1. Truth is found in a variety of ways
2. Words used well are beautiful
3. The number of stories is endless
4. Creativity comes in many forms
5. A simple phrase can paint a whole scene
6. A simple phrase can give deep insight into a person/character
7. No country or culture has a monopoly on beauty, creativity or truth
8. I love starting new stories

I’m sure there is more but those are just things off the top of my head. I could fill many blogs if I went into detail on each book I’ve read and what has spoken to me and what I’ve gotten out of them…some other day.

What are you reading? what are you learning?

So far this year i’ve read Grimms Fairy Tales, Frankenstein, The Jungle and The Scarlett Letter. Quite a combination. I’m getting ready to start The Man in the Iron Mask to bring a bit of swashbuckling adventure into my morbid list.

What are you reading?

I’m taking a bit of a break from the classics to read a few other books. I’ve been working on From Good to Great by Jim Collins for a bit. It’s good but a bit businessy for me so I’m trying to pull out as much as I can.

There are some great business principles but I’m in the process of getting my brain to think in that way. It does break the main points down at the end of each chapter which is nice.

Next on the radar will be Stuff Christians Like by blogger/tweeter Jon Acuff. I’m really looking forward to this one but scared it will go by way too quick.

Soon Scrooge rehearsals will start & I’ll be immersed in all things Christmas Carol. Last year, I got the audio book & it was brilliant to have someone read it to you with the accent & different voices.

What are you reading?

In my quest to conquer the classics, i have consumed yet another one. I finished Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens a couple of nights ago and have a bit of time to think it over.

It was a harder read than i thought it would be. It takes me a couple of chapters to get into the groove of each book, especially those written in a different century and this one took a while to get that groove. It’s also much darker than i thought it would be. When i think of Oliver Twist, i think of the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Oliver, Please Sir may i have some more…you know, the musical. But the book had lots of deceit and seediness and death and revenge.

Dickens is excellent at capturing a character or situation with a well-turned sentence. He also used a lot of words for some situations. I’ve got some more Dickens on my list, so we’ll see how those go.

Next up: i’ve kinda started The Art of War by Sun Tzu. It’s pretty interesting so far. I’m thinking something much lighter when i’m done with that.

What are you reading?

I finished Dracula by Bram Stoker - not at all what I expected. I thot it would be all Bela Legosi creepy but there was some great character development & plot. It wasn’t as “scary” as I thot it would be. There were moments of intensity but nothing causing nightmares. It wasn’t my favorite book so far, but it wasn’t bad.

Next up - Oliver Twist by Dickens. I’m looking forward to this one. I like his characters & this one has some great ones. It may be time for some more Twain after that or venturing in to some I haven’t read before…

1984 by George Orwell
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Aeneid by Vergil
Aesop’s Fables by Aesop
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Ambassadors by Henry James
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Arabian Nights
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Other Writings by James Weldon Johnson
The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction by Kate Chopin
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beowulf translated by John McNamara
Best Short Stories by O. Henry
The Bible
Billy Budd and the Piazza Tales by Herman Melville
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry by Christine De Pizan
The Bostonians by Henry James
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Bulfinch’s Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch
The Call of the Wild and WhiteFang by Jack London
Candide by Voltaire
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Catch-22 by Heller
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
A Christmas Carol, The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Collected Oscar Wilde
The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
Common Sense and Other Writings by Thomas Paine
The Communist Manifesto and Other Writings by Karl Marx
The Constitution of the United States
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Volumes I & II by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Confessions by St. Augustine of Hippo
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
Daisy Miller and Washington Square by Henry James
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Dracula by Bram Stoker
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Emma by Jane Austin
The Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit
Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essential Dialogues of Plato by Plato
Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe
Ethan Frome and Selected Stories by Edith Wharton
Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
Far from Madding Drowd by Thomas Hardy
A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway
Founding America: Documents form the Revolution to the Bill of Rights edited by Jack N. Rakove
The Four Feathers by A.E.W. Mason
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Germinal by Emile Zola
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Great American Short Stories: From Hawthorne to Hemingway edited by Corinne Demas
Great Escapes: Four Slave Narratives Intro and Notes by Daphne A. Brooks
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Grimm’s Fairy Tales by  Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction by Joseph Conrad
The Histories by Herodotus
The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The House of the Dead and Poor Folk by Fyofor Dostoevsky
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Howards End by E.M. Forster
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Iliad by Homer
The Importance of Being Earnest and Four Other Plays by Oscar Wilde
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Writings by Washington Irving
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Writings about New York by Stephen Crane
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Man and Superman and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw
The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Metamorphoses by Ovid
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Moll Fanders by Daniel Defoe
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
My Antonia by Willa Cather
My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
Narrative of Sojourner Truth
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
Native Son by R. Wright
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky
o Pioneers! by Willa Cather
The Odyssey by Homer
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Paradiso by Dante Alighieri
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
The Phantom of the OPera by Gaston Leroux
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
Poetics and Rhetoric by Aristotle
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners by James Joyce
Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Prince and Other Writings by Niccolo Machiavelli
The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain
Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri
Pygmalion and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw
The Red and the Black (Scarlet and Black) by Stendhal
The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Short Fiction by Stephen Crane
Republic by Plato
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Rise of Silas Lapham by William D. Howells
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Selected Stories of O. Henry by O. Henry
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
A Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Silas Marner and Two Short Stories by George Eliot
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner
The Strange Case of Dr. Jeekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Stranger by Albert Camus
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
The Swiss Family Robinson
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
The Tenet of Windfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitgerald
Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Three Theban Plays by Sophocles
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Time Machineand The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Tristan Shandy by Sterne
The Turn of the Screw, The Aspern Papers and Two Stories by Henry James
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Two Years before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana
Ulysses by James Joyce
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Utopia by Thomas More
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
The Virginian by Owen Wister
The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
Ward No. 6 and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Winesburg, Ohio by Anderson
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

what are you reading?

A year ago Christmas, i came across a list of classic books everyone should read. I did a bit of research (and have added to it since) and came up with 4 pages of classics to read.

I’m proud to say i just finished reading my 21st book since end of December ‘09! i just finished The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway and was it a sad, shallow story. The writing was fantastic which made it that much more sad. I think it’s pretty much Gatsby in Europe.

Anyway, 21 plus a few others i’ve read in the past down and a bunch more to go…i’m reading Dracula by Bram Stoker right now…sweet dreams!

My reading list - slowly working thru it. just finished Call of the Wild by Jack London - now i’m ready to go sledding thru the frozen tundra! maybe i’ll start by harvesting my yard before it rains.

Just finished Robinson Crusoe. Pretty good, very detailed & a long read, especially on an itouch. Ol’ Rob was quite an industrious guy. I kept thinking “would I be able to survive if I was shipwrecked?”

It really puts things into perspective on what’s important & what we take for granted. Nice spiritual lessons throughout on God’s providence & being thankful.

I’d recommend it.

Next up - The Call of the Wild by Jack London

One of my goals for this year to to read 25 classics. I found a couple of lists of classic books you should read before you die and compiled it into a grand list of around 200 titles to read. Everything from Dickens to Twain to Dostoevdky to Emerson to Dumas…oh the list goes on and on. Maybe i’ll start a little book review with a few thots on what i learned and how these “older” books contains lessons for us today.

i downloaded a few apps on my iTouch so i always have books with me which makes it really handy while waiting anywhere. Two apps contained a list of classics and another is a reader with links on how to get books to read - very cool

My update for mid-March is:

6 completed so far in 2010:

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain - i love his style. He says so much in a few words. Twain is an amazing author.
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - was this guy drugged? crazy book. can’t wait to read Thru the Looking Glass
• The Death of Ivan Ilych - Leo Tolstoy - SAD, sad story. wow!
• The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald - set in the 20’s but so appropriate for any time period - the cult of personality and being “somebody”
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum - great story. wish i could’ve read it without pics from the movie in my head
• Ten Little Indians - Agatha Christie - Christie is the best mystery writer.

I’ve read a few others already:

• 1984 - George Orwell
• Animal Farm - George Orwell
• Lord of the Flies - William Golding
• Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
• snippets of others that i will read in full

I’m currently reading Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe - great so far. since the language & style are old, you really have to concentrate when reading. he’s a very thorough writer.

I’ll probably try to find a list of Christian classics once i’m done with these and start all over. I LOVE to learn!

What are you reading?