From researching characters from the time of the English Civil War, I came across this great name:

Praise-God Barebone.

He was an English parliamentarian, and kinda goofy looking too. Only a puritan could come up with a name like this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praise-God_Barebone

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.

Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Here's the twist: add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you read 'em for school in the first place.



*Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
*Crime and Punishment
*Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
*The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
*Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey

Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
*American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged

Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
*Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
*The Historian : a novel
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
*Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
*The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
*Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
*Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
*The Catcher in the Rye
*On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

I have an interesting co-worker with, as it turns out, extremely limited knowledge of music. I was listening to Iron Maiden's "State of Mind' album. He asked to hear some. After listening for a few seconds, he commented, "Reminds me of Supertramp." Hahahahaha.

My musical listening activities have varied tremendously the last week. Really got into Bruckner. Listened to the 9th Symphony the other day. Very moving and spiritual. Musicologists have speculated that Bruckner was trying to approximate the sound of the organ in his orchestration. It really shows in this symphony. I could imagine hearing it in a great cathedral and being deeply affected by it.

On the other end of the spectrum, I've also been reacquainting myself with the Ramones, Radiohead and Iron Maiden. IM's Flight if Icarus is fantastic! The lyrics nicely encapsulate the myth. As to the Ramones, well..."Hey, ho, let's go...Blitzkrieg Bop!!"

My week was capped with the nastiest fight I've ever had with a woman. Makes me wonder what we'd be like if we actually ended up dating.

Well, my HMV career #3 is now over. Things heard from customers on my last evening:

1)  Is Mandolin the performer or the instrument?

2)  Who was the famous violinist who played the Stradivarius?

Music selections of the night: 

-  Il Divo. Just had to. I really enjoyed it, for 2 reasons. So many people came and asked me what the "wonderful music" was, and I couldn't stop giggling throughout.

-  Bond. The girls are hot, the music not. People still came to ask what it was. Techie Pet did not, to his credit. Sadly, I was unable to provide him with his musical request. Sorry.

This is why I joined the Facebook group, "I worked in retail and have lost faith in humanity".

Went out tonight with a lovely Japanese lady for beers at Steamworks.

You're The Guns of August!
by Barbara Tuchman
Though you're interested in war, what you really want to know is what causes war. You're out to expose imperialism, militarism, and nationalism for what they really are. Nevertheless, you're always living in the past and have a hard time dealing with what's going on today. You're also far more focused on Europe than anywhere else in the world. A fitting motto for you might be "Guns do kill, but so can diplomats."
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.