What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.

Bold the ones you've read for pleasure,
Underline the ones you read for school,
Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish (even if you intend to finish them).
Strikethrough the ones you hated.
Add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend.
My addition: (Parenthesize) the ones that are on your "unread" list.


Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre***
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
(A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales (didn't read all of them, but read what was assigned to me)
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead (Words cannot describe how much I despise Ayn Rand.)
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
(Dracula)
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
(The Once and Future King)
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984** (chose it myself for a school assignment)
Angels & Demons
The Inferno and Purgatory and Paradise
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray**
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (listened to the audiobook)
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury***
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners (I read one of the stories for an assignment.)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road***
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit (I didn't read it for class, but it was an assignment - Battle of the Books. I need to read it again.)
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
(Treasure Island)
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers


P.S. I have a LibraryThing. It currently only includes books I had with me at Wesleyan this fall and books I have with me here in the UK.

Yet another cool thing that results from my Last.fm data.
(By the way, if anyone else wants to post their versions to their LJs - you have to change the code to HTML. It's really simple, though.)

Random: I was watching Torchwood tonight (the second-to-last episode of the past season, "Fragments") and it struck me: I had no idea Ianto was so young! Jack gave his birthdate as August 19th, 1983 - which means he's 24, going on 25 (as part of Jack's flashback placed the episode firmly in 2008). Somehow, this struck me as interesting.

Tonight I've been listening to stuff on Librivox (The Secret Garden, The Forsyte Saga, Nicholas Nickleby... all of them very well-recorded, too), crocheting, and playing Scrabulous on Facebook. Life is good. And lazy.
Today I went into town with Tom and Pete and had a very nice time of it. Pete showed us some cool places - a bookshop, a candy shop, a bakery. I had the cheapest lunch ever (75p). It was a cheese and onion pasty - pastry crust with pierogie filling, basically. I also bought some scones. Excellence. And I got a book (Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms) for 50p! Good times.

On my immediate reading list right now (as in, sitting in my room waiting to see which one I pick for this evening):
A.S. Byatt's Insects and Angels
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass
Other Voices, Other Rooms (I'm really excited about this one, for some reason)

I've also been reading and re-reading a little book of Wallace Stevens poems. I LOVE Wallace Stevens.

I'm in such a nice mood. And now... I'm going to bed!

My study abroad application got accepted!
Which means: University of York, here I come!
Which also means: I am clearing out of the US for six months as of the beginning of the year.

I am so excited.




Also, it is 1:30am, I have to be up at 7:15am, I feel sick and I am not sleepy at all.

But looking at Sebastian and Alyosius (*points at icon*) is making me feel a little sleepier.
Fact: Brideshead Revisited was filmed at Castle Howard which is located, yes, outside of York. (!!!)

P.S. Did you know that the name Alyosious is closely related to the names Louis and Luigi? (Which don't really have an English equivalent in the Jean-Giovanni-John kind of way) I had no idea.
You learn something new every day, especially when the internet is involved.
Also, St. Alyosius is the patron saint of youth and students.
I want to have a cat named Alyosius.
I need to go to bed.

I have just realized something terribly serious.

I am not a man.

You see, I already knew this, of course.
However it seems to me, on reflection, that what has never truly sunk in before this evening is that, as not-a-man, I am not much of the sort who (even were I rather more wealthy than I am) could ever obtain a bespoke suit.

And that is what I currently desperately want.


We see the problem here?




(If you do not know what a bespoke suit is, I advise looking it up, and visiting the link I've placed at the end of this entry. You will be the better for it.)


On a fairly related note, this is a book I need.


I shall pursue tailoring anyway, I do so hope, at some point in my life. It is a path I need to follow until all fits gloriously.


( More on my sartorial choices: jodphurs, chilly weather, scarves. )

Yesterday I bought:
( Food, music, a book, and, with my patience, a signature. )

Tonight was a concert (meh... but I had nice chats with my co-worker and his friend, and later with my boss), then what I think was a radiantly excellent radio show.

Oh, and by the way, this what inspired my suited espousing.

So I finished Deathly Hallows today.

And I was allllll ready to write a long thing about it... and then LJ was down.
I will probably do it at another point... right now I am going to bed.

For now, suffice it to say... Oh My Gosh. Damn. I can't believe it's over... and damn did it ever suck me in. And yes, I did cry. And yell, a lot.
And a whole bunch of my predictions / theories I subscribed to / things I hoped for did happen, which was good or bad depending on the circumstance.

It's nice to be able to read my friends page without scanning for spoilers now...

Weeeel, I got some of the best news of my young life today. It has yet to sink in. And I'm not really going to go into it, but suffice it to say there was something bothering me for a long time that has been resolved (I hope).
Um... yes.

Today I bought 4 different yarns and new crochet supplies, and ordered the last Harry Potter! Tomorrow I am going art supply shopping. Also today I had a nice time with my friend Mattie, listen to and told crazy stories, ran into someone we both know (it was awkward), ate a nice grilled cheese sandwich and carrot sticks for about $2.50 (oh, I love cheap lunches), and got a bit of a waxing for the beach (ow). And I got a really nice gift from Max in the mail. <3. AND I got my hands on the motherlode of "Nicholas Nickleby" screencaps, which was exciting. AND when I was waiting at a stoplight earlier today there was a dude dancing VERY MUCH behind the wheel of the car two back from mine. It made me smile. At the time I also happened to be rocking out to MIKA and singing and dancing myself, which somehow made it even more amusing. MIKA puts me in such a good mood.

And now, to bed!

Things I have been doing (a list mostly ganked directly from a comment I wrote to Zach):

- Looking for a job.
- Being really lazy.

- Turning 20. (Woot. Now I can have an existential crisis because OMG I am in my fucking 20s, and who knows where those will take me.)

- Watching too much TV (mmm, Mythbusters and Globe Trekker and Adult Swim). I also watched the end of the last Bob Barker "Price is Right." Now what will I do if I'm home sick?

- Reading a lot. I'm on The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault now. And oh, do I ever love that woman.

- Adding applications to my Facebook and messing with them a lot.

- Getting excited way in advance to go to the beach next week (because, you know, my life is so hectic and stressful right now, so I sooo need a break... from the TV).

- Hiking. Day hike among the rhododendrons with my mom and dog, overnight with my dad on the night of my birthday / eve of Father's Day.

- Fantasizing about all the British men I will have at my disposal in Britain.

- Staying up late.
- Being antisocial.
- Receiving and buying more books to read later.
- Crocheting bags and coasters/dog hats.
- Cooing at my fish (Dusty and Aurelia) and my cat and dog.
- Becoming heavily addicted to The Sims 2.

- Writing fan fiction of a children's book, which has been fairly well-received, which gives me far too much of a sense of accomplishment.

- Daydreaming.

- Seeing movies... The Science of Sleep, which was beautiful and fun but left me kind of sad, and Paris, Je T'aime, which was fucking awesome. I cannot get it out of my head, int he best possible way. One of the sections seemed half-gleaned from a short story I started, never finished, and still play with.

- Planning to spend gift certificates on yarn, crochet needles, and art supplies, and to buy lots of music.
- Talking to my dad about dating experiences and my mom about sex, which were two big steps in a good direction.
- Missing my friends.
- Figuring out what to read next.
- Writing.
- Smiling at the rain, especially when it comes while the sun is shining.

- Talking on the phone to a friend in Australia (hi Nic!) and on Facebook to friends in China and France. Oh, global communication. You thrill me!

- Getting a new pair of my favorite, extremely worn-down shoes, and a bright blue pair of sneakers.

- Feeling like a true Doctor Who fanatic now that I have TWO box sets. I got the Second Series for my birthday. Also, introducing my mom to Tenth Doctor by way of "New Earth." She and I are both fans of the cat-people.

- Having a closet / shelf system built along one wall of my room. Now I can unpack my clothes when I come home! It is really cool.

- Procrastinating doing the dishes.
- Getting hungry.

( A meme result that is interesting, but not nearly enough to make it into the main body of this update )

Things:

Jane Eyre is a FUCKING AMAZING book. I started it yesterday... and proceeded to read 102 pages of it by the time I went to bed. It's a remarkably easy read, considering its age; I can't read Dickens, or Austen, nearly so fast. And it's better, story and writing-wise, than either of those two.

I have been listening to MIKA constantly for days. I have only just stopped in order to listen to "Release the Stars" again.

My dad's family is... very large. And I think I am now, for the first time, part of the big girl's club; I feel perfectly comfortable hanging out with my aunts and 8-years-older cousin.

It's raining! Yay! We need it so very bad. I just knew that if I hosed all the dust off my car it would rain this afternoon. I am magic! It is thundering. Yum.

I love my cat. She has slept with me the last two nights, and the first night I woke up in the middle of the night to find her snuggled up beside my pillow. So sweet.

I have a 3.79 GPA as this semester. I am pleased. Three A, one A-, one B+.


I need a boy full of glee for the world. That is what my hypothetical personal will someday say. "Mature, intelligent, and eclectic young woman possessed with an overactive imagination and an expansive sense of wonder and beauty seeks young man with similar qualities, full of glee for the world."


EDIT: Several hours later... I forgot to actually post this dang thing.

AHHHH fuck work. I am so ready to be done.
But no, I have about 12 pages worth of take-home midterm to write tonight. Which I've hardly started on. Because I tired and headachy. Blegh.

In other news...
The Amber Spyglass seems to be prepping itself to be the saddest book I've read in a long time. I'm only 59 pages into the thing and it has already made me cry once.
I had dreams of craziness last night.
I am cold in my carrel, for once.
I have written about 33 pages of school work in the last month, not counting the handwritten exam yesterday.
I neeeeed to start packing omg.

This week I have to do a lot of things I don't want to. Boo.

And my voice still sounds like a teenage boy.

I cannot wait for this summer so I can have time to read "Amber Spyglass," December for the movie!

Finally!
The end of last week was crazy. I am over it now, and ready to post these. Took me long enough.

Favorite Books Read in 2006, Fiction:
The Thursday Next books, Jasper Fforde
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
At Swim, Two Boys, Jamie O'Neill (begun in 2005)
The Charioteer, Mary Renault
The Persian Boy, Mary Renault

Favorite Books Read in 2006, Non-Fiction and Memoir:
The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest To Become the Smartest Person in the World, A. J. Jacobs
Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman
Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century, Graham Robb
You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When it Monsoons - The World on One Cartoon a Day, Mo Willems
In Ruins, Christopher Woodward

My favorite books of the year, in all, would probably be The Persian Boy and In Ruins.

This list is really heavy on gay literature and humourous things. In matter of fact, there in all are only two things on the two lists that don't fit in either category.
I guess this is because I read so much for school when it comes time to read for myself I pick up what I know I'll really enjoy. This equates to gay lit, humour, and fantasy. In Ruins was just a happy, happy accident.

So I'm back from the West Coast, and I have a lot to relate, but instead I'm doing a book meme. So there.

( Books )

I'm back from the beach, just in time to do laundry and pack for San Francisco.

The beach was very nice, though I wish I'd not been feeling blah as much as I was. It was still great, though. Good times were had by all.
Yesterday we went to a place I'd not been in 15 years, which was interesting. It's been built up a lot, but the beach there is amazing. Soooo very much fun was had.
The day before that we voyaged to the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher, where I viewed fishes, and turtles, and alligators, and pretty neon-lit jellyfish, and then I discovered a tank of cuttlefish, and all symbolance of being interested in anything else was lost completely. Cuttlefish are... completely amazing. Cephalopods are now one of my favorite types of creatures, beating dinosaurs, dinosaur-like birds, and regular birds, and tying with sloths, echidnas, pangolins, and domesticated cats.
I forgot to mention last time that on my first night at the beach I got to see loggerhead turtle babies emerging from their nest. 107 of them. That was awe-inspiring.

Right now I'm reading "The Persian Boy" by Mary Renault. I'm a little more than half-way through. I'm very invested in it... the writing is great, and I'm awfully attached to the characters. It's making me into such an Alexander the Great fangirl. And Bagoas is just wonderful... and the love story... well... just, *sigh.*
When I pick it up, I can't put it down, but I'm getting slightly more reluctant to open it once I do, because I know bad things are going to happen. That's what sucks about historical fiction. If it's about real people, you know at least some of how it will end. So now if anything at all bad happens, I get so upset, because I want them to be as happy as possible for as long as possible. Of course, that adds depth, and I love and appreciate it, and so far, things have looked up again after the unhappy bits.
So, in other words, it has sucked me in big time.

I've been feeling a bit sick and blah; I hope I feel better before I head to California. Or that Max cures it. I know he'll cure the blah; maybe the sick will go with it.

I think I just stummbled into an alternate universe.
I'm not sure where it is. Or if it realy exists. But holy hell... I need to get out more. Or at least see the sun.
Think I'm gonna fall asleep on my desk now, as in this alternate universe no one is at work at 2:43 on a Monday afternoon.

I just got to Chapel Hill two days ago, and tomorrow morning I'm leaving again?
What the hell...

Sorry. It's the alternate universe talking. Meh.


EDIT: To ammend for this admittedly wacky entry, I give you a quote from the book I'm reading right now.

Anyone who called the gentle Carpenter a'disseminator of filth and dirt vomited from the foul opit of sin and death' and who worried about the effect of homosexuality on the steel industry was not representative; he was simply a lunatic with time of his hands.

That's from Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century, a wonderful book I've been meaning to read for years. I expected it to be dry, but it's not; the author has a wonderful voice, and he's funny, something few nonfiction writers seem to be. The information he gives is very interesting and informative, and the stories he recounts are even better. Read it.

Things:
I made all A s this semester... two regular A s and two A- s. I'm QUITE pleased. My grades went up this semester. I have a 3.71 GPA.

Today my mom and I went shopping... for plants and a bird. She found a parakeet a few weeks ago, and we felt he needed a buddy. So now we have big, pretty male Blue Bird (the first) and a sweet, pretty green girl I'm calling Budgie Girl.
Also went to Circuit City... they were having a big CD sale. I got the new albums by The Streets and Snow Patrol and The Raconteur's debut. I'm listening to it right now, it rocks very much.

Erm...
I think I've found a place to live, but it's not for sure yet. I'm leaving tomorrow for Winston-Salem (assuming my car is functional by then) and then heading for Chapel Hill over the weekend, I believe.
I need to pack. Gah.

Went to my grandparents' last night, they gave me a full set of The Chronicle of Narnia that my grandpa ordered not knowing what they were (he though they were mysteries...?). I'd kinda been thinking of reading them, so now I am. I'm working on The Magician's Nephew. I might skip The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, as I read it as a kid and I just saw the movie.
It's good to have easy, fun books to intersperce with the very dense sociological study of the British indie scene I'm also working my way through right now. That one goes about two pages per sitting... the Narnia stuff goes about 5 pages just while I walk my dog. I'm already about 40-something pages into it. WooT!

So, yes. Grades, birdie, music, books... all is well in the land of Sarah.

Oooh, the power went BOOM last night. There were a series of odd noises (I think three transformers blew) and the power was gone gone gone. So I stumbled about then read by candle light. And just stared at the flames and wax. I like fire.

Now I'm gonna go sit in the sun and read my book and listen to my music. Life is good.

So.
Today I read "Brokeback Mountain." I bought a hardback copy from my school bookstore. It gives me joy.
And... well, WOW.
Can you say "breakdown"? Can you say curled up under a blanket in my study lounge crying after wandering out from my room so my roomate wouldn't ask me what was wrong? I looked a real crazy person, wandering around all wrapped in a blanket, hair wild fron hiding under it and eyes red.
It was definitely one of the most stike you dumb, knock you off your feet things I've read in a long, long while. It's still with me. Everytime I think of parts of it, those little things Proulx put in so carefully, it just overwhelms me. What an amazing piece of work.
I keep coming back to the shirts. That was such a great image, such a strong image, it said everything all at once.

I just watched the trailer for the movie again, and it made me cry, now that I know what all is behind it, the story. That movie is going to rip me apart, tear me limb-from-limb and then put me back again, feeling different.

Things like that, like the story, things that send sorrow and thought coursing through your body, leave you feeling so exhilerated and so odd, a little out of the loop and wonderful. It's strange and I like it.

( Now a musing that's about people and not the story )

I went to a great concert last night, An Albatross, they were intense screaming indiehardcore glory and sexy and awful and wonderful all at once and my ears rang for hours afterwards and still some today. The power of the music rushing through me felt so good.

I see Rufus on Friday. I'm quite excited, and for OKGo, too, because I really like them.

Lastly, I give you a picture.

My friend/hallmate/classmate Lisa took this today on the way to lunch. It's on Foss Hill, the big hill in the middle of our campus. That's me on the right; it looks like I am expounding upon something. The guy beside me is Max, one of my favorite people in the whole wide world.
This is very good friend named Max #3 for me; my preschool best friend and my elementary school best friend (who is still another of my favorite people in the world) were both named Max. As was my stepdad's best friend in childhood. They're good people, Maxes.
The weather was just gorgeous today, and I thought this picture was just too pretty not to share.