501 Must-Read Books

List taken from Emma Beare's 501 Must-Read Books. Because I have too much time on my hands.

Chapter 1: Children's Fiction
Chapter 2: Classic Fiction
Chapter 3: History
Chapter 4: Memoirs
Chapter 5: Modern Fiction
Chapter 6: Science Fiction
Chapter 7: Thrillers
Chapter 8: Travel Writing

Children's Fiction

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, Hans Christian Andersen
Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi (Lorenzini)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Alan Garner
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Children's and Household Tales, Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
Emil and the Detectives, Erich Kastner
Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
The Complete Nonsense Books, Edward Lear
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren
Dr. Dolittle, Hugh Lofting
At the Back of the North Wind, George MacDonald
Nobody's Boy, Hector Malot
Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne
Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
Five Children and It, E. Nesbit
Tom's Midnight Garden, Philippa Pearce
The War of the Buttons, Louis Pergaud
Fairy Tales, Charles Perrault
The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Northern Lights (The Golden Compass), Philip Pullman
Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome
Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, Mordecai Richler
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling
The King of the Golden River, John Ruskin
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Human Comedy, William Saroyan
The Misfortunes of Sophie, Comtesse de Ségur
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, Dr. Seuss
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
The Golem, Isaac Bashevis Singer
Heidi, Johanna Spyri
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien (the first one)
Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers
Charlotte's Web, E.B. White
The Sword in the Stone, T.H. White
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Happy Prince and Other Tales, Oscar Wilde

Classic Fiction

The Epic of Gilgamesh, Anonymous
The Thousand and One Nights, Anonymous
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
Old Goriot, Honoré de Balzac
Vathek, William Beckford
Lady Audley's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
The Collected Stories, Anton Chekhov
The Man Who Was Thursday, G.K. Chesterton
Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Coxcomb, John Cleland
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
The Christmas Books, Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Tom Jones, Henry Fielding
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Howard's End, E.M. Forster
North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Vicar of Wakefield, Oliver Goldsmith
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
King Solomon's Mines, H. Rider Haggard
Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
The Iliad, Homer
Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
Bliss and Other Stories, Katherine Mansfield
Utopia, Sir Thomas More
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, Edgar Allan Poe
In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust
A Sicilian Romance, Anne Radcliffe
Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady, Samuel Richardson
Waverley, Sir Walter Scott
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley
The Red and the Black, Stendahl
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula, Bram Stoker
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (started - twice!)
Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Candide, or Optimism, Voltaire
The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
La Bête humaine, Émile Zola

History

London: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd
Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, John Lee Anderson
The Hour of Our Death, Philippe Ariès
The Fall of Berlin, 1945, Anthony Beevor
The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Fernand Braudel
The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, John Brewer
Frozen Desire: An Enquiry Into the Meaning of Money, James Buchan
Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, Alan Bullock
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Jacob Burckhardt
Daily Life in Ancient Rome, Jerome Carcopino
The Accursed Kings, Maurice Druon
The Age of Cathedrals, Georges Duby
The Stripping of the Altars, Eamon Duffy
The Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, Modris Eksteins
The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, Niall Ferguson
Millennium, Felipe Fernández-Armesto
Pagans and Christians, Robin Lane Fox
The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama
The Naked Heart, Peter Gay
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy, Martin Gilbert
The Cheese and the Worms, Carlo Ginzburg
God's First Love, Friedrich Heer
The Histories, Herodotus
Hiroshima, John Hersey
The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, Robert Hughes
Pandaemonium, Humphrey Jennings
A History of Warfare, John Keegan
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Bartolomé de Las Casas
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence
Islam in History, Bernard Lewis
Chinese Shadows, Simon Leys
The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, Amin Maalouf
The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, Garrett Mattingly
The Story of English, Robert McCrum
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, Maria Rosa Menocal
The Women's History of the World, Rosalind Miles
Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire, Jan & James Morris
Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade, Henri Pirenne
Parallel Lives, Plutarch
Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul, Roy Porter
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, Simon Schama
Leviathan and the Air-Pump, Steven Shapin & Simon Schaffer
The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler
The Trial of Socrates, Isador Stone
The Annals of Imperial Rome, Tacitus
The Origins of the Second World War, A.J.P. Taylor
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara W. Tuchman
A People's History of the United States, 1492 to Present, Howard Zinn


Memoirs

Paula, Isabel Allende
Journal Intime, Henri Frédéric Amiel
Brief Lives, John Aubrey
Confessions, St. Augustine of Hippo
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir
My Left Foot, Christy Brown
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Benvenuto Cellini
The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus, Cyril Connolly
Boy: Tales of Childhood, Roald Dahl
My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell
An Angel at My Table, Janet Frame
The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
The Journals of Andre Gide, 1889-1949, Andre Gide
Poetry and Truth: From My Own Life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments, Edmund Gosse
Ways of Escape, Graham Greene
Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin
84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff
Pentimento, Lillian Hellman
Childhood, Youth and Exile, Alexander Herzen
The Diary of Alice James, Alice James
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Gustav Jung
The Diaries of Franz Kafka, Franz Kafka
The Story of My Life, Helen Keller
The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery Kempe
I Will Bear Witness, 1933-1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years, Victor Klemperer
In the Castle of My Skin, George Lamming
A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis
The Towers of Trebizond, Rose Macaulay
Journal, Katherine Mansfield
The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, Paul Monette
My Place, Sally Morgan
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, Vladimir Nabokov
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Azar Nafisi
Memoirs, Pablo Neruda
Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, Nigel Nicolson
Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje
Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Samuel Pepys
Letters, Pliny the Younger
Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Words, Jean-Paul Sartre
Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton
Walden, or Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau
De Profundis, Oscar Wilde
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeannette Winterson
Autobiographies, W.B. Yeats

Modern Fiction

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Jorge Amado
Le Grand Meaulnes, Alain-Fournier
Take a Girl Like You, Kingsley Amis
Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
Surfacing, Margaret Atwood
The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster
Tales of Odessa, Isaak Babel
Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin
The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks
The Regeneration Trilogy, Pat Barker
Herzog, Saul Bellow
Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges
Nadja, André Breton
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
Naked Lunch, William Burroughs
Possession, A.S. Byatt
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino
The Stranger, Albert Camus
Auto-da-Fé, Elias Canetti
Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey
The Kingdom of This World, Alejo Carpentier
The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, Raymond Carver
The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary
Journey to the End of Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Soldiers of Salamis, Javier Cercas
The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever
Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
Chéri, Colette
Victory, Joseph Conrad
A House and Its Head, Ivy Compton-Burnett
Fifth Business, Robertson Davies
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernières
Underworld, Don DeLillo
Seven Gothic Tales, Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)
Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Döblin
Once Were Warriors, Alan Duff
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
The Lover, Marguerite Duras
The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
The Wars, Timothy Findley
The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford
Independence Day, Richard Ford
A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald
From the Fifteen District, Mavis Gallant
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
Our Lady of the Flowers, Jean Genet
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
July's People, Nadine Gordimer
FerdyDurke, Witold Gombrowicz
The Tin Drum, Günter Grass
Hunger, Knut Hamsun
The Blind Owl, Sadegh Hedayat
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse
Lost Horizon, James Hilton
A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
The World According to Garp, John Irving
The Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood
The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
Ulysses, James Joyce
The File on H, Ismail Kadare
The Trial, Franz Kafka
It, Stephen King
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa
The Diviners, Margaret Laurence
Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
Changing Places, David Lodge
Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, Machado de Assis
The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk; Palace of Desire; Sugar Street, Naguib Mahfouz
The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer
God's Grace, Bernard Malamud
An Imaginary Life, David Malouf
The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
Embers, Sándor Márai
Life of Pi, Yann Martel
Cakes and Ale, W. Somerset Maugham
The Group, Mary McCarthy
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
Enduring Love, Ian McEwan
The Sea of Fertility, Yukio Mishima
A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
Cold Heaven, Brian Moore
Beloved, Toni Morrison
The Progress of Love, Alice Munro
The Sea, the Sea, Iris Murdoch
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul
The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brian
A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Connor
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
Where the Jackals Howl, Amos Oz
The Messiah of Stockholm, Cynthia Ozick
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
Mr. Weston's Good Wine, T.F. Powys
The Nephew, James Purdy
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
Barney's Version, Mordecai Richler
Hadrian the Seventh, Frederick Rolfe
The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth
The Human Stain, Philip Roth
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo
Bonjour Tristesse, Françoise Sagan
The Complete Short Stories, Saki
Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Staying On, Paul Scott
Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald
Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby, Jr.
Unless, Carol Shields
The Magician of Lublin, Isaac Bashevis Singer
The Engineer of Human Souls, Josef Škvorecký
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
The Man Who Loved Children, Christina Stead
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Sophie's Choice, William Styron
Perfume, Patrick Süskind
The Confession of Zeno, Italo Svevo
Pereira Declares, Antonio Tabucchi
The White Hotel, D.M. Thomas
The Master, Colm Tóibín
Felicia's Journey, William Trevor
The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Amos Tutuola
The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler
Couples, John Updike
The Time of the Hero, Mario Vargas Llosa
In Praise of Older Women: The Amorous Recollections of A. V., Stephen Vizinczey
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Voss, Patrick White
Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar

Science Fiction

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
Hothouse, Brian Aldiss
Brain Wave, Poul Anderson
I, Robot, Isaac Asimov
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
The Crystal World, J.G. Ballard
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Who Goes There, John W. Campbell
The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares
Planet of the Apes, Pierre Boulle
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
The Sheep Look Up, John Brunner
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Erewhon, Samuel Butler
Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino
2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, James De Mille
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip José Farmer
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heilein
Dune, Frank Herbert
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Two Planets, Kurd Lasswitz
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
Shikasta, Doris Lessing
The Stepford Wives, Ira Levin
Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Dwellers in the Mirage, Abraham Merritt
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller, Jr.
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Time Traders, Andre Norton
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Edgar Allan Poe
The Inverted World, Christopher Priest
City, Clifford D. Simak
Donovan's Brain, Curt Siodmak
Lest Darkness Fall, L. Sprague de Camp
Last and First Men, Olaf Stapledon
More than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
Slan, A.E. van Vogt
Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Jules Verne
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade, Kurt Vonnegut
The Island of Dr. Moreau, H.G. Wells
Islandia, Austin Tappan Wright
The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham

Thrillers

More Work for the Undertaker, Margery Allingham
Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly, John Franklin Bardin
Trent's Last Case, E.C. Bentley
Trial and Error, Anthony Berkeley
The Poisoned Chocolates Case, Anthony Berkeley
The Beast Must Die, Nicholas Blake
Psycho, Robert Bloch
Double Indemnity, James M. Cain
Thus Was Adonis Murdered, Sarah Caudwell
Farewell, My Lovely, Raymond Chandler
No Orchids for Miss Blandish, James Hadley Chase
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
Unnatural Exposure, Patricia Cornwell
The Moving Toyshop, Edmund Crispin
In the Last Analysis, Amanda Cross
Rose at Ten, Marco Denevi
Vendetta, Michael Dibdin
The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest, Peter Dickinson
He Who Whispers, John Dickson Carr
The Big Clock, Kenneth Fearing
Blood Sport, Dick Francis
Quiet as a Nun, Lady Antonia Fraser
The Sunday Woman, Carlo Fruttero
Death in the Wrong Room, Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Beatrice Malleson)
Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett
Suicide Excepted, Cyril Hare
Bones and Silence, Reginald Hill
A Rage in Harlem, Chester Himes
Smilla's Sense of Snow, Peter Høeg
Malice Aforethought, Francis Iles
Hamlet, Revenge!, Michael Innes
The Murder Room, P.D. James
The Sleeping-Car Murders, Sébastien Japrisot
Death of My Aunt, C.H.B. Kitchin
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John le Carré
The Mystery of the Yellow Room, Gaston Leroux
The Last Detective, Peter Lovesey
Final Curtain, Ngaio Marsh
An Oxford Tragedy, J.C. Masterman
The Steam Pig, James McClure
The Seven Per Cent Solution, Nicholas Meyer
How Like an Angel, Margaret Millar
The Red House Mystery, A.A. Milne
A Red Death, Walter Mosley
Deadlock, Sara Paretsky
Dover One, Joyce Porter
The Chinese Orange Mystery, Ellery Queen
The Man in the Net, Patrick Quentin
A Judgement in Stone, Ruth Rendell
Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
The Engagement, Georges Simenon
The Laughing Policeman, Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö
The Red Box, Rex Stout
The Man Who Killed Himself, Julian Symons
A Pin to See the Peepshow, F. Tennyson Jesse
The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey
Above the Dark Circus, Sir Hugh Walpole
Born Victim, Hillary Waugh
The Bride Wore Black, Cornell Woolrich

Travel Writing

The Travels of Ibn Battutah, Ibn Battutah
The Scorpion-Fish, Nicholas Bouvier
The Road to Oxiana, Robert Byron
In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin
The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin
My Journey to Lhasa: The Classic Story of the Only Western Woman Who Succeeded in Entering the Forbidden City, Alexandra David-Neel
On the Narrow Road to the Deep North: A Journey into Lost Japan, Lesley Downer
The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands, Patrick Leigh Fermor
Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrer
Kon Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft, Thor Heyerdahl
The Purple Land, W.H. Hudson
The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole, Roland Huntford
Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East, Pico Iyer
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, Samuel Johnson & James Boswell
Eothen: Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East, A.W. Kinglake
The Seasick Whale, Emphraim Kishon
A Rose for Winter, Laurie Lee
Golden Earth: Travels in Burma, Norman Lewis
The Cruise of the Snark, Jack London
Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez
Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea, Claudio Magris
The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen
Destinations: Essays from Rolling Stone, Jan Morris
Never Cry Wolf, Farley Mowat
Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey, V.S. Naipaul
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, Eric Newby
Roads to Santiago: A Modern-Day Pilgrimage Through Spain, Cees Nooteboom
La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, Francis Parkman
Into the Heart of Borneo, Raymond O'Hanlon
The Travels, Marco Polo
Dead Man's Chest: Travels after Robert Louis Stevenson, Nicholas Rankin
Sailing Alone Around the World, Joshua Slocum
Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, J.H. Speke
Travels with Charley: In Search of America, John Steinbeck
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Valley of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels, Freya Stark
The Great Railway Bazaar, Paul Theroux
Tschiffely's Ride: Southern Cross to Pole Star, A.F. Tschiffely
A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain
On Fiji Islands, Ronald Wright

Hanguel Holidays

Oops

I got off work early today, 2.5 hours early. I had plans to run three errands and go down to Songtan for Mismanagement, and all I accomplished was to run an errand that it turns out I didn't need to run and to fall asleep while reading the introduction to Frankenstein. Welcome to November. All I want to do is to make it to Christmas vacation.

Postcard from Ciddy Cent!

Running Schedule - No Time for Sleep!

I Want To Reread This Book

Rite of Passage by Alexi Panshin

Nike Plus Run Like You've Never Run Before

Believe in the Run

Very Amusing

So, Courtnie and I went down to OBH3 yesterday, but it's a long weekend and there was construction and we were uber-late. I called Little Leaguer when we hit the bus station and she told me they'd just gotten on the subway to Sema Station and I should head straight there and try to catch up. I took a cab over but was at a minimum two trains behind the pack. Miraculously, I caught up to the runners and was about the fourth person in at the end. I'm absurdly proud of myself. Great circle, since there was a large contingent of visitors from the Mother Hash in Malaysia, and then surprisingly enjoyable evening in Songtan, very low key, with about 10 Steves (new OBH3 tradition - any NNer is a Steve now, because clearly we are all too lazy to remember their names. Makes for confusing conversations, but is amusing) and Thumper Humper and ToT, but the rest of the girls had all gone up to Seoul, which was actually probably why it was such a great night. Had very little sleep and made it back to Seoul just in time to "host" a barbeque on my roof - Gus and Gabby and Ally actually did all the work of getting meat and a bbq and cooking, so really all I did was provide the location, the hookah, and a bag of Cheetos. It was a great night but I am now ridiculously tired. Thank god tomorrow is a holiday. Taking April's aunt up Seoul Tower and then hopefully doing the hash at 2.

Big fail though - have possibly killed my phone with excessive boob sweat. Sigh. Am attempting to get it to dry out, but I'm not optimistic. I'll give it a few days, if it doesn't start working again I guess I'll buy a new one.

Lace Up!

Leonard Cohen

Anthem

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again,
I heard them say;
Don't swell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.

The wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again;
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed,
the marriage spent;
the widowhood
of every government -
signs for all to see.

Can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned up
a thundercloud
They're going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum.
Every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

- from Stranger Music by Leonard Cohen

"homage to my hips"

these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

(Lucille Clifton)

The Door

The door swings open,
you look in.
It's dark in there,
most likely spiders:
nothing you want.
You feel scared.
The door swings closed.

The full moon shines,
it's full of delicious juice;
you buy a purse,
the dance is nice.
The door opens
and swings closed so quickly
you don't notice.

The sun comes out,
you have swift breakfasts
with your husband, who is still thin;
you wash the dishes,
you love your children,
you read a book,
you go to the movies.
It rains moderately.

The door swings open,
you look in:
why does this keep happening now?
Is there a secret?
The door swings closed.

The snow falls,
you clear the walk while breathing heavily;
it's not as easy as once.
Your children telephone sometimes.
The roof needs fixing.
You keep yourself busy.
The spring arrives.

The door swings open:
it's dark in there,
with many steps going down.
But what is that shining?
Is it water?
The door swings closed.

The dog has died.
This happened before.
You got another;
not this time though.
Where is your husband?
You gave up the garden.
It became too much.
At night there are blankets;
nontheless you are wakeful.

The door swings open:
O god of hinges,
god of long voyages,
you have kept faith.
It's dark in there.
You confide yourself to the darkness.
You step in.
The door swings closed.

- from "The Door" by Margaret Atwood

Carnation Pens

Every year for Teacher's Day, I score at least half a dozen pens that have a felt carnation on the top and are wrapped in ribbon. They are sort of annoying to write with, so I've been regifting these things all over the place. It's a good thing I'm thinking this is my last year in Korea because I don't think there's anyone left to send one of these things to.

I also get a lot of socks and candy/chocolate, but those are considerably more useful.

One Day by David Nicholls

"He had mentioned it in passing, but only as a distraction and alibi. It seemed that as he ambled through his late teens his possibilities had slowly begun to narrow. Certain cool-sounding jobs - heart surgeon, architect - were permanently closed to him now and journalism seemed about to go the same way." Derek

"But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel - independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic." Emma

The part of this book I liked best was that tiny bits of it were set in Edinburgh and I could totally picture Rankeillor Street (I lived just down the road from there) and Arthur's Seat is somewhere I went hiking up both drunk and hungover (and even sober) and I shopped at the grocery store on Nicolson Street that is mentioned for two straight years. I also liked the British slang - good job you, wahey, etc. But, it's not really enough that a book reminds you that your ex used to say wahey a lot or that it amuses you that Em and Dex sounds a lot like Ant and Dec (annoying TV presenters much like Dexter was in the novel). I didn't like Dexter at all as a character, so it was hard to care much about what happened to him. I did like Emma and occasionally identified with her life quite a bit. All in all, it was okay but would have been a much better read on a beach when I wasn't looking for much in the way of depth.

"These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through." Derek

"'Live every day as if ti's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to simply try and be good and courageous and bold and to make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Go out there with your passion and your electric typewriter and work hard at... something. Change lives through art maybe. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance."

Emma

Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehenreich

"What would it mean in practice to eliminate all he 'negative people' from one's life? It might be a good move to separate from a chronically carping spouse, but it's not so easy to abandon the whiny toddler, the colicky infant, or the sullen teenager. And at the workplace, while it's probably advisable to detect and terminate those who show sings of become mass killer,s there are other annoying people who might actually have something useful to say: the financial officer who keeps worrying about the bank's subprime mortgage exposure or the auto executive who questions the company's overinvestment in SUVs and trucks. Purge everyone who "brings you down," and you risk being very lonely or, what is worse, cut off from reality. The challenge of family life, or group life of any kind, is to keep gauging the moods of others, accommodating to their insights, and offering comfort when needed.

But in the world of positive thinking other people are not there to be nurtured or to provide unwelcome reality checks. They are there only to nourish, praise, and affirm. Harsh as this dictum sounds, many ordinary people adopt it as their creed, displaying wall plaques or bumper stickers showing the word "Whining" with a cancel sign through hit. There seems to be a massive empathy deficit, which people respond to by withdrawing their won. No one has the time or patience for anyone else's problems."

I loved the first chapter on positive thinking and cancer, but after that I was less impressed. The parts about business were really just a recap of Bait and Switch and the bits about religion and psychology felt a bit repetitive. Still, the main idea, that the emphasis on positive thinking in today's culture has a negative effect overall was a good one.

"Still, surely it is better to obsess about one's chances of success than about the likelihood of hell and damnation, to search one's inner self for strengths rather than sins. The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat into anxious introspection when, as Emerson might have said, there is a vast world outside to explore? Why spend so much time working on oneself when there is so much real work to be done?"

My time at RBS was an introduction into forced positive thinking. All that bullshit about people with negative attitudes but high production being "terrorists" in the workplace always pissed me off. Don't show me some stupid show about people happily singing as they work in the Seattle Fish Market and then think that I'm going to put on a happy smile whether I feel it or not. The rah-rah company events that are run like some sort of religious revival meeting merely pissed me off. I may work for you, but I am not you. And that should be okay as an employee.

"In the hands of employers, positive thinking has been transformed into something its nineteenth-century proponents probably never imagined - not an exhortation to get up and get going but a means of social control in the workplace, a goad to perform at ever-higher levels... With 'motivation' as the whip, positive thinking became the hallmark of the compliant employee, and as the conditions of corporate employment worsened in the age of downsizing that bgan in the 1980s, the hand on the whip grew heavier."

"This is the project of science: to pool the rigorous observations of many people into a tentative accounting of the world, which will of course always be subject to revisions arising from fresh observations... There seems to be an evolutionary paradox at work here: human survival in the face of multiple threats depended on our ability to live in groups, but the imperative of maintaining group cohesion can sometimes override realism and common sense, making us hesitate to challenge the consensus or be the bearer of bad news. So, after checking with others, it remains the responsibility of each individual to sift through the received wisdom, insofar as possible, and decide what's worth holding on to. This can require the courage of a Galileo, the iconoclasm of a Darwin or Freud, the diligence of a homicide detective."

"A vigilant realism does not foreclose the pursuit of happiness; in fact, it makes it possible. How can we expect to improve our situation without addressing the actual circumstances we find ourselves in? Positive thinking seeks to convince us that such external factors are incidental compared with one's internal state or attitude or mood...IT's true that subjective factors like determination are critical to survival and that individuals sometimes triumph over nightmarish levels of adversity. But mind does not automatically prevail over matter, and to ignore the role of difficult circumstances - or worse, attribute the to our own thoughts - is to slide toward the depraved smugness Rhonda Byrne expressed when confronted with the tsunami of 2004. Citing the law of attraction, she stated that disasters like tsunamis can happen only to people who are 'on the same frequency as the event.'"

Canyons by Gary Paulsen

"Brendan Cole lived in El Paso, Texas, and each afternoon after school he ran. He did not run from anything and did not run to anything, did not run for track nor did he run to stay in shape and lose weight. He ran to be with himself."

I liked the bits about running.

Read Forever

Blast From the Past - And Inaccurate

Amanda's Friendster Profile

Female, 33, In a Relationship, Great Britain (UK)More
My Friends (11)

Member Since:Oct 2003
Hometown:Bolton, Ontario
Other education:Queen's University, Classical Studies, 2001
What I enjoy doing:hiking, travelling, film and book addiction
Favorite Books:the No1 Ladies Detective Agency, Ian Rankin novels, Oryx and Crake, Manufacturing Consent
Favorite Movies:baraka, whale rider, the first two godfathers, anything with audrey hepburn, documentaries, buffallo soldiers, the diner
Favorite Music:radiohead, ani difranco, mull historical society, idelwild, the flaming lips, rem, u2, sleater kinney
Favorite TV Shows:haven't watched tv since i lived in scotland and probably won't own a tv in the next year
About Me: well, i'm sort of randomly wandering around at the moment, just back in Edinburgh, Scotland and from living in Vancouver and Korea. I have finally broken the horrible trend of working in banks.