101 Books to Read Before You Die

So, yesterday I was looking for a list of book to read before I die. I was specifically looking for a 41 book list that my English teacher had brought into class that she was working through, but I found this longer 101 book list instead. I found this on another blog I found on Google called Carlo's. This list is apparently from South Africa, so a few titles are written in Afrikaans so omit (or try) the ones by Dalene Matthee. I'll let you know if I can find those in an English translation. I'll also let you know if any of the others are in Afrikaans that were not mentioned on the other blog.

1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Kite-Runner - Khaled Hosseini
3. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
4. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
5. Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
6. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
7. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
8. LIfe of Pi - Yann Martel
9. The Da Vinci Code- Dan Brown
10. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
11. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
12. Spud - John van de Ruit
13. The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
14. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
15. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
16. Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
17. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
18. The Catcer in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
19. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
20. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
21. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
22. Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
23. My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
24. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
25. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
26. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
27. The Pillars of the EArth - Ken Follett
28. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchel
29. Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
30. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
31. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
32. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
33. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
34. Atonement - Ian McEwan
35. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
36. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
37. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
38. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
39. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
40. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
41. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
42. I Know This Much is True - Wally Lamb
43. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
44. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
45. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
46. The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel
47. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
48. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
49. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
50. Possession - A.S. Byatt
51. Perfume - Patrick Suskind
52. The House of Spirits - Isabel Allende
53. Chocolat - Joanne Harris
54. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith
55. Q & A - Vikas Swarup
56. Dune - Frank Herbert
57. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
58. Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels
59. River God - Wilbur Smith60. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
61. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
62. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
63. Mort - Terry Pratchett
64. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
65. The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
66. East of Eden - John Steinbeck
67. The Name of Rose - Umberto Eco
68. The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory
69. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne
70. The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
71. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
72. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
73. The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx
74. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
75. Animal Farm - George Orwell
76. The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
77. Watership Down - Richard Adams
78. Magician - Raymond E. Feist79. Middlemarch - George Eliot
80. The Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsyth
81. We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
82. The Magus - John Fowles
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk
85. The Cout of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
86. The Shell Seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher
87. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
88. The Beach House - James Patterson
89. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
90. Kringe in 'n Bos - Dalene Matthee
91. The World According to Garp - John Irving
92. Northern Lights - Phillip Pullman
93. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
94. Shades - Marguerite Poland
95. Kane and Abel - Jeffrey Archer
96. Fiela se kind - Dalene Matthee
97. Story of an African Farm - Olive Schreiner
98. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
99. The Magic Faraway Tree - Enid Blyton
100. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
101. Winnie the Pool - A.A. Milne

Carlo's Blog mentioned that this list was from Exclusive Books. I have no idea what that is, but that's where this was originally found.
I have already read the Harry Potter Series, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I must say all three (or technically 9) books deserve to be on this list.
The Harry Potter Books are beautifully written and exceptionally well imagined.
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe was a remarkably imaginitive piece, and it was very symbolic (as my mother never fails to remind me after we have finished watching the movie) of the story of Christ's sacrifce. I prefer to look at this book as an entertaining tale, not a recreation of my bible, but others may see it as my mother does.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was terribly humerous, and truelly painted a picture in ones mind of the scenes that were described and later carried out in movie form.
I am starting to plow through this list with Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, and I must say I was up until 1:30 this morning reading this book, it is enthralling and very picturesque.
I prompt you to read through this list as well and let me know of progress and you're thoughts on the books. Bon chance!

The Wonderful World of High School

Well, I finally started high school in September. The classes are great, the teachers are great (with one exception...) and the homework is not as bad as everyone says it is. I will, however, probably be saying different things next term when I start Pure Math Honours.
The mixture of homework and exahustion (I believe I may be coming down with a cold) has left me no time to write. I have been trying to squeeze in the time to do a little creative writing here and there, I joined teh creative writing club at school so I can get a whole lunch hour in each week, and I am staying up far to late for my liking just so I can get a few messily hand written pages done in the hopes of finding THE muse.
Seeing as it's Thanksgiving weekend I will be thankful for something. I am thankful for the long weekend so I can catch up on some much needed sleep, I am thankful for my mom because she's my best friend and a wondeful cook, I'm thankful for my brother because he is finally being nice to me (he probably hit his maturing stage by now. Yes, he is younger than me) and I'm thankful for all my friends for keeping me sane. I'm sure they all would say the same thing to me.
I found neat new background. Anyone who has been watching my blog earlier will note that is probably the first white one I have ever had. Yes, it is. I'm trying to lighten my blog and my writing experience. Positive thinking should keep my hectic life in more order.
This is all for now, I'm thinking of posting some paragraphs I've written or some poetry. I want to actually prove that I can write things besides rambling blog entries on my frustration.
More soon.
Allie

Updates on Da Poll

So I got some more votes on the poll, I need a few more, but this is going well. Not! I need more votes, oh well. If no one votes I just won't use the votes given, since we need a tie-breaker vote now. But, whatever happens I'll still have more installments of the story.
My origional muse is going well. I'm having fun with it and came up with another, crappy muse so that both is good and sucks at the same time.
I'll have more later.

No More Polls?

I'm thinking of just cancelling the polls, no one is voting, and i need votes to see what the majority wants to see. Apparently, not much. So, I'm cancelling the polls.

On another note, I found a muse and I'm running with it. It's actually an old muse that was returned to me after I pulled an old book from my shelf. So, we'll see where that takes me. Hopefully far, but this optimism is going to break that down.

My mom saw Stephanie Meyer on a talk show the other day and she said something interesting. She said to write a book as though you are the only one who is going to read it. I think I may have taken that to heart... It's advice from Stephanie Meyer! Of course it will be helpful and is probably right, so I should take it to heart.

My series on Ficwad is becoming better and better, even with the (sorry readers) imminent close of the second installment. Archie's secret has been let out of the bag and Atlanta's still sour. Neil lost, and Dani's singing better than ever (if you havn't read the series, you may have figured out that it's a Fan Fiction peice on Class of the Titans. If you don't know who Dani is, you'll have to read for youself :D).

More soon, on the progress of this muse! Chiao!

Great Reviews!

So, as you can possible tell (depending on the time you read this post) from the polls on the side bar I am writing a series on Ficwad.com called "Good Enough" under the Class of the Titans tab.

I recently got two awesome reviews on the sequel "Out in The Park" which have boosted my faith in my writing immensly. Both said that they liked my story even though they normally didn't like aspects I had used in the story! I was very happy to know that I can change som people's minds, that really makes me feel like I'm succeeding in my chosen feild of the arts.

So, if you haven't read my story go to my profile and check out all my stories! If you're only interested in the Class of the Titans ones again they're "Good Enough" and "Out in the Park" by masquerade37.

No Luck

I have over an hour to do as much writing as I please. I am stuck in my mom's office at the University while she meets with one of her dissertation supervisors. Now of course this is the opportunity that I would kill for, time and a computer to type on (as writing things first on the computer is a hell of a lot more efficient than writing it on paper and transferring it to a computer later on. Then you have to write it twice!). The only problem is, I've looked through my story ideas on my memory stick and I have found that all my previous story ideas are terrible. Quite cliché as well. My God, there has to be something better than whatever I have come up with so far, I'm sure of it.
Honestly, I do have some knew ideas I could be working on, but I'm sure they are on the cliché side as well, and that is very discouraging.
If I have not mentioned this before my life long goal is to have a book published before I graduate high school. Now, it's become more real a goal than ever before, as I will be beginning my high school journey in September. Idea's are flowing, but I'm not sure I can use any of them. ARGH! This is so frustrating. Now i know what other writers talk about when they say that they are squeezed fresh out of ideas and they are feeling relatively useless to the world. I can TOTALLY relate to this now.
Though I suppose these authors would pursue whatever ideas they had, cliché or otherwise, whereas I seem to be giving up on first mention of the idea of a cliché. That just goes to show the mental maturity difference between an adult and a fifteen-year-old who thinks shes an adult :D. I should be more attentive to this fact as it is staring me unforgivingly in the face. This may be a a case where I am showing my immaturity by being as stubborn as a mule and blindly waving away this truth that could be my imminent demise as far as my previously mentioned goal states.
As far as this entry goes, I have nothing else to report. I should be using this time wisely and trying to develop these ideas I have mentioned, instead of whining and complaining here. More very soon, I promise!

Summer Vacation

School's finally out and I'm very bored..

I've been promised Stampede this year (finally) and we're planning for Monday or Tuesday.

I'm at a loss for interesting input lately and for that I apologize.

I am looking forward to High School in the fall. I don't handle summer vacation well, I always like having something to do and during the summer I don't have anything to do! ARGH! I can't even find any writing inspiration around. I have so little inspiration I wrote about my brother and me hunting down a mosquito last night, and that's not a very interesting, though I used some very unique vocbulary to make it sound interesting.

Mind you I guess that's one of the many challanges of being a writer, making normal things seem interesting! Man, that's one of the hardest parts though :(!!!

I am not going to be writing much about my life any more, more about my writing progress.

So I suppose there's not much to talk about then... so I'll have more soon.

Au revoir!

Archery Provincials This Weekend

I'm leaving tonight for Edmonton for the Archery Provincials. I'm planning to place this time, because at the Alberta Winter Games I kind of came in last. But it doesn't matter, I will succeed this time it's my goal and my overall improvement already shows it.
I get to skip the last two periods today for the 3 hour trip. I'm looking forward to another fun-filled weekend away with my archery team!
Wish me luck!
AlL!3 out!

Much Better Now

Well it's been a week back into school and all is going well. I have some great news, but it's nothing I can write down right now, but it's awesome!
No more Daytime TV, I don't want to kill the TV anymore. I am now addicted to the XBOX and the XBOX 360. I think I may be developing a problem. I cannot stop playing Guitar Hero 3 and Star Wars Battlefront. And the internet I am sorry to say is losing my interest.
My brother and his friend are playing Guitar Hero and it's funny, they're laughing at each other and trying to screw each other up, funny.
That's all for now!
AlL!3

Better Today

So today I didn't spend all day in front of the idiot box watching boring TV. I went to my mom's office with her this morning, spent two boring hours reading a book for a book talk I have to do (I'm reading Anne Frank's Diary, it's actually quite interesting) then she came back from class and took us to the mall.
At the mall she actually bought my black nail polish. Before now she has practically banned black nail polish from me because she's afraid I'll get rebellious or Gothic on her. Anyway, I also got new eyeliner and an awesome denim dress that looks very 50's funky.
I watched CSI all afternoon and didn't write any hate mail to the people who program daytime TV. They have been spared my wrath.
That's about all I can say for now, I don't really have anything interesting going on in my life (I'm single, what can I say?).
Oh well.
Ciao, AlL!3

Daytime Television

I hate Daytime TV. Why? Because all that is on daytime TV is crappy soaps and awful decorating shows. I hate decorating shows and soaps. I like Jeopardy and CSI and House and Class of the Titans (hey, a girl's entitled to her cartoons). I think I may have to send letters to TV stations to ask about better daytime programming. To anyone who cares, if you get sick anytime soon and have to stay home, watch movies instead. Or YouTube. Both are better than daytime TV.
That's all for now.
Hasta Lasagna!
AlL!3

The Garooge

Hey Garooge Fans,

Since my last update I posted about my joint blog, our team has sprouted from three members to five! So many friends with hopefully more coming! Check it out!

Also, my friend Rae now has a blog and it's pretty good. That's all for now, more later, bye-bye!

Allie

Valentine's Day Blues

Hey all,

Valentine's is approaching and I'm blue. Not Pink or red Like you're supposed to be, but blue.

The guy I like is really cool right? He's friends with like, everyone in our grade, and chances are, he has his sights set on some popular pretty girl. Not me. Though we are friends (not best friends, but friends) I still bet he wouldn't give me the time of day. Some day, I'm gonna get outta this funk, pluck up some courage and ask him out. Oh, who am I kidding, no I won't. Oh well.

On a better note, I am making huge progress on an article for Youthink magazine. It's about this band I know called The Consonant C. I know the drummer, and he's really cool.

That's about all I have to say right now, I'll give you some more later.

Allie

From School

Hey All,

It's freezing cold in Calgary today so we are stuck inside. I chose the computer lab so here I am trying to think of something interesting to tell you. I have a dentist appointment today? That's irrelevant. I have an LA test next period? Concerning to me, but you don't care.

Well, I can't think of anything.
Rachel's here!
Rachel: Uh... hi everybody... um... I don't know what to say.
That's okay Rachel, neither do I.
Rachel: YAY! I'm not the only one!
So, for anyone who has read the new blog "Our Garooge" I have invited Rachel to join that blog. Which you will accept tonight right Rachel?
Rachel: Yes.
Good. I've also invited two other people besides Rachel, Julia and Izzy. They should accept I hope. I think they will.

I also wanted to give a shout out to a blog I may have mentioned before, but I still love it! The Class of the Titans blog now run by Sandra (who I beleive said she worked in the animation department of the show)! CotT is my favourite show (even though I'm a little old for cartoons, I LOVE Greek Mythology and that show is so addicting!).

I have about three more minutes here, so I should wrap this up. Rachel, any input?
Rachel: Uh, well, I have, uh math this afternoon, but that doesn't really concern you.
Uh, ya, I dont' care really either. I MISS HALF OF SCIENCE AND ALL OF SOCIAL! Dentist appointments are awesome.
Rachel: I get braces next Monday and I miss lunch and most of the afternoon! YAY!
Cool, Rachel. So I have nothing else to say and I'm kinda blabbering on (if you couldn't tell) so I'm gonna go.

Bye!
Rachel: Bye! *Waves*
Haha,
AlL!3

For Any Veiwers...

I have recently opened a blog with two friends from my class. Click Here to veiw it, I think itll be pretty good! We were inspired by a presentation in class and this is what we've got. Check it out if you wish to see what three teenagers have to say about life, love, and the like. I'll have more later.

AlL!3

Evanescence Pic

Hey, I found this on the net and thought it looked cool. Evanescence is my favorite band and that's why I'm putting the picture up!

So ya... thats that. I'll post something interesting soon here promise!