100 Books

So this is BBC's list of "100 Books to Read Before You Die"...

I think this summer will be a great time to buckle down and get to it. Bolded = already read. Italicized = will attempt to finish it before summer 2010 ends.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

• Honestly I did not particularly enjoy this book, but I'm planning to give it another try very soon...I find Jane Austen's writing style irritable.

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

• I could never bring myself to read through this series. I shall attempt again soon...

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

• I started on this book, wrote a book analysis on it (without having finished it)...I've always meant to re-read the book in its entirety but have never gotten around to it. I think this will be one of my starting summer books this year.

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling

• For my generation, I really think this is a classic series in that we totally "grew up" with the characters in the book. I will forever tell my future kids about waiting every summer for a new book to be released...I'm still kind of sad that it's over.

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

• One of my favorites. I taught it last summer to a group of high schoolers who totally did not even give the book a try (sigh), but I think some of them got the core message of it. And for that I am happy. It's astonishing how much you can learn from actually teaching the book...it was very interesting to see it from the other side.

6 The Bible

• I've actually read it cover-to-cover, but I definitely was not reading it the way I was supposed to be reading it. I think going through the Bible will always be a persisting lifetime goal.

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

• I hear that this is a depressing book, but I would like to read it this summer before I leave to the UK in the hopes that I will be able to visit the place that inspired the author when I am abroad.

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

• This book is referenced so much that it's quite a surprise I haven't read it yet...will try this summer.

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

• I think this was the first book of Dickens I had ever read (I believe it was in 7th grade?). And I read it probably three or four more times since then. It's kind of one of those books that I feel has been over-read in my life...if such a thing can exist.

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

• I think I finished this in the sixth grade? I kind of want to pick it up again just because I don't remember much from the book, but its thickness deters me...

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

• I remember being so angry at the end of this novel. I can't remember if I read it in the 11th or 12th grade, but this book made me so depressed that I don't think I can bring myself to pick it up ever again...

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

• Still haven't gotten around to this book!! I shall this summer...

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

• My face just cringed at the title. One day....

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

• I still can't believe I haven't read this yet...

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

• Another book I've been meaning to pick up...

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

• Such a charming book. I LOVED this book when I first read it during 8th grade and became super attached to it ever since. I cried like a baby the first time around. I think it'll always remain as one of my favorites.

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

• I have mixed feelings about this book. Don't know why.

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

• I have this love and hate relationship with Dickens where I totally love some of his novels and can't stand others. I hope this one will be of the former.

24 War and Peace – Leo 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

• Totally attempted to read this book; one of my Dickens failures. I'll try again someday..

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

• I think I read this as a child but never really fully understood all of its connotations. Will reread this summer.

34 Emma – Jane Austen

• I don't know if I can ever pick up Austen again...

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

• Same as Chronicles of Narnia

37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

• Read this last summer because I had to teach it. I cried like a baby, even though I would never admit that to my summer kids. I will never be able to forget my mischievous boys going, "WTF? That's so messed up, Teacher!" and "I HATE ______". What a heartbreaking story...

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

• I totally have mixed feelings about this book, too.

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

• I need to get to this!!!!!

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

• Why is this on the list...?

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

• I was wayyy too young when I read this...

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

• Judging from how reading Tess went, I don't know if I can ever pick up a Hardy book again...

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

• I read this for the first time last summer because I had to teach it, and I am so glad I did. I'm also happy about the way my English class reacted to the book. They were (by far) my favorite class and I was able to (hopefully) imbed some great themes about the human nature from the book into the kids.

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

• LOVE LOVE LOVE this book. I have read it probably more than five times in the past few years, and this book has been the center of numerous essays throughout my high school years. There's something so remarkable about the ending that captures me every single time I read it.

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

• I've totally been hesitant to read this book because it seems heartbreaking. Maybe this summer is the right time...

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

• Again, I was forced to read this book because I had to teach it last summer. I think it's such a powerful book.

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

• I have two copies of the book and totally mixed feelings about it.

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

• I picked it up in the 10th grade and was like "WTF" and immediately put it down. Since the movie is coming out soon, I think I am going to pick it up this summer.

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

• One of my favorites, for sure.

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

• Another Hardy book...

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

• I attempted. Like 10 plus times. (Not even exaggerating). I just can't bring myself to read it...

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

• One of my favorites. Is that weird? I found the story meaningful and charming.

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

• Childhood favorite, anyone?

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 – EB White

• Delightful.

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

• One of my favorites. I think I want to give it another read this summer..

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

• I actually read this for the first time in the 12th grade, and I thoroughly enjoyed it - even though I totally thought I would hate it...

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

• My ultimate favorite. If someone asks what my favorite book is, this is always the answer. I want to re-read it someday..

28/100. That's kind of bad.

Here's the list for this summer:

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

Bleak House - Charles Dickens

Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

Animal Farm - George Orwell

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom

Hopefully this little blog post will keep me accountable :)

Because of you

Sometimes, I wish that things were different so that on a night like tonight, I can just pick up the phone and call you. Just to say "hey, how's life?" - to see what you are up to, to laugh about the memories, to show you how mature I've gotten since the last time we talked, to get into a silly argument with you that clearly shows that I still have a long way to go.

Sometimes, I wish that I hadn't been so black-and-white on the situation. I wish I hadn't pretended that I didn't care when I clearly did.

Does this mean that I regret my actions? Nope. I don't believe in regrets.

Is it too late for us to be friends? Probably not.

Do I want to open up a line of communication between us? At this point, yes.

What then, is stopping me from picking up the phone and calling you right now? I don't know.

For a while, because of bitterness or what-not, I tried really hard not to care. But now ironically, I feel bad that I have stopped caring so much. I don't know if it's the fact that it's you, or the fact that I have essentially shunned a person that used to mean so much in my life, but I would like to reintroduce me to you.

So much has changed since then - and so much has still changed since the last time we spoke.

It's funny how due to my terrible memory and my "over-moving-on" problem, I can't even remember what spending time with you is like - I can't remember what kind of lifestyle I enjoyed with you being a constant factor or even much of your personality despite the fact that I knew you at such an intimate level for almost a year.

But there's something in me that still wants to preserve the little memories that I can remember from that era in my life. Maybe it's just because looking back upon it now, it's all so faded and vague that I am curious what it actually was like.

Or maybe I just have too much time in my hands right now and am thinking way too much...

Long Overdue

I'm back.

And as usual, my lifestyle in LA has already begun to sweep away the life I had begun used to at Penn. Apparently, LA cures everything. As soon as I stepped into the sunshine out from the airport and looked outside to see such green grass and the sway of palm trees, I knew that I was not going to be fine, but was already fine.

The disappointment of an academic shortcoming, the frustration of particular friendships, the sadness of the goodbyes - everything seemed so far away. Well, that is partly due to the fact that 3000 miles away is really far away, but I really am starting to think that being home, being in this wonderful city puts a magical shield around me. The soft breeze and the wonderful sun surround me, hugging me - almost like how nature interacts with those dreamy princesses in Disney movies.

Okay, that sounded totally corny.

But seriously. Los Angeles. The city of Angels. I LOVE my city. When I am walking down the street, with huge sunglasses on and feeling the warmth of the sun and the people, I feel as if it is a very small representation of God's love for me. It surrounds me completely - it's in the atmosphere, the air, the aura - it's the sun, the warmth of the Pacific Ocean, the soft breeze, the palm trees, the smile of the stranger on the street, the art of the musicians and producers sitting next to me at Barnes & Noble, the splash of the fountain as I make my way home.

I really needed this after such a busy and crazy semester. I really needed this before heading off to the other side of the world next semester.

God knows what's best.

God knows...

mercy

I feel like I am back to Square One.

All the guilt, pain and craziness that I had to deal with two years ago are coming back again.

Why do I continue to fail, over and over again?

Why does He love me unconditionally, over and over again, even when I fall continuously?

I guess it is where my weakness lies that He completely fills me. And I know that although it might be difficult to return to Him, He will always be there waiting for me with open arms full of love.

Dark

The darkness never fails to calm me down.

It was such a hot day today, terribly humid - and being swept along life as usual, I didn't have much of a chance to recollect my thoughts. But sitting here after a warm shower, just on my bed, me and the world alone...it feels so good.

I don't know what I am doing. There are so many little things that need to be done and thinking about all of them at once gives me such a headache. Life has once again become extremely overwhelming...

I'm starting to lose focus on everything. It's almost as if I am not sure who I am anymore, as stupid as that sounds.

Wales? Wales will be a good change, I think... just to relax, stop worrying, and take a breather.

Sigh.