Lulu’s blog

From Hannahbanana.  Because the subject of books is always a favorite subject.

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"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”

1) Bold: I have read.
2) Italics: Those I intend to read. 
3) Underline: Books I love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (ony the Hobbit...never got into LOTR)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling (haven't read them all...not a big hit in our house)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee  ( so many great lines)
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell   (forced to read...hated the whole experience)
9 His Dark Materials – Phillip Pullman  (never heard of it)
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy  LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS STORY  go buy one with a pretty cover
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller  (own, may read)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (well, no not the complete)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (great story, good for a teen recommendation, a little spicier than Austen)
16 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien oh here we are
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks (own, thanks to Von's bookstore and hannahbanana)
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife (good, scarry read, and have been to the CAGE...see my second post ever..I had nigmares that I was in downtown Chicago and took the train around town and would end up in another time and couldn't go out to the suburbs)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (own, have began...if I finished it I don't even remember..I would add Silas Marner here)
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 Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck  (did I finish it?)

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (no thank you)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (loved them, wish my children had the same passion for these books)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (couldn't finish it...won't finish it and that's ok, great writer, so good it's too much...
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (several times, first recommended by my mom, re-read, then book group)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell  (if there is a an orwell book out there you think I'd like, please resond)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez  (have begun)

44. A Prayer for Owen Meany- (great book, but probably won't ever finish it)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (not familiar with this)
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy  (Ah yes, my dad could be Farmer Oak and my mom Bathsheba)
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding (not a favorite, but don't hate enough to strike)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (read it??? endured it)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (...but the movie is so great!!!)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (yes! and a fave now with the serendipitous visit to Quatre Gats restaurant in Barcelona.  Couldn't have planned it if we tried)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (...have begun)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (no, precisely because everyone says I should)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (read thanks to a book group, also have a copy in French for some reason)
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 (I own and have no desire to read)
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
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (I began reading this book aloud to Kazia and Anja while in England.  I bought a copy at a little bookstore next to the cafe where we had delicious grilled ham and pear sandwiches for lunch)
80 Possession - AS Byatt (library copy, didn't finish it)
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  Love it, and see the French film, lovely paint and fabrics
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom  (yeah, what's the big deal?)
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 St. Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole (I have this in hardcover and have started it so many times....)
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute  (excellent, check out at your loco library today)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I have no guilt whatsoever over the books I have not read, though I trust they are very good and very deserving to be on this list.

  Hell, to me, would be having to read only what's on someone else's list. 

Just READ. 

We have a big sheet of paper that we are keeping track of our summer reading as a family.  I'll post it later.

tape dispenser

It is taking all my self control to let the kids wrap presents on their own and ignore the copious amounts of scotch tape being used to secure otherwise flimsy wrapping paper.

twelve

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Our resident twelve year old had a great birthday.  Swimming and hanging out during the day followed by a party at Ethel's Chocolate Bar and browsing at B&N.  The girls were out on the town a little later than twelve year olds should be....

first coat

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K. is very excited about getting her own room. 

Fine Arts Festival

A. at the Fine Arts Festival after a concert with her orchestra.

Wax Museum

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L. as explorer Leif Erikkson at the annual 3rd grade Wax Musuem.  He wrote a very good summary. He is shown here in a pose.  The parents must come and press a "button" that brings the statue to life. 

Preschool Graduation

K. at his preschool graduation with teacher, Mrs. B.  She was a fabulous teacher and loved all the students.  He had a great year.

What is your definition of cheating?

If you think it's wrong-- it's wrong.

....than last night's server at Jimmy's Charhouse.

When a friendly sales person suggests the undereye cream with concealer, is it because they want to sell the concealer, or are they telling me something?

How is it, with the gale-force winds we are having, that the same wadded up kleenex tissue is still on my lawn?

I finally get what that old tv show thirtysomething was about.

Fact:  the first (and only) child who comes in the kitchen and asks "What can I do to help?", gets all the brownies they want.(even if they are 5 years old)

Did you know?

Hmm he weighs only 50 pounds...that means I would need how many balloons.....???? 

imagine that

We had a great time in St. Louis during our spring break.  We visited The Magic House, Sonic, movies, St.Louis Zoo, Union Station, the Old Courthouse, The Arch.  We saw the Speedway without racecars and Busch Stadium with Cardinal fans in the bleachers.  The kids swam, we played scrabble, 20 questions, painted fingernails, and ate too much junk. 

Below are photos the kids took in the Old Courthouse, where such landmark cases as the Dred & Harriet Scott slavery case and Women's Suffrage cases were heard.  (The Scotts were freed, only to have the decision reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Virgina Minor and her husband lost her appeal for the right to vote in 1872.)

Photos: left to right by Kazia, Kai, Leif & Anja

Show us a collection.

Mom said three or more is a collection:

I have tried for half an hour to load photos individually.  Maybe I'll try later...gotta go.

see collections:  Brothers and Sisters

Brothers and Sisters