100 Books

I came across this "100 books meme" when through random surfing I ended up at Living the Scientific Life. Anyhow, here's my take on these 100 books... with a few editorial comments thrown in for good measure. All fiction, heavy on the science fiction, way too much Harry Potter. With all this Sf, no Asimov, Clarke, or Heinlein? Substitute "I, Robot" or "Foundation" or "Childhood's End" for one of the Potter books and you'd improve this list. By my count, I've read 27 of these (but really, "Lord of the Rings" should be one book not three. That would take me to 25.)

Look at the list of books below:
* Bold the ones you’ve read,
* Italicize the ones you want to read
* Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown) (Not just NOT interested in, actively repulsed by... I almost couldn't read the rest of the list when I saw this at the top)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) (but I saw the movie)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien) (why are these 3 out of order?)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) (is it unfair to call this a girl book?)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon) (never heard of it)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry) (never heard of it)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling) (I read the 1st Harry Potter. From what I
hear, the rest are all the same book. Harry & friends are a year older, bad things happen, the
Professor of the Dark Arts is responsible. Rinse, repeat.)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) (gag)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald) (never heard of it)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) 23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold) (never heard of it)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26.The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) (and the other 3 books in
this 4-book trilogy)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom) (oh frigging gag me with a saccharine spoon)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert) (and many others. Stop after the 2nd book, they go downhill)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks) (never heard of it)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) (I am embarrassed to admit this)
34. 1984 (George Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Cortenay) (never heard of it)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb) (never heard of it)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) (never heard of it)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) (never heard of it)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) (never heard of it)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom) (more gagsome crap from a guy who's gone to the saccharine well once too often. But this stuff sells, doesn't it?)
45. The Bible (I read about half the Old Testament when I was a teen, does that count?)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb) (never heard of it)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling) (Too much Harry Potter!)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) (in a survey, this would be one of the books used to try to determine whether the anonymous responder were a man or a woman...)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) (highly recommended)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) (again, I'm embarrassed to admit)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice) Great book - the other vampire books, not so much)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis) (feel I should read something by one of Canada's most revered novelists)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding) (I saw the movie. Enough.)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay) (never heard of it)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence) (never heard of it)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley) (never heard of it)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier) (never heard of it)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields) (never heard of it)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago) (never heard of it)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer) (never heard of it)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) (but I did see the movie!)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield) (I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon than read this, thank you.)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) (if I ever have six months to kill, I'll read this)

The Southern Highlands

Earlier this month we took a short driving cruise through the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, a rural district between Sydney and Canberra. It was a nice short vacation. This area was settled fairly early on in NSW's history and retains its rural character.

We spent a day wandering around the village of Berrima. It's a pretty little place, its early 19th century character preserved in part by the fact that the Hume Highway between Sydney and Canberra ended up passing it by. Maybe it's ironic, but one of the village's main attractions is its 19th century jail - still in use today, although according to an Australian Federal Police friend of mine, it is used mostly for nonviolent offenders, kind of a Club Fed place.

We cruised to Bowral, a bigger town. I was struck at how vibrant its downtown was -- two main streets lined with shops, restaurants and cafes all open for business. A contrast to the quiet and dying downtowns of so many small (and not-so-small) American towns. We went to the cricket oval where Don Bradman first played high school cricket. Bradman, if you don't know who he is, is sort of an Australian Babe Ruth. Well,not in personality but like Ruth and at about the same time as Ruth, Bradman did things with a bat that broke all sorts of records -- his average 99.94 run average in Test matches is far and away the best ever (next highest is 61). The Don is the closest thing to a god that Australia has, and every Aussie that I've told about my visit to Bowral knows that was Bradman's home town.

Then, after a winding mountain road that featured back-to-back hairpin turns with speed limits below 10 mph, we found our way to Kangaroo Valley, another early 19th century settlement. That town has Australia's oldest standing suspension bridge -- not quite as grand as Sydney Harbour Bridge, but attractive. There is a pretty neat little village-run museum there featuring life on a 19th century Australian farm. Kangaroo Valley also featured a war memorial to all the area's young men who went off to fight in World War I and II and didn't return -- a feature of practically every Australian town and a reminder of how much Australia lost in those wars.

The Leaning Tower of Perth

For your information, Australia has many more attractions than most people realize. This short video will help correct some misconceptions about Australia. For example, the Great Wall of China is just outside of Darwin...

The Peril of Inappropriate Economic Incentives

(Panels from left to right: "David that's way too much." "The tooth fairy left me 20 BUCKS!" (nothing) "We're gonna be RICH!")

Be warned, this comic site isn't for everybody. Don't let the name (Perry Bible Fellowship) fool you -- it's irreverent and many of its comics feature sex and violence. But if that doesn't bother you, it's damn funny.