Too many books

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien x
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte x
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee x
6 The Bible x+
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens x+
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott x
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare x
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier *
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien x
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger x
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot *
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell x +
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald x
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens * (parts)
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy x
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams x
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh x
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky x
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck x
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll x+
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy x
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens x
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis x
34 Emma – Jane Austen *
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis x+
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres (parts)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden x
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne x+
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez x
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving *
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery x++++
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding x
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan *
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen x
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens x
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley x
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 x
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov x
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt *
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas x
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 x
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens x
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker x
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett x
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce x
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath *
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray x
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens x+++
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker x
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert x
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White x+
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Alborn ?
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x+++
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery x
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks ?
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole *
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas x
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl x++
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo x++++++++

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
52 books and counting…

 

Never act irresponsibly…

in front of family members.

Which I may have done yesterday, with my “little black dress.”

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. ~ JAMES BALDWIN

 

Valley View High School Class of 2009

It is with great pride

Anthony & Sheila Metcalf

Announce the commencement

of their son

Steven Ross Metcalf

and the Valley View High School

Class of 2009

Sunday the 31^st day of May 2009

At 3 o’clock in the afternoon

The Schuster Center

110 North Ludlow St

Dayton, Ohio 45042

 

RECOGNITION

While attending a local high school graduation ceremony recently, the role parents play in the lives of their children came into sharp focus. It was a truly defining moment, one that I shall not soon forget.

Following the principle’s opening words of welcome; the students that had received scholarships spoke briefly. One common denominator united them: They thanked their parents for “all the love,” “for all the encouragement,” “for always being there,” “for the great example,” “for setting high standards for yourselves and me,” “for being an awesome role model.”  Applause followed each as he or she stepped off the stage.

The last person to speak was the class valedictorian. She took the microphone in her hand, looked across the sea of faces in the packed auditorium, and then asked, “Mom and Dad, where are you?” Scanning the crowd, but not finding them, she repeated her question, “Where are you, Mom and Dad?”

Two people stood up. Their daughter, beaming said, “Audience, I would like to introduce you to my parents. I have asked them to stand along with me because I would not be up here today if it had not been for them. And now I would like everyone to give them a big round of applause because they are the ones who deserve it more than I.” And applaud they did – with such vivacity that it seemed as if the noble efforts of parents everywhere were being honored.

Parenting. This most scared duty cannot be understated. Of this I am convinced: the firm foundation of a parent’s deeply rooted commitment to his or her children may also be the springboard that launches those children to new heights. The effort to teach our young all that is good and true and worthy will bear fruit in season as surely as New England cherry trees open beneath the May sunlight. The growth within our children’s souls – the product of our abiding presence and tender care – will come to bloom before us as we stand looking on in appreciation, and perhaps awe.

Maybe we, too, will hear the applause someday.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Making the decision to have a child – it’s monentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~ ELIZABETH STONE

 

Don’t let your family get so busy…

that you don’t sit down to at least one meal a day together.

When we forget the obvious, the little joys, the meals together, the birthday celebrations, the weeping together in time of pain, the wonder of a sunset or of a daffodil peeping through the snow, we become less human. ~ MADELEINE L’ ENGLE

 

Tell your kids…

how terrific they are and that you trust them.

To feel loved, to belong, to have a place and to hear one’s dignity and worth often affirmed – these are to the soul what food is to the body.  ~ ANNE ORTLUND