ebtblue’s blog

Books

nobody@vox.com(ebtblue) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:03:26 -0500

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
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) Put an asterisk next to the books you'd rather shove hot pokers in your eyes than read
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them.

I believe all the books i did not enjoy reading were from 10th grade english. We read some decent stuff that year, but a whole lot of "classics" that were not that great. I like how the majority of books i've read off this list are childrens books.

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 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 Hitchhiker'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 {Saw Movie}
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
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 {Saw Movie}
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

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Yaa Summer

nobody@vox.com(ebtblue) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:15:41 -0500

I've been enjoying a few days of summer before heading off on my other adventures. Last week i volunteered at a GS outreach camp. It was rather interesting since most of the other volunteers were in high school....but it worked out pretty well overall. It would have been more fun if i had been able to play with fire, but the director was way overcautious so i couldn't.

I spent today hanging out w/Rachel. We went to Burke lake w/the plans of having s'mores...but it turned into just a walk since they wouldn't let us use a campsite for the afternoon. It ended up alright though since we built a mini fire in the backyard and had our s-mores anyway. This evening we went to Vandyke and tried to see a movie. We had dinner there & ice-cream but a little ways into the movie a storm came through so we had to head home. Still a fun night out.

Looking forward to the beach on Monday....the rain needs to stay away cause storms would just not be cool.

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100 word action research

nobody@vox.com(ebtblue) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 08:45:39 -0500

I came across this cool little program on a friends LJ page. What you do is to paste in a bunch of text and it creates an image with the words you use the most. For anyone who is slightly interested in what i spent the past semester working on, but doesn't want to read a 20 page paper, here is my action research project in 100 words:

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QotD: Friday the 13th

nobody@vox.com(ebtblue) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:35:30 -0500

Has anything unlucky happened to you today?

Nothing horrible per-say....do out of control kindergarteners count (it wasn't even their last day of school....[maybe that was the problem???] i was at a year round school)?

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QotD: Summertime Bests & Worsts

nobody@vox.com(ebtblue) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:12:10 -0500

What are some of the best(and worst) things about summer?
Submitted by L33tchica.

I think this is a fairly straightforward questions. Summer is a great time to travel to new places, play outside, go to the beach, have a break from school/work (yaaa working in education), and have cookouts. The worst aspects are to more obvious ones: heat, sunburns, humidity, large crowds.

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Firework Surprise

nobody@vox.com(ebtblue) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:12:13 -0500

I was driving home from barns & noble tonight when the FF fair started setting off their fireworks. I was right by FF corner so i pulled over (& was even able to find a parking space) and watched the show. Twas a nice little surprise, especially since i wont' be here on the 4th to see firworkz.

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Vox Hunt: Way Back Wednesday

nobody@vox.com(ebtblue) — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:21:32 -0500

Share a song you loved way back in the day.

MAGIC

When I was young I thought the stars were made for wishingon

And every hole deep in a tree must hide a leprechaun

Old houses all held secret rooms if one could find the door

But who believes in magic anymore

CHORUS

Magic is the sun that makes a rainbow out of rain

Magic keeps the dream alive to try and try a gain

Magic is the love that stays when good friends have to leave

I do believe in magic, I believe

As I grew up the grown-ups said one day I'd wake to find

That magic is a childish game I'd have to leave behind

Like clothes that would no longer fit, or toys that I'd ignore

I'd not believe in magic anymore

Chorus

Now my chilhoods far behind, I've learned to my surprise

The magic did not fade away, it wears a new disguise

A child, a friend, a smile, a song, the courage to stand tall

And love's the greatest magic of them all

Chorus

(Last line)

I do believe in magic, and love's the greatest magic

I do believe in magic, I believe

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QotD: Memorial Day

nobody@vox.com(ebtblue) — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:16:01 -0500

How are you spending this Memorial Day? How will it differ from Memorial Days past?

I twent on a picnic w/Kimmiez. We had a ton of foodage then walked around the Botanical Gardens in Tysons where we saw a bunch of animalz. The best was the goose that hissed @ me when i tried to feed him some bread. Turns out i was a few inches away from his nest of eggs that his wife was about to sit on. I left him alone and went back to my yummy brownie. The male duck was a very good daddy and stood the whole time protecting the nest and glaring/ruffling his feathers @ ducks that got to close....Kim & i agree he must be a new father and will soon slack off and start watching TV/being a bum.

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Vox Hunt: Cut & Paste

nobody@vox.com(ebtblue) — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:07:51 -0500

Ctrl-V (PCs) or Command-V (Macs) Time! Paste whatever text you copied last.

The Whole Wheat Tollhouse Cookie

Here's a version of a cookie classic from 1937, made a bit more nutritious with whole wheat.

SERVINGS
Makes 4 to 5 dozen cookies

INGREDIENTS
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup nuts, chopped

PREPARATION
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly oil a baking sheet or cover with parchment paper.

2. In a large bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Cream the butter with the brown sugar until light in color, about 4 minutes. Beat in the egg until well incorporated. Stir in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and blend well. Stir in the oats, chocolate chips, and nuts.

3. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, or until brown. Cool on a wire rack.

Now i am off to try out these cookies & see if they are any good. I am craving cookiez and and all we have is whole wheat flour so experimentation is what i shall do.

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Adventures in Subbing

nobody@vox.com(ebtblue) — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:51:19 -0500

I've had fairly routine days recently, mostly i've been subbing (in kindergarten, ESL or special ed classes.) Today was no exception. I was an aid in a kindergarten class. Last night the class ant farm arrived, so during science the teacher introduced them to the class. Then we attempted to transport the ants from their container into the ant farm. I even put the ants into the refrigerator so that their body temp. would cool down, thus slowing down their movement....i'm sure people can guess what happened next......when we tried to move the ants some of them ended up in the farm, but a large amount of the ended up all over the table and floor. We were relativity ok with this, attempting to put them back into the funnel/ant farm. Then one of them bit me and the kids freaked out. All ended up alright (except for some of the ants) in the end. The paper we were using as a funnel was thrown out the window. The renegade ants were squashed, and the ants that had safely made it into the ant farm were closed in. All in the name of science.

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