What've You Read Lately?

Cathy over at Homestretching blogged about the National Endowment for the Arts "The Big Read" and how of the top 100 books, most adults have only read 6!

The top 100 list is a bit speculative, but interesting, nevertheless. These are Cathy's directions:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you started but did not finish.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them. :^)

The List:
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
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 (well maybe not the complete works but quite 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 - Douglas Adams
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 - 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
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- ALice Sebold
65. The Count of Monte Cristo- Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' 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 - 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

It's funny, when you start thinking back to what you read in high school and college and on your own just for fun...I'm kind of suprised by how many I have read and by how many I haven't! I was very very pleased that A.S. Byatt's Possession was in there - god, I devoured that book! 3 TIMES! It was assigned reading for a Modern Lit. class in University and I loved every minute we discussed this book! Of course, on the flip side there was Ulysses, which I had to read for my Irish Lit. class - oh dear god this book dragged on and on and on! I liked Joyce...I read Portrait, and Dubliners, and enjoyed them both, but Ulysses...ugh!

One thing about this list, it made me realize that I don't read as much now as I used to. I was a readin' fiend - had to be, I was working on a degree in literature. I think it's time to renew my library card, make time to actually go down there (they don't have the best of hours for anyone who works 8 to 5!) and start picking up some of these books that I've never heard of. A Town Like Alice? Could be interesting! Who knows?

Stumble Upon

A great stumble upon book, found after it was mentioned in an article I read on organic fertilizers...so I had to get it, right? Right!

I've only had it a few days and I've already found it useful, especially the section on companion planting. And like most books I tend to pick up these days, it was used and budget friendly!

Budget friendly is the way I think we're all going these days: alternative modes of transportation, growing our own food, reusing/recycling/precycling. I'm even getting a roommate...well, my brother is moving in with me, but we're sharing costs, which will help the budget GREATLY! We'll see how it works out. We haven't lived together in 17 years and have both grown accustomed to living alone...it'll be interesting to say the very least. But I'm looking on the positive side - when I get a major attack of the "girlies" and can't face spider central (my cellar), I'll make him go down there! :^)

Here's to a 3 day weekend of sheet rocking and trying to get that bedroom looking less like a pit, so my brother can move into it!

A Thrifty Sort of Day - the books

I love thrifted books, especially the crafty ones from the 70's - this one was a must (and at $1.99, how could I resist?)

These guys and....
these guys were truly the selling point (check out that funky green crab, isn't he the best?)
And the hippy handbook...
I had to have this book (and for $2.99, why not?)
Ever wanted to make a Mexican Peasant Blouse? Here you go...
Ever wanted to live in a commune? Good tips to remember...
The handwriting can get a bit sketchy and there are no chapters, but it's very freeing to skip from one subject to the next with no lead in or relation to the last thing you read.
This is my absolute favorite page:
And there you have it, some of my thrifty book finds. I have an idea brewing in my brain with regard to the stuffed animals, something that needs a little more thinking on and a little more research on, but once I've got it figured out...I'll be sure to share!

Now I realized this morning that I never did my mini quilt over the weekend. I was just so busy, that I never got around to it and I was more in a painting mood (pictures to come); so this weekend, I will make 2 and show them off next Monday (those and the funky shelf that was inspired by Anahata's art...more on that later, too).

A Thrifty Sort of Day

A few weeks ago, a good friend from high school and I met up again for the first time (to have breakfast) in more than 10 years. When we went off to college, we drifted apart. Then, out of the blue, she emailed me (via myspace) and come to find out, she worked for the State, too, and lived all of a 1/2 hour from me! So today, we decided to hit Rockland for a bit of thrifting.

We visited several little shops downtown (The Grasshopper Shop is one of my fav's)
I found this at a wonderful little consignment shop for $25!
Check out the detail
At Goodwill, I found this sweater (it's an L.L. Bean) for $2.50
and this one for $4.99!
These two scarves are from Mace's, which sells India inspired clothing. They were total bargains ($6 each!)

I also found several books at Goodwill that I will share with you as soon as I scan some pages. I was very excited to find them. One is a how to in making soft toys ($1.99), one is a Halloween book ($.99), one is The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Divakaruni ($1.99) and the last one blew me away. It's called Living on the Earth, published in 1970 by Alicia Bay Laurel. It's handwritten and hand-drawn (very reminiscent of Sark's books, only sans the color). It's a hippie life handbook...and it's freakin' great! I love it!

The Forgetting Room by Nick Bantock

I just finished a fabulous book and had to share...

Book Description (from the inside cover)
When his grandfather dies, Armon inherits the family home in Ronda, Spain, and finds himself trying to unravel the surreal conundrum his grandfather has left for him. Armon begins to remember his childhood art lessons, and gradually, as his grandfather's studio takes hold of him, he finds himself pulled, day by day, toward a most extraordinary elliptic link with his past.

Binding art and text in a narrative marriage, Nick Bantock takes us to the Forgetting Room, where he teases us through a tale of discovery, revenge, alchemy, and Moorish legend.

The Forgetting Room has been described as “equal parts diary, novel, artistic work-in-progress and surrealist game” and I have to agree. It's an artistic adventure into the mind of the main character. It's mentally visually stunning, if that makes sense. As you read, you become Armon; you see what he sees, you feel what he feels and the urge to paint, to collage, to create is overwhelming.

It can be a little disjointed at times, but if you can overlook that - it's magical.

It's funny too (huh-funny, not ha-ha funny), that I would happen upon this book now. I've really been getting interested in collage art. I mean, I've done collage before, but it wasn't really my thing. Lately, I've been drawn more and more to it. And then to find this book on my bookshelf...well, I knew it was on the shelf. I'd looked at it a million times, but I never picked it up to read it. You see, it belonged to my ex and must have been thrown into my box of books when I moved out 5 years ago. When I started unpacking my books last fall, I put it on the shelf, thinking that maybe someday I'd read it. But I just couldn't bring myself to read it...it was Pete's...and everything that once belonged to Pete held too many memories for far too long.

But broke down and finally read it. And I loved it! I highly recommend it.