Letter to my Congressman

* Names have been changed to protect the innocent

Mr. Wolf,

After watching last night's senate debate on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act and reading the text of the legislation for myself, I feel compelled to share my views on this issue in the hopes that you will change your mind from your previous vote. While a lot of work has been put into this plan, it still does not address the true issue behind our problems. I agree that the plan will a) stabilize the stock market; b) rid banks of troubled assets to encourage/assist them in lending; and c) most likely profit the Unites States government after a period of years. However, with this being said, I believe that this act is still contrary to the best interests of the American people.



A number of things amaze me about the events of the last few weeks. First are the arguments that we need to act or else millions of Americans will not be able to obtain credit to buy homes and cars. Isn't that one of the basic reasons why we are having this problem? We extended lines of credit to people who should not have been eligible, and we are suffering because they defaulted. What lies next, and is supported by a number of studies in addition to numerous credit card companies raising capital to offset losses, is the impending collapse of our credit card companies when millions of individuals start defaulting on their credit card debt.



The second thing that amazes me is the fact that Congress has rushed to put together a plan so quickly, and there is still no program established to manage these funds. Why the rush when the act that you propose still gives up to 45 days for the Secretary to determine how he will spend the money you authorize him? Shouldn't this be a requirement before we pass this act? I've included an excerpt detailing all of the guidelines that have yet to be established, most of which should be essential to know prior to the enactment of this Act:



Section 101(d) PROGRAM GUIDELINES. — "Before the earlier of the end of the 2-business-day period beginning on the date of the first purchase of troubled assets pursuant to the authority under this section or the end of the 45-day period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall publish program guidelines, including the following:



(1) Mechanisms for purchasing troubled assets.

(2) Methods for pricing and valuing troubled assets.

(3) Procedures for selecting asset managers.

(4) Criteria for identifying troubled assets for purchase."



The next excerpt deals with preventing unjust enrichment.



Section 101(e) PREVENTING UNJUST ENRICHMENT. — "In making purchases under the authority of this Act, the Secretary shall take such steps as may be necessary to prevent unjust enrichment of financial institutions participating in a program established under this section, including by preventing the sale of a troubled asset to the Secretary at a higher price than what the seller paid to purchase the asset. This subsection does not apply to troubled assets acquired in a merger or acquisition, or a purchase of assets from a financial institution in conservatorship or receivership, or that has initiated bankruptcy proceedings under title 11, United States Code."



It should go without saying that we should not pay a higher price than what the seller paid to purchase the asset. Should we not take it a step further and state that we not pay more than current fair market value if we are truly worried about unjust enrichment?


Section 104 outlines the membership of the Financial Stability Oversight Board, which include the following individuals and who will meet 14 days after the first exercise and every month thereafter:



(1) the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System;

(2) the Secretary;

(3) the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency;

(4) the Chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission; and

(5) the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.



It follows later in 104(g) that " (g) REPORTS.—The Financial Stability Oversight Board shall report to the appropriate committees of Congress and the Congressional Oversight Panel established under section 125, not less frequently than quarterly, on the matters described under subsection (a)(1)."



I hope you agree with me when I tell you that this does not provide adequate oversight of money that can already be spent by the time any action can be taken by the board or the panel. Perhaps the board should meet after the establishment of the program guidelines and BEFORE any money is spent and the panel should be required to meet more frequently than a quarterly basis.



Section 108 outlines conflicts of interest. I've included the text below, which is interesting considering the Secretary's decision to rescue AIG, which saved his former firm of Goldman Sachs approximately $20 billion, and another decision to hire Morgan Stanley in August to advise the GSEs, which later collapsed to the cost of billions to taxpayers and investors.



"SEC. 108. CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.

(a) STANDARDS REQUIRED.—The Secretary shall issue regulations or guidelines necessary to address and manage or to prohibit conflicts of interest that may arise in connection with the administration and execution of the authorities provided under this Act, including—



(1) conflicts arising in the selection or hiring of contractors or advisors, including asset managers;

(2) the purchase of troubled assets;

(3) the management of the troubled assets held;

(4) post-employment restrictions on employees; and

(5) any other potential conflict of interest, as the Secretary deems necessary or appropriate in the public interest."



Being that I am simply a school teacher and a veteran of both Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, I will not begin to pretend that I understand the sections on executive compensation. However, I did read through Sections 111 and 302, and what troubles me is that I don't believe it ever states a specific dollar amount when it comes to executive pay. I suggest that we tie it to the salary of the President of the United States, but I think that is even too much.



What concerns me most about your statement and many similar statements made by supporters of the act is that you have heard from tens of thousands of voters who have asked you not to support this legislation. However, the assumption is that most of these people are not educated with regards to the overall impact if we do not act now. I contend that many of us understand the impact all too well, and we urge you not to support it.

My Idea for 'The Bailout'

$700,000,000,000* is roughly 50% of the individual income tax collected by the U.S. in 2006. (I couldn't find 2007 numbers.)

So here's my alternative plan for bailing out the economy: Instead of giving the assholes that got us into this mess that $700,000,000,000, why doesn't the Govt cut refund checks equal to 50% of the individual income taxes each of us paid for 2007? I don't know about you guys, but for me, 50% of my individual income tax isn't small potatoes.

A large chunk of that would go to paying down debt. Another large chunk of that would go into my savings account - injecting my bank with the additional liquidity they claim they so badly need. Those homeowners having trouble paying for their mortgage would have a cash infusion that - if they actually are responsible - would go a long way to avoiding foreclosure. Less foreclosures = good for businesses with too many mortgage-backed securities and the housing market. Giving the money directly back to the people who sent it into the Govt in the first place strikes me as a better idea than throwing tons of cash at a crew of executives who made really stupid decisions and are now trying to avoid any consequences for it. And it's more fair, since it's not screwing over renters and people who lived within their budget rather than going out and buying a McMansion on a liar-loan - everyone gets money back, instead of giving money to just the people who couldn't resist doing dumb shit.

Even if a certain percentage of people in financial trouble turn around and blow the windfall on new rims, video games and weed, rather than avoiding foreclosure or paying their bills? They may end up losing their homes anyway, but they'd totally deserve it, and spending all that money still helps the economy.

I don't think my plan is any dumber than giving a bunch of failing companies a shit-ton of cash with no oversight. Instead of giving all of our money to people who have already demonstrated they're too stupid or too corrupt to use it wisely, and just hoping we see the benefits down the line, give the money to us, and we can decide which companies we want to save by investing in them through savings, purchases, and well, actual investing.

* Saying 'billion' just doesn't have the same impact that that insane line of zeroes does. Billion is only two syllables. Typing out enough zeroes to make a billion takes counting up to 11 while I hit the 0 key.

Across the Universe

I just finished watching Across the Universe. It's awesome. I loved it. I think everyone should watch it. It's a musical--utilizing only songs from the Beatles--about two people who fall in love during the 1960s Peace Movement, and how the events and aesthetics of that time mold and shape their relationship (but also the relationships of those around them). I figured it would be fantastic though because it stars Evan Rachel Wood, who I think is a spectacular actress. I can't think of a movie that I've seen her in that I didn't enjoy. Also, it's from director Julie Taymor, whom I also find very talented. She directed the 1999 film version of Shakespeare's play "Titus Andronicus"--probably one of his more twisted pieces--entitled Titus, which I also loved. So, everyone should go watch that too!

I thought Across the Universe not only did a wonderful job utilizing the Beatles' songs as a narrative device, but I felt that it also strongly captured the essence of their music. I think the only thing that irritated me while watching this film ***SPOILER ALERT*** was the fact that Direct TV summarized it as a story about two "star-crossed" lovers. This led me to believe that the ending would be one of those sad and pitiful ones where one, or both, of the main characters die. So, it kind of sucked when the two lovers had hit their low point, and then the direction of the film seemed to be getting more and more uplifting. I kept waiting for something terrible to happen, but it never did. This film had a perfectly happy ending and I kind of felt as if my anticipating their doom hindered the full effect the film could have had on me.

***BORING ANALYSIS*** One of the things I thought special though, was the cinematography of the film. I love artsy fartsy camera, sound, and lighting work because it makes you think. Example: I thought the ending of Across the Universe was at once both consistent AND contradictory with the narrative and cinematography of the film. Just as the Peace Movement frames the narrative, so does the cinematography; It plays around with the structure and shape of the narrative through movement and color. What I thought was most interesting about this though, was that the 1960's Peace Movement was all about freedom of expression and peace, which Taylor shows effectively through her fun use of camera work and narrative, but at the same time fails to express through these very modes. One: She is limited to the film medium, which is made all that more obvious with her manipulation of said medium. Two: The narrative is classic Hollywood. As I mentioned above, the film has the typically happy Hollywood ending, which to me says "conformity." It seems almost tongue in cheek. Perhaps it was, given the time in which the film was made ;).

Anyhow! It's a fun movie to watch :), but also moving. I cried a few times...

It's Official!!

Soooo. It's official :)! Nick has finally gotten promoted. He is now an Assistant Store Manager for Starbucks. He fills out his paperwork on the 3rd, but his title has already been changed. We are happy : )! It has been a very long time in coming!!

CONGRATULATIONS NICK!!!

Death of a Fox

I killed a fox last night with my automobile. It jumped in from of my car and I had no time at all to respond except to scream, "NO! Don't do that!" One second later, and it would have landed on my hood; that is how close it was :(. I started crying immediately and didn't stop for about 40 minutes. After it happened, I turned around to see if maybe I had imagined the whole horrible incident, but no such luck. In the middle of the road was a dead animal. Then--because it was dark and couldn't see exactly what it was I had hit--I started wondering if maybe I had killed someone's cat, which made me even more sad. So, this morning I drove by it again, to see what exactly I had hit--for peace of mind, but also so that I could mourn it properly--and it was not a cat, but definitely a fox.

So, I am so sorry that I killed you little fox. May your soul rest in peace.

Google Chrome - niftykeen

Of course I couldn't resist checking out google's new beta browser, 'Chrome'. I'm actually writing this post using it right now. Initial impression - this thing is nifty. Sure, there will be some getting used to the feel and I haven't gotten into many of the special features yet, but on Vista it's rendering the pages lightning-fast and has some built-in features that are ideal for QA - like the Inspector:

It shows page load graphs, element sizes, and has a full element inspector that will let you go through the source line by line, show dimensions, css, etc. All things I had to install Firebug to do in FF.

Even better is the Task Manager, which will break down memory, cpu and network usage for each of the apps/processes running within your browser. Now you can easily see if it's really your page or if it's the 20 gossip blogs you have open in the background that are killing your browser.

So far I'm liking it. I dunno if it'll replace my beloved Firefox, or even if I want it to, but right out of the box it includes some pretty nifty features that make it worth playing around with.

Geeking Out

Okay... I'm so damn pleased with myself, I can't help posting about it. I've had a little downtime at work for the past few days, so I spent some time writing up regression tests using the Selenium IDE for my websites's tracking tags. I didn't want to rely on just a static set of pages/urls to use in my tests, so it was a little tricksier than just saying "this page should use the following values, assert that they're there." Instead, I needed to pull the values off of the page I hit, and then, depending on the page type, compare what was in our tracking tags, and verify they matched.

... but wait, it was worse than that, because of two things:
1. The format for the tracking tags doesn't always match the format for the data on the page (i.e., Rock & Alternative on the page = rock_n_alternative in the tag).
2. In some cases, there was nowhere in the html source of the page where I could find the expected data. For this, I needed to actually pull the data out of the database, store it in a variable, and then compare the variable to the tag.

So... for number 1, I used some javascript expressions to transform the data. If, as an example, Rock & Alternative was in the h4 tag on the page, my script went like this:

Command: storeText
Target: //h4
Value: navGenre

Command: storeExpression
Target: javascript{storedVars['navGenre'].toLowerCase().replace(/( |\-)/g,'_').replace('&','n')}
Value: genre

That got me the expected format for the genre in a 'genre' variable that I could compare against the tag in the tracking code.

For number 2, the record ID for each item on the page is the last piece of the url for the page. I'm in luck that my db can be queried using an http request, so using the following regular expression, I was able to cut everything but the last piece of the url from the page to get the record ID I needed, and store it in a variable:

Command: storeLocation
Target: curPage

Command: storeExpression
Target: javascript{storedVars['curPage'].replace(/.*\/([^\/]{0})/,'')}
Value: assetID

Then, I plugged that variable into an url, like:

Command: open
Target: http://my.db.serverurl/select/?q=select+something+from+mytable+where+assetID%3D+${assetID}

(this is obviously not the actual url, because I think I'd get in trouble if I just passed that out.)
Once I hit that query, my results are in an html table, so it's not hard to construct an xpath to pull the cell from the table I wanted and store it in another variable, then go back to my test page and verify that the data matched in the tag.

Ta-da! I can now do lookups in my db for anything I want, store the data in variables, and then compare that data to the values on my page. Of course, it'd be easier if they stored that data in the source of the page somewhere, but I'd rather have dev pushing new code than rewriting existing pages just to make my regression tests easier.

Biggie Magnum strikes

YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)
Biggie Magnum

YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)
LOL - C-Wet

YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
Yellow Cat

YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Petrina Baltimore

YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)
Wetce

SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink)
The Red Coffee

NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)
Orval Jack

STRIPPER NAME: ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy)
Sandalwood Bonbon

WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names)
Elaine Leroy

TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)
Bottigi Berlin

SPY NAME/BOND GIRL: (your favorite season/holiday, flower)
Autumn Laurel

CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”)
Raspberry Shorty

HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)
Nada Dogwood

YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”)
The Dancing Lightning Tour

Here's Livvy!

YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)
Gizmo Matrix


YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)
O-BIL (OMG Banana...Ours are the SAME!!!)


YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
Green Kitten


YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
LeAnne Fort Gordon


YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)
Bi-lol (I hyphenated it. It just seemed right...)


SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink)
The Blue Water (mine's redundant...)


NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)
Jack Orval (oooh...Let's see what Lissa and Celeste come up with :) ).


STRIPPER NAME: ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy)
Honey Sour Patch Kids


WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names)
Elaine Leroy


TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)
I have no idea....Stupid memory!

SPY NAME/BOND GIRL: (your favorite season/holiday, flower)
Spring Rose

CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”)
Olive Sweatery

HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)
Waffle Magnolia

YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”)
The Hiking Lightning Tour

Your Superhero Name

I picked this up on another blog. I meant to save it for later what with the recent spate of postings on here, I figured we could all use a break, but whatever . . . I'm bored already.

YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)
Tootsie Scion

YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)
O-BIL (I wonder what Livvy's will be LOLOL!!!)

YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
Green Penguin

YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Lenore Fort Gordon

YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)
BILOR

SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink)
The Blue Beer

NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)
Orval Jack

STRIPPER NAME: ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy)
Coconut Ginger

WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names)
Elaine Leroy

TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)
Bowditch Boise (Spaced on fifth grade teacher's name, sixth grade will have to do)

SPY NAME/BOND GIRL: (your favorite season/holiday, flower)
Winter Orchid

CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”)
Apple Jeany

HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)
Grapefruit Willow

YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”)
The Reading Snow Tour

When It Rains It Pours....

Okay.... last one today, and then I guess I'll do something productive for work...

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

Okay... now I'm going back to my Buffy marathon....

Arrgh

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 gave up half way through actually. Another monster of a book.
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

I call Shenanigans does Lord of the Flies actually qualify as fantasy? Also China Mieville while an excellent writer, is more scifi.

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!