Let's Talk Books

Okay, so you know I have a book blog....oh wait, you dont? Well I have a book blog as well that I post on as well as a bunch of other awesome people (some of you!!). So it is probably fairly obvious that I heart books a whole lot. In fact I have read most of the classics like Flowers in The Attic and Twilight. (yes that WAS William Shakesepere that rolled over in his grave).

Actually I have NOT read many classics and I'm not sure why that is. Yes, I have read The Odyssee (oh, now I drive one....HA) and almost all of Shakesperes works but when I came across this list of "Books you really should read" I realized that I have not read many of them. So, here it is.....I will put the ones that I HAVE read in BOLD. Which ones have you read? Which should I not live another moment withOUT reading??? (oh and for one, ones I have never even HEARD of in italics)

1.Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible – Im sure I am missing a few books but I have read most of it
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 (maybe minus a few)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
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
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 Meany - 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. A 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
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. 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 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
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

Not Me Monday

Monday again already??? I swear the weekends just keep getting shorter! You know the drill.....Not Me Monday was created by MckMama to tell the world about all of the things that you did NOT do over the past week. I find it to be rather therapeutic!!

This past week.....hmmmmm.......

I did NOT spend a lot of last week working on a project that I will talk about later this week. I was NOT AT ALL thrilled with the outcome and will NOT expect much attention from you all in regards to said project. What do you all think I am? An attention whore? Not Me.

I did NOT read Eclipse for the 3rd time. In fact I'm not even going to bother mentioning this since all of you already know that I do NOT have an infatuation with the Twilight series. That said, I do NOT plan on reading Breaking Dawn (for the 3rd time) this week as well.

I did NOT decide to start training for a 5K that I may or may not even run in. I was NOT AT ALL proud of myself for not only running on the treadmill, but living to tell about it. I am NOT AT ALL out of shape and I am NOT determined to do this and lose some weight in the process.

Friday I was NOT excited to put my kids to bed so that I could enjoy my Tivo'd Today Show with the New Kids on the Block....I did NOT stop and rewind a few parts more than once while wiping the drool from my chin.

At the same time I was NOT enjoying my New Kids porn Joe was NOT in the kitchen BAKING his daughter's birthday cake. When he told me that the New Kids were gay I did NOT point out to him that he was the one working on a 3 layer pink princess cake.



Saturday.......I did NOT celebrate my daughter's 3rd birthday (more on this on her actual bday which is this Friday) We did NOT have a wonderful day at the park with friends and family.

BFF Liz did NOT give me the biggest smile ever when revealing to me her gift for my daughter which was a t-shirt that read "The Future Griffin McIntyre" who is NOT the son of my beloved Joey McIntyre aka hottest New Kid ever.

I did NOT find that ironic seeing as just 3 weeks ago I did NOT get my friend's daughter a shirt that read "Lil Miss Cullen" for her birthday

I did NOT have a wonderful mother's day!! I did not come downstairs to be greeted with smiley kids wishing me a happy Mother's day! I also did NOT love finding a case of wine, Archivers gift card and 90210 Season 4 waiting for me! Yeah!!!

Hope all of you mommy's did NOT have a wonderful Mother's day as well!

"I got a dress"

She said sounding like Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman

After assessing my wardrobe I have come to terms with the fact that I will have to do a little shopping for my upcoming trip to our Nation's capital.

Oh Darn.

Here is the problem. For over a year now my office has allowed us to wear jeans to work. This is a nice thing but my shopping for "business attire" has dwindled down to nothing.

So when Joe advised me of all of the dinners and tours that we are attending in D.C. I got a little stressed about what to wear. As usual HE does not have to worry much about this because he will be in uniform 95% of the time. We are attending 4 dinners and 3 days worth of tours that include the White House. Yeah, I can't roll to the White House in jeans.

Easy solution right? I used to have to be business casual so I can just pull out my dressy clothes from back then. Imagine my surprise when I realized that my closet had shrunk them!!!!!!! Stupid Closet.

Now I DO actually have a few outfits that will suffice....I'm not total white trash for Pete's sake. I do however need to pick up a few things.

So last night after work I went shopping for a dress for Thursday night which is when Joe will be honored for his award. I tried on probably 20 different things and came out with a dress. I considered this a success.

My next issue is that I will likely have to wear hose. My legs have not seen hose in literally over 5 years. To say I hate them is an understatement but right now I am the color of a member of the Cullen Family (God I love when I can find a reason to use Twilight in a post) and honestly I could use the benefit of a control top. Hose it is.

I'm not a fan of dressing up. I used to be....I think having kids and therefor the constant threat of being puked on or spilled on has caused me to not want to be as girly as I used to be. This week in D.C. sans children is causing me to have to get back to my girly roots.

Could be interesting. Could be scary.

One more thing.....I need to drop about 20 10lbs before then. Awesome.

(almost) Wordless Wednesday

Oh my goodness. This almost makes me want to be team Jacob. But not quite. I need some private time now so I have to go.

Ouch

Before I grumble about my pain I would like to point you towards my book blog. I was given the opportunity to review a book called Reunion by Therese Fowler. My review is up and if you are interested I am giving away the copy that I was given....you have to post over there if you want to be entered and I am having random.org pick the winner on Friday.

Now onto my regularly scheduled bitching.

I am sore. Why? Yesterday I tried something new.....I ran. Without a fire, a sale in the wine aisle or Edward Cullen cheering me on (oh wait, more on that in a minute).

A few months back Kami (cool name right?) sent me a program to get started on a running program. While I have never EVER been a runner, or even WANTED to be a runner, I thought that it would be a good way to get in shape and drop some weight.

Then I was given a little more incentive to want to do this......My sweet friend Andrea lost her husband in a tragic work accident last fall. Andrea and the company that her husband Matt worked for are having The 1st Annual "Run for Row" Memorial 5k.

When I first heard about this I knew right away that I wanted to be there to support Andrea and my other friends that would be running, no way did I plan to RUN in it. Actually I still don't have plans to run in it but maybe I could run/walk it. We will see.

Yesterday was day 1 towards "maybe" doing this. We will see how I do in the next few weeks....this week was the easy week.

Today I hurt like hell. To say I am out of shape is being nice.

Oh and Edward......he actually DID kind of help. I had Twilight (the movie) playing on my iPod while I was on the treadmill....in my mind I was running to him........heehee

Not Me Monday

Happy Monday!! All over the bloggy world people are happily posting their NOT ME MONDAY's to say how happy their are that STELLAN is HOME with his family!! Finally on the right combo of meds to keep his little heart working until he is old enough for another surgery! Head over to MckMama's blog if you are one of the last 5 people on earth who don't know who Stellan and MckMama are.

Sooooo, last week was kind of boring actually.....not a lot of things to NOT tell you about. hmmmm.

I did NOT deal with Mallory's temper tantrums at least 5 times last week. Each time I did NOT have to close windows in fear that the neighbors would hear and call children's services. I do NOT play that conversation in my head over and over....."no Ms Social Work Person, I have NOT been beating my daughter.....trust me, I have realllllllly wanted to but this performance is 100% ass beating free"

I did NOT go to the gym 3 times last week.....this did NOT make me happy because I am NOT serious about losing weight......I do NOT have a little over a month to drop some lbs before our trip to DC

Speaking of DC.....The fam did NOT head out to the airforce base in Dayton so Joe could get fit for a "mess dress" uniform which apparently is the military's version of a tux--which he will NOT be wearing when he accepts the awesome award that he won.
Why did the entire fam go on a trip to buy a uniform? Because I do NOT get excited to shop at the class 6 liquor store with cheap wine and no tax. Not one bit.
And finally.....to start my new week off on the right foot.....I did NOT snap THIS picture on my way in this morning....


I did NOT at all fear that they would dive bomb me on my way into the office.

A Pierce Funny

So funny that yesterday I posted about Mallory's dramatic temper tantrums. Well she delivered another one this morning.....one that had me close the windows in fear that the neighbors would call child services thinking she was being murdered. It lasted a good 20 minutes where I just kind of ignored her and eventually it was over.

So, my hands are full, Pierce, Mallory and I are heading downstairs to leave for the day when I realized that Mallory's shoes were (for some reason) next to my bed. I asked Pierce if he would please go find them for me since I had other stuff in my hands and off he went to grab them. As soon as he catches up to us (and I should have known better) her majesty says "NO, I want to find them!!!!!!!"

Pierce looks in total annoyance at his sister. Drops them right there on the floor in the hallway and said...."There.....find them."

And walked away.