Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Probably not actually the BBC top 100 book list, since it wasn't well formed

The Ones I've Read (Bold) and Started but Never Finished (Italicized):
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 (Yup, I'm a heathen-- I've never finished it from cover to cover, but it's kind of like my history homework-- I haven't read it but I know the content pretty dang well)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (I think... I can't remember for sure, but I think I've read it)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (I have an anti-goal never to read or watch this.  For no real reason other than I don't feel like it)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace -Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
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 - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
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 (I started it once in, like, third grade.  Never got past the second page, even in attempts since then)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (I like this better than 1984)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (I got bored with this book when it turned out just to be about doing drugs and having sex and not really caring about much of anything at all)
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 Inferno - Dante
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 - E.B. 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 - Enid Blyton
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

My Own List of Books I Have Read and Really Quite Enjoyed that Never Show Up on These Lists:
-Anything by Haruki Murakami (most especially Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, though you should also read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World).
-Hoffman, especially Der Sandmann, which I actually didn't read but I read Freud's description of it in his essay on Unheimliche
-Notre-Dame de Paris, which I've started four times now and never finished.  One of these days, I will conquer Victor Hugo.  Mark my words.  Your endless paragraphs on architecture will not stop me.  I get where you're going with that, Hugo.
-Ender's Game, which is one of the few Sci-fi books I've ever even touched, let alone read
-Persepolis.  Let's forget that it's a graphic novel for now, and put Maus on the list, too, even though I haven't read it.
-Silence by Shusaku Endo-- it's about a Portuguese priest in Japan after they've outlawed Westerners there (except the capitalist Dutch traders)
-In Praise of Shadows
-Prisoner of Mao.  Even if you know nothing about China or communism (both of which are likely if you live in the US), this book will blow your mind.  Except it's out of print in English (the original language), so good luck finding it.  BYU has a copy, and it's still being printed in French (the author's second native language, along with Chinese.  English was his third, I believe).
-Anything by Chrétien de Troyes, because it's crazy awesome.  Seriously.  Let me tell you some stories about King Arthur's court, and you will probably think I made it all up.  But no, Chrétien is the crazy one.
-La Cantatrice Chauve by Ionesco.  Or anything by him.  
-L'étranger.  Or skip reading this, and just listen to "Killing an Arab" by the Cure.
-Gargantua, or anything by Rabelais.  It's crazy, it's hilarious, it's actually pretty poignant through that bawdy humor.  Also, giants are funny, and so are promiscuous monks who create utopias.
-Discourse on a Republic by Machiavelli.  Because The Prince is a poor reflection of his real thoughts.  Or, for a laugh, read Mandragola or Belfagor, the Devil who Took a Wife.  Classic renaissance humor.
-Defying Hitler.  It raises the question of what resistance is in situations like the Third Reich.  Also, it's a compelling memoir.
-Maupassant.  SO AWESOME.  I once totally plagiarized Le Horla, but made it about breadboxes.  It was awkward and hilarious.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Top ten lists from study abroad, transcribed with one hand while whisking something on the stove

Top Ten Clues that Liel is an FBI Agent:
10. Dark suit.  Dark glasses.  Head mics.
9. Dark hair.
8. Perfect disguise: LDS international student.
7. Accidentally tried to put her rifle in her holster and had to pretend she was being a cowboy for Halloween.
6. Says random words out loud- don't worry; it's how she remembers things.
5. In her notes she draws pictures of likely suspects, should she be captured.
4. Views Utopia as the Ancient Roman Empire.
3. She OWNS Portugal
2. Never too young to be an ESPION!
1. IS a 14 year old English boy.

Top Ten Things Liel Has In Common with France
10. She's smaller than Texas
9. She loves to read Tintin
8. Her read hair is a majestic beacon of baguettes
7. It's like she's trying to SPEAK to me, I know it!
6. She was invaded and easily subdued
5. Only eats on egg because one egg's "enough."
4. Her skirt is white and I like it.
3. People come from all around the world to see her.
2. She has an emperor problem
1. She speaks French... well, sort of.

Top Ten Things Liel has in common with Religious Characters:
10. Her middle name is Mohammed
9. She has 6 arms and is made out of bronze
8. She is a fat China man
7. She wears veils... amazing, technicolor DREAM veils
6. She keeps turning her pencils into worms
5. She almost got burned with Joan of Arc b/c of her hair
4. She is tight like unto a dish
3. She thinks she's the only one who has been chosen to be saved.
2. She stands on the streets wearing a barrel and preaching about the "fin du monde"
1. Corporeal mortification is high on her "to do" list.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Goupil (Renard)

Animals I feel a particular bond with:
-Foxes
-Cats
-Dogs
-Wolves
-Sparrowhawks
-Peacocks
-Polar bears
-Horses
-Humans, occasionally, but mostly of the child or naive varieties
-Cheetahs

Why I love Dogs:
-They are awesome
-They are so cute
-They are so loyal
-They are so smart
-They are so loving
-They are so fluffy (the good kinds of dogs are)
-They intimidate strangers
-They are so funny
-They are so warm and cuddly
-They make funny facial expressions when trying to figure out what you are eating and whether or not they will also be eating it with you
-They get so excited about things that seem so basic (food, walking outside, when you come home, when you go into the closet to get a coat and not their leash)
-They are so good at empathizing with humans
-When trained well, they are so obedient
-They have such individual personalities manifest in everything they do
-They sometimes slobber and drool all over the place
-They react really funny if you make animal noises and pretend you didn't to tease them
-They learn quickly when food is involved
-They start their lives as puppies, which are also known as one of the cutest creatures in the animal kingdom, as well as one of the fluffiest

Why I think I am similar to the fox:
-Red hair (don't even dare think that I'm not a redhead)
-Clever
-Looks better in winter for some reason
-Quiet
-Sarcastic (because foxes totally would be sarcastic if they told jokes)
-Loyal (Cf. Le Petit Prince)
-Known for lying (Cf. Le Roman de Renart)
-Trickster
-Ancestor to the chihuahua?
-Known for eating lots of chicken
-On average, consumes 1 kilo of food every day
-Cache excess food for later consumption
-Ruined the Australian wildlife system by driving certain animals to distinction
-Smells different when domesticated
-Sometimes considered to have magical powers in folklore
-Hunted mostly only in Anglo-Saxon countries, but also Italy, France and Russia
-Occasionally catches awful diseases, like Rabies or Mono
-Typically lives in small family groups

Saturday, November 6, 2010

My Kind of Adventure

Places I want to eat at before I move away from Provo:
-Gloria's Little Italy
-The Vietnamese place on Center Street
-Sam Hawk's (again)
-The Korean place on University, right by Center Street
-Pizzaria 712
-Communal (again)
-Shabu Shabu
-The Parlor
-Four seasons hot pot and dumplings
-The China buffet place that's next to that crazy intersection down seventh east. I think.
-That one place called "@5" or something like that
-Taco-n-tento
-La Dolce Vita
-O'Falafel
-Ali Baba's (for the fourth time this semester... hahaha)
-Brugges waffles and frites (for the third time)
-Saigon's Cafe (or, as I call it, Ming's, which used to be a regular part of my diet)
-The chinese place that used to be the Mongolian place called "cooking taste right." Except I don't know if I really want to go now that it's not "cooking taste right."
-Diego's (I just really like that place)
-El Gallo Giro (ditto to the above)
-Se Llama Peru
-That one Peruvian place that's by University Mall
-Yamato's
-La Brioche (technically, it's just a bakery and not a restaurant)
-That one place by Timp high that's in that one mormon movie
-India palace
-Sammy's (I just like their cup shakes and the grilled cheese isn't bad)
-Einstein's (I just really like the lox, and that they're about the only place to get real bagels around here)
-Probably more places I can't think of

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Procrastination: Listed

Things to Do When Procrastinating:
-blogging
-cooking/baking
-reading something for fun
-food blogs
-facebook
-hulu
-TV
-housework
-running errands
-making lists
-spacing out
-txtmsging
-international cinema
-going to the gym/working out
-planning out what to do tomorrow/this evening
-planning out future meals
-reading other blogs
-reading cookbooks
-homework
-calling people
-writing in my journal
-starting new projects
-shopping, especially when done online
-going to movies
-eating
-sleeping
-going to parties
-more or less anything I do on a daily basis