The Jaye Tyler Cover Band

In response to burly_curly...

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:24:07 GMT

Apparently “The Big Read” assumes that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Of course, I can't turn down a challenge.

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 LJ

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

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

19 The Time Traveler'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’s Adventures 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

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

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

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 - 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

Commentary: What an awful list! I was torn about books I've only half-read, and in the end, decided that they didn't count. But why don't the series listed (Narnia, Tolkin) count for multiple books? Why is "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" listed separately? What idiot complied this list?

This should come as a surprise to no one.

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 01:49:22 GMT

Why would you be executed in Nelson's Navy?

Article 24. Try not to light the ship on fire. Seriously."Every person in the fleet, who shall unlawfully burn or set fire to any magazine or store of powder, or ship, boat, ketch, hoy or vessel, or tackle or furniture thereunto belonging, not then appertaining to an enemy, pirate, or rebel, being convicted of any such offence, by the sentence of a court martial, shall suffer death."
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...And a Happy New Year!

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 02:56:37 GMT

Tonight I've watched

the moon and then
the pleiades
go down

the night is now
half-gone; youth
goes; I am

in bed alone.

-Sappho,
trans. Mary Barnard

Do not underestimate my love for Sailing Ships

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 05:18:59 GMT

Another post about song lyrics. I know!

I couldn't find my tape of Steeleye Span's Tempted and Tried, so I thought I'd finnaly listen to my tape of sea shanties (Victory SINGS at Sea.) "Sea Shanties are just like British folk songs," sez I, "It may not be the Span, but sea Shanties are okay too." I was WRONG. Sea shanties are AWESOME. A sample lyric:

Oh Lord above
send down a dove
with beak as sharp as razors
to cut the throats
of them there blokes
what sells bad beer to sailors

Another post that is not about Batman

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 04:46:31 GMT

Sadly, X3 turned out to be mostly lame. I think it was a mistake
watching the first two movies the day before, because they were
obviously superior.

Noted, It had some good ideas and a couple of great scenes. It
started well. There's a funny danger room sequence (the movie is
sadly lacking in funny). All of the early Jean-Grey-as-Phoenix are
very creepy and neat. But the story they set up leads to predictable,
dumb conclusions. By the time we go to the inevitable denouement, I
was shaking my head at the stupidity of it all. (There are literally,
six X Men versus Magneto's ENTIRE ARMY OF MUTANTS. Cmon, people.)
It's possible that the movie was even more frustrating because it had
a couple neat ideas, and completely flubbed them.

It's brutal movie, too. It knocks off (or out) many a beloved main
character. But it isn't as if you can tell who's going to bite it
about ten mintues in. I think that Katy and I got pretty hysterical
when one of the main X Men dies and NO ONE CARES. They literally move
on to the next scene without blinking. The rest of the characters get
little screen time and NO character development. It made me feel
gyped, because the first two movies were thoughtful, and gave us time
to love these X men. Not so here.

And the movie actually contains the line "You must not know who I am,
I'm the Juggernaut, BITCH." Nuff said.

Is it sad to say I had a better time at the Da Vinci Code?

"It's like CSI, with God!"

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 06:35:32 GMT

The Da Vinci Code would have been much more entertaining if Ian McKellan had just played everybody.

But honestly, I had a great time at the Da Vinci Code (My viewing was inhanced by the fact that Katy and I snikered through the whole thing together). It's kind of a dumb thriller, but an entertaining dumb thriller. I knew that all the "historical" mumbo-jumbo would be bullshit, but I was kind of amazed at how brazen the bullshit was. He just makes stuff up! History, smistory! We don't need no stinkin patches! I think it would make a great double feature with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. All your Grail hooey in four hours!

I can’t help thinking that Jesus would have been a much happier guy if he had just married his boyfriend John and retired to the Bahamas. They could have even made a movie about it! Jesus and John Have Tea, Starring Ian McKellan as Everyone.

Wed, 31 May 2006 05:41:04 GMT

Good Night and Good Luck is a great little movie. It is interesting and brilliantly acted. It is, however, one of those movies that I have a hard time reccomending to most people. It is very slow, and filmed in black and white, which may not appeal to everyone. It is practically a documentary, and it is a "documentary" about a single incident: CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow standing up to Sen Joseph McCarthy, by way of his TV program "See It Now". And that's all there is to the movie. There's no big dramatic climax; it is a movie of quiet moments. (There's maybe one subplot, a minor story about a husbend and wife that both work on the show.) If you know know nothing about the McCarthy witchhunts, then the movie may be utterly confusing. I didn't know very much, and don't think I could really appreciate the movie's historical commentary. That being said, I enjoyed it.

...Though I did spend the movie entirely awestruck at how much public smoking that people did in that era. It was horrifying. But then, those were the times. If I lived back then, I probably would have smoked, too.

What about the Jesus fish?

Sun, 21 May 2006 19:47:30 GMT

I'm sort of sad to hear that the Da Vini Code is getting lousy reviews. I was hoping that it would be a nifty little thriller (I couldn't care less about the silly religous trappings). I'll still go an see it, of course. I hear it has pretty castles and Ian McKellan, so hopefully it won't be a complete wash.

When I was visiting my sister at SOU, I picked up a pamphlet titled "The Da Vinci Code: A Companion Guide to the Movie." It 's published Campus Crusade for Christ. I find religious propaganda pamphlets pretty damn funny, and this one is fairly amusing.

My favorite exerpt:

Every now and then something comes along that's difficult to classify. It's rather bizzare, for example, that a whale is classified as a mammal. Something that lives its life in the ocean should not wear the label of a mammal.
In the world of religious leaders, Jesus is a whale, often lumped into the same phylum with other great religious leaders, including Moses, Muhammad and Buddha. But frankly, he doesn't fit. On the surface, he looks like a fish (a wonderful religous leadeer who has helped shape the world of faith and morals), but he has taught something that, when analyzed, makes him a different species altogether. He claimed to be God.

Jesus is... a whale. Good to know. I don't find it bizzare at all that whales are classified as mammals. That's just what they are; dolphins, otters, and seals are all mammals too. Declaring that these animals "should not wear the label of a mammal" sounds ignorant and downright bossy. But then, I've spent way too much time with marine biologists, so I'm a little more familiar with marine life than the average joe. Does the average joe have a problem with marine mammals?

"He longed to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral."

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 18:55:30 GMT

My father is my favorite correspondent, bar none. If I ask him to elaborate on a topic (most likely on a pet historical peroid), he will respond with an email that is funny and entertaining, and no less than two pages long. I recently asked him about Teddy Roosevelt, a historical figure whom we both admire. His reply contained this highlight:

"Teddy was the acknowledged expert of his time on North American bird calls. He popularized bird watching as a hobby and was invited to teach ornithology at Harvard. In the White House he liked to entertain visiting foreign dignitaries by imitating bird songs of birds from their native land. (Most thought him insane)."

Remmber, this is on top of being: At various times: he was a cowboy, a sheriff in North Dakota (famed for capturing several notorious bad guys); a rich New York dandy, man about town; a congressman; a police commissioner; naval historian; columnists for several magazines and newspapers; a soldier and war hero; explorer; youngest man ever to be President, and always a politician and shameless self-promoter, etc. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor; he was the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize (the first American to win a Nobel of any kind); and oddly, as a young man, he became the first American to climb the Matterhorn! What a guy!