Paul's posts with tag: shakespeare
Nicked from Mary Ann.The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.2) Italicize those you intend to read.3) Underline the books you LOVE.4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;)
Disclaimer: It's the Great White Canon, I'm afraid.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (Read twice within three or four months?)2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I really should, shouldn't I?)3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (If only to get the references in other works, like The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde.)4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Only until The Order of the Phoenix. I'll finish the series eventually. Just don't feel compelled to read it now.)5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee6. The Bible - Most of it, at least. Back in school, I had to memorize a verse each day and a chapter each month. And of course it was the King James version, which I still prefer over later translations.7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (This was required in my English 22 class--Survey of English Literature II--but I never got to finish it. So gloomy.)8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (Also required in the aforementioned English 22 class. We were only required to read half the book, but I ended up reading the whole thing. Let's all learn Newspeak!)9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (I might, but not sure. Anyone care to convince me to read the series?)10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (It's one of those I-really-should-read-that-one books.)11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (Maybe not this one.)12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (I could use some more convincing here.)13. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller (It was funny the first time I read it. I tried reading it again, and I wanted to cry. Why?)14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (Only thirteen out of the thirty-six, so far. Still whittling away at it. Reading old Will reveals some unexpected finds, like early uses of the words 'punk' and 'the dickens'.)15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (I have Rej to impose Du Maurier on me.)16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (Will read this with the same sense of obligation as with the trilogy.)17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (Read three or four times. Once in my teens, which led to my dropping out of Manila Science High School, and the other two or three times in my twenties with less catastrophic results. Still love it.)19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (What's this?)20. Middlemarch - George Eliot (Still open to convincing.)21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Or should I just watch the movie?)22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Read this twice. Am a huge Fitzgerald fan, of course.)23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens (Now if you change this to Oliver Twist, at least then I can say I've read one of his works.)24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (Do I have to? Hindi ba puwedeng Nabokov na lang?)25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (I should read this, but it'll probably inspire more enthusiasm than the other should-reads.)26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (Until I read Adrian Mole, I also thought Waugh was a woman. *blush*)27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Do I have to? Part II.)28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (Do I have to? Part III.)29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (Really, these Russians.)32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (Yeah, yeah.)34. Emma - Jane Austen (Read this twice within the same six-month period.)35. Persuasion - Jane Austen (My favorite of the Austen novels. Also read twice within the first half of this year.)36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Redundandant!)37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (Mmmaybe.)39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (Saw the movie. If the book's anything like it, or any James Clavell novel, then it's an orientalist piece of snot.)40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne41. Animal Farm - George Orwell (But maybe not.)42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Stopped after the first few chapters out of sheer boredom. Might resume it, just to know the extend of how it sucks.)43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Read twice. Might read again a few more times.)44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (Who?)46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (Perhaps, unless there are other Atwood books people think are better.)49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding (Not sure about this one.)50. Atonement - Ian McEwan 51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (Perhaps.)52. Dune - Frank Herbert (Read the first book four times, the second book twice, and the entire six-book series once. Frank Herbert rocks my socks.)53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (Part of my Austen craze this year.)55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (If this reads like one of those Russian novels, maybe not.)56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (Very interested in this one. Joon, how's A Spot of Bother?)60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I tried. I failed.)61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (Read twice: once in high school, once in college. OK lang.)62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (Soon.)63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (The grandfather of the telenovela. Read this one chapter a day to simulate the experience.)66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac (Eight bleeding months to finish this one. Love snippets of it, but reading this book is like mining. You have to hammer away to find the gems. You'd have better luck with The Subterraneans. It's more compact.)67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (Saw the movie. Will the book depress me as much? It starred Christopher Eccleston, yes?)68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding (Hahaha! No one could've written a better homage to Pride and Prejudice.)69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (I did enjoy The Satanic Verses and Haroun and the Sea of Stories.)70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Nah, I'm good. Whales are an endangered species, man. Besides, I get enough Dick references in Star Trek.)71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (Required reading in high school. Liked it enough to finish it.)72. Dracula - Bram Stoker 73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75. Ulysses - James Joyce (For me, this is like the Kilimanjaro of readers. And Finnegans Wake is the Everest.)76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (Quillfolk, any votes of confidence?)77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome78. Germinal - Emile Zola79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray80. Possession - AS Byatt (Just finished rereading it. Brilliant postmodern shit.)81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (My mom does love the book.)86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry87. Charlotte's Web - E.B. White (One of my first book-report books, back in elementary! Don't you just love Templeton? And imagine my surprise, in college, at being required to have a copy of Elements of Style by the same author!)88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (Talaga?)89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Fine. I thought I was OK with Poe's Dupin stories.)90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (Maybe not. I read somewhere that Conrad only believed in using English in a literal sense. As in ayaw niya ng metaphor and other figures of speech. Ang corny, diba?)92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (Required in high school and college. The kind of book you have to read when you're young.)93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 94. Watership Down - Richard Adams95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (Loved the novel, hated the movie. Stupid Disney. Unfortunately, only this Monte Cristo, and The Man in the Iron Mask are available in English translation. Apparently, there were more novels with the musketeers.)98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Redundant nanaman. Read it three, four times, though.)99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame na lang.)
Since Ron's going to spend the night here tonight, I decided to ready the extra-strong harness and the studded paddles he likes so much. I also made sure to give my room a good cleaning, since we're going to get dirty later on.Seriously, though. :-PRon's allergic to cat hair, and the felines have been spending a lot of time in my room lately. I figured anaphylactic shock wouldn't really work for Ron. Bleh, taking mind out of gutter now.Better to put it on the shelf, with all the books there. Mine, borrowed, given, forgotten at the house, read, unread, what have you. And I'm too lazy to use Shelfari or LibraryThing as yet. Here, on top of my White Wolf gaming books, are my Shakespeare, The Shakespeare Book of Lists which the housemates gave me for Christmas, Nigella Lawson's cookbook Forever Summer (the show of which I've seen several times over), Reitch's Austen compilation, and Jon's Into the Wild.To the left is a copy of The Last Tycoon, from one of my English professors, who gave it to me because I was (and am) such a Fitzgerald fan; The Faber Book of Modern Verse, which Aldus has had since our college days; the two Bridget Jones novels, which I bought when I had that hankering for Jane Austen; Jon's Kitchen Confidential, V for Vendetta from my lovely mother; Reitch's Books of Magic: Summonings; a TPB I got at National Cubao because it was cheap; and Tobie's copy of Adventure!. The stack on the right has Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Oneal's pasalubong from Vegas; The Alchemist (overrated? haven't read it yet), The Screwtape Letters, and The English Patient, all from my mom; Reitch's The Satanic Verses, which I bought a couple of years ago and still need to pay for; my fiction instructor's Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories; Czar's novel, Warpath; Simulacra & Simulation, which Oneal got Rej during the heyday of The Matrix; Maryann's Orlando, and a copy of Myth and Meaning which I think I found lying around the house somewhere; and there's The Sibley Guide which the housemates got as a birthday present in 2006. In the middle is the Tan twins' yoga book by Tara Fraser. Then there's the e.e. cummings compilation I got last week; my copy of Northanger Abbey; Mayo's The Portable Jack Kerouac; Baudolino, again from my mom; The Crack-up, which Aldus gave me (I'm a Fitzgerald fan to the point that people give me copies of his books :D); my fiction professor's Art Objects; a Norton Anthology I dug up at one of the Book Sales here; Vocalese by Aldus Santos (!); and Rant, a birthday gift from Burt. And down below: Lost in a Good Book, a Jasper Fforde novel I found last week, part of a series my friends Lorie and Mylee love and I haven't begun (sorry guys!); the Grammar and Style Guide I use for my English training, and was published by the same guys who produced the World Book Encyclopedia; The Chicago Manual of Style, also from my mother who loves me that much; The Politically Incorrect Guide (PIG) to English and American Literature, which Rej got in California after the Rose Parade; and on the left, the Roseros' copy of 70 Favorite Stories for Young Readers, which I also had growing up. And that violet bundle in between books? Dante's Tarot cards (which I use), wrapped in Tita Ruby's scarf.Of course, this is just the abridged, enumerative version. Maraming kuwento bawat libro diyan.
I'd always wanted to get my Shakespeare reading back on track, so last week I started to read The Merry Wives of Windsor, mostly for its protagonist, the amoral Falstaff. So there I was, ambling along the iambic pentameter, when lo! Old Will Shakespeare gave me a little surprise: "This punk is one of Cupid's couriers." (Pistol, Act 2, Scene 2) This discovery merited noting down in my (seldom-used) journal and some Googling. According to Answers.com, the word means: - A young person, especially a member of a rebellious counterculture group;
- An inexperienced young man.
It goes on further to say that it's an archaic term for "prostitute" (I read elsewhere it might mean to derive from "punctured"), with an additional note: "Origin unknown." Yahoo! Answers, on the other hand, had another story regarding its origin. The question was posed to several users, which garnered a few proposed answers, and were in turn voted on by the community as to what the most viable answer was. Yahoo! Answers pegs the word's earliest usage to be in 1618 in Virginia, a word referring to overcooked corn, one who had Native American origins. Too bad none of the Yahoo! Answers people bothered to check their Shakespeare, because lo! The Merry Wives of Windsor is generally believed to have been written for the Garter Feast on April 23, 1597 (St. George's Day). This was the same day when George Carey, the patron of Shakespeare's company, was installed as a Knight of the Garter.* This same order also figures prominently in the play. If there's any doubt as to the veracity of this supposition, a corrupt text of the play was first printed in 1602, and the play was performed for James I in November 1604,* which predates them colonists in Virginia by at least 14 years. Now I'm wondering if it's more appropriate if a "broken sonnet" hailed (hahaha, pun!) from a punk band. Another discovery: "I cannot tell what the dickens his name is my husband had him of." (Mistress Page, Act 3, Scene 2) I'd always thought the phrase found its origins in Charles Dickens, who was born in 1812, but apparently, the phrase's origin is this play! Amazing. More on the play as I progress. Happy Valentine's Day, all! __________ * William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Oxford University Press, 1988.
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