That 25 Writers Meme

So I just did that 25 writers who have most influenced you meme and, not surprisingly, it turned to be a list of my colleagues and professors, plus my favorite writers. Therefore, I've decided not to post it because it will become blatantly obvious if not who I am then at least where I have gone to school and where I currently work. I guess this is the problem when you are a "writer" (ack!) for your primary job description.

Book Meme

As seen at Dr. Crazy's:

BBC Book List

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings -
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible - X (The Old Testament, anyway)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X (Well, not complete, but most)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - +
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (Does the movie count?) *
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 X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia -
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini*
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
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 - (The whole darn series) +
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ++
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan X
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 X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - X
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 - X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (one of my alltime favorites) +++
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ++
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X (en francais!)
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 (I've started it repeatedly) *
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X (and hated every minute)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - (But I did read Finnegans Wake and that has to count) *
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 X
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro X
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (some anyway) X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
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 - X (More with the Shakespeare?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total read: 47
Total I plan to read: 6 (these are the six I am most embarrassed for not having read)

Ode to 2008

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before? Parented a four-year-old.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I didn't make any resolutions last year, though I called it "The Year of P," in honor of the qualities I tried to achieve (peace, patience, presence, purpose). Despite the way this year has ended, I do have to say that I managed to cultivate peace in my life, more than I have since LG was born. I'll do something similar this year.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? There have been a number of babies born to people I know in the past year but no one incredibly close, no.

4. Did anyone close to you die? No.

5. What countries did you visit? None.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? A book contract. A baby on the way.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? None, really.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? I suppose it would be getting through the third year review.

9. What was your biggest failure? Not getting pregnant, though I realize that's an event that I have very little control over and would rather not think of it as "failure."

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Run-of-the-mill colds and allergies and such. Nothing major.

11. What was the best thing you bought? 6 vials of LG's donor, to try for a sibling.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? My mother's, for dealing with all the nonsense with my siblings with grace, patience, and gentleness.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? My sister's.

14. Where did most of your money go? Mortgage, daycare, fertility treatment.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Thinking I might be pregnant.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008? Hmmm. Well, I suppose it would be LG singing a song that includes the lyrics "the last time I freaked out" by Miley Cirus (courtesy of her preschool). My own song of the year was Sara Bareilles "Love Song."

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer? happier, the same (or slightly thinner), the same (or slightly richer, due to a hefty raise at the end of the year and LG's daycare cost finally going down)

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Yoga.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? I think I made pretty good use of my time, actually.

20. How will you be spending Christmas? I spent Christmas on a train and then making phone calls to try to track down my lost laptop.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008? Nope.

22. How many one-night stands? None. Though I did have a short-lived flirtation that probably could have ended in a one-night stand had I chosen to pursue it.

23. What was your favorite TV program? Bones.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? My sister's fiance.

25. What was the best book you read? The best poetry: Billy Collins' Selected Poems. The best nonfiction: Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. The best novel that I didn't read for class: Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. I think.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Still listening to the same stuff, mostly.

27. What did you want and get? A stellar third year review and raise.

28. What did you want and not get? Pregnant.

29. What was your favorite film of this year? The only films I saw in a theater were Sex and the City and The X-Files: I Want to Believe. I'm sure I saw better films via Netflix, though nothing comes to mind.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 36 Thanksgiving weekend. My mom, my sister, LG and I went out for dinner. LG gave me a brown sweater and chocolate cake. It was nice, I suppose, but after going through a miscarriage on my thirtieth birthday, I have really low expectations.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Getting pregnant. Getting a book contract. (Could I say that again?)

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? College professor meets yuppie Gap mom. (Which is to say, not any different than it has been for the past four years or so. But since I didn't succeed in getting knocked up, I will be purchasing new black pants and/or a black suit, as well as some new black boots. Buying new clothes has been on hold for far too long.)

33. What kept you sane? LG. Yoga. My mom. Chats with Best Professor Friend.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Barack Obama. Duh.

35. What political issue stirred you the most? Umm, the election?

36. Who did you miss? My friends from out of town.

37. Who was the best new person you met? Honestly, some new students.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008. Slow down.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. I'll fill this in if I think of one later.