THE BIG READ (stolen from Morgan Drake)

This fun list came from another blog written by Morgan Drake, and I have to say I found it a fun list of good reading, something for everyone in it.

Big Read Top One Hundred
"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed." So check the list and 1) Look at the list and bold/colorize those you have read.2) Post the list on your site.(This can also remind you of some great books to read.)

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 (well, I read the first two books of the series)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6. The Bible (some, huh?)7
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 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 Meaney - 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. ife 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. 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 Conrad92
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

Well darn seems I have read less than half of the above list---spending to much time sucking up all the "Who dunits" I guess. (I didn't count the titles above that I hadn't read the book ,but HAD seen the movie---that would be cheating)

What Ya Reading?

I was bumming around the house and got to thinking, what do others read, what magazines do they subscribe to and like to read.  My curiosity built higher so I googled up so stats, the ones I came up with are from close of business 2006.  Here is the list of the Top 10 magazines by circulation.

TOP 10 MAGAZINES BY CIRCULATION

1    AARP Magazine                         23,434,052.

2    Reader's Digest;                          10,094,281.

3    Better Homes And Gardens           7,638,912.
4    National Geographic Magazine       5,071,134.
5    Good Housekeeping                       4,74,1353.
6    Ladies' Home Journal                      4,169,444.
7    Time                                               4,066,545.
8    Woman's Day                                 4,027,113.
9    Family Circle                                   3,953,651.
10  People                                             3,750,548.

     I guess I was surprised to see this list, as had if I had had to guess, I would have guessed maybe that The Reader's Digest would probabely have been number one, and not the AARP Magazine.  Wow guess us old people do read a alot.   The other big eye opener for me was just how bad the TV Guide has sunk in the rankings.  Back when TV was good, the TV guide was the must mag to have, to make sure you knew what was on when and on what channel.  Today's TV Guide---doesn't tell ya what channels anything is on, only referencing the station call letters, which is worthless to most tv viewers.  This explains I think why they have gone from 4th to 13th, a drop of 55.4% in circulation.
     I learned to the advertising people make a distinction between magazines like those listed above versus those that are distributed via Newspapers.  Here are the top 3 newspaper distributed magazines, (sunday supplements). (again as of the close of 2006)

Parade Magazine     30,416,712
American Profile        8,162,141
Relish                        7,199,254

     Oh, and how about that rabid supermarket magazine---the National Inquirer you ask??  They came in at position number 78, with a circulation of 1, 149,106---and not counting all those quick peeks we all take while waiting to check out.   Well happy reading to ya all.

   

The Olympics Are Coming----

Man time flies when your having fun, seems like just the other day , but hello, its now four years later and we have the Summer Olympics from China about to start. I just hope for a couple weeks we can all set aside politics, and sit back and just applaud the individual athletes , regardless of their nationality---we all live on the same small blue marble people---keep that in mind.
I have always been enchanted and amazed with the Chinese acrobats when they tour our country and appear on our TV programs. I can only lick my lips with nervous anticipation on just what the opening ceremonies of the Olympics will present us. Lets all enjoy the spectacle, and for a couple weeks ignore the political issues---the Olympics are a salute to the best of the best athletes---its not a political statement.
For those that only get off on politics, after the Olympics we will have a marathon of 10 weeks of mud slinging and then we get to vote for a new clown prince-----the world hates us for being the richest, the free-est, ----and we are so dumb, we actually believe it.----the clock is ticking for the late great USA---I am glad I knew ye when------and no , if its okay with you captain, will stay aboard and ride it down--------eeehawwwww!!!

I'm Late, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANA

Just want ya to know your kinda special, weird yeah, but special, so if anybody messes with your Day---

and if necessary Spike here has another friend he can call on to lend a persuasive hand (or in this case paw)

Hope you all had yourself a PHEEnomenal day

Travel Adventure

Its that time of the year, when the majority of us take our annual vacations. I am not exactly sure why I include myself in that group---what with being retired, everyday pretty much anything I care to do with it---who needs a vacation then right? Guess one needs to define what a Vacation is.
Well according to Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary: 1. a respite, or a time of respite from something. 2. (a) a scheduled period during which activity (such as a court or a school) is suspended. (b) a period of exemption from work granted to an employee for rest and relaxation. 3. a period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation---4. an act or an instance of vacating.-------I think that pretty much defines "vacation" don't you agree? (I for one am not about to get into a argument with Webster over word definitions, smart as I am, am not that smart).
Like most people, my earliest vacations that I remember would fall under the category of the No 2 (a) definition----a scheduled period , in my case, of school being suspended.-----which when finally over (sigh)---was traditionally signaled by getting the dreaded essay in school titled , "What did you do on your summer vacation?" (seems I recall there was a minimum of 200 words required??) Course later as I grew into adulthood and got plugged into the ever popular 40 hour weekly grind, definition No. 2 (b) became the norm. Now however, I no longer work for a living, and so for me the applicable definition would be No. 3. which is kinda cool, as I don't have the threat of that 200+ essay to write when I get home (but kinda suspect I have already exceeded that in this blog---oh well THIS is a labor of Love---(hee, hee, hee!).
Now younger people literally live for their vacations, save up, plan, beg, borrow and steal to go here or there, Hawaii, Florida, or north to Montreal, Juneau, or go to Europe, Asia, South Seas, the Caribbean, Mexico , it seems during the summer the whole country is in motion. However it is a fact, there is a large segment that pretty much stays damn close to home, home being wherever it might be. I am speaking of myself and my fellow Seniors, who like me, aren't filthy rich, who kind of have to keep one eye on the old monthly outgo, and world cruises and international flights are well just pipe dreams.
However before ya break into tears of sympathy, its not all that grim. We have our Lil travel and adventures and 90-95 percent of the time we are back safe at home, our slippers on and all relaxed by the time the sunsets in the west. I would wager to bet that in a 25 mile radius from my house I have literally hundreds of interesting and exciting places to make day trips to. Places that don't charge an arm and a leg to visit. The other day, last Monday to be exact, I took the free tour of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (you have heard and seen on the news about the Mars Rover---well that was designed and built at JPL, the tour explains how, you see the laboratory, the museum of all the previous robots they have built and sent into space, the control center where they maintain 24/7 communications with all the robots out there, including Voyager which is over 10 billion miles out and still going (takes a radio signal 14 hours just to reach the robot, and another 14 hours to return). JPL was 22 1/2 miles from my house--about a 30 minute drive (if ya don't get lost that is). I am as the crow flies about 8 miles outside of Hollywood, 15-18 miles to and number of beaches (its fun to walk the promenade, enjoy the sea air, and watch people not to mention check out the cute Lil fillies sunning in the sand--Hey I'm 71, not dead!!), The Getty Art Museum, Olivera street, Chinatown, The LaBrea Tarpits, , and I am maybe about 7 miles from Universal City (but for that ya need that arm and leg). I took the free tour of Lawry's Seasoning Plant last year, and did ya know there is a most delightful show given to the public at Forrest Lawn Cemetery. Three miles from my house there is an impressive Japanese Garden, tours are about $5, but you have to make reservations and they are not open on Sundays.-----anyway don't feel sorry for us Seniors----most of us saw Hawaii back when it was something to see and not the Disneyland West that it is now. but have to confess I am still saving up for that Alaska Inland Passage Cruise----.