OBSCURE REFERENCE!

True Affection - The Blow

Listen to this! (Click on the thingy above.) I was listening to Pandora today at work, and this song came on my "Band of Horses" radio station (which is one of THE best radio stations by the way hint hint). Here I am listening listening working working blah blah blah and then suddenly - 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA! Not really, but listen for the reference. It's the chorus, so if you miss it you are having a very "slow" day and should probably just go back to bed before you hurt someone.

MY POINT IS THIS: Have you started reading yet?

I am not being patronizing or motherly or higher-than-thou, as I have yet to begin reading the book myself, quite honestly. But apparently Captain Nemo... or Pandora... or someone out there wants me to read the thing because it threw me this little reminder via hip tune-age.

So let's get to reading mateys ;)

Month 1: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Today, it begins.

We have decided to start with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.

The book contains two sections: Book 1 and Book 2. I suggest we read at our own paces throughout the month but only discuss the first book within the first two weeks, the second book during the second part of October.

Breaking it up, we would discuss the first half of pages in Book 1 the first week, and so forth.

Now, onto the book!

We're getting closer!

In three days (well, would it be considered two days since I only have to live through a Wednesday and a Thursday - sleep only twice - before Friday?), I will TAKE THE GRE.

Needless to say, this monster of a test has bogged me down for the better part of, oh, five months. BUT, once I take it, I'll be finished studying, at least for now and hopefully for forever.

Therefore, October 1st will commence the reading of the bagillion books of the "Before We Die" list. It seems we have decided to begin at the beginning, sans those books some have already read. That leaves us with "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea."

From what Lorrie remembers of an attempt to read the book in the past, it is "dry."

I don't know about you, but I came into this knowing we'd run into some "dry" ones.

So I guess we may as well start with one of 'em and get it out of the way.

Sam ordered a copy of the book online from Amazon. I made fun of that copy, because it looks like a giant children's book - as thick as a chapter book but hard-backed and over-sized like those you find in a preschool section. I then proceeded to check out an identical copy of the book at the library the following day.

Thus, if you haven't gotten a copy yet, you might find it equally entertaining to choose as silly a version as we did (it comes with pictures and diagrams!)

Anyway, we'll officially begin the book this Saturday, October 1st, 2011. On Friday, look for a beginner post about the book, for from that first post our discussion thereafter about "20,000" will grow. Discussion can include any questions, frustrations, comments you wish to share with the others. In fact, the discussion is hugely important, because without it, we are no book club - we're just some people who happen to be reading the same random, weird, possibly over-sized book at the same time.

If anyone has any suggestions, questions, etc leading up to Saturday, post it here! Otherwise...let's set sail! [Get it? 'Cause the book's about the sea??]

When to start??

Okay, scouts, so far there are four of us. If you know of anyone else who would like to join this "book club," send them here to comment on the list so I can mark which ones they've read. We need to get everyone in on it soon so we can begin chipping away at this thing. My thought is to allow the remainder of this month (September) to finish up books/projects (like studying for the G.R.E. in my case) that we're currently working on, as well as allow time for anyone else to join, and begin the list Oct. 1. What are your thoughts on this?

After deciding when to start, we need to also decide what to read. As you can see, we have all already chipped away at the list on our own over the years before we even knew it was a list. Some have read books while others have not. That will make it difficult to read together. Anyone have ideas on how we could do it? We also need to decide in what time frame we should read each book. You ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Finally, I think the best way for us the "read together" is for each of us to comment on this blog periodically to share our thoughts, insights, etc. I will create an initial post describing the book we are currently reading, and from there, we can begin a discussion chain of comments on the book.

Please share your ideas via comments on this post. Thanks, friends! Can't wait to get started!

Before I begin the monster list...

I am attempting to chip away at the books I've made promises to and neglected for too long. One includes "Committed," Elizabeth Gilbert's answer to the questions raised in her first "megajumbo" (as she calls it) hit Eat, Pray, Love. I can't speak highly enough of Gilbert. Sure, many were turned off by the raw emotions and impulsive decisions described in the first book, but the key to her success is that Gilbert lives with a priceless humility. "Committed" proves she has grown to understand herself and learn from her past mistakes. I strongly recommend that anyone considering the epic commitment that is marriage first take time to read this book and consider the many aspects of history, research and insight Gilbert provides during her own quest to make peace with the institution. I know that I, being someone who entered marriage very much the way she did (young, naive, ill-equipped), have taken so very many useful gems away from her work and will be ever grateful to her for saving me from making any future costly mistakes.

A Mountain of Must-Reads

1. 1984 (1982) by George Orwell 
2. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1869) by Jules Verne
3. Absalom, Absalom! (1936) by William Faulkner
4. The Adventures of Augie March (1953) by Saul Bellow
5. Alexander of Macedon (1991) by Harold Lamb
6. All the King's Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren
7. American Pastoral (1997) by Philip Roth
8. An American Tragedy (1925) by Theodore Dreiser
9. Ancient Inventions (1995) by Peter James and Nick Thorpe
10. Animal Farm (1946) by George Orwell
11. Appointment in Samarra (1934) by John O'Hara
12. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (1970) by Judy Blume
13. The Art of War (1910) by Sun Tzu
14. The Assistant (1957) by Bernard Malamud
15. At Swim-Two-Birds (1938) by Flann O'Brien
16. Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand
17. Atonement (2002) by Ian McEwan
18. Band of Brothers (1992) by Stephen Ambrose
19. Battle Royale (1999) by Koushun Takami
20. Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison
21. The Berlin Stories (1946) by Christopher Isherwood
22. The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler
23. The Blind Assassin (2000) by Margaret Atwood
24. Blood Meridian (1986) by Cormac McCarthy
25. Blubber (1974) by Judy Blume 
26. Brave New World (1965) by Aldous Huxley 
27. Brideshead Revisited (1946) by Evelyn Waugh
28. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) by Thornton Wilder
29. Call It Sleep (1935) by Henry Roth
30. The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London
31. The Canterbury Tales (1470) by Geoffrey Chaucer
32. Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller 
33. The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger
34. Charlotte's Web (1952) by E.B. White
35. A Clockwork Orange (1963) by Anthony Burgess
36. The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker
37. The Complete Plays of Aristophanes (1984) by Aristophanes
38. The Complete Shakespeare (1623) by William Shakespeare
39. The Complete Sherlock Holmes (1986) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
40. The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) by William Styron
41. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark Twain
42. Contact (1985) by Carl Sagan
43. Cop Hater (1956) by Ed McBain
44. The Corrections (2001) by Jonathon Franzen
45. Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
46. The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) by Thomas Pynchon
47. A Dance to the Music of Time (1951) by Anthony Powell
48. The Dark Knight Returns (1986) by Frank Miller
49. The Day of the Locust (1939) by Nathanael West
50. Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
51. A Death in the Family (1958) by James Agee
52. The Death of the Heart (1958) by Elizabeth Bowen
53. Deliverance (1970) by James Dickey
54. The Divine Comedy (1867) by Dante
55. Dog Soldiers (1874) by Robert Stone
56. Don Quixote (1989) by Miguel De Cervantes
57. Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker
58. Education of the Wandering Man (1989) by Louis L'Amour
59. Eaters of the Dead (1976) by Michael Crichton
60. The Executioner's Song (1977) by Norman Mailer
61. Exodus (1958) by Leon Uris
62. Falconer (1977) by John Cheever
63. Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk
64. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway
65. Foucault's Pendulum (1988) by Umberto Eco
66. Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov
67. Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley
68. The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) by John Fowles
69. A Game of Thrones (1996) by George R.R. Martin
70. The Golden Notebook (1962) by Doris Lessing
71. Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953) by James Baldwin
72. Gone With the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell
73. The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck
74. Gravity's Rainbow (1973) by Thomas Pynchon
75. The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
76. Grendel (1971) by John Gardner
77. A Handful of Dust (1934) by Evelyn Waugh
78. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers
79. Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad
80. The Heart of the Matter (1948) by Graham Greene
81. Herzog (1964) by Saul Bellow
82. The Hobbit (1937) by J.R.R. Tolkien
83. Hour of the Dragon (1935) by Robert E. Howard
84. Housekeeping (1981) by Marilynne Robinson
85. A House for Mr. Biswas (1962) by V.S. Naipaul
86. I Am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson
87. I, Claudius (1934) by Robert Graves
88. The Illiad (1488) by Homer
89. In Cold Blood (1966) by Truman Capote
90. Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace
91. Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison
92. Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) by D.H. Lawrence
93. Les Miserables (1862) by Victor Hugo
94. Light in August (1932) by William Faulkner
95. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by C.S. Lewis
96. The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
97. Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov
98. The Long Goodbye (1953) by Raymond Chandler
99. Lord of the Flies (1955) by William Golding
100. The Lord of the Rings (1954) by J.R.R. Tolkien
101. Loving (1945) by Henry Green
102. Lucky Jim (1954) by Kingsley Amis
103. The Magus (1966) by John Fowles
104. The Maltese Falcon (1930) by Dashiell Hammett
105. The Man Who Loved Children (1940) by Christina Stead
106. McTeague (1899) by Frank Norris
107. Middlemarch (1871) by George Eliot
108. Midnight's Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie
109. Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville
110. Money (1984) by Martin Amis
111. The Moviegoer (1961) by Walker Percy
112. Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf
113. Naked Lunch (1959) by William Burroughs
114. Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright
115. Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson
116. Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro
117. Night (1982) by Eli Wiesel
118. No Exit (1943) by Jean Paul Sartre
119. Of Mice and Men (1937) by John Steinbeck
120. On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac
121. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) by Ken Kesey
122. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
123. The Painted Bird (1965) by Jerzy Kosinski
124. Pale Fire (1962) by Vladimir Nabokov
125. Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton
126. A Passage to India (1924) by E.M. Forster
127. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde
128. The Pillars of the Earth (1989) by Ken Follett
129. Play It As It Lays (1970) by Joan Didion
130. Portnoy's Complaint (1969) by Philip Roth
131. Possession (1990) by A.S. Byatt
132. The Power and the Glory (1939) by Graham Greene
133. Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen
134. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) by Muriel Spark
135. The Prince (1640) by Niccolo Machiavelli
136. The Princess Bride (1973) by William Goldman
137. Rabbit, Run (1960) by John Updike
138. Ragtime (1975) by E.L. Doctorow
139. The Recognitions (1955) by William Gaddis
140. Red Harvest (1929) by Dashiell Hammett
141. Revolutionary Road (1961) by Richard Yates
142. The Road Less Traveled (1916) by Dr. Scott M. Peck
143. Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe
144. Rosemary's Baby (1967) by Ira Levin
145. The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
146. The Science of God (1998) by Gerald L. Schroeder
147. Season of Mists (1992) by Neil Gaiman
148. The Sheltering Sky (1949) by Paul Bowles
149. Shogun (1954) by James Clavell
150. Slaughterhouse Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut
151. Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson
152. Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) by Ray Bradbury
153. The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) by Richard Ford
154. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1964) by John le Carre
155. The Stand (1978) by Stephen King
156. Starship Troopers (1959) by Robert A. Heinlein
157. The Stranger (1989) by Albert Camus
158. The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway
159. A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens
160. The Telltale Heart and Other Writings (1843)by Edgar Allan Poe
161. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston
162. Things Fall Apart (1959) by Chinua Achebe
163. The Three Musketeers (1844) by Alexandre Dumas
164. Titus Groan (1946) by Mervyn Peake
165. To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee
166. To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf
167. Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson
168. The Trial (1925) by Franz Kafka
169. Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller
170. Ubik (1969) by Philip K. Dick
171. Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce
172. Under the Net (1954) by Iris Murdoch
173. Under the Volcano (1947) by Malcolm Lowry
174. War and Peace (1865) by Leo Tolstoy
175. War of the Worlds (1897) by H.G. Wells
176. Watchmen (1986) by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
177. Watership Down (1972) by Richard Adams
178. We Have Always Lived in a Castle (2006) by Shirley Jackson
179. White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo
180. White Teeth (2000) by Zadie Smith
181. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys
182. The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame
183. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1897) by Frank Baum
184. World War Z (2006) by Max Brooks
185. Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Bronte
186. You Can't Go Home Again (1940) by Thomas Wolfe 

Graphic Novels

1. Berlin: City of Stones (2000) by Jason Lutes
2. Blankets (2003) by Craig Thompson
3. Bone (2004) by Jeff Smith
4. The Boulevard of Broken Dreams (2002) by Kim Deitch
5. The Dark Knight Returns (1986) by Frank Miller
6. David Boring (2000) by Daniel Clowes
7. Ed The Happy Clown (1989) by Chester Brown
8. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000) by Chris Ware
9. Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (2003) by Gilbert Hernandez

***Carrie has read

***Lorrie has read

***Sam has read
***Tara has read 

100+ Books to Read Before We Die

This list is a compilation of not only Time Magazine's "ALL TIME 100 Novels" but another list I found and agreed with, though I cannot seem to find it now (I will post it when I pinpoint it). If, in the future, anyone happens upon a list that includes books that are not already included in the list to follow and feels strongly said books should be added to the Master List, feel free to make your case!

I should explain that the idea for such a list came when I was amidst compiling my personal
"Bucket List" or list of things to do before I die. I realized there are several books still sitting patiently inside my current "To Read" queue and that, furthermore, there were maybe one million more I would love to make acquaintance with. If you are like me, hopefully you, too, will take something away from this group - a group dedicated to gradually but consistently chipping away at the evermore ominous mountain of must-reads.