How Unread I Am

One of the blogs that I read, http://www.oakmonster.com/ published the following list of books. I thought it would be interesting to see how I would fair since I like to read, although not always stuff that is good for me. I didn't do too well and I do not know that I will ever read all of these books.

From CV Rick, the 106 (why 106? nobody knows) books most often tagged "unread" at LibraryThing. The idea is to mark the ones you've read in bold, the ones you've started but not finished in italics, and the ones you read for school in bold and underlined. À la CV Rick, I put asterisks next to the ones I plan to read.

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 (I was also suppose to read for school; the main reason why I did not get into Honor English again my sophomore year.)
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 (I loved this book and enjoyed A Thousand Splendid Suns more!)
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 (This book I read for book club and really liked it!)
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
*Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein (This was a book that I read for a college English class and found that I really enjoyed it.)
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 (Thought I might like this after reading The DaVinci Code, but didn't get into it.)
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 (High school reading that I never finished)
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 (Book club reading)
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

Unfortunately, some of these books I have not even heard of!

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

This was a book that was picked for book club this month. I was not able to go to book club and join in on the discussion which was just as well because I wanted to finish the book on my own and I would not have if I had gone to book club.

Again, this author has published a wonderful book that sheds light on a world that we sometimes do not think still exists. We are extremely blessed to be United States citizens and as women have the opportunities that we have. We need to remember that all women do not have our opportunities and although some accept their lot in life, there are others that would like change.

The setting is Afghanistan during the last thirty years and how things have changed not only for women, but for all people of Afghanistan. There were parts of this book that touched me deeply and I will never forget.

What a great follow-up to another wonderful book The Kite Runner, which was also a book club choice. Look forward to more great work by this author.

Escaping the Giant Wave by Pat Kehret

I was turned onto to this book when I subbed in a fourth grade classroom. It was their read-aloud book from which I read them a chapter. I found that I wanted to know more about the book, so I reserved it at the library.

I really enjoyed this easy reading. It is a fiction book, but it could be a true story someday. The book is based on vacationers who encounter a tsunami while visiting the Oregon coast. Would you know what to do? The children in this book did, and it made a difference.

Subbing

I have spent some of my free time substitute teaching.  I have found that I enjoy it, and I really do miss my classroom kids.  I like the variety of subbing and getting to know different grade levels and their expectations.

It is amazing to see the differences between the urban school district where I spent my teaching career, and the suburban school district where I current sub.  In the urban school district it seems that there was a great deal of concentration on social norms and school norms that the suburban children seems to come to school knowing.  Walking in the hall is a different experience in the suburbs.

The suburbs seem to have a great deal of diversity and proof that their taxpayer money is well-spent.  The children are generally the same no matter where you go, but the accommodations that are provided by the suburban school district for their children are wonderful.

One day I may have my own classroom full of kids again, but I am enjoying my small snippets with kids.

PS

I actually ran into one of my students that I had in Kindergarten last week.  He is now in the third grade and seems to be doing well.  Good for him!

Lessons Learned

My aunt was here for four months helping me out in the restaurant and with my kids. She was a god sent gift and what she did for us can never be repaid.

We shared many memories about time that we spend together as I was growing up and what her life was like without parents and having to live with relatives. She shared with me many teaching memories from her years as a marketing teacher as well as how she brought life experience to the classroom. Even though she is retired, she was still collecting information to bring back to her students in the case that she teaches another class.

As an aunt, teacher, and breast cancer survivor, she is an inspiration to me and to many of her students and that could be seen by the number of them that keep in contact with her after they graduate.

One of her favorite mottos is every problem has a solution and to fix problems as they come. She gave me confidence in myself that I can handle anything.

When she left, I gave her a scrapbook that I made with memories of her time here with us. She left me with the parting words that the next time that we meet we are going to talk about what love is (quam luk ben young rai). I look forward to the conversations!

Stupid Stuff

My mother has always told me that when I talk to one of my life-long friends, she always knows who I am talking to because we always talk about stupid stuff. I was always somewhat offended by this remark until the other day when I was talking to my friend, and we ended up talking about what kind of TV our children watch, and what kinds of foods our children eat. Then, I started to think to myself that we do talk about stupid stuff, but it is stuff that interests both of us. I think that when you have been friends for as long as my friend and I have, you keep finding things that interest both of you to keep your friendship going.