Blog: For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Jews... Or, Much A-Blog About Nothing...

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Oooh, look Ma, another meme!

Look at the list of books below: Bold the ones you’ve read. Mark in blue (or aqua ;-)) the ones you want to read. Cross out/strikethrough the ones you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole (or mark them some other way if you can't figure out how to strike through text--I used green) Finally, italicize the ones you've never heard of.

I've read a fair amount of these (didn't like all of them, but ehh) and some I was like "wth is that???" Enjoy. I'm tagging RaggedyMom and Orieyenta because CYM already did this one :-P

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) The movies are better but I still liked it.
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling) Only so my friends will quit bugging me about it LOL!
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling) Again only so my friends will leave me alone.
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden) It was good but then I read Geisha: A Life (Mineko Iwasaki) whom Golden based Memoirs on and she claims that he fabricated so much of the book that she was ashamed, so then I was a little peeved.
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Rowling) See above.
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling) Ahem.
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) High school Honors English. 'Nuff said ;-)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) Oh, high school Honors English LOL!
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) Didn't read it but I have the BBC-produced movies (there are 2 on VHS)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) I HATE Steinbeck. Ugh. I read The Red Pony in 6th grade and Of Mice and Men in 7th and again in 9th grade English and loathed it both times, and The Grapes of Wrath in 12th grade, again, I hated it.
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell) 9th grade book report
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) She came to speak at my University and I felt dumb because everyone but me had read it--even my non-Jewish friends! Oh well, her "Choosing a Jewish Life" is a fave so I guess it's all good :-)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible --I've read the Christian version in several variations, as well as the TaNaKh (translated of course)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) I liked the movie but I have no desire to read the book.
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) One of my all time favorites
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) Again, I repeat, I HATE STEINBECK.
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) Technically I didn’t really read it so much as sleep through it…
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens) Why was I tortured in English class?
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) 9th grade English
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling) Enough with the HP already! :-p
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy) Don't necessarily plan on reading it any time soon but I figure to be considered "well-read" it's kind of a must, right?
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding) Saw the movies which were great but I still want to read the book.
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White) One of my favorites as a kid
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck) YUCK.
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams) 9th grade English, totally creeped me out but I loved it :-P
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) Yuck. 12th grade English. Though my bff and I still get a chuckle out of quoting some lines from it.
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)Read it just this spring, couldn’t put it down.
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) 8th grade English. Hated it.
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Bonus: The Princess Bride (William Goldman) I’ve seen the movie, does that count?

Friday, July 06, 2007

I've been tagged! Aaaaaaah!

Ok, ok, so I guess I have been in hiding for too long. Orieyenta has tagged me so I suppose I should finally get off my lazy tuchis and do this ;-) Thanks, O, for making me come back to the blogosphere, it has been too long!

Here we go:


The Rules are:
~ Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves.
~ The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed.
~ At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.


1. I am addicted to The Learning Channel, the Food Network, Lifetime, and HGTV. I can't help it. :-p

2. I am a Diet Pepsi fanatic. I can stomach Diet Coke, but if I have the choice, Diet Pepsi is the one for me!

3. I love love love love love studying other cultures, but religions in particular interest me. Of course, my love of travel goes hand in hand with that.

4. My secret dream job is to be a hairstylist and celebrity makeup artist.

5. As a kid, I wanted to be Shirley Temple. I even had a Care Bears cake for my fourth birthday that said "Happy Birthday, Shirley Temple" Yeah, I guess you could say I was a bit obsessed...Thank goodness my mom indulged me and didn't send me to a shrink! :-)

6. I used to do beauty pageants. Yup, you got that right, interviews, speeches, swimsuits, evening gowns and all. Big hair and fake eyelashes, the whole nine yards. And I LOVED it. *sigh* You can take the girl out of the country... ;-)

7. I am an encyclopedia of song lyrics. More often than not, I know the band/singer and title as well, but I for sure know the lyrics to songs as far back as the 1950's all the way through today. I was raised on the "golden oldies" and I didn't know what "pop" music was until I was about 8 or 9--my favorite songs were Chantilly Lace by the Big Bopper and La Bamaba by Richie Valens! Today, however, I have been known to impress my friends with my awesome rapping skills ;-) Take that, P Diddy!

8. I can sleep almost any where, any time, on anything if I am tired enough. I cannot, however, sleep if any dresser drawers are open, or my closet door, or my bedroom door. Maybe I'm borderline OCD, I don't know, but those things simply drive me nuts until I'm forced to get up and close them all myself.


Ok, I don't even think that 8 people read this blog, but I guess I'll tag them anyway. I was going to tag RaggedyMom but I see she's already done it, so I'm tagging Elie, Fudge, JewCess (though she has been MIA since February so I don't know if she'll respond), aaaand...Well, I think that's about it. So get to it, folks!



BTW, does anyone know what the deal is with this new blogger? I can no longer add links or anything because it won't let me out of the HTML-edit-mode-thingy....I'd appreciate the help as I am feeling rather challenged. Thanks!

-Hila