Conquering the classics

Back in 2010, I posted a list of classic books I found on the Internet. I decided that in the interest of becoming well-read, I would attempt to tackle all of them eventually. And I’ve been working hard on it ever since. Some of the books have become favorites (The Count of Monte Cristo, Gone With the Wind, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), and some of them (ahem, On The Road) have made me feel like this:

Anyway, I’ve made a lot of progress, and I feel pretty accomplished these days. But recently, I realized that the list was in need of some revisions. In my original post, I noted some duplicates on the list, and some of them don’t seem worthy of this elite selection (Bridget Jones’s Diary? Really?) Plus, some of my literary friends pointed out other classics and popular/important books that are often referenced. 

So here is the updated list. I’m bolding the ones I’ve already conquered to track my progress (and also so I can feel proud of myself!) I’m sure there are a ton of other books I’m missing, so I’ll probably move things around again at some point.

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.   Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
7.   Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
8.   His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
9.   Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
10. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
11. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
12. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
13. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
14. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
15. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
16. The Time Traveler's Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
17. Middlemarch – George Eliot
18. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
19. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
20. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
21. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
22. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
23. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
24. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
25. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
26. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
27. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
28. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
29. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
30. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
31. Emma – Jane Austen
32. Persuasion – Jane Austen
33. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
34. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
35. Animal Farm – George Orwell
36. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
37. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
38. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
39. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
40. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
41. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
42. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
43. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
44. Atonement – Ian McEwan
45. Dune – Frank Herbert
46. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
47. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
48. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafo
49. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
50. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
51. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
52. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
53. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
54. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
55. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
56. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
57. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
58. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
60. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
61. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
62. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
63. Dracula – Bram Stoker
64. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
65. Ulysses – James Joyce
66. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
67. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
68. Possession – AS Byatt
69. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
70. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
71. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
72. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
73. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
74. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
75. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
76. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
77. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
78. Watership Down – Richard Adams
79. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
80. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
81. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
82. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
83. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
84. The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
85. As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
86. The Call of the Wild – Jack London
87.   Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
88.   A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
89.   The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
90.   Slaugherhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
91.   Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
92.   Don Quixote – Miguel De Cervantes
93.   Robinson Cruesoe – Daniel Defoe
94.   Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
95.   Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
96.   Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
97.   Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
98.   Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
99.   Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
100. The Phantom of the Opera – Gaston Leroux
101. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
102. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – William Shakespeare
103. The Merchant of Venice – William Shakespeare
104. Much Ado About Nothing – William Shakespeare
105. Taming of the Shrew – William Shakespeare
106. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
107. King Lear – William Shakespeare
108. Othello – William Shakespeare
109. Macbeth – William Shakespeare
110. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
111. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
112. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame – Victor Hugo

What else am I missing? Which ones are your favorites? I always love to discuss books, so feel free to comment with thoughts, or add me on Goodreads. Happy reading!

Autumn Adventures

This Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for all the fun and adventure that has been thrown my way since I moved to New York. Life has been exceptionally eventful lately, so here are some of my favorite reasons why I've been way too busy to update this blog.

1. Earlier this month, I traveled to Greece with a few family members. While there, we ate obscene amounts of food, explored ancient temples and monasteries, and even stumbled upon long lost distant relatives we never knew existed. The above picture is of a monastery in Meteora, near the village where my mom’s family came from. I’ve never had any interest in being a nun before, but the scenery almost made me consider it.

2. Before my travels, I met JK Rowling, my writing idol and the queen of my childhood. Somehow, I managed to score a ticket to her only promotional event in North America for her new book, The Casual Vacancy. I really only had about ten seconds with her during the signing, but I blurted out something about how much she has inspired my writing, and she thanked me graciously. The picture is blurry, because I was too busy focusing on not peeing my pants in excitement to worry about a good photo. (But hey, I did better than the girl sobbing with joy in the lobby afterward).

3. Apparently the Gods of Fangirl-dom were smiling down upon me this month, because just days after the Rowling event, I also met Jake Gyllenhaal after a performance of his off-Broadway play, "If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet." For those of you who don’t know, I once wrote an embarrassing (but totally accurate) post about my love for Mr. Gyllenhaal. I’d had the honor of being in his presence once before, but this time we actually spoke. While he may have looked like a hairy hobo with that ridiculous beard, he was quite the gentleman, and even took a picture for me since I was juggling too many items. Sigh. Oh, and the play was good too.

4. And can we talk about all the great albums that have come out lately? I’m especially loving Green Day’s latest, Dos. Other notable albums include The Chevin’s Borderland and Pines by A Fine Frenzy. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Recommendations for fall

Fall is finally here, and I could not be happier about it. In the past, I've created special autumn playlists to pump me up for apple-picking and pumpkin eating, but this year I'm pretty much listening to the same few albums over and over. So instead, here are a handful of things that have been entertaining me lately.

The Gaslight Anthem - Handwritten

Every time I listen to this album, I fall a little bit more in love with it. Before Handwritten, I was a casual Gaslight listener—I liked a bunch of songs but could not have told you anything about the band. Well, this was the album that transformed me into a fan. Every song has its own personality, yet together they make up such a complete, cohesive collection. Beautiful.

Songbook by Nick Hornby

I bought this book on a whim when I found it used for $2, and I am so glad I did. If you don't know who Nick Hornby is, you should stop reading my blog immediately and run to your nearest bookstore, because he is a far better writer than I am. Songbook is essentially a collection of short essays about his favorite songs. While I am not familiar with most of them, I found myself struck by his musical musings. He took all my passions and emotions towards music and turned them into beautiful prose.

On the concert experience: "...You could feel the whole audience fall in love with her, and the song, and the evening. It was one of those rare moments—miraculous, in the context of a rock show—which make you grateful for the music you know, the music you have yet to hear, the books you have read and are going to read, maybe even the life you live." Amen.

Lost

Years ago, I watched bits and pieces with my college roommate, but I have finally decided to watch this show from the beginning. I am so with the times. Do you think George W. Bush will get reelected, you guys?

Blaqk Audio - Bright Black Heaven

Electronic music isn't usually my thing, but I'll buy pretty much anything Davey Havok wants to sell me. This album was actually finished years ago but did not make it to shelves until a couple weeks ago, so I'm just grateful to finally have it in my possession. I haven't decided yet if it's as good as their previous release, CexCells, but I do know that "Let's Be Honest" makes me dance like a fool and "Ill-Lit Ships" is one of my all-time favorite BA songs. Not too shabby.

Tell The Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

A short blurb won't do this book justice. Usually after finishing a book, I close it and move on with my life, but after this one, I sat speechless for a while. It's a coming of age tale about 14-year-old June and how the death of her uncle turns her world upside down. The story was moving and the writing is just poetic.  

There you have it. And this upcoming Tuesday, three different bands I love are putting out new albums, so I will soon be flooded with even more recommendations. Until then, enjoy.

The fabulous Veronica Roth signs books in Tribeca

While this blog is almost focused on music, I do reserve the right to discuss other forms of entertainment. Well today, I'm going to exercise that right, because I'm also a huge book nerd and last week, I went to a Veronica Roth book signing!

For those of you lame enough to not know, Veronica is the New York Times best-selling author of Divergent, a young adult Dystopian novel. Divergent won lots of praise and awards last year, and it was one of those rare books that I could not put down (I confess, I was seriously considered reading a few chapters at work when no one was looking. Not that I would ever actually do such a terrible thing...) So I was psyched that the sequel, Insurgent, was finally coming out on May 1st, and I was even more psyched to hear that Veronica would be celebrating the release day at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca.

Real talk.

So anyway, last Tuesday night, I was in the audience while Veronica read a small, spoiler-free excerpt from Insurgent (she almost gave something away, but caught herself just in time). She then followed up by answering a few questions. Here's some of the information she gave us:

• There will be a third book in the series, although she herself still has no idea how it will end. 
• Once the series is over, she plans to continue writing young adult literature, but she doubts she will have any ideas leftover for another dystopian story. 
• She also mentioned having an anxiety disorder, and described how even ordered meat at the deli counter makes her nervous. I can only imagine how much stress talking to crowds of strangers must cause, but she seemed so comfortable and casual in front of us that I never would have suspected.
• She chose the name Beatrice for her main character because it was one of the only names she could think of that sounded sort-of old-fashioned but could be shortened into a tough nickname ("Tris"). Likewise, she loved the name Tobias, but has since had tons of fans tell her that's the name of "that blue guy" in Arrested Development.
• One fan asked which faction Veronica would be in, and while she did say that Abnegation was her favorite faction, she ultimately said, "I would just fail at this world."

Truly a terrible photo, but this was the best I could get. 

Have I mentioned how young Veronica is? We both graduated college in 2010 but she's several months younger than I am. So now I feel like the slacker.

Anyway, then I got my book signed! Ta-da:

Yeah, I'm pretty pleased with myself.

She's right though, I will need to be awfully strong while I wait until 2013(!!) for the next book to be out. I tried to make Insurgent last, and in a way, I was semi-successful as I think I made this one last three days instead of two like Divergent. Anyway, the book is full of action and intensity and there's never a dull moment. If you liked the first, you will like this one. But there's not much recapping (thank goodness, I get sick of pages wasted on explaining what happened in the previous book!) so either reread Divergent or check out the recap Veronica recently posted on her blog before you pick it up. Also, so I can pretend this post is about music, see the playlist Veronica listened to while writing.

Finally, if my post wasn't enough for you, check out the archived livestream of the event:

epicreads on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Long time, no post

Phew, life has been keeping me busy lately. Thankfully, I've had plenty of multimedia to entertain myself with, and some of it is so good, I need to recommend it to the world (a.k.a. all of you fine people). Here are some books, a movie and the music that has been helping me get through my long commutes and my first real business trip to Portland, Oregon.

1. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll

Right now I'm checking out a lot of classic authors in the hope that by the time I'm retired, I might actually be sort-of well-read. (There are just way too many must-read books out there). Anyway, "Alice" was one of the first ones I took on, and I absolutely adored it. Lewis Carroll was much wittier than I ever expected. I even bought a special edition with lots of footnotes and explanations, so I could understand the cultural jokes that I never would have picked up on on my own (plus, as you can see above, the cover is just really pretty). A special shout out goes to the Borders cashier who assured me I would enjoy this book. He was so right.

2. The Lady Killer by Cee Lo Green

I wrote about this in my last post, but I am really loving this album. One night I came back to my fancy-schmancy hotel room in Oregon to find that housekeeping had turned down my bed and turned on some Cee Lo for me to come home to. (Another shout out goes to the Nines Hotel, because that place is ridiculously awesome. If any of you have tons of money to blow and happen to be headed to Portland, stay there for sure).

3. "Changing" by The Airborne Toxic Event

That's right, they're baaaaaack! After announcing that their second album will be released in April of this year, the band released their brand new single, "Changing." It feels louder than any of the tracks off of the band's self-titled debut, but don't let the name fool you - they haven't changed that much. This song is so catchy, I have to have a mini-dance party every time it comes on my iPod.

4. Blue Valentine

I finally saw this movie, and it seriously drained me emotionally. It felt like Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams were ripping my heart out of my chest and stomping all over it, yet somehow I still enjoyed myself. Also, as a sidenote, whoever did Gosling's hair, make-up and wardrobe deserves awards, because I did not realize it was possible to make such a beautiful man look that gross. Well done. (Just please, don't do it again for us ladies' sakes).

5. "Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest For True Love and A Cooler Haircut" by Rob Sheffield

I've always enjoyed Rob Sheffield's columns in Rolling Stone, and I also celebrate National Duran Duran Appreciation Day every year (August 10th - Google it, I didn't make this up). So naturally, I had to read this book. It's all about 80s music and culture and made me laugh out loud every few pages. Sheffield makes many interesting points about music - one of my favorite quotes: "All summer long, the songs were the only souvenir from the night I could hold on to the next day - remembering all those sensations was overwhelming in sunlight, so I would hum the tunes to myself." I love the idea of songs as souvenirs. You so smart, Rob Sheffield.

Finally, while I'm on the topic of books, I just started a GoodReads account. If anyone also uses the site, add me as a friend so we can talk about books even when I don't have time to blog.

Bring it on, BBC.

Today may only be December 2nd, but I have already come up with my New Year's Resolution. I know, I know - sometimes I am so prepared, I scare myself.

You see, there is a list of books floating around the internet, and supposedly the BBC says most people will only read 6 of the 100 titles named. Now, I can't actually find a record of the BBC saying that, and this list is a little messed up in places, as you will soon see. So I'm not so sure about the legitimacy of this list but let's just skip over that minor detail for the time being.

The point is, here are a bunch of classic books, many of which I've been meaning to read anyway. I spend about 20 hours a week commuting on the bus to and from my job, so I am always looking for more reading material. Now that this list of beloved novels has entered my life, I feel a sense of purpose. That's right, challenge accepted. I am going to read all of these books.

I'm not giving myself any deadlines, because I want plenty of time to savor these books at my own pace. But some day, I'm going to be able to look at this meme and say "Yeah, I've read ALL of those. How you like me now, BBC?"

I've noticed the list is a little repetitive in places and there are more than 100 books on it (Hello, Harry Potter is seven books, you can't count that as one, fools). So I reserve the right to edit this list as need be. But, without further ado, here is the list of books, with the ones I've already read in bold:

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 (Well, I've read a bunch of it throughout my childhood anyway, so I'm counting it).
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 (Cheaters, this is way more than one book!)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
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
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 (Why is this book listed separately from the Chronicles of Narnia?)
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
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 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 Zafo
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 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 – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (Ugh horrible memories of high school French class.)
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare (Why is this listed separately from the Shakespeare collection?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I've got about a quarter of the list covered already. Not too shabby.

Any suggestions for the book I should kick off this madness with? I'm thinking Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," since it's that time of year and all. I hope you will all support me on my journey to becoming a well-read individual, even if I don't complete it until I'm 80 years old.

Watch out, Boston Public Library, because I'm comin' for you.