Well, my goal this summer was to read five books, and I have finally made some headway.
1. Twilight at the World of Tomorrow (James Mauro)
I love any book about New York City, especially at its peak (1920s - 1960s). I love any book about the World's Fairs. Therefore, when I saw this book in Vanity Fair, I knew I had to read it ASAP. I bought it the day before we left for vacation, and I finished reading it just the other day. It was a decent read, but I have some complaints. First, it was not the best written history book I've ever read. After taking classes in graduate school about how to read and write scholarship, I was not impressed by Mauro, who is a journalist by trade. Second, there was not enough description. I couldn't envision things until I either got further through the book, or looked up a picture online. Finally, this book really wanted to be Erik Larson's "Devil in the White City," and it fell quite short. The tag lines are quite similar, both promising murder and such at the fair. However, in "Twilight at the World of Tomorrow," there was one murder and one bombing, the latter happening 3/4 of the way through the book. He was going in too many different directions for me to be invested in any one story. I really enjoyed the parts about Albert Einstein, and I would have liked to have read more about him, but that could be saved for another work all together. All in all, a good read, but Mauro is no Larson.
2. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
I am, traditionally, not a fast reader. Sure, I inhaled Harry Potter, but that's different. It took me three months to read "Gone With the Wind" in middle school. It's a long book, but THREE MONTHS? Seriously. I was reading it for so long that at the end of eighth grade, it was part of my bio at the awards night. I also, being a history major and preferring non-fiction, have missed out on a great many American and English texts. This is why I'm reading Jess' list. Tonight I finished "The Grapes of Wrath," which was easily one of the best books I've read in years. This also took me three months, but there was a lot going on. It illustrated the struggles of Okies during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl so well that I plan on assigning this book when I get the chance. I don't know why no one made me read this earlier. I have one complaint, in that one of the major characters disappears from the book and his fate or future is never explained. That being said, I plan on reading more Steinbeck soon, possibly "East of Eden" so I can watch the movie. I am a firm believer in reading the book prior to watching the film.
I have not picked new books to read yet. I usually read a non-fiction and fiction book simultaneously, especially if I'm on a reading-for-pleasure kick like I am now. My non-fiction pick will probably be something by David McCullough (Truman or John Adams...), while my fiction pick is absolutely up in the air. If you have a suggestion, please comment.
My blog has seen some serious action lately. Nice.
Please read my articles on the sidebar. My mom says they're pretty good, but that's also my mom. She may or may not be biased.
- I'm peachy.
7.25.2010
7.23.2010
girlie things.
So, in the last few years, as I've lived with girls other than my mom and sister, I've gotten more into make-up and nail care. I'm much more confident about picking colors other than red and pink on my nails, and colors other than brown and green on my eyes. recently, my roommate Liz, our friend Kelly, and I traveled to Ulta to find a very specific Essie polish, namely mint candy apple. It's a gorgeous color. That being said, I never thought I'd go anywhere just for a nail polish.
I also didn't plan on buying any, but I did. It was "buy 2 get one free" for the professional brands (o.p.i., Essie, Piggy Polish, China Glaze), and to pay me back for the internet bill, Liz told me to get one and she'd use it to get a free one. I chose o.p.i.'s 'Fiercely Fiona', a light lime. Well, according to the woman at the counter (who, for working at a make-up and hair care store, was a hot mess), you can't mix brands. I had already fallen in love with this color though. Dilemma ensues.
I decided to go a little crazy.
I picked out an Essie color, so the deal could still go down as planned, but I also found two o.p.i.'s that I liked in order to get the other polish too. I got "Chinchilly" from Essie, which is a pale grey (beautiful...on my fingers right now), the Fiona color (from the 'Shrek' collection), "chop-sticking to my story" (from the glorious hong kong collection), and "Lincoln park after dark" (a house must have). I have Fiona on my toes and it is much brighter than I thought. I'm going to a wedding in a few weeks, and I'm going to put Lincoln park on my toes for a sophisticated but unique look.
a post about nail polish? i surprise even myself sometimes.
on a side note, who is psyched about the 'mad men' season 4 premiere? i sure am. what awful thing will don and betty do to each other this season?
i'm peachy.
I also didn't plan on buying any, but I did. It was "buy 2 get one free" for the professional brands (o.p.i., Essie, Piggy Polish, China Glaze), and to pay me back for the internet bill, Liz told me to get one and she'd use it to get a free one. I chose o.p.i.'s 'Fiercely Fiona', a light lime. Well, according to the woman at the counter (who, for working at a make-up and hair care store, was a hot mess), you can't mix brands. I had already fallen in love with this color though. Dilemma ensues.
I decided to go a little crazy.
I picked out an Essie color, so the deal could still go down as planned, but I also found two o.p.i.'s that I liked in order to get the other polish too. I got "Chinchilly" from Essie, which is a pale grey (beautiful...on my fingers right now), the Fiona color (from the 'Shrek' collection), "chop-sticking to my story" (from the glorious hong kong collection), and "Lincoln park after dark" (a house must have). I have Fiona on my toes and it is much brighter than I thought. I'm going to a wedding in a few weeks, and I'm going to put Lincoln park on my toes for a sophisticated but unique look.
a post about nail polish? i surprise even myself sometimes.
on a side note, who is psyched about the 'mad men' season 4 premiere? i sure am. what awful thing will don and betty do to each other this season?
i'm peachy.
7.02.2010
Jessssss!!!
*shaking of fist*
One of my dear friends, Jess, has started a reading project, and while I'm still on the first book I picked up this summer (May...Grapes of Wrath), she is two books in. And she has a full time job. And a life. So, I am following in "mama"'s footsteps. I'm going to read her list too. If I already read it, I'm replacing it with something else or reading it again.
1. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
2. Watership Down – Richard Adams
3. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott (reread)
4. Speak – Laurie Halse Anderson
5. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
6. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
7. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
8. Go Tell It On the Mountain – James Baldwin
9. Peter Pan – J.M. Barrie
10. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum
11. 2666 – Roberto Bolano
12. Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury
13. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (reread)
14. The Good Earth – Pearl Buck
15. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess (reread)
16. The Stranger – Albert Camus
17. Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card (reread...so good!)
18. Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll (reread)
19. Wise Children – Angela Carter
20. My Antonia – Willa Cather
21. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
22. The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
23. The House on Mango Street – Sandra Cisernos
24. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
25. The Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
26. The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
27. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
28. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
29. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
30. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
31. Ragtime – E.L. Docorow (reread)
32. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
33. An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser
34. As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
35. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
36. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald (reread)
37. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flabert
38. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
39. The Wind and the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
40. The Tin Drum – Gunter Grass
41. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
42. Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemmingway
43. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemmingway
44. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
45. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
46. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
47. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
48. The Berlin Stories – Christopher Isherwood
49. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
50. Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome
51. Ulysses – James Joyce
52. The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka (reread)
53. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
54. The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri
55. Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
56. The Maltese Falcoln (previously The Call of the Wild – Jack London. I hate this book and refuse to read it again.)
57. The Giver – Lois Lowry
58. One Hundred Hears of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
59. The Road – Cormac McCarthy
60. Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt
61. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (previously Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell, which is my favorite book of all time. I've read it a couple times.)
62. Watchmen – Allen Moore
63. Beloved – Toni Morrison (reread)
64. The Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison (reread)
65. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
66. 1984 – George Orwell (reread)
67. Animal Farm – George Orwell (reread)
68. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
69. Bridge to Terabithia – Katherine Paterson
70. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
71. V. – Thomas Pynchon
72. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
73. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
74. The Human Stain – Philip Roth
75. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
76. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger (reread)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
78. East of Eden – John Steinbeck
79. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (CURRENTLY READING)
80. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
81. Dracula – Bram Stoker
82. Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe (reread)
83. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
84. Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero – William Makepeace Thackeray
85. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolken (reread)
86. Anna Karena – Leo Tolstov
87. Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
88. Ordinary People - Judith Guest (previously The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain. I've read it twice in the last two years for school.)
89. Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne
90. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut (reread)
91. Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
92. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
93. All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren
94. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
95. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton (reread)
96. The Once and Future King – T.H. White
97. The Bridge of San Luis Rey – Thorton Wilder
98. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
99. To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
100. On Parole – Akira Yoshimura
The Chopping Block
(those that didn’t quite make Jess' cut; *'s denote that I have chosen it to replace another book.)
1. Emma – Jane Austen
2. Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
3. Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
4. Agnes Grey – Anne Bronte
5. Kindred – Octavia Butler
6. Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather
7. O Pioneers! – Willa Cather
8. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
9. Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
10. Deliverance – James Dickey
11. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
12. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
13. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett*
14. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemmingway
15. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo*
16. The World According to Garp – John Irving
17. From Here to Eternity – James Jones
18. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
19. The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
20. The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
21. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
22. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
23. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
24. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
25. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne
First up: Grapes of Wrath, because I'm already half-way through it.
One of my dear friends, Jess, has started a reading project, and while I'm still on the first book I picked up this summer (May...Grapes of Wrath), she is two books in. And she has a full time job. And a life. So, I am following in "mama"'s footsteps. I'm going to read her list too. If I already read it, I'm replacing it with something else or reading it again.
1. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
2. Watership Down – Richard Adams
3. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott (reread)
4. Speak – Laurie Halse Anderson
5. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
6. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
7. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
8. Go Tell It On the Mountain – James Baldwin
9. Peter Pan – J.M. Barrie
10. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum
11. 2666 – Roberto Bolano
12. Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury
13. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (reread)
14. The Good Earth – Pearl Buck
15. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess (reread)
16. The Stranger – Albert Camus
17. Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card (reread...so good!)
18. Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll (reread)
19. Wise Children – Angela Carter
20. My Antonia – Willa Cather
21. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
22. The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
23. The House on Mango Street – Sandra Cisernos
24. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
25. The Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
26. The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
27. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
28. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
29. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
30. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
31. Ragtime – E.L. Docorow (reread)
32. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
33. An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser
34. As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
35. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
36. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald (reread)
37. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flabert
38. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
39. The Wind and the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
40. The Tin Drum – Gunter Grass
41. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
42. Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemmingway
43. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemmingway
44. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
45. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
46. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
47. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
48. The Berlin Stories – Christopher Isherwood
49. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
50. Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome
51. Ulysses – James Joyce
52. The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka (reread)
53. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
54. The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri
55. Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
56. The Maltese Falcoln (previously The Call of the Wild – Jack London. I hate this book and refuse to read it again.)
57. The Giver – Lois Lowry
58. One Hundred Hears of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
59. The Road – Cormac McCarthy
60. Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt
61. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (previously Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell, which is my favorite book of all time. I've read it a couple times.)
62. Watchmen – Allen Moore
63. Beloved – Toni Morrison (reread)
64. The Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison (reread)
65. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
66. 1984 – George Orwell (reread)
67. Animal Farm – George Orwell (reread)
68. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
69. Bridge to Terabithia – Katherine Paterson
70. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
71. V. – Thomas Pynchon
72. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
73. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
74. The Human Stain – Philip Roth
75. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
76. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger (reread)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
78. East of Eden – John Steinbeck
79. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (CURRENTLY READING)
80. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
81. Dracula – Bram Stoker
82. Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe (reread)
83. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
84. Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero – William Makepeace Thackeray
85. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolken (reread)
86. Anna Karena – Leo Tolstov
87. Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
88. Ordinary People - Judith Guest (previously The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain. I've read it twice in the last two years for school.)
89. Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne
90. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut (reread)
91. Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
92. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
93. All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren
94. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
95. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton (reread)
96. The Once and Future King – T.H. White
97. The Bridge of San Luis Rey – Thorton Wilder
98. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
99. To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
100. On Parole – Akira Yoshimura
The Chopping Block
(those that didn’t quite make Jess' cut; *'s denote that I have chosen it to replace another book.)
1. Emma – Jane Austen
2. Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
3. Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
4. Agnes Grey – Anne Bronte
5. Kindred – Octavia Butler
6. Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather
7. O Pioneers! – Willa Cather
8. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
9. Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
10. Deliverance – James Dickey
11. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
12. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
13. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett*
14. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemmingway
15. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo*
16. The World According to Garp – John Irving
17. From Here to Eternity – James Jones
18. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
19. The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
20. The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
21. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
22. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
23. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
24. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
25. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne
First up: Grapes of Wrath, because I'm already half-way through it.
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