Jennifer’s blog

I know, I know, you're surprised that such things exist. But I haven't read every book out there. Maybe some day I'll get around to this.

Grabbed from Kelly McCullough over at Wyrdsmiths.

A list of the books most often listed as "unread" on librarything. The original instructions say italicize books started but not finished, bold books read, and bold and underline books read for school.

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 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (four times)
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 (and Purgatory and Paradise)
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

*I borrowed this one from my aunt ages ago and pick it up every so often. I fully intend to finish it.

Huh. Didn't have a lot of required reading in high school, it appears.

http://capwiz.com/rif/issues/alert/?alertid=11150206

Visit this link to send a letter to your congressman/woman, senator, and state representatives about continuing funding for Reading Is Fundamental, a program that, among other things, provides free books for low-income children.

From Jonathan Lyon's journal:

George Bush's $3.1 trillion budget proposal for 2009 eliminates the funding for the Reading is Fundamental book distribution program. This program, which would cost 26 million dollars next year, has provided more than 300 million books to over 30 million underprivileged children since its founding in 1966.

Instead, Bush has proposed to raise military-spending to levels not seen since World War II. He proposes $515 billion for Pentagon's day to day operations, higher than the total combined military spending of every other country in the world (and this doesn't include supplemental requests).

We're spending enough to make the Pentagon the 10th richest country in the world, but we can't spend what amounts to 0.005% of this on a program that distributed books to nearly 4.5 million children last year?

If you could travel back in time, which era would you visit and why?

I'm a sucker for the Middle Ages, lack of hygiene and all. I'd just like to see what it would be like to be a medieval person, and have a reason to wear a sword (oh, I'd totally do the disguise bit and learn swordfighting). It's the simplicity of the time, I think. There needs to be more of a reason to know archery, blacksmithing, actual sewing...I'm sure I'd hate it after a while, but it would be fun.

I'd be happy for the 1600s too...France, with the Musketeers, or with pirates. Oh yes, I would be a female pirate. As long as we were only liberating ill-won spoils from the other guys.

I played with this stuff when I was in middle school. It's a lot of fun, very messy, and completely natural. Makes me want to build a big pit and make my own "magic water" ;)

What have you lost that you wish you still had?
Submitted by gunderson bee.

artist charcoal

In 7th grade, I was really into the Phantom of the Opera musical. I had the soundtrack (on tape, natch) and the tie-in book, and the sheet music (yes, I could actually play that DAH! DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH! beginning of the eponymous song). I don't know if I did most of them during spanish class or that just happens to be the class that got stuck in my head, but I drew a bunch of pictures from the photos in the tie-in book and the sheet music, not directly copying Sarah Brightman as Christine, but doing my own take on them. They were pretty good, for a 7th grader, and I was very proud of them. I colored some of them, but most were just heavy pencil with shading, contouring, the works.

And I don't know where they are. I wish I did, so I could look at them and say, huh, they aren't as bad as I thought/these are actually quite hideous. I just wish I knew, either way. I remember that for the longest time I thought they were in my portfolio from art class in middle school, and I looked in there one day and they weren't, and I was flummoxed. I hate losing art.

If you were independently wealthy, where in the world would you live?
Submitted by Eileen.

I'd probably live in a few different places. Paris, for one. It's just too pretty there. And maybe take a flat in London. I'd like to try living in New York and Los Angeles, but I doubt I'd stay long. Denver sounds better and better as I read about it for Worldcon, though it's awfully far away from my parents.

I like it here in St. Louis though. Maybe I'd stay. :)

What's the best April Fools' Day prank you've ever had pulled on you?
Courtesy of Team Vox.

(Is this really the last? It is April 1, after all...)
I actually really hate April Fools' Day. I'm not very good at pulling pranks--seems like they get me worse than the person I'm pranking. And I always feel bad for the person. I'm just a big softy. Like Sophie. The cutest cat in the world.

Neil Gaiman says the best things:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

I hope 2008 holds great things in store for you. I hope I can get at least one of the in-progress NaNovels finished. It would be very nice to start an agent search. Good luck for everyone!

moar funny pictures

Scientists have made fluorescent cats. Seriously. Whoa.

Can't wait to go home. Last work day of the YEAR!

What's your favorite thing to drink when it's cold outside?

Hot mulled apple cider. It warms your nose and makes the house smell yummy!