Olivia's Fantasy Meme

:)...Look what I found:

J R R Tolkien, Lord Of the Rings Trilogy
J R R Tolkien, The Hobbit
J K Rowling, Harry Potter Series
Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time Series
C S Lewis, The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe
George R R Martin, A Song of Ice & Fire
David Eddings, The Belgariad Series
Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule
Raymond E Feist, Magician
Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials Trilogy
Terry Brooks, The Sword of Shannara
Ursula K Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
Christopher Paolini, Eragon
Robin Hobb, The Farseer Trilogy
R A Salvatore, Dark Elf Trilogy
Stephen King, The Dark Tower Series
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle In Time
Richard Adams, Watership Down
Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic
George Orwell, Animal Farm
Weis & Hickman, Dragonlance Chronicles
Stephen Donaldson, Thomas Covenant - The Unbeliever
Roger Zelazny, The Chronicles of Amber
Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists Of Avalon
Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl
Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire
Gaiman & Pratchett, Good Omens
Brian Jacques, Redwall
Roald Dahl, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
William Golding, The Lord Of the Flies
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
Tad Williams, Memory, Sorrow & Thorn Series
Garth Nix, Sabriel
Anne McCaffrey, Dragonflight
Piers Anthony, On a Pale Horse
T H White, The Once & Future King
Gail Carson Levine, Ella Enchanted
Stephenie Meyer, Twilight
Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Tamora Pierce, Alanna: The First Adventure
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Unknown Author, Beowulf
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Dianna Gabaldon, Outlander
C S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Homer, The Odyssey
LaHaye & Jenkins, Left Behind
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
Lloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Prydain
Yann Martel, Life of Pi
David Eddings, The Malloreon
Terry Pratchett, Mort
J R R Tolkien, The Silmarillion
Laurell K Hamilton, Guilty Pleasures
Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon
Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana
Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
Moore & Gibbons, Watchmen
Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
China Mieville, Perdido Street Station
Frank Miller, Batman - The Dark Knight Returns
Cornelia Funke, Inkheart
Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard Matheson, I Am Legend
Weis & Hickman, Death Gate Cycle
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Patricia C Wrede, Dealing With Dragons
Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Mercedes Lackey, Magic's Pawn
Patrick Suskind, Perfume
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Peter S Beagle, The Last Unicorn
Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair
Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Dante Alighieri, Inferno
Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun
Christopher Moore, Lamb
Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkan
Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Susan Cooper, The Dark Is Rising
David Eddings, The Elenium
Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle
Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword
Anne Bishop, Daughter of the Blood
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

Still less that the first one, but better than the sci-fi one :)!

Olivia Sci-Fi Meme

Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Frank Herbert, Dune
Isaac Asimov, Foundation
Douglas Adams, Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
George Orwell, 1984
Robert A Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Arthur C Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey
Isaac Asimov, I, Robot
William Gibson, Neuromancer
Robert A Heinlein, Starship Troopers
Larry Niven, Ringworld
Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Arthur C Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama
H G Wells, The Time Machine
Robert A Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Arthur C Clarke, Childhood's End
Dan Simmons, Hyperion
H G Wells, The War of the Worlds
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Niven & Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye
Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel
Philip K Dick, The Man in the High Castle
Frederik Pohl, Gateway
Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle In Time
Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
Robert A Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
Carl Sagan, Contact
Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids
Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain
Philip K Dick, UBIK
Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep
Isaac Asimov, The End Of Eternity
Walter M Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
L Ron Hubbard, Battlefield Earth
Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth
Iain M Banks, Player Of Games
Niven & Pournelle, Lucifer's Hammer
Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow
David Brin, Startide Rising
Greg Bear, Eon
Peter F Hamilton, The Reality Dysfunction
Philip Jose Farmer, To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man
Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat
Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Arthur C Clarke, The City and the Stars
Philip K Dick, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch
Robert A Heinlein, The Door Into Summer
Connie Willis, Doomsday Book
Robert A Heinlein, Citizen Of the Galaxy
Philip K Dick, A Scanner Darkly
Robert A Heinlein, The Puppet Masters
Robert A Heinlein, Have Space-Suit - Will Travel
C S Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
Clifford Simak, Way Station
John Wyndham, The Chrysalids
Ursula K Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars
H G Wells, The Invisible Man
Julian May, The Many-Colored Land
Dan Simmons, Ilium
Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons
E E 'Doc' Smith, Grey Lensman
William Gibson, Burning Chrome
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in KA's Court
Michael Crichton, Sphere
Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space
David Brin, The Postman
Clifford Simak, City
Arthur C Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise
John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
Edwin A Abbott, Flatland
Philip K Dick, VALIS
Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human
Greg Bear, Blood Music
Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad
James Blish, Cities in Flight
David Brin, The Uplift War

Hmm...I should read more actual science fiction too! I have a ton of Philip K. Dick to read. I recommend him because, although I haven't read the books on this list (but are on my own to read list), I have read a couple of his other novels, which were really good. I also have been meaning to read more Ursula K. LeGuin, and Isaac Asimov...AND I have been wanting to read some Alistair Reynolds too :).

Top 100 SciFi: Celeste

Items I've read in bold
1. Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
2. Frank Herbert, Dune
3. Isaac Asimov, Foundation
4. Douglas Adams, Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
5. George Orwell, 1984
6. Robert A Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
7. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
8. Arthur C Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey
9. Isaac Asimov, I, Robot
10. William Gibson, Neuromancer
11. Robert A Heinlein, Starship Troopers
12. Larry Niven, Ringworld
13. Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
14. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
15. Arthur C Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama
16. H G Wells, The Time Machine
17. Robert A Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
18. Arthur C Clarke, Childhood's End
19. Dan Simmons, Hyperion
20. H G Wells, The War of the Worlds
21. Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
22. Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
23. Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
24. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
25. Niven & Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye
26. Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
27. Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
28. Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel
29. Philip K Dick, The Man in the High Castle
30. Frederik Pohl, Gateway
31. Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
32. Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle In Time
33. Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
34. Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
35. Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
36. Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
37. Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
38. Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
39. Robert A Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
40. Carl Sagan, Contact
41. Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves
42. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
43. John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids
44. Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
45. Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain
46. Philip K Dick, UBIK
47. Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep
48. Isaac Asimov, The End Of Eternity
49. Walter M Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
50. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
51. Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
52. Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
53. Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
54. L Ron Hubbard, Battlefield Earth
55. Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth
56. Iain M Banks, Player Of Games
57. Niven & Pournelle, Lucifer's Hammer
58. Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed
59. Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow
60. David Brin, Startide Rising
61. Greg Bear, Eon
62. Peter F Hamilton, The Reality Dysfunction
63. Philip Jose Farmer, To Your Scattered Bodies Go
64. Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man
65. Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat
66. Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer
67. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
68. Arthur C Clarke, The City and the Stars
69. Philip K Dick, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch
70. Robert A Heinlein, The Door Into Summer
71. Connie Willis, Doomsday Book
72. Robert A Heinlein, Citizen Of the Galaxy
73. Philip K Dick, A Scanner Darkly
74. Robert A Heinlein, The Puppet Masters
75. Robert A Heinlein, Have Space-Suit - Will Travel
76. C S Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
77. Clifford Simak, Way Station
78. John Wyndham, The Chrysalids
79. Ursula K Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
80. Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars
81. H G Wells, The Invisible Man
82. Julian May, The Many-Colored Land
83. Dan Simmons, Ilium
84. Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons
85. E E 'Doc' Smith, Grey Lensman
86. William Gibson, Burning Chrome
87. Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in KA's Court
88. Michael Crichton, Sphere
89. Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space
90. David Brin, The Postman
91. Clifford Simak, City
92. Arthur C Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise
93. John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
94. Edwin A Abbott, Flatland
95. Philip K Dick, VALIS
96. Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human
97. Greg Bear, Blood Music
98. Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad
99. James Blish, Cities in Flight
100. David Brin, The Uplift War

Were it not for the heavy representation for Heinlein, I wouldn't have so many.... there are number of authors on the list I've read, just not that particular book, though. Like L Ron Hubbard (anyone who actually read Battlefield Earth is a glutton for punishment), Le Guin, Brin, Clarke, May, and Vonnegut (I've read a lot of his stuff.) Heh. And I went into this thinking I'd have a better score than that NEA list.

Anna's Top 100 Sci-Fi

Some of these books I attempted to read when I was all of ten, so I abandoned them. I fully plan on reading them in full one day, so I put those in italics.

1. Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
2. Frank Herbert, Dune
3. Isaac Asimov, Foundation
4. Douglas Adams, Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
5. George Orwell, 1984
6. Robert A Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
7. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
8. Arthur C Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey
9. Isaac Asimov, I, Robot
10. William Gibson, Neuromancer
11. Robert A Heinlein, Starship Troopers
12. Larry Niven, Ringworld
13. Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
14. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
15. Arthur C Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama
16. H G Wells, The Time Machine
17. Robert A Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
18. Arthur C Clarke, Childhood's End
19. Dan Simmons, Hyperion
20. H G Wells, The War of the Worlds
21. Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
22. Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
23. Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
24. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
25. Niven & Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye
26. Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
27. Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
28. Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel
29. Philip K Dick, The Man in the High Castle
30. Frederik Pohl, Gateway
31. Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
32. Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle In Time
33. Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
34. Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
35. Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
36. Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
37. Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
38. Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
39. Robert A Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
40. Carl Sagan, Contact
41. Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves
42. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
43. John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids
44. Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
45. Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain
46. Philip K Dick, UBIK
47. Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep
48. Isaac Asimov, The End Of Eternity
49. Walter M Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
50. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
51. Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
52. Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
53. Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
54. L Ron Hubbard, Battlefield Earth
55. Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth
56. Iain M Banks, Player Of Games
57. Niven & Pournelle, Lucifer's Hammer
58. Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed
59. Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow
60. David Brin, Startide Rising
61. Greg Bear, Eon
62. Peter F Hamilton, The Reality Dysfunction
63. Philip Jose Farmer, To Your Scattered Bodies Go
64. Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man
65. Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat
66. Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer
67. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
68. Arthur C Clarke, The City and the Stars
69. Philip K Dick, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch
70. Robert A Heinlein, The Door Into Summer
71. Connie Willis, Doomsday Book
72. Robert A Heinlein, Citizen Of the Galaxy
73. Philip K Dick, A Scanner Darkly
74. Robert A Heinlein, The Puppet Masters
75. Robert A Heinlein, Have Space-Suit - Will Travel
76. C S Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
77. Clifford Simak, Way Station
78. John Wyndham, The Chrysalids
79. Ursula K Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
80. Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars
81. H G Wells, The Invisible Man
82. Julian May, The Many-Colored Land
83. Dan Simmons, Ilium
84. Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons
85. E E 'Doc' Smith, Grey Lensman
86. William Gibson, Burning Chrome
87. Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in KA's Court
88. Michael Crichton, Sphere
89. Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space
90. David Brin, The Postman
91. Clifford Simak, City
92. Arthur C Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise
93. John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
94. Edwin A Abbott, Flatland
95. Philip K Dick, VALIS
96. Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human
97. Greg Bear, Blood Music
98. Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad
99. James Blish, Cities in Flight
100. David Brin, The Uplift War

Celeste will win. I remember she had a hard-on for Heinlein and Vonnegut. I never could finish those Heinlein books, because I was so young. I'll have to try again. Incidentally I just finished Cryptonomicon last week. It's like 1500 pages long. Good read though.

Top 100 Sci-Fi meme

This is a top 100 Sci-Fi list, which can be found here. I know Celeste will probably win this one, lol, though I would put even odds on Anna winning, except they seem to be very strictly in the Sci-Fi category and have a bias against stuff that leans more towards Fantasy (e.g. is there any Piers Anthony on here at all?). Anyway, copy it, bold the ones you've read!

1. Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
2. Frank Herbert, Dune
3. Isaac Asimov, Foundation
4. Douglas Adams, Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
5. George Orwell, 1984
6. Robert A Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
7. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
8. Arthur C Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey
9. Isaac Asimov, I, Robot
10. William Gibson, Neuromancer
11. Robert A Heinlein, Starship Troopers
12. Larry Niven, Ringworld
13. Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
14. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
15. Arthur C Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama
16. H G Wells, The Time Machine
17. Robert A Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
18. Arthur C Clarke, Childhood's End
19. Dan Simmons, Hyperion
20. H G Wells, The War of the Worlds
21. Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
22. Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
23. Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
24. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
25. Niven & Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye
26. Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
27. Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
28. Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel
29. Philip K Dick, The Man in the High Castle
30. Frederik Pohl, Gateway
31. Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
32. Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle In Time
33. Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
34. Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
35. Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
36. Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
37. Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
38. Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
39. Robert A Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
40. Carl Sagan, Contact
41. Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves
42. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
43. John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids
44. Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
45. Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain
46. Philip K Dick, UBIK
47. Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep
48. Isaac Asimov, The End Of Eternity
49. Walter M Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
50. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
51. Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
52. Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
53. Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
54. L Ron Hubbard, Battlefield Earth
55. Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth
56. Iain M Banks, Player Of Games
57. Niven & Pournelle, Lucifer's Hammer
58. Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed
59. Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow
60. David Brin, Startide Rising
61. Greg Bear, Eon
62. Peter F Hamilton, The Reality Dysfunction
63. Philip Jose Farmer, To Your Scattered Bodies Go
64. Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man
65. Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat
66. Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer
67. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
68. Arthur C Clarke, The City and the Stars
69. Philip K Dick, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch
70. Robert A Heinlein, The Door Into Summer
71. Connie Willis, Doomsday Book
72. Robert A Heinlein, Citizen Of the Galaxy
73. Philip K Dick, A Scanner Darkly
74. Robert A Heinlein, The Puppet Masters
75. Robert A Heinlein, Have Space-Suit - Will Travel
76. C S Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
77. Clifford Simak, Way Station
78. John Wyndham, The Chrysalids
79. Ursula K Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
80. Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars
81. H G Wells, The Invisible Man
82. Julian May, The Many-Colored Land
83. Dan Simmons, Ilium
84. Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons
85. E E 'Doc' Smith, Grey Lensman
86. William Gibson, Burning Chrome
87. Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in KA's Court
88. Michael Crichton, Sphere
89. Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space
90. David Brin, The Postman
91. Clifford Simak, City
92. Arthur C Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise
93. John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
94. Edwin A Abbott, Flatland
95. Philip K Dick, VALIS
96. Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human
97. Greg Bear, Blood Music
98. Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad
99. James Blish, Cities in Flight
100. David Brin, The Uplift War

Yikes, 11 out of 100 for me. I actually really love Sci-Fi, though you wouldn't know it from this list. I just have a tendency to pick up whatever crap I find in used book stores indiscrimintely. So I probably read quite a bit of Sci-Fi that Sci-Fi experts would consider trash. I have quite a few of these in my to read stack and haven't got to them yet, and I know I read one other Heinlen book besides Starship Troopers, but can't remember which one, lol.

Alicia Book Meme

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog.


The premise of this exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

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 (book one only) --I've read all three.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (a few only)--I've read more than a few.
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
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy -- I've read all of them.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
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 - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
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 Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables- LM Montgomery
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
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
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
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
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
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
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
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
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
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

51 out of 100 -- though a few I had read to me when I was a kid. You can consider all the rest italicized for me as I have tons of classic book lists that I look at regularly to decide what I should read next. Surprised to see some of these on here, I don't think I have seen "A Fine Balance" on any lists before and was a very excellent read, though horribly depressing.

Duck Salad

If you like Vietnamese food, then this duck salad should go on your menu for the week. I took recipes from two different food blogs and cobbled them together into a close approximation of the vermicelli dishes I get at Vietnamese restaurants. I roasted the duck the day before because it takes around 3 hours to render off all the fat. My suggestion is that you DO not do this if the dish you are eating for dinner that night is disgusting and makes you want to vomit. Just so happens the meal I made on Sunday that I had to eat again on Monday, the night I roasted the duck, was an enormous FAIL. So I had to eat that crap while the scent of roasting duck tickled my nostrils. I ended up helping myself to a leg when it came out of the oven, and gave Sonny the other one as an apology for my awful awful spaghetti. I also saved the fat, and am definitely going to use it for something.

Recipe 1: Aromatic Duck Salad I changed it obviously but I like to give credit where credit is due.

1 Roasted duck (mine was 4 pounds and change)
1 package Rice Vermicelli
1 seedless cucumber thinly sliced
1 Bunch scallions, sliced into matchsticks (huge pain in the ass)
2 cups mung bean sprouts

To roast the duck:
Salt liberally and pat dry. Don't forget to remove giblets and if you want you can trim off loose fat, but why would you want to do that? Let sit for about half an hour at room temperature while you preheat the oven to 350. Roast at 350 for two hours, turning every half hour. Increase heat to 375 and roast for additional 30 minutes, then roast at 400 for ten minutes to re-crisp the breast. Total cooking time about 2hr 40 min for a 4 pound bird. The leg should swivel easily and pull out without a struggle. Just so you know flipping the duck is a bitch because you want to be careful not to prick the skin, so you have to fiddle with spoons and cavities and what not to get that sucker on its back and vice versa. Let rest 20 minutes.

Once the duck is cool enough to handle--in my case the next day by which time I couldn't frakking wait to eat the stupid thing--cut off the wings at the joint, and then cut that sucker in half lengthwise. Then cut the halves in half lengthwise. Work the meat off the bones, you want to end up with perfect little pieces of sliced duck with the skin still attached.

To cook rice noodles:
Bring water to a boil, take off heat and throw the rice noodles in for five minutes. Do not over cook, rinse with cold water while draining.

To slice cucumber:
Slice in half cross wise, and then in half again lengthwise, then slice thinly crosswise. This would be good with little matchstick cucumbers but I didn't have the patience for that. If you do, well . . . you're weird.

To slice scallions:
I have no idea how people get those perfect little scallion matchsticks. Can you buy them that way? I mean seriously slicing those suckers is the most irritating job in the world. Half of the bunch ended up sliced on a diagonal, because I am not made of time.

Throw everything together.



Recipe 2: Nuoc Cham This I kept the same, except my directions are the lazy way.

1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup warm water
1/4 cup fish sauce (Viet Huong Three Crabs brand)
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 of a lime, juiced
3-4 cloves of garlic , minced
2-3 Thai chili pepper, minced

Add the sugar to the water and swirl until the sugar dissolves. Throw everything else in.

Pour some dressing over your salad, and voila. A dish that makes up for my colossal spaghetti failure. AND there's enough left for lunch for two more days. Thank God!

Olivia Book Meme

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog.
The premise of this exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.
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 (book one only) --I've read all three.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (a few only)--I've read more than a few.
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
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy -- I've read all of them.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
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 - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
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 Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables- LM Montgomery
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 (Loved it when I was a teenager. Re-read it recently and found it tedious.)
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
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
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
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
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
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
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
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
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So...I guess I've read about 30%, but I think that I should re-read some of those because some of them were read a long time ago. I actually have been wanting to read a number of these books, simply because I believe my high school education was slack in its reading requirements. So, hopefully I will get to them soon.

I agree with Celeste though...this list is not that great. Also, what's with the duplicates? They have the Chronicles of Narnia listed and then go on later to list The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. They did the same thing with Shakespeare!

Innovation in Education

Now, this is pretty damned innovative.

...five school days a month, Adams skips the uniform and dons business attire. On those days, after a morning assembly, she bypasses the classrooms and hops instead into a van bound for Essex County College. There Adams works in the human resources department from 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. or so, scheduling résumé appointments, doing clerical work, and generally keeping the place functioning. Far from being a distraction, this opportunity to work while going to school is what drew Adams to Christ the King in the first place. “I thought it would be a good school for me to learn about business,” she says. “I would like to be an entrepreneur.”

Few teenagers are so concretely focused on their future careers. But Adams’ attitude is not unusual for the 89 freshmen at Christ the King Prep, part of a recently formed national network of Catholic schools that combine school and work. In the process, these “Cristo Rey” (Spanish for “Christ the King”) schools have stumbled on a new business model for private urban education—one that asks students like Adams to largely pay their own way.

At the 19 schools in the network (three new ones are opening this fall in Brooklyn, Detroit, and the west side of Chicago), four-student teams share entry-level clerical jobs at area employers. In exchange, these companies pay the schools $20,000 to $30,000 for each team. The subsidy of $5,000 to $7,500 per student keeps tuition low enough (usually around $2,500) that a prep school education becomes feasible for poor families.

As the article points out, this isn't a fixit for all poor urban families; the schools will not take students who are discipline problems, and will ask students to leave if they are not holding up their end of the work bargain. So the resulting group of students attending Christo Rey schools are motivated and willing to work hard for their education - but they're also poor, come from bad neighborhoods, and have no experience dealing with people in a professional environment. The schools give them a prep-school education, professional work experience and contacts they can use on their resumes, and have a college-acceptance rate far higher than public schools. By asking these students to work for their education, they're getting a far better idea of the value of it.

Book MeMe: Celeste

The premise of this exercise is that someone has claimed that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

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 - (editors note: lol. What, they consider this anonymous?
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - tried to read it, but something more compelling was sitting on my desk.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - actually, just Romeo & Juliet, MacBeth, Hamlet, all of his histories (thanks to my drama teacher), As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest... um, okay, most of them really...
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
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
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 - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
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 Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables- LM Montgomery
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 - tried to read it, bored the shit out of me.
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
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
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
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
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
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
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - I've read some of them, but not the whole thing.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
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
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - why does this show up twice?
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Eh.... 40% ain't bad. Especially for what I'd call a rather arbitrary list. I mean seriously, there's like NO sci-fi. What about "War of the Worlds", "The Time Machine", "Stranger in a Strange Land", "I, Robot", "The Mote In Gods Eye"... I could go on and on, but you get what I mean. I fail to see how Adams made it to the list (much as I enjoy his work), but Niven, Heinlein and Asimov were snubbed. And not a single Mark Twain, and no Oscar Wilde?

Now I have to sit down and put together a top 100 list of books I've read and think everyone else should give a shot as well. I have a feeling it'll be substantially different....

Book MeMe

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2) Italicize those you intend to read.

3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE

4) Reprint this list in your blog.

The premise of this exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

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 (book one only)

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (a few only)

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

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

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 - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

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 Meany - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables- LM Montgomery

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 (Loved it when I was a teenager. Re-read it recently and found it tedious.)

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

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

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

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

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read considerably more than six, thanks in large part to my high school English teachers. I'm a little disappointed that I haven't read more than half of the list, boo for me.

Dr. Horrible = Totally Freaking Awesome!

I just finished watching Act One of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and I heartily recommend you do the same. And before July 20th, because apparently they will be taken down. It's Joss Whedon through and through.

I'm at a loss to describe it, except to say that Neil Patrick Harris rules!

Hellboy 2

So, I really enjoyed Hellboy 2. I recommend that all those who haven't seen it yet, go see it. It was pretty predictable, but then I don't go to Ron Perlman movies to think. I go see them to be entertained, and entertained I was. I especially loved all of the fantastical beings that they threw in there. I kept thinking back to my childhood days and The Neverending Story or The Labyrinth. The difference however, is that the special effects are much better. Guillermo del Toro is far better at rendering the fantastical believable.

GO SEE IT!!! Or wait for it to come out on DVD...whichever :). It'll still be loads of fun.

Self-Congratulatory Post

I roasted my first chicken and it was awesome! The technique called for a full day of dry brining, and then roasting that puppy at 475-500 degrees for an hour. I didn't have to add any fat and the skin was nice and crispy. I also threw some Chinese Broccoli in the bottom of the roasting pan for the last ten minutes and when it came out it had been fried in chicken grease. It was delicious. I totally recommend it. I stole the recipe from one of my favorite food bloggers.

I'm serious OK, even the breasts were juicy (tee hee)!

Worst Remake Ever

I just watched the original 1988 "Hairspray" again last night, after about five years since my last viewing... and it struck me forcibly just how godawful the remake is. John Travolta might be a touch more attractive in drag, but he just doesn't even hold a candle to Divine, who I spent years trying to decide - "he or a really ugly she?" Every single one of the new characters, with the only possible exception of Michelle Pfeiffer, utterly lacks the sparkle and soul of the original cast, and the musical numbers really pretty much blow. What was the point in turning a movie about music into a musical, which loses most of the fantastic original soundtrack? Or taking a character like Edna Turnblad and turning her into a sniveling, chin-quivering, hyper-sensitive waste of flesh? Seeing the musical remake just made me appreciate the original version more.

It's Official!!

Sooo....As of 04/25/2008, Nick and I are officially homeowners :). It's been hectic--still is for that matter--but we are both really happy to be living in our new home. We're also both incredibly tired and can't wait to be done unpacking and moving in so that we can start to enjoy our new house...

Just wanted to keep you all posted.

Love,Livvy

I've Got a Black Magic Shaman...

This is totally freaking awesome!

India TV, one of India’s major Hindi channels with national outreach, invited Sanal Edamaruku for a discussion on “Tantrik power versus Science”. Pandit Surinder Sharma, who claims to be the tantrik of top politicians and is well known from his TV shows, represented the other side. During the discussion, the tantrik showed a small human shape of wheat flour dough, laid a thread around it like a noose and tightened it. He claimed that he was able to kill any person he wanted within three minutes by using black magic. Sanal challenged him to try and kill him.

The tantrik tried. He chanted his mantras (magic words): “Om lingalingalinalinga, kilikili….” But his efforts did not show any impact on Sanal – not after three minutes, and not after five. The time was extended and extended again. The original discussion program should have ended here, but the “breaking news” of the ongoing great tantra challenge was overrunning all program schedules.

Read the whole thing. I giggled through all of it, and then thought back to when I was in high school and read tarot cards ... and blushed.

How to Own Your Home YEARS sooner!

One of the local news stations here does this segment called "Saving You Money" periodically and shows different tips on, well, you guessed it...saving you money! Last summer, I saw a story about a valet parker here in Vegas who his paying off his 30 year mortgage in 9 years! It's called the mortgage elimination system explained in a book by Harj Gill called "How to Own Your Home Years Sooner Without Making Extra Interest Payments" (long-ass title!) The anchorman, Jim Snyder, raved that there were other people in the studio testing out the system, and they loved it. He then had the author, Harj, as a guest, to explain the system. The news spread like wildfire and tons of people wanted more info and inundated the station with calls and emails. Needless to say, banks, mortgage brokers, etc. were not at all pleased with what this guy was teaching people...how to pay off their homes! A "cease and desist" order was put on Harj to try and make him shutup! The news station wasn't even allowed to talk about the program anymore!

Fortunately, I was able to get the email address of Harj and put myself on one of his mailing lists. About a month later he did a free seminar and taught people how his system worked, and I have to say...it's incredible! I can't possibly do the system justice by explaining it via blogging, but I'll try...

Basically, it's like this. You know how they say if you make one extra house payment a year you knock off five, six, maybe seven years off the back end of your mortgage? This is similar in that you're making extra principal payments. What you do is get a home equity line of credit (must be revolving, NOT a loan). Then, you borrow from the HELOC (I picked $5000 injections, you choose your own) and inject that in the principal of your mortgage. Then, every payday, you deposit your paychecks directly into your HELOC to eat up the interest. When your bills are due, you write checks of off your HELOC. (I use ONE credit card **that earns points!** for all my purchases and bills and thus only have to write one check a month). The extra money that usually sits in your checking account and doesn't earn any interest is now sitting in your HELOC eating up the interest! Now imagine if there are TWO of you depositing your paychecks into that HELOC every payday...that HELOC gets wiped away FAST and then you start the process over again.

I know this is hard to grasp by blog, so I highly recommend buying the book. You can find it on Amazon.com for $17.39 plus s&h. Also, Harj has a website: www.speedequity.com Check it out! I've taught a couple of friends from work how to do the system and they all agree, it works! What's even more interesting is when I'm talking about it to friends at work, some passerby inevitably hears me and says, "Oh yeah...I'm doing that, too!"

I just want to mention that there are software programs out there promising to teach you how to do a similar program for $3500! A friend of mine actually bought it and thinks it was worth every penny. No way! You don't need it! The book will teach you everything! On the speedequity website you can purchase membership with access to a software program that's pretty nifty for $199...but read the book first! (I have a membership to the website only because when Harj gave his seminar he promised all KVBC viewers free membership for one year).

I've knocked 13 months off my mortgage already (my loan matures August 2018...as of now, July 2017). If I continue to follow the program, I'll have my condo paid off within 3 years! If I chose to not do the program anymore, I just pay off the HELOC and quit borrowing from it. It's that simple.

Buy the book! If ya'll have any questions, I'm here to help!

Book Report - Scratch Beginnings

So... the internet was abuzz for a few days because some white college grad decided to set off on his own with nothing more than a sleeping bag and 25 bucks in his pocket and 'pull himself up by his bootstraps'. The experiment was to see if, within a year, he could improve his situation to the point where he had: a furnished place to live, a car, and 2500 dollars in the bank. Before the year in his experiment was up, he had a duplex with a roommate, a working truck, and over 5000 dollars saved up. To some folks, Adam Shepard is an inspiration - proof that the American dream isn't dead, and that "Nickel and Dimed" got it wrong. To others... well, here were some of the major criticisms I read about the book (apparently by people who hadn't read it):

1. Ooooh, a college graduate can make it off the streets? That's a revelation how?
He didn't use his college degree when applying for jobs, and the job that he took wasn't one that required even a high school diploma - being a college grad isn't gonna help you as a furniture mover or a day laborer.

2. The experiment isn't valid because: he's white. Of course he had no problem finding a job.
See the jobs he took again - none of them are what one would call reserved for whites-only.

3. The experiment isn't valid because: he didn't have any medical problems. See how an injury throws a kink in his plans and then come back to me!
Actually, he was laid up for a week from work after he broke his toe. The cost of medical help and lost wages threw a major kink in his plans, and he repeatedly stressed how grateful he was that it was only a toe, and acknowledged that had it been something more serious, he would have really been up shit creek.

4. The experiment isn't valid because: he ended it early! He only did it for 10 months and then when he heard there was an illness in his family, he gave up and went home! Let's see how well he would have made it if he'd had to support his sick family member!
This one is definitely by people who hadn't read the book. Aside from the fact that he'd already exceeded his goals when he ended the experiment, in reality, his struggle was just beginning for real. His mother came down with really aggressive cancer, and had nothing but a small disability check to support her. He and his brother took an apartment and moved her in with them to help support her. Oh, and the job he was helping support her with? He got a job at another moving company. The experiment ended up being practice for what his real life threw at him.

It's a quick read, at less than 250 pages. Every once in a while, he slips into white liberal anthropologist mode where he starts talking about how "authentic" and how "real" the people on the streets are, as if anyone living in a middle-class neighborhood is somehow a cardboard cutout. Other than that one criticism, though, I found the book truly inspiring. It wasn't a screed about how lazy poor people are, and the only thing stopping them from not being poor is a willingness to work. It was an ode to hard work and delayed gratification. It emphasized that teaching these concepts is critical to getting people off the streets. He doesn't say that anyone can do it on their own, and doesn't try to say that he did either - he openly acknowledges the help he received from Crisis Ministries, advice from other residents at the homeless shelter where he started out, advice and inspiration from his coworkers who were making it at the moving company. I enjoyed it, if only because it inspired me to keep on track - keep saving, keep paying down debt and keep to my goals. If Shepard can achieve his goals, starting from just 25 bucks and a year to work at it, I can surely achieve my own with a good job, and good house, and a supportive family.

La maison de Livvy et Nick

Bonjour peeps! Me and Nick have been on the house hunt since mid-February, and it's been really annoying. Who knew buying a house was so time consuming? It seemed to me that when Awrissa and Pesto did it, it went by super smooth and quick. But not for me and Nick--or at least I don't think it was a breeze. We found one house and put an offer on it. It was a townhouse. Super nice :). But, it took the bank about a week to get back to us and tell us that he wasn't accepting any offers that weren't for the listing price. We were like "screw you bank." If you don't want to even consider our offer--the guy wouldn't even look at it--then we don't want to do business with you. So we started looking again. (It's funny, but they didn't get any other offers on the place. Ours was the only one. And they called us back about a week ago. We sent in a letter to withdrawal our offer. Hahahahah.)

We found another house, that was on a quarter acre. It was two stories, 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and was perfect for us :). We loved it. It was listed for 254,900. It was a foreclosure and it's assessed value (for tax purposes this year) was 344,900 or something. The year previous it was like 414,000 or something. So a really nice property, that we were already getting for pretty cheap, but that was a good investment too because the value will most likely go up since it was up in previous years. Anywho, we had the second best offer because someone else came in and offered well into the 300k's. We were like "what the hell? Who does that? The appeal of this place was because it was CHEAP, so why offer so much more for it?" Whatever. So we started looking again!!! I am super down at this point and beginning to think that we'll never find a house. Especially since Nick LOVED that one sooooo much and kept saying things like "in our price range, that's probably the best we can do." So mean of him seriously :).

So, the weekend before last we go out again. We're looking at everything--strictly single family homes though because Nick really wanted one, and they are better and more private--and not being picky. Within three houses, we find another one that we both really really really like. It's a rambler, so just one level, but it's pretty big for just 2 people; 1830 sq. ft. It's got 3 bedrooms (one of them used to be two bedrooms, but a previous owner took out the dividing wall, so now it's a huge bedroom with a sitting area), 3 full bathrooms, a GORGEOUS and completely updated kitchen--granite counters, brand new cabinets, tile flooring--a seperate laundry room, a small formal living room/dining room combo, a family room with a huge stone hearth and fire place/woodburning stove, that's also set up for surround sound, and a lovely stone patio. It's sitting on a quarter acre of land and has two storage sheds in the back yard, with a stone path lined with rose bushes leading out to one of the sheds. It also has a vegetable garden, but we don't know if we'll keep that. Anywho, it's all ours :). We got it.

We're paying 278,000 and the seller is paying all the closing costs. But, it's assessed at 356,000 for this year, and last year it was 404,00, and the 2 years before that it was 465,00 or something obscene like that. So, it's a really good investment property that we'll already have equity in after purchase, and it's also just a really nice house. We are both soooooo excited! We can't wait to move in :).

So, anyone who lives in a state other than VA should come visit and bring your puppies. There's a fence in the backyard :)!

Wish us luck. I probably got ahead of myself with this post, but all that's left is to settle, so hopefully nothing goes wrong between now and then!! Keep your fingers crossed for us :).

Toodles,
Livvy