BOOK IT. *

Totally stolen from She Likes Purple.

DISCLAIMER: Um...Looks like I did read a lot of these. But...in my defense...I started reading at age 3, went to High School in Canada (where the required reading list is DAUNTING) and...well...I am a big dork.

Key1) Bold the books you have already read
2) Italicize the books you intend to read
3) Personally added: Notes in parentheses next to note-worthy titles.

***********************

1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2) The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (Um, sorry in advance, but can we say WORDY?)
3) Jane Eyre by Charlotte (DELICIOUS.)
4) Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling (sadly, sadly addicted.)
5) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (would like to name my child Scout, but Demi and Bruce STOLE IT FROM ME YEARS BEFORE I WAS OF CHILD BEARING AGE.)
6) The Bible
7) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
8) Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell (ADORE Orwell.)
9) His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
10) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
11) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (My favourite book from the time I was 7 until I discovered A Tree Grows in Brooklyn at 21.)
12) Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
13) Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare (Not my fault. Theatre major.)
15) Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
16) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
17) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
18) Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (Though it makes me think of “The Good Girl” more than the book…)
19) The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (Slow going at first, then I adored it…)
20) Middlemarch by George Eliot
21) Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (actually…embarrassingly…I am obsessed with the book and movie…I collect Gone with the Wind memorabilia…)
22) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
23) Bleak House by Charles Dickens
24) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (My ex was obsessed…)
26) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (um...I didn't like this. Sorry. The Turtle chapters got to me.)
29) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
30) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Oprah made me do it. And, I gotta say…BORING.)
32) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
33) Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis (ALL of them)
34) Emma by Jane Austen
35) Persuasion by Jane Austen
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis (One of the books I read to Violet in my Belly.)
37) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
39) Memories of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (So heart-breaking.)
40) Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne (I think this would be good to read with Vi to the New Bebe in my Belly.)
41) Animal Farm by George Orwell (one of my favourites of all time…)
42) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Angels and Demons was better.)
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving
45) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
47) Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
48) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (I read the Robber Bride and Alias Grace a whole bunch of times...that should count...)
49) Lord of the Flies by William Golding ( DESPISE this book. The first time I ever hated something that was required reading)
50) Atonement by Ian McEwan
51) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
52) Dune by Frank Herbert (Jason makes me watch the RIDICULOUSLY LONG MOVIE, I should totally get credit for that.)
53) Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
55) A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
58) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Read in conjuction with 1984, not for credit. JUST BECAUSE.)
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (The only reason I don’t despise Stienbeck)
62) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (creepy, dude. CREEPY.)
63) The Secret History by Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
65) Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (BORING.)
66) On The Road by Jack Kerouac
67) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
68) Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (This made the list? Seriously?)
69) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
71) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens ( one of the first books I ever bawled through. I read when I was 8)
72) Dracula by Bram Stoker
73) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
74) Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses by James Joyce (Strangley enough, I was inspired to read this by George Clooney.)
76) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (Dude, I was angsty, and I even thought this was DEPRESSING. Well-written, but DEPRESSING.)
77) Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal by Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
80) Possession by AS Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (LOVE LOVE LOVE.)
82) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple by Alice Walker (CRY CRY CRY)
84) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
85) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Um, I tried. Nope.)
86) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte's Web by EB White (I have been thinking of reading this with violet...but it seems kind of...morbid.)
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Read when I was 10. Liked Encyclopedia Brown better.)
90) The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
92) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93) The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
94) Watership Down by Richard Adams
95) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
96) A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (Aramis, my heart be still.)
98) Hamlet by William Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew is better.)
99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
100) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

so...50 out of 100. Not bad, I suppose. I am surprised, I always feel so less well-read than everyone else around me.

*Anyone remember this program from elementary school? You read so many books and they gave you a free personal pan pizza coupon form Pizza Hut? I was drowning in personal pan pizza coupons....

One of the ways having a daughter brightens my day...

how can you be grumpy after watching this?

By the way, my ma does not have cancer! Thanks for all the well wishes and prayers.

She has been diagnosed with something called Histiocytosis, though we don't know the extent yet. Any info any of you have is more than welcome.

I spent 2 weeks on edge, waiting to hear the results, but holding it together. When I found out, I cried, got a fever, then slept all afternoon. Then I got up, picked a fight with Jason, cried some more, then fell asleep again. Apparently, I handle a crisis well, but after the crisis is over, WATCH OUT, HERE COMES THE CRAZY. Luckily, the next morning I was back to normal.

Ma and I have a close bond...actually, the four women in my immediate family are all very close. Ma is the matriarch, I am the crazy one, Mandie is reliable and hilarious, Bethany is a bit of a diva but also very big-hearted. I speak to one or more of them at least twice a week, despite the 3,000 mile gap between us. I want to think of this as a natural bond; but the more I see of other women and the women they are related to...the more I think we must be unnatural. It is not the norm for four highly-charged and passionate women to be so close.

We do all work to stay close, to stay involved in each other lives. But we are very lucky to have a mother who encouraged and fostered our friendships.

Though I will love my bebe-in-baking no matter the gender, I am hoping for another girl. I want my daughter to have the built-in support system I have been blessed with.

cherish her.

A woman on Oprah, victim of horrific abuse, made a comment about always knowing she would leave a man for hitting her, but that she didn't realize that by that time it was too late.

I live in a state with some of the highest rates of crime against woman in the country. I know too many women who have been abused. I know women who have been nearly killed, who have been strangled while pregnant, who have permanent scars from the men in their lives.

Why? I wish I knew. I wish I could take every ounce of domestic violence away. I wish my daughter didn't have to grow up in a world where this is so commonplace. How am I supposed to protect her? How do I teach her to know which partner will truly love her, and which one will shred her dignity, her mind, her body?

It seems to start off so minutely. Just these little jabs, this slow pecking away of self esteem, imperceptible to the naked eye. Snide comments about looks, intelligence, talent, common sense, housekeeping habits, anything. Slowly escalating to outright insults, name calling, blatant condescension.

He makes you feel as though you have brought it on yourself. He is a manipulator who makes you think it is all your fault. He makes you feel that everything that goes wrong in his life is at your hands.

I know this firsthand. I was in the place where I was made to feel low. I was made to believe I was nothing and deserved worse. I literally lost all of myself, and thought there was nothing in me worth loving.

I was lucky. When he threw the shoe at my head, I ended it. I was able to go to my parents. I was able to get out.

It was a long recovery. I didn't date for a year, trying to find myself. Through friends, family, faith, and soul searching, I had regained most of my former self by the time I met my gorgeous and loving husband.

But I know so many who are not so lucky. Girls who believe the man who could do this to them could really love them. (they can't.) Who believe they will get better on their own. (they won't.) And who truly think that they are at least partially to blame. (they aren't.)

I want so much for them. I want to give them strength and power. I want to give them a place to go. I want to take away the hurt and restore the confidence. I want them to be the people I know they were before.

I want them to be healed so I can have hope for my daughter's future. I can only instill so much in her, I can only go so far.

At some point, I will have to let her go and let her fly.

I am terrified by this thought. Chilled to the bone.