Saturday, February 20, 2010

New Year's Resolution


"When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, 'Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.'" 
— Virginia Woolf

Yes, I am aware that it is almost March and maybe a little late to start making New Year's Resolutions. But in this case, I have a truly extraordinary one - one that I've wanted to accomplish for a long time - and because it's so awesome, I think it's okay that it's a little late.


I have decided to read all of the books on the BBC's list of the best 100 books ever. I have already read 27 of them, so that's 73 books to read. I will read them and then blog about them when I finish. 


Pretty awesome, eh? I think so.


SO (drumroll please...) here's the list! I've crossed out those that I've already read. Join me if you like. It'll be a fun adventure!  


See you next time, when I'll be blogging about Gone With the Wind. Happy reading!




BBC's top 100 Books


1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell - reading right now!
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck

53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

Thursday, January 28, 2010

J.D. Salinger & The Catcher in the Rye



Today, the world has lost one of it's greatest treasures - J.D. Salinger has passed away.

It's difficult to put into words, even to comprehend, the great effect that Salinger's writing has had on the world. Every good book that comes out now that deals with disillusionment is compared to Catcher in the Rye, every book that deals with the intense pain of growing up. I've just finished reading Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower - all three reference Catcher.


Catcher is my husband's favorite book - one that he asked me to read when we first started dating (he was shocked that I hadn't read it already). For his birthday, I gave him a hardcover second edition of the book.

Everyone who reads this book feels connected to it. Everyone who has ever felt disconnected from the world feels connected to it, which to me is a miraculous thing. Everyone who has read and has felt one with Holden Caulfield feels one with Salinger, yet Salinger hid from the world - hid from the press, from photographers, from publishers, from everyone. This man who worked so hard to stay away from the rest of the world is still so very much at the center of our consciousness - still someone that teenagers AND adults wish that they could talk to, years and years after Catcher was published.

Catcher in the Rye is to the literary world as Led Zeppelin is to music. You listen to Led Zeppelin and you think, "This still sounds new. This still sounds fresh, modern, and innovative. This is what so many of our contemporary musicians are TRYING to sound like but will never be able to."

When you read Catcher, you think "Oh... THIS is what all of those other authors were trying to say."

I think that John Green describes the beauty of The Catcher in the Rye better than anyone when he explains that Holden is human, Holden has no one to talk to but us, and we love him for his humanity, for his imperfections, for his frailty and his loneliness.

We love him because he isn't a character - he's a human being. He is us. He is me.

J.D. Salinger, the hole that you have left will never be filled.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

The Perks of Being a Wallflower & Awake



"So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be." — Stephen Chbosky 


Recommended Tea: Tazo's Awake


So, my very very best friend is studying to become a teacher. She's quite good at it, I suspect. We were talking about her experiences student teaching the other day - about how being around high school students makes us uncomfortable sometimes, takes us back to those feelings that we felt when we were in their shoes. Feelings that you couldn't pay me money to experience again.  


Naturally, we started talking about Young Adult books (like we usually do). She recently attended an awesome young adult book convention extravaganza thing, and got to meet (GASP!) Sarah Dessen (we're not worthy! we're not worthy!). 


She was particularly moved, she said, by a speech that Stephen Chbosky gave about how "changing one person is like changing the world entire." (Please tell me, BFF, if I misquoted that)


"Who's that?" I asked.


"GASP!" I felt the room reply.


"He wrote The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Read it. Read it now. It saves lives."


So, I decided to check it out from the library. I've recently finished Paper Towns and Looking For Alaska by John Green, which are both BR-IZ-ILLIANT books, but I have to admit I was kind of thinking, "Hmm...are three quirky YA books about being awkward in a row going to be a little too... angsty?" 


Again, that feeling that I get when I think about high school came back. Do we really want to re-visit those feelings too much? Like I said... not enough money in the world.


But I started reading anyway. And I didn't stop until I finished it, my face wet with tears.


I have to say, I usually enjoy most of the books I read. Finishing a book makes me feel like I've gone on a journey - each has its own experience - so at times, I have a little trouble judging the "goodness" or "badness" of books. 


This time, I had no trouble at all. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is beautiful. Heartbreakingly beautiful - which is a phrase that I use often, but never has it been more appropriate.


 Rarely does a book make me feel the way that this book made me feel. 


Charlie, the novel's narrator, is such a real character. I struggle to even use the word "character" because he feels like a friend. You fall completely in love with him - and not because he's sparkly and dreamy. He is vulnerable, painfully honest, deep, intelligent. Small. My heart literally hurts when I think about him - the same way I feel when those Sarah McLachlan commercials about the kitties and puppies come on.  


It hurts to be unable to reach through the book and hold him, hug him. It hurts not to be able to scream at everyone around him, "Pay attention to this one! PLEASE tell him how special he is!"  


I found this book so relatable. Not in the "Oh, I went through that in high school. Poor kid! I really feel for you!" kind of way, but in the "I think these things all the time. I worry about these things. I feel things like he does. I'm not the only one who feels things this deeply?" 


And that's the thing that I love the most about Charlie - the way that he feels things. Here is someone who is quiet and shy, (again, "small" is the best word I can think to describe him) with more than a few communication problems, but he really FEELS things. He lives. He soaks up the world. He sees the beauty in the people around him, and he isn't afraid to care about them and to tell them so, and in a completely pure way. He cries often - but wouldn't we all if we hadn't been so conditioned not to?


The experience of reading Charlie's story is like being baptized. You are completely submerged in his world, in his head, in his feelings. After the last page, you're reborn in a way. And by "reborn" I mean that you look at the world - at the people around you - with different eyes. Moments in your life that were just moments become "infinite." Human beings become family, in that realization that we all feel. 


It reminds me of Jane Eyre, when Jane says to Mr. Rochester:


"Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? ...Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! ...I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!"


What would the world be like if we took that word - "feel" - more seriously? If we weren't afraid to feel, to feel new things, to feel scary things, and to express those feelings, unashamed of how we look or what people think?


I want to shout as loudly as my body would let me, "What would the world be like if we all took a minute to think about the fact that everyone around us FEELS things?" 


Honestly, I think that this concept is one that we forget - one that we make a decided effort to forget. That girl you went to high school with isn't just a "diva" or a "bitch," that boy not just an "ass" or a "nerd." They are human beings with the same capability to feel as you - no better or worse. 


What would the world be like if we didn't reduce everyone around us to such soulless name-tags? 


Wake up!





Thursday, January 14, 2010

John Green & The Great Gatsby

Okay, this youtube video is so awesome that I've posted it in every place postable, and this blog is no exception.



THIS is why reading is so important! THIS is why learning how to analyze, to read and to think critically is vital in order for us to exist together.

Check it out!

And if you like what John Green has to say, check out his books Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines, and Looking for Alaska.
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