Monday, January 31, 2011

How many of these books have you read?

Reportedly the BBC has made this list of the top 100 books that a well read person ought to have read but believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Let's see how many I have read.
The ones in bold are books I've read completely.

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

The King James Bible
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four (1984) – George Orwell
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

Emma -Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne

Animal Farm – George Orwell
The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies – William Golding

Atonement – Ian McEwan
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Dune – Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
On The Road – Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Inferno – Dante
Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
Germinal – Emile Zola
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession – AS Byatt
Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Watership Down – Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Friday, April 23, 2010

Memories

Someday I'll walk down the street and remember a song, a song you sang an age ago, a song that brings back memories of laughter, joy, maybe some tears. It will bring back thoughts of the fun we had lying together in the sand, the waves brushing up against our feet, the wet sand sticking to our legs, my hands running through your hair. I'll allow myself to remember the touch of your fingers on my skin, the way you let your index finger trace the contours of my face, the smell of your perfume. I'll allow myself to remember the way you walked away from me after telling that you loved me. The huge grin you had on your face, the finger you pressed against my lips, not allowing me to respond. You just wanted to tell me that you loved me, you didn't want me to say anything to you. You said that would come later, because you realized how I felt for you even before I knew it. I'll allow myself to remember our first fight. It was over something so trivial, you forgot my best friend's birthday. The two of you somehow ended up bonding over that. My two best friends getting along, that was such a momentous event, especially since you couldn't stand each others guts. I'll allow myself to remember that it was I who pushed you away. I locked up my emotions and feelings, kept them a secret from even myself. I didn't let you in. I couldn't let you in. I was afraid to let you in. I'll allow myself to remember the day you left me, never to come back. The look in your eyes, one of pain and bewilderment. You never understood why I could no longer be with you. I will allow myself to remember that you thought you were always too good for me, you deserved better, not a train-wreck like me. I was too broken, too damaged to be thrust upon you. How could I let you love me, when I couldn't find it in me to love myself? I'll allow myself to remember the last time I saw you. You were locked in a kiss with a pretty woman, at the cafe where we met for the first time. I'll allow myself to remember the stab of jealousy I felt when I saw the way you looked at her with such love in your eyes. I'll allow myself to remember that you once reserved such a look for me. I'll allow myself to remember a number of tiny details about you but I'll never ever allow myself to forget the day you hit me so hard across my face that I still bear a light scar on my left cheek. I'll never allow myself to forget that you were the cause of the thirteen stitches on my forehead and the deep cut across my back which healed badly because you didn't let me go to a doctor. I'll always remember never to let a man treat me the way you once did.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Saturday, January 30, 2010

...

Just something I wrote


I felt odd all day, I had this feeling of anxiety, a premonition that somethng was going to happen. Something big. Something good, something bad, something life-changing. It could be anything. All I knew was that something was definitely going to happen. It kept me on edge all day even when I was out having dinner with some friends of mine.

It was around that time, that I felt like the chair I was on moved a bit, the table seemed to have wobbled too, but it didn't seem like anyone else had noticed, so I just put it down to feeling a bit light-headed. The conversation and laughter at the table continued uninterrupted until it happened again, but this time, everyone noticed. The table was shaking violently, as were the chairs we were sitting on, the dishes seemed to be trembling and the spoons and forks rattled. Suddenly, everyone began to scream and run helter-skelter. It was an earthquake and we were on the top-most floor of a posh restaurant. Many made a dash for the staircase, some crawled under their tables, some just stood rooted in their spots, shocked, not knowing what to do. I ran and took shelter under a huge wooden table that was in a conference room just off the main dining area. I closed my eyes and began to pray. Everything around me shook violently, I could hear things clatter to the floor, the floor seemed to be cracking. All of a sudden I felt someone beside me. The electricity had gone off, so I could see no one, but I could definitely feel a human presence by me. "Is someone here?" I called out loudly, hoping to be heard over the crashes, booms and the screams. "Yes," a voice replied. I soon began to feel the floor beneath me, give way and I screamed. A hand reached out and grabbed me, "Hold on to my hand," the voice shouted out. I found myself tumbling downwards, things falling, tiles, cement, stones. All the while, this stranger held on to me. He seemed unafraid. Maybe it felt that way because I couldn't hear much of anything other than the crashing building. I found myself buried under mountains of debris, entwined in the arms of this stranger. We had miraculously fallen in a small space through which we could breathe. During the fall, however, I hurt my leg and my arm, my chest felt bruised and every breath I took, made me shudder in pain. I was sure I had broken quite a few bones. "How badly hurt are you?" my strange companion asked, gasping for breath. "I don't know. I think I may have broken some bones. What about you?"
"I've hurt my knee and my back for sure. And I've hit my head, other than that I seem to be okay."
I nodded, though it was so dark, I am sure he didn't notice me nodding. "Don't let go of my hand," I whispered, fear apparent in my voice. "I won't," He promised. Minutes, passed, then hours, soon we lost track of time. For a long while we could hear the screams of others trapped like us beneath the rubble, shouts of people above the ground, later we could hear the dull thud of people lifting up and throwing away large boulders.

I Think of You

When I hear children chatter,
When I see the flowers bloom,
When I see marbles scatter
Into different corners of a room,
I think of you.

When a loney puppy whines,
When a singer sings a song,
When for love I begin to pine
And wonder where it has gone,
I think of you.

When the evening sun goes down,
When the birds go home to roost,
When my smile turns into a frown
And my spirit needs a boost,
I think of you.

Thoughts of you make me happy,
They take away my fears,
I sometimes feel a little sappy
And I am filled with joyful tears
When I think of you.

~candice

Yes i know it is cheesy

Monday, December 28, 2009

Books I want to read

The Secret History” by Donna Tartt

An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott

Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery

Lamb by Christopher Moore

A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving

The Poisonwood Bible

“A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.” by Dave Eggers

Rebecca

“Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card

Thursday, December 24, 2009

The Devil at Work

I was really bored studying yesterday, I couldn't understand the concepts and I was really sleepy and here is what I wrote.

Been studying hard for the past few days
Wish they'd given us some time to play
All this studying does no good
When none of the concepts have been understood.

~ a frustrated candice