Posted in Reading Rocks

Thanks to joyfulhomeschooling for this reading list.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Put a star by those you intend to read someday.

3)Put a % by the ones where you've seen the movie. 

This is a list of best books from the BBC.

 

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen  *  %
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkein  %
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte  * %  (I can't get this to unbold, but it shouldn't be bolded)
4 Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling %  (I tried to read it.  I really did.)

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee  %
6 The Bible  (well, I’ve read a lot of it)

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte %

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman  (read the 1^st one only)

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott  * %
12 Tess of D'Urbevilles -Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller  *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare  (well, I’ve read a lot of them)  %
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier  *
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkein 
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (tried, didn’t finish)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot  *
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell %
22 The Great Gatsby

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens  *  (my friend Mike lent this to me in 1994, won’t take it back until I read it.  I still have it)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams  % (one of Hub’s faves)

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky  (started, didn’t finish)  *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck  %
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll  %
30 The Wind and the Willows - Kenneth Grahame  %
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy*
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis  (some, not all yet) * %
34 Emma - Jane Austen  * %
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (started, need to finish) *  %
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis  %
37 The Kite Runner - Kahled 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 DaVinci Code - Dan Brown  %
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez  *
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery  *
47 Far From The Maddening Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood  *
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding  %  (one of my all-time faves)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan  * %
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons  (currently reading)
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 Plain
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 %

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole  (tried, and quit)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexander Dumas *
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare %
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl %
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo  *

 

 

Posted in Reading Rocks

I put off posting about this for quite a while.  I just wasn't sure I was going to enjoy the website, as at first I found it hard to navigate.  Well, not hard, per se, but unpleasant.  But as it turns out, I do like it!  So I will share.

Good Reads

When you set up your account, you will find virtual shelves, one for "to read", "currently reading," and "read."  There is a 5 star rating system and a place to put your comments.  Then you find links to books read by others that liked some of the books you like.  Or you can just browse around and find books with comments.  I know I do not have the time to read a bad book (although I have been doing it a lot lately).

If you are interested, check it out!

Posted in Reading Rocks

Now you can all rest easy as we've chosen My Father's Dragon as our next read-aloud.  What a great book!  We started it last night and already read half of it!  (It isn't very long.)  J didn't want me to stop but my voice was going.  I told him we can try to finish it tonight if I can handle it.  It's such a fun book and it's a crime I'd never even heard of it before diamondsintherough suggested it.  How have I missed it all these years?  We will probably read the whole series.

My kids are begging for school because they want to do Reader Rabbit.  I love bribery.  It's mother's secret weapon.  A shame it gets to that... But I told them once they do everything else, they can do their Reader Rabbit.  I try to only do it once a week or so.  They are so young and I really don't like them on the computer too much.  But these days, you really have to teach computer skills young, so it seems.  As long as they don't ask for a cell phone.  Did you know I saw the elementary kids getting out of school one day and little 3rd and 4th graders had cell phones?  Who are they talking to?  What are they talking about?  "Yeah, Hannah Montana is so, like, cool (or whatever they say now)."  "I'm eating pizza for dinner.  I have to go beat up my brother now."  Something like that...

I want you to know that the kids think I am the world's greatest mom today because I made orange jello and cut up canned apricots and put them in there.  I love how easy kids are sometimes.

Has anyone seen the remote to my Xbox?

I am off to wrap up school for the day.

Posted in Reading Rocks

Hello collective brain.
Can you suggest some read aloud chapter books for my lovely children?  K is 4 (almost 5) and J is 6.  We have already read and enjoyed The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and are currently reading James and the Giant Peach.  We read half of, and did not enjoy, Hank the Cowdog.

Posted in Reading Rocks

As I am incapable of doing anything remotely productive in my temporarily gimpy state, I read two books yesterday.  One was by Terri Blackstock (is that her name?) called Cape Refuge which was really good.  I had a hard time putting it down (obviously, perhaps).  The second was The Princess by Lori Wick.  Now this one, I started with some hesitation as it is about an arranged marriage and really, was altogether a little odd.  I just kept telling myself, "one more chapter.  Maybe he'll be nice to her."  Or "one more chapter.  Maybe they will fall in love."  It was annoying really.  Because I didn't really care but I HAD TO KNOW.  I am nosy like that.  So I read that whole book too, since it wasn't too long.  Today I started Expiration Date by Eric Wilson, which one of you lovelies recommended to me.  The author anyway.  So far so good.

Posted in Reading Rocks

I just read this really good book called Table for Eight.  It was about the joys and trials of having a large family.  The families profiled all had at least 4 kids, and some had more.  It had chapters on housing, feeding the family, affording vacations, how to spend time with each child, and more.  I enjoyed it and I think many of you have large families and might also like to read it.

Here's the link to Amazon.

Posted in Reading Rocks

Right now I am reading Jeffery Deaver's The Twelfth Card.  I love Deaver; he's creepy.  He wrote The Bone Collector, for those who know that movie with Denzel Washington.

I also picked up another Ted Dekker book at the library.

The kids and I have been finishing up The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (yes, we are slow as Mommy is tired...).  We've also started reading Christmas stories.  One of my favorites is by Eve Bunting.  I believe it is The Night Tree.  It's a beautiful story about a family who goes into the woods to decorate a tree for the forest animals.  I don't know what it is, but I love it.

I find it strange but it is very difficult to find Christmas books at our local library that actually mention Jesus.  I think I only found one.  So I think that we are going to buy one for the library and give it to the librarian as a Christmas gift.  It teaches the kids that we are thankful and giving at Christmas, and it'll help diversify the collection.  I can only read so much about snowmen.