#190

Our landlord called and told us he would be over in about an hour to show the apartment. So of course we fled because being here would have been totally awkward. The three of us ended up at B&N. It was bad, I now want so so many books. 

I call this list books and DVD collection that are destined to be mine just as soon as I get some cash:

#181

This new layout reminds me of strawberries. It seemed appropriate for the upcoming seasons. I also now desperately want those shoes. They make me happy.

Passover does not make me happy. It started today and boy, oh, boy are some of the people celebrating this holiday CRANKY. I know they can't have flour and have to eat matzo but its really no reason to be absolutely positively miserable. I just keep thinking of all the energy they waste being unhappy. It must be horribly sad and lonely.

Today I was asked if any Jewish boys had invited me to seder. HA HA HA HA...no... I was also told if I played my cards right, I could someday become Jewish. Who knew? I wish I could only be that lucky.

I bought this book yesterday. I plan on reading it during my flights next weekend. I'm 

pretty excited to be reading a history book for fun rather than being forced to for class. 

I have also been struggling to get through this book. Its been about 4 months now and 

I just can't seem to finish it. Hmm...now that I think about it, I have at least 2, possibly 3 books on my bookshelf that I have started and still haven't finished. Maybe I should stop buying new ones and just finish those??

#49

The poll has closed. My computer shall be known as Murray Boondoggle (Boonie). I think its a nice mix of funky and cool. He can always go by Boonie if he chooses but this way other laptops at school wont make fun of him. I want to thank MMM for her suggestion of Boondoggle because I never knew what is meant but I think its appropriate. 

I went to the library and got some new books today. The new biography of Benazir Bhutto, a book by the first female press secretary (so I assuming that one is going to be just like watching CJ on West Wing, right?), and Brideshead Revisited. I'm guessing I wont read all of them but I sure looked smart checking them out today. 

Is anyone else totally bored with this season of Project Runway? I just feel I've seen it all before and no one is bringing anything new to the show? I miss Santino, Christian and Daniel V. (even though I read he got a really big head after the show and turned down a bunch of job offers because he felt they were beneath him. And where is he now???) Maybe the change to Lifetime & LA will be good but I sorta doubt it. 

#30

I stole this from Toi.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I bought the first one, got really bored with it, but someday)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 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 Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (This is another one sitting on my bookshelf staring at me)
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
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*
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
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
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 (doesn't this fall under #33? do I get to count it twice)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
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 (I got halfway through this in France and stopped)
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-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (We bought this from the nuns but I didn't read past Chap. 1)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (Toi~remember how obsessed Mrs. Manwell was with this?)
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 Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
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 Blyton
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

*=reading at the moment

I've got 22. I feel all competitive now. So watch your backs!!!!

Where are all the books Deb made us read? Native Son? The Good Earth? The Awakening? If I HAD to read those, they should be on the list.

#28

I did just something stupid.

I reread Marley & Me.

Before when I got to the end, I was sad.

This time? I cried like a baby, sobbed.

My brothers were in the same room and didn't even notice.

#22

I’m watching the annual AFI countdown “10 Top 10” with my parents. I love watching these countdowns. But my parents keep ruining the ends of all the movies I haven’t seen yet. On a side note, "Laura" the movie I’m named after placed #4 on the Mystery list. It makes me happy.

ETA: I just discovered the origins of the dingo ate my baby. Oh Meryl Streep!

After watching “The Unicorn and the Wasp”, I was inspired to read some of Agatha Christie’s books. I remember as a child seeing them on my parents’ bookcase. So I spent all night searching for them in the basement where almost all the books were banished to when the den roof caved in. I couldn’t find them anywhere. I came upstairs and asked my parents where they were. Once they actually paid attention to my question, I discovered that my mother donated them all to library because no one was reading them. This was disappointing. So I headed over to Zauel and checked out “Murder on the Orient Express” and another something about a funeral. I’m excited to read them. 

I’ve also recently got the new Ann Brashares novel “The Last Summer (Of You and Me)” but I haven’t started it yet. I hope its good. I enjoyed the first Sisterhood book, the second just made me so mad, and the last two were okay.