proverbs31girl's Xanga

Book Club, Anyone

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 06:00:12 GMT

So one of my friends tagged me in this, and I wanted to do it, but not over a facebook note.
Also, this gives me a direction to go for in my subway reading list.

Apparently BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read. Tag other" Book Nerds".

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling ~
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x
6 The Bible (all the way through, not just parts) ~all of the new testament; most of the old testament
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x

Total 1-10: 6; 2 partial

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott ~
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 COMPLETE Works of Shakespeare ~ (I own it, and I've read most of it, does that count?)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total 11-20: 1; 2 partial

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ~ (another one I own, but haven't read all the way)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
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 x

Total 21-30: 2; 1 partial

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x
34 Emma - Jane Austen ~(own it; started reading, didn't finish)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ~(own it; started reading it, still finishing it)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein ~(own it; started reading it)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x

Total 31-40: 4; 3 partial

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell ~(own it, started reading, didn't finish)
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 x
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

Total 41-50: 2; 1 partial

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x
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 - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total 51-60: 1

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

Total 61-70: 0

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

Total 71-80: 1

80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
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

Total 81-90: 1

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Eupery x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
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
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total 91-100: 4

Total: 22; 8 partial

Annie' needs to read more.

Wreckage

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:38:13 GMT

Some days, I'm drowning in sorrow. There should be hole in the ground that I can fall into right now.

Fifteen Life Changing Albums

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:37:26 GMT

So, it's been a while, but I'm posting this here because I don't want to post it anywhere else. Deal.

Fifteen Albums That Changed My Life:

15. Rockapella Live- Rockapella
This album made me truly appreciate the beauty of voices harmonizing with one another. I really began to understand the importance of balance and not trying to over power the melody when I harmonize.

14. A Mix CD of The Monkees- The Monkees
Okay, so I don't know if this counts, but I downloaded a bunch of songs off of Napster back in the day when it was free... (is it still even around?) and I made a Mix CD with an old school CD burner. I wore that CD out. It not only introduced me to oldies music, but it also helped me to recognize that it was okay if music was silly. That sometimes the fun part of the lyrics (which could only be understood by the writer) was to find out how they came about and what inside jokes they had..

13. Hope- Hillsong
This album was the first real worship album that I really loved. It spoke to me and made me feel excited about worship music, and opened me up to really worshipping God through music.

12. Silers Bald- Silers Bald
This was the album that really got me into loving the sound of folk and acoustic guitar. I was more of a pop-music, synthetic beats type, and it really helped me to learn how to quiet my soul and be at peace.

11. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill- Lauryn Hill
I loved and still love this album to this very day. Seeing her honesty and whole-heartednesss through out this album has always stunned me. You can see her pain, her joy, and all the colors in between. It's extraordinary and beautiful.

10. In Between Dreams- Jack Johnson
This album defined my summer in 2005, and I was literally in between dreams, or at least in between the discovery of the dreams of my heart. This album really brought a lot of peace and happiness to me while I was at Look Up Lodge.

09. Our Newest Album Ever- Five Iron Frenzy
Like I said, I listened to a lot of Christian music before I was officially a Christian, and it was this album that I really learned how to rock out and jump around and be crazy and mosh pit all around, and let loose in terms of physical movement.

08. Swing Kids (Soundtrack)- James Horner and Various Artists
This was the album that made me want to dance! I wanted so badly to learn how to swing dance and on one of my lists of things I wanted to do before I died (I was 13 when I wrote it), one of them was to become a swing dancer.

07. DC Talk- Free At Last
I listened to Christian music my whole life without really knowing God, but it was one of the albums that really defined my adolesence. It really made me discover the brilliance of rhyming and rhythm.

06. Films For Radio- Over the Rhine
I learned about OtR from Nomi and Ashley at different times in my life. Their music has really opened a deeper part of me, and it's been their music that has helped bring me away from having a distorted "no fun allowed" image of God. It's also taken me from a view point of legalism and the expectations of law and punishment to a place of grace and mercy and Christ's love for us.

05. Glenn Miller: His Greatest Hits- Glenn Miller and the Glenn Miller Orchestra
This really cultivated an appreciation for swing music which opened a door to a world of music for me: from jazz to music way beyond the scope that I had previously listened to.

04. Take Me To Your Leader- The Newsboys
This album really brought forth wonderful and clever lyrics- most of them penned by Steve Taylor- that made me really have to think about what they meant. It was this album that really made me ponder and appreciate well written and clever lyrics. Ever since then, I've never really been satisfied with dumb lyrics.

03. Into the Woods (Original Broadway Recording)- Stephen Sondheim
This album made me truly fall in love with musical theater. It was when I introduced myself to this musical that I wanted to be in musical theater in some way, shape, or form.

02. Newsies (Soundtrack)- Alan Menken and Howard Ashman
Even before Into the Woods, there was Newsies. It's my favorite movie, and the songs will remain in my heart forever. I believe it is this very movie/soundtrack that put a drive in me to fight for justice, equality, and even when I fall and mess up, to get back up and finish what I started. I wore this CD out so bad that I had to get a new one.

01. What A Heart Is Beating For- Chris Rice
This was the album that really introduced me to Chris Rice's music beyond the superficial level of simply hearing. After listening to this album, I discovered a different kind of love for God, and love for mankind. I feel as though, I've learned a lot about myself and a lot about love, and how I'd like to live my life.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:56:03 GMT

I can now successfully bear lonliness. It's not sad, nor do I need to be pitied. I am lonely, but this solitude is strengthening. I am not so lonely as you may think. I am alone, yes. I am apart from the rest, yes. But lonely? No, being alone is not as lonely as it might have seemed.

There's the Trinity in the mix. And there's Sophie. And there are friends in Georgia, and the Carolinas, and other little pockets around the country, and around the world, even, and yes, while I don't have any bosom buddies or besties here in NYC, I at least have some friendships and acquaintances.

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:57:21 GMT

Stupid, silly girl,
Foolish in the art of love
You scared him away
Showing far too much emotion

Or is he the fool,
Letting a grand prize slip away,
Unable to tell the difference
Between diamonds and coal

You are not too much.
You are not below or beneath.
You are as you are meant to be,
And you are loved very well.

It may seem difficult to bear,
But love is not the way
You perceive it to be.
It goes beyond your understanding.

It is something that you will learn
And one day, you will know it.
But that day has not come yet.
Be patient as you wait for it.

It will come.

Pursuit of Purity

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:56:29 GMT

Purity, am I going to pursue you? Yes, I am. LORD, I need the eyes to see and the ears to hear. I am surrounded by selfishness. Inside of me, I am selfish. I want to burn out all of my pride and selfishness, all of my self righteousness to be burned out, and I want to be found holy and pure in the cleansing fires.

Holiness, be my house
Faith, be my foundation
Purity, be my pillars
Repentance is my roof
Build them around me, Lord
Let these be my fortress and protection

Hate

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:01:10 GMT

I want you all to dissappear and stop it.

Quit telling me what to do because you're not even in this scene and you're not the teacher and you're immature and you're stupid and I will not use commas because it is an entire sentence that should have no spaces.

Quit being a lazy idiot. Please, just for a second humor me, and let's rehearse this thing until we are happy with it. Will you please analyze the text? Will you please use your brain? It's there for a reason your lack of energy? If we were on stage in front of everyone, would you be this disconnected? If you rehearse it half assed, you're going to perform it half assed. Please work. I don't know who's paying your tuition, but you're here to work.

Quit making out on the subway-- for everyone's sake. There are hotels for that kind of behavior. I don't want to hear your lips smacking and your tongue going down someone's throat, and I don't need to see it either. JUST STOP. It's disgusting.

You are nasty. Take a shower please.

Do you really think that you're going to get a date by whooping and hollering at me? Because you're not. You're an ugly scrub. Get away from me now please.

Anything Can Happen

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:46:31 GMT

Anything can happen if you let it... -Mary Poppins

The dreamer in me is coming alive. I am hoping, dreaming, entertaining thoughts, and thinking about all the possibilities out there. While there is a whole new level of warfare, God is really filling me up with courage. It's a big world out there, but God is bigger, and all of this is sitting in the palm of His hand. It is scary and intimidating, but I know that the creator of the universe is cheering me on, and rooting for me to make it.

"Live! Live!" He calls out to me.

And I take that command seriously. I am going to be a part of this Big Apple. I am going to live, and I am going to let God do the impossible.

Amusing

Thu, 22 May 2008 02:16:09 GMT

So my parents and I were talking about romantic relationships because one of the Ashton Kutcher digital camera commercials came on. My dad and mom were very unhappy that he's married to Demi Moore because he's so much younger than her. Then they started talking about Woody Allen and his wife-step daughter, and so I asked them how much of an age gap is too much.

Not ten years, apparently since my parents are almost ten years apart, so what about twenty years? I asked my parents how they would feel if I started dating someone twenty years older than me. My mom was like, "Well... it's okay if you're dating someone twenty years older, just don't get married, because if you get married, then you'll become a widow sooner." And then my dad was like, "Well, if he's rich, then you'll get the inheritance and you can re-marry... that's what a lot of women are doing these days."

Wow, I was not even going there, and I am not even that type of gal to pull that off. BUT, I did tell them about my big crush on Chris Rice that I still haven't gotten over, and my mom said, "Oh, I know his name, we know his music... (then I showed them a picture off of his website)... Oh, he's good looking!" Sheesh, don't I know it! And then my dad was like, "If he's never been married before, then it's okay for you to like him." And then my mom said, "Yeah, you're twenty four, you're old enough to like whoever you want to like."

Ha ha, I officially have my parents approval and permission to like Chris Rice... what a strange night this has been...

Blooming Time

Sun, 11 May 2008 05:04:14 GMT

I think he's blooming. He might be in love, and it may be rapid and he may grow his teeth back... but I'm coming to a realization that my admiration is unhealthy. I'm still going to write him a letter, but I don't think I'll be visiting his blog and myspace and facebook pages anymore. It's probably about time for me to put away childish things like the crush I've had on Chris Rice.

But I'm blooming too, not in the same way that he's blooming... my flowers are much different than his. I'm blooming into one of my callings. I keep thinking of stories that need to be written. I've started one, and then another idea came to mind. I've been watching interviews with Amy Sedaris, and she's so creative and funny and strange, and I thought to myself- she's awesome. I want to be like her only I hope to be more sane. But she's energetic and entertaining and she doesn't even have to try, really. I've been trying to become better at life in general, but I don't know if I'm doing a good job at it or not. I don't think I am doing a terrible job, but I'm not sure if I'm on the up and up. I hope that I am, but I can't be certain.

June is coming a lot faster than I expected it to. I am still chubby and I did not suede to soles of my shoes yet. I don't like being insecure.

God, will you take all this nonsense, plant their seeds and let them bloom... all except for the chubby part.