Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry CHRISTmas 2010, Everyone!

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: 
and the government shall be upon his shoulder: 
and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God
The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end,
upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, 
and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this
Isaiah 9: 6, 7

Friday, December 10, 2010

Womanly Intuition is Highly Overrated

pc: Wheaton College
It was early in the afternoon, and I was the lone parent in the waiting room of the Music School.

Entry door opened; I got up to take a look.

I did not recognize the man -- short, stocky -- wearing a light-coloured coat; peering into the empty practice rooms.
He stopped and smiled when he caught a glimpse of me.

"Where is the owner?" he asked.
I gave directions to the outside stairs which lead to the owners' residence.
"Uhmmm....what's her name?"
I said her first name.
"Are YOU one of the teachers?"
No. Did he want someone in particular?
"Never mind. So the stairs are where??"
They're outside of the front doors, to the left.
He smiled once again and exited.
My anxiety level suddenly shot up.

I hurriedly found my cell phone and called my husband.
I paced from hallway to the waiting room, and back again, as I explained the situation.
He was just as perplexed as me; but after five minutes I'd calmed down enough, 'tho still feeling wary, to hang up.
I continued to wait.

Don, the school co-owner walked in through the back door.
Did a man show up at their front door about 10 minutes ago?
"What man? I didn't see anyone?" he answered.
Once again, I felt anxious.
"Let me go back upstairs and ask my wife."
I waited for his return, all the while thinking that the Music School needed a better security system.
A camera by the door?  Doors that lock behind you?
A Guard? One can never be too sure in today's society.

Don returned with the missing pieces to the puzzle.
Don's wife had given a donation months (years?) ago to AA.
The stranger had  remembered her (tho' not her name).
He had successfully completed the Alcoholics Anonymous program.
He's sober.  He's happy.  Most of all, he's thankful.
And that's why he'd shown up at the Music School.
Talk about misjudging a fellow!!




12.8.23.18

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

BBC top 100 books, continued

I want to read most of BBC's TOP 100  books, God willing.
Done with my number 35 on the list (The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins).
Here's my next read  ---

Number 36: Middlemarch by George Eliot



It's got me bogged down, though.  I think it's because both 35 and 36 are from the 19th century.
 So, I'll read this at the same time ---

Number 37: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini


Friday, December 3, 2010

BBC's top 100 books

This was a friend's blog from a couple of days ago.  This has resulted in an impromptu reading list for my Nook.  I've made bold those books I remember reading. I did not italicize.  I may have read more, but the total comes to 34.  


    The Woman in White is  my  number 35 (as of today, 12/03/2010) . For a book that is over 150 years old, it's quite rivetting:

Have you read more than six of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here... Bold those books you've read in their entirety and italicize those you have read in part.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen


The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien  


Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte


Harry Potter series - JK Rowling


To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee


The Bible


Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte


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


15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier


16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien


17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk


18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 


19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger


20 Middlemarch - George Eliot  (done, 12/15/2010)


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


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 -reading now


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


37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (done 12/20/2010)


38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres


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 Zafon


57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens


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


61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck


62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov


63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt


64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold


65 The 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 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


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 Blyto


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


99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl


100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo