Books (Plus Meme)
Jun. 29th, 2008 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jheti
I spent yesterday digging through garage sales and halfassing a trip to Wet n' Wild. I have an annual pass, now. Much happier about the books, though I won't say no to a good water slide.
I hurt all over and still stink of chlorine, two showers later. -_-;
Here, I'll just post the back-copy of each book instead of reviewing them, since I've only read one. Two, technically, but there you are.
Wise Child - Monica Furlong
"In a remote Scottish village a girl called Wise Child is abandoned by her parents and taken in by Juniper, a sorceress. Under Juniper's kind but stern tutelage, Wise Child thrives. She learns reading, herbal lore, and even the beginnings of magic. Then Wise Child's natural mother--the "black" witch Maeve--reappears, offering the girl a life of luxury. Forced to choose between Maeve and Juniper, Wise Child comes to discover both her true loyalties and her growing supernatural powers. By this time, though, Maeve's evil magic, a mysterious plague, and the fears of superstitious villagers combine to place Wise Child and Juniper in what may be inescapable danger..."
The Cry of the Icemark (One of a series of those teenager books the size of a bus) - Stuart Hill
"Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield: Fearless and flame-haired, the thirteen-year-old more than lives up to her impressive name. But when her father is killed and her kingdom, the Icemark, is threatened with invasion, Thirrin must become a true warrior, no matter the cost. Will fragile new alliances between Snow Leopards, Vampires, and Wolf-folk see her to victory? And can her budding friendship with Oskan, an intense young wizard, survive a war?"
I bought this one for its cover, so I don't expect to be wowed, but he did offer me buttons, didn't he. I remain hopeful but not optimistic.
Cover your eyes if you mislike romance, next.
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
"A most untraditional love story, this is the celebrated tale of Henry De Tamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who involuntarily travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bounds of love."
I saw the words "adventuresome librarian" and HAD TO HAVE this book, regardless of outcome.
The Same Stuff as Stars - Katherine Paterson
"Angel Moran's family is falling apart. Her daddy is in jail, and her mother has abandoned Angel and her little brother, Bernie, at their great-grandmother's crumbling Vermont farmhouse. Grandma spends most of her time wrapped in a blanket by the wood stove.
There is one bright spot in Angel's world--a mysterious stranger who teaches Angel all about the stars and planets and constellations. Carving out a new life proves harder than Angel ever imagined. But she feels a tiny spark of hope when she remembers what the stranger said--that she is made of the same stuff as stars."
I, um, the title. XD
Wicked: Etc. Etc. - Gregory Maguire
Read it. Wanted it. Found it for a dollar. Now I can go over and over and over the Gelphie bits, and pretend. And if I just wish hard enough, someday. That's how magic works, you know; it's no good clapping your hands if you don't believe in faeries. ^_~
Dear Readers: may I present:
Bradbury, London, Bradley, and Brin, all of whom write better than half the authors on the list following.
Apparently I can't add. XD
WHERE IS BRADBURY. WHERE IS TWAIN. WHERE IS LONDON. Srysly, where are the good American authors?
Well. At least James Fennimore Cooper and Henry Miller finally aren't on the "reading lists" anymore. >_<
The purpose of a "good" book is to transport you, not to punish you for knowing how to read. That's the largest reason I hate these lists: they spread misery.
Anyway, the rules:
The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa (MAY is her middle name THANK YOU) Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - I JUST BOUGHT THIS. But have not read it. Uh-oh, now I'm positive it sucks. XD
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (I read "Tales of the Jazz Age" instead.)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Do not grok the fuss = dngtf.)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (*Uninmpressed.* One of the rare occasions on which Disney improved the tale.)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis (Is uninteresting, except for the snow queen and the terrible stone table; that was the only time I felt anything for Aslan, and nothing whatever for the silly little children, whom I found absolutely unendurable.)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (BAKAYAROU. *Ahem.*)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (Oh, Anne, you adorable histrionic redhead; WHY did you become such a boring adult? *facedesk OF WOE.*)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (Intensely sexist, powerfully weird, decidedly delicious, and monumentally heavy for a book of its type. The movie is WONDERFUL, also, but you must buy the DVD version; VHS renders the print so dark it's impossible to tell what's going on half the time, which ruins the whole thing.)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (Portions, in order to illustrate precisely WHY I cannot stand Dickens.)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold.
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (Do not grok the fuss.)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Heavily abridged; dngtf.)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (DNGTF. SRYSLY. Its origins, however, are femmeslash, and that pleases me.)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (And many, many other of her works.)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (Sure, it's a godawful potboiler, but it's the only thing he ever wrote that even CONTAINED SENTENCES. Besides, I'm a sentimental trash hound.)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - (femmeslash! Briefly. The style drove me right up a wall, but I finished it.)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White (No one helps me; I live by my wits.)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Tenchi loved this.)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (O, satire, I love you.)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (D'ARTAGNAN FTW. Enough said.)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (OTHELLO IS SUCH A BETTER PLAY. *Ahem.* I have also read King Lear and most of A Midsummer Nights' etc. etc.)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (No, but I have read The Hunchback etc. etc., which, as legend has it, is the reason Notre Dame still stands--they were going to tear it down, so he wrote this book, and presto! Instant monument. ^_^)
PS: Get![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nyohah to introduce you to Twain if you haven't met him yet. ^_^
I hurt all over and still stink of chlorine, two showers later. -_-;
Here, I'll just post the back-copy of each book instead of reviewing them, since I've only read one. Two, technically, but there you are.
Wise Child - Monica Furlong
"In a remote Scottish village a girl called Wise Child is abandoned by her parents and taken in by Juniper, a sorceress. Under Juniper's kind but stern tutelage, Wise Child thrives. She learns reading, herbal lore, and even the beginnings of magic. Then Wise Child's natural mother--the "black" witch Maeve--reappears, offering the girl a life of luxury. Forced to choose between Maeve and Juniper, Wise Child comes to discover both her true loyalties and her growing supernatural powers. By this time, though, Maeve's evil magic, a mysterious plague, and the fears of superstitious villagers combine to place Wise Child and Juniper in what may be inescapable danger..."
The Cry of the Icemark (One of a series of those teenager books the size of a bus) - Stuart Hill
"Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield: Fearless and flame-haired, the thirteen-year-old more than lives up to her impressive name. But when her father is killed and her kingdom, the Icemark, is threatened with invasion, Thirrin must become a true warrior, no matter the cost. Will fragile new alliances between Snow Leopards, Vampires, and Wolf-folk see her to victory? And can her budding friendship with Oskan, an intense young wizard, survive a war?"
I bought this one for its cover, so I don't expect to be wowed, but he did offer me buttons, didn't he. I remain hopeful but not optimistic.
Cover your eyes if you mislike romance, next.
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
"A most untraditional love story, this is the celebrated tale of Henry De Tamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who involuntarily travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bounds of love."
I saw the words "adventuresome librarian" and HAD TO HAVE this book, regardless of outcome.
The Same Stuff as Stars - Katherine Paterson
"Angel Moran's family is falling apart. Her daddy is in jail, and her mother has abandoned Angel and her little brother, Bernie, at their great-grandmother's crumbling Vermont farmhouse. Grandma spends most of her time wrapped in a blanket by the wood stove.
There is one bright spot in Angel's world--a mysterious stranger who teaches Angel all about the stars and planets and constellations. Carving out a new life proves harder than Angel ever imagined. But she feels a tiny spark of hope when she remembers what the stranger said--that she is made of the same stuff as stars."
I, um, the title. XD
Wicked: Etc. Etc. - Gregory Maguire
Read it. Wanted it. Found it for a dollar. Now I can go over and over and over the Gelphie bits, and pretend. And if I just wish hard enough, someday. That's how magic works, you know; it's no good clapping your hands if you don't believe in faeries. ^_~
Dear Readers: may I present:
Bradbury, London, Bradley, and Brin, all of whom write better than half the authors on the list following.
Apparently I can't add. XD
WHERE IS BRADBURY. WHERE IS TWAIN. WHERE IS LONDON. Srysly, where are the good American authors?
Well. At least James Fennimore Cooper and Henry Miller finally aren't on the "reading lists" anymore. >_<
The purpose of a "good" book is to transport you, not to punish you for knowing how to read. That's the largest reason I hate these lists: they spread misery.
Anyway, the rules:
The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa (MAY is her middle name THANK YOU) Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - I JUST BOUGHT THIS. But have not read it. Uh-oh, now I'm positive it sucks. XD
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (I read "Tales of the Jazz Age" instead.)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Do not grok the fuss = dngtf.)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (*Uninmpressed.* One of the rare occasions on which Disney improved the tale.)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis (Is uninteresting, except for the snow queen and the terrible stone table; that was the only time I felt anything for Aslan, and nothing whatever for the silly little children, whom I found absolutely unendurable.)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (BAKAYAROU. *Ahem.*)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (Oh, Anne, you adorable histrionic redhead; WHY did you become such a boring adult? *facedesk OF WOE.*)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (Intensely sexist, powerfully weird, decidedly delicious, and monumentally heavy for a book of its type. The movie is WONDERFUL, also, but you must buy the DVD version; VHS renders the print so dark it's impossible to tell what's going on half the time, which ruins the whole thing.)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (Portions, in order to illustrate precisely WHY I cannot stand Dickens.)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold.
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (Do not grok the fuss.)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Heavily abridged; dngtf.)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (DNGTF. SRYSLY. Its origins, however, are femmeslash, and that pleases me.)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (And many, many other of her works.)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (Sure, it's a godawful potboiler, but it's the only thing he ever wrote that even CONTAINED SENTENCES. Besides, I'm a sentimental trash hound.)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - (femmeslash! Briefly. The style drove me right up a wall, but I finished it.)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White (No one helps me; I live by my wits.)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Tenchi loved this.)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (O, satire, I love you.)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (D'ARTAGNAN FTW. Enough said.)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (OTHELLO IS SUCH A BETTER PLAY. *Ahem.* I have also read King Lear and most of A Midsummer Nights' etc. etc.)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (No, but I have read The Hunchback etc. etc., which, as legend has it, is the reason Notre Dame still stands--they were going to tear it down, so he wrote this book, and presto! Instant monument. ^_^)
PS: Get
nyohah to introduce you to Twain if you haven't met him yet. ^_^
