SeekingSolace[dot]Net

Got this from Erika (I know, you’re surprised). I’d be interested to see everyone else’s answers, too.

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Here’s the twist: add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you read ‘em for school in the first place.

I’m also putting a pound sign (#) next to the ones I want to read. Someday. Eventually.

• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell #
• Anna Karenina #
• Crime and Punishment
• Catch-22
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Wuthering Heights
• The Silmarillion #
• Life of Pi : a novel
• The Name of the Rose
• Don Quixote #
• Moby Dick
• Ulysses #
• Madame Bovary
• The Odyssey #
• Pride and Prejudice #
• Jane Eyre #
• The Tale of Two Cities
• The Brothers Karamazov
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
• War and Peace #
• Vanity Fair #
• The Time Traveler’s Wife
• The Iliad #
• Emma #
• The Blind Assassin
• The Kite Runner
• Mrs. Dalloway
• Great Expectations
• American Gods
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
• Atlas Shrugged
• Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books #
• Memoirs of a Geisha #
• Middlesex *
  
• Quicksilver
• Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West *
• The Canterbury Tales #
• The Historian : a novel # - A/N: I JUST bought this today…
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Love in the Time of Cholera
• Brave New World #
• The Fountainhead *
  
• Foucault’s Pendulum
• Middlemarch
• Frankenstein #
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Dracula *
  
• A Clockwork Orange
• Anansi Boys
• The Once and Future King
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
• 1984
• Angels & Demons #
• The Inferno
• The Satanic Verses
• Sense and Sensibility
• The Picture of Dorian Gray #
• Mansfield Park
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• To the Lighthouse
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles
• Oliver Twist #
• Gulliver’s Travels
• Les Misérables #
• The Corrections
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• Dune
• The Prince
• The Sound and the Fury
• Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
• The God of Small Things
• A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present #
• Cryptonomicon
• Neverwhere
• A Confederacy of Dunces
• A Short History of Nearly Everything
• Dubliners
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• Beloved
• Slaughterhouse-five #
• The Scarlet Letter
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves
• The Mists of Avalon
• Oryx and Crake : a novel
• Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
• Cloud Atlas
• The Confusion
• Lolita #
• Persuasion
• Northanger Abbey
• The Catcher in the Rye *
  
• On the Road #
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame #
• Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values #
• The Aeneid #
• Watership Down
• Gravity’s Rainbow
• The Hobbit *
  
• In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences #
• White Teeth
• Treasure Island
• David Copperfield
• The Three Musketeers

Saturday, things got even awesomer.

Photo Album for Day 1:

I didn’t take many pictures on Friday. That will change.

After a long weekend, I have finally regained enough of my senses to report that I have, indeed, finished “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” The only thing I will say is that it was amazing.

[1] What is your middle name?
Sue

[2] What color is your mailbox?
Silver

[3] Are you available?
No, I am not.

[4] Have you ever hit a deer?
Nope.

[5] Do you have to drive over a bridge to get home?
Home to the parents’ house? Yes. Home to the apartment? No.

[16] Are you taller than your mom?
Hahahahaha, yes.

[17] What word do you say the most when your tickled?
I don’t get tickled. It doesn’t work for me.

[18] Are you a Christian?
No.

[19] What do you do to get over a broken heart?
Cry, typically.

[20] Do you enjoy writing in colored pens?
Hell yes. My obsession with red pens is how I knew I wanted to be a teacher.

[21] Does anything hurt on your body right now?
My back.

[22] Do you often cry during a movie?
Not often, no.

[23] Last text message you received?
I don’t remember.

[24] Who sent it?
See above.

[25] Do you hate your life?
No.

[26] Do you get mad easily?
Not really.

[28] What is your biggest pet peeve?
People who talk about your relationship as if they know what’s going on in it. And people who don’t know how to speak English when it’s clearly their native language. Especially people who don’t know how to use English on the computer, like suddenly the rules of the language don’t apply anymore. Do U NO what I SAYIn’?!?! LOLOLOL!11!!!!!

[29] Are you cold?
Always. That’s why I need to move to California.

[30] Do any of your friends have kids?
No. Erika’s sister does, but I never really see her.

[31] Do you know anyone that is pregnant right now?
No.

[32]Who should pay on the first date?
You should go on the assumption that you’re going dutch.

[33] How many years older than you are you willing to date?
Probably only a few years, though it doesn’t apply right now.

[34] Do you have any friends of the opposite sex?
Yes.

[35] Do you have any mean friends?
Not really. I let go of the last really mean friend I had three years ago. Good riddance.

[36] What is the ugliest color in your opinion?
Purple.

[37] Have you ever liked someone who all your friends couldn’t stand?
Nobody liked John when I was dating him. I’ve been told in retrospect that people have hated my ex-boyfriends. So far everybody seems to like Justin.

[38] Have you ever felt like driving off a cliff, seriously?
Oh, Gods, no.

[40] Do you scratch your ears?
Only when they itch, like Rae.

[41] Who was the last person to hug you?
Justin. Who just hugged me right this minute so he’d be the most recent.

[42] What brand are the pant/jeans you’re wearing right now?
Old Navy! W00t, awesome semi-cords!

[44] What is the closest green object?
My pants! W00t!

[45] What is on your feet?
Nothing but nail polish. And Justin’s feet.

[46] If you were born the opposite sex, what would your parents name you?
I have no idea.

[47] If you could go back to any time period when would it be?
I refuse to choose only one. Ancient Greece, Jerusalem in the Crusades, Medieval Europe, Elizabethan England, 1940s America or Germany, 1960s America.

[48] Do you want to have kids?
No, because my boyfriend will warp them permanently and then end up eating them.

[49] What is the brightest color you’re wearing?
Pink on my undies.

[50] Who is the friend you have that you would never have thought you’d have?
Erika, actually. I hated her when I met her. Same goes for Rae, who is now my hetero life mate.

[51] Who do you hate the most right now?
I don’t actually hate anyone. Except maybe George W. Bush. Or Tom Lenox on “24″. Or Fox for screwing up and/or cancelling every good show ever.

[52] Whats your mother’s middle name?
Marie

[53] What kind of car do you want?
Honda Fit, VW Beetle (old or new), VW Bus, VW Jetta, VW Cabriolet

[54] What is your favorite video game?
Katamari Damacy or any Mario Bros. game before the 64.

[55] Do you like your dad?
I adore my dad. I’m a little upset I never grew up to be a daddy’s little girl. I miss that. Too bad I’m a tomboy.

[56] Do you have any TV shows on DVD?
Buffy, Firefly, Kare Kano, The O.C. (first season, still need the rest), 24, Fraggle Rock, Chobits.

[57] Are you wearing makeup?
No. I almost never do.

[58] Do you have a tattoo?
I have 7.

[59] Have you ever broken a pinata?
I doubt it highly. I could be wrong, but if I did, it was like 19 years ago and I don’t remember it.

[60] What time is it right now?
8:29pm

[61] Do you know how to draw?
Eh, workin’ on it.

[62] Who loves orange soda?
KEL LOVES ORANGE SODA! And so do I.

[63] Who is your hero?
My grandma, my aunt Debby and my aunt Sue. My mother. My Great Yiayia. Notice a theme? Also, Fiona Apple.

[64] Who was your last IM?
My boss.

[65] Do you work a lot of hours?
HAHAHAHAHA, yes.

[66] Where were you 24 hours ago?
Sitting in Justin’s basement waiting for him and his brother and his friend Chris to get ready to go out.

[67] Who was the last person that called you?
Kerry, Justin’s sister.

I’ve been silent since the day before Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out. That’s because I’m still in a state of shock. Still.

It’s a phenomenal book. I loved it. I think it’s the best book of the series so far. Absolutely incredible.

I’m not going to talk about the finer points because you never know who hasn’t read it yet.

In HPDA last night, a whole bunch of my chatters behaved improperly…I’m also not going into details because I just don’t feel like it. Suffice it to say, my chat is starting to succumb to the same crap that makes other chats fall apart, and I’m not going to let it happen. In those other chats, the admins disappear. Conveniently, I’ve been around constantly for this chat, and I don’t intend to stop. Something’s gotta happen, though. I’ll just keep trying to keep people in line.

AAAAAAAAAGH! I can’t hold it any more. I’m SO GODDAMN EXCITED about Book 6! I can’t wait, I’m really concerned I may explode before it hits midnight. And it’s worse because I’m listening to the soundtracks and allowing myself to get to freak-out phase. AGH!

I was signed up for Napster’s free dealie, but I gave up on that because it didn’t appear to be working, and then it vanished off of the “offers” page for my account at freeipods.com. I signed up with Zooba.com to get books for $9.99. You have to buy three before you can cancel your account (still…$30 for an iPod? Not bad…). Anyway, I got my offer credit almost immediately after signing up with Zooba.com. I’ve put in my order for three books, and I should get 1 each month. My first book ships tomorrow. I’ll keep everyone updated on the status of this company, but it looks like everyone else who has used the Zooba.com offer is really happy with the service. I might just keep my account in case I want cheap books.

Here’s my referral link again (or click on the iPod in the left column): http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=17275466 - make sure you use this when you sign up or I won’t get your referral credit!

Verdict on The Dark Tower: BOOO! Okay, so it’s not the worst book I’ve ever read, by far (that would be A Tale of Two Cities, never got past the first page). But, shit, Mr. King, could you have done any worse? I personally felt the series started to slip at the end of Book 5. It wasn’t the same anymore. I even loved Wizard and Glass, which most of the people I’ve talked to claim is the worst in the series because it’s all flashback. It still felt series-worthy to me. But this book closed the deal that Book 6 started to make. Disappointed! C- grade on that one. But to anyone who’s reading the series, you have to finish it. I will probably read the whole series through again. Because much as it may not feel like it, it’s still a cohesive unit that can’t be separated.

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.” - Jake Chambers of New York, gunslinger

Still think the first book is the best. Oh, and Stephen King is bad at writing women. Particularly black women with disabilities. Ever heard the phrase, “Write what you know?” Oy.

Finished the first draft of a 15-page screenplay that will hopefully evolve into a 30-page screenplay. At least, that’s what I’m shooting for. Draft 2 is at 18 pages and still going. A big thanks to everyone who helped me work this one out (those of you who read my blog, anyway). You’ll be in the credits. Count on it. I’m already making a list. Best part is that Peter Mulvey (who you all know I am enthralled with) told me personally that I can use his music in my movies. If ever I got an ambition kick, it was then.

Tasha bet me $10 that Sean will propose to me within a year. I laughed really hard, and then I thanked Sean for winning me $10. He gave me a look, but he knows I’m right. The whole conversation came up because I found my wedding dress the other day at “Total Wedding” in Woodfield. And my bridesmaids’ dresses, at that. I’m still looking for pictures, but I didn’t catch the brand name, so it might take me awhile to find them.

I guess that’s it for now. Nothing else too exciting has happened. Night, all.

Okay, so I haven’t posted in a really long time, and I’m sorry. Right now, things are too hectic and I don’t really want to sit at my computer…at all. So I guess that’s a victory.

Got my job at the movie theater back. Orientation’s on Tuesday. Sure it’s a massive cut in pay, but fuck if I’m gonna sit behind a desk again. At least not for a very long time.

Might be applying to Columbia. I’ve been chastised for the “English teaching degree” idea by those who know me best: they know my heart’s in film, so I should do film. Might not hurt to send out those apps to ISU and EIU just in case, anyway.

“The Dark Tower” - 7th and last book in a series started with “The Gunslinger” - by Stephen King. Just finished it. I think I have an anneurism behind my eye right now. Still in a fog, give you a verdict later.