Holy Toledo! Is it ever cold here. If you’re not in the middle part of the US, you’re probably tired of hearing about our COLD weather. My car said it was -15 degrees F tonight when I was on my way home from my book group. I even took a quilt in to work today so that I could bring it out to my car at the end of the day to buffer me from the cold car seats. (My butt-warmer thingy is broken — poor me.) I’m sure Karen is thinking what a wimp I am — her temps have been WAY lower than ours.
Speaking of Karen….looky what arrived in the mail today.
I ordered that cute little snowman and book from Farmhouse Woolens. I couldn’t help it, my hand slipped. It’s too cold to do anything outside, so a little internet shopping accidentally happened. I had another accident too.
Aren’t they pretty? I ordered these Darla fabrics from Fresh Squeezed Fabrics. They’re so soft and yummy, I can’t wait to do something with them. And before you ask…no, I do not know what I’m doing with them. I told you it was an accident and I couldn’t help myself. Randi kept showing such pretty pictures of projects she’s made with these fabrics and she just wore me down. I told her she’s like my kids. They just keep showing me something they want until I finally give in just to get them to shut up! Not that I want Randi to shut up — Keep showing your beautiful Darla creations Randi — I love the inspiration.
Anyway, both ladies have impeccable (and FAST) service and it was very exciting to find these packages in the mail tonight. It made things all warm and happy in the house. Thanks for your great service ladies!
Ok, if you’re not a book person, you can be excused! For the rest of you, I’m sure you’ve seen this 100 books meme. I’ve been wanting to do it, so I thought I’d give it a try. And just for the record, I think this is a really goofy list. I have no idea where it came from, but it’s missing many excellent books (for example, Beloved by Toni Morrison and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (two in my top 10), not to mention many classics. Plus, there are a LOT of questionable books IMHO, like The DaVinci Code and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Ok books… but in the top 100???
So, here’s the deal:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you started but did not finish.
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (I’m using an asterisk, ’cause wordpress doesn’t have an auto-underline tool and it’s too late to be manually entering the .html code.
And I’m throwing in **, for books that I want to read:
1. Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen (can you believe it? For Shame!) **
2. The Lord of the Rings — JRR Tolkein
3. Jane Eyre — Charlotte Bronte **
4. Harry Potter Series — JK Rowling **
5. To Kill a Mocking Bird — Harper Lee
6. The Bible (This seems odd to be on this list — you don’t read the Bible like a novel, you read and study it.)
7. Wuthering Heights — Emily Bronte *
8. Nineteen Eighty Four — George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials — Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations — Charles Dickens **
11. Little Women — Louisa M. Alcott *
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles — Thomas Hardy *
13. Catch 22 — Joseph Heller **
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare **
15. Rebecca — Daphne Du Maurier *
16. The Hobbit — JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong — Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye — JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife — Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch — George Eliot **
21. Gone With the Wind — Margaret Mitchel
22. The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald *
23. Bleak House — Charles Dickens **
24. War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy **
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited — Evelyn Waugh **
27. Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoyevsky **
28. Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows — Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy **
32. David Copperfield — Charles Dickens **
33. Chronicles of Narnia — CS Lewis
34. Emma — Jan Austen **
35. Persuasion — Jane Austen **
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe — CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner — Khaled Hosseini **
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin — Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha — Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh — AA Milne *
41. Animal Farm — George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code — Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel Garcia Marquez (aka One Hundred Years of Hell)
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany — John Irving *
45. The Woman in White — Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables — LM Montgomery
47. Far From the Madding Crowd — Thomas Hardy **
48. The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies — Wiliam Golding **
50. Atonement — Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi — Yan Martel
52. Dune — Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm — Stella Biggons
54. Sense and Sensibility — Jane Austen (clearly, I have an Austen hole — it must be fixed!) **
55. A Suitable Boy — Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind — Carlow Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities — Charles Dickens **
58. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime — Mark Haddon **
60. Love in the Time of Cholera — Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men — John Steinbeck **
62. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History — Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones — Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas
66. On the Road — Jack Kerouac **
67. Jude the Obscure — Tomas Hardy **
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary — Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children — Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick — Herman Melville **
71. Oliver Twist — Charles Dickens
72. Dracula — Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden — Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes from a Small Island — Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses — James Joyce **
76. The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath **
77. Swallows and Amazons — Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal — Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair — William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession — AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas — David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple — Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day — Kazui Ishiguro **
85. Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance — Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web — EB White
88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven — Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection — Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince — Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory — Iain Banks
94. Watership Down — Richard Adams **
95. A Confederacy of Dunces — John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice — Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers — Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet — William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables — Victor Hugo
I know I’ve seen other versions of this meme around. If I were to re-do this one, here are a few from the Modern Libraries Top 100 Lists that I would add (if I haven’t read them, I want to):
1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce
2. Atlas Shrugged — Ayn Rand *
3. To The Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf
4. An American Tragedy — Theodore Dreiser
5. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter — Carson McCullers
6. Slaughterhouse Five — Kurt Vonnegut
7. Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison
8. Tender is the Night — F. Scott Fitzgerald
9. As I Lay Dying — William Faulkner
10. The Sun Also Rises — Ernest Hemingway
11. The Age of Innocence — Edith Warton
12. Death Comes for the Archbishop –Willa Cather
13. A Farewell to Arms — Ernest Hemingway
14. Angle of Repose — Wallace Stegner *
15. Sophie’s Choice –William Styron
16. My Antonia — Willa Cather
17. Farenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury
18. Beloved — Toni Morrison *
Personally, I think they should have made the list from our book group list (which will be updated soon) — it’s lots more fun haha. As you can see, I have a LOT more reading to do (and that includes a TON of blogs that I’m behind on). Have a good weekend everybody!
XOXO,
Anna
Oh! and p.s. — I’m SO excited that so many of you have signed up for the signature block swap — go look at Connie’s sidebar to see who signed up!
The fabrics are truly scrumptious, now what to do with them. I am impressed with what you have read and/or are going to read. I have stacks of books in my to do pile, kind of like fabric… LOL! Currently reading some fiction and awaiting the release of a couple of new ones by my favorite authors.
I would be embarrassed to show what I’ve read…as much as I read I’ve missed a lot of these books. I do have to recommend The Time Traveller’s Wife, though….a wonderful, but heart wrenching, book.
Can you believe in the coldest weather of the year I am off to a lodge in the middle of the woods??
Okay, let’s talk about why you haven’t read any Jane Austen!!!!! This is a travesty beyond belief. :-D
And could you please not post pictures of anything with the Darla fabric until I get mine? DH is self employed and we are (not so) patiently waiting for more money to come in before I can buy them to make the girl’s quilts. wah!
No, really, I can’t wait to see what you do with them. They are so loverly!
Hi Anna,
well, yes, you’re mean too! I have avoided eye contact with the DARLA fabric but your post came quite unexpected & now I have to really fight ;O).
As to the book list – there are many books (or authors) that should have been mentioned. For example Milan Kundera (Immortality, The Unbearable Lightness of Being)…and I think Khaled Hosseinis second novel, A thousand splendid suns, is even better than his first one…just finished it yesterday…
When I read the list I’m somehow ashamed that I don’t even know some of the books {and I call myself a bookworm…}.
Bye for now,
Julia
I have been resisting buying any fabric from Randi until I’ve cleaned out that messy sewing room of mine and know exactly what I have in my stash. I’m always drooling over her fabric.
Wow, what a book list….I won’t even tell you how many I’ve read on it. I see Ray Bradbury on the list, I met him once…I went to school with his nephew from K-12th grade and was in class with him many years, but his uncle Ray came to our class to speak when we were in about 5th or 6th grade. It was totally cool.
First of all, no Pride & Prejudice??? Holy cow woman, you need to fix that!! : ) I always like reading these lists on people’s blog, it’s interesting to see the combination of books they’ve read and liked. I’ve been eyeing some of Randi’s fabrics too – she’s got a ton of great stuff.
(maybe today little bunny will arrive?? I hope he’s not freezing in his box!!)
Yummy happy bouncy fabrics Anna! Can’t wait to see what you do with them! Lucy x
I’m sorry, but did you say -15 degrees? That is not right. You DESERVE that sunshiney fabric for dealing with that kind of weather. Holy holy.
Phew! At least you weren’t tellin’ me to shut up! I was gonna cry right here on my keyboard! ;)
I have tried to read Toni Morrison, including Beloved, but I JUST CAN’T! Her books seem so odd to me. I consider myself to be a reasonably good reader, although I do add a bit of fluff now and then, so I don’t know what my hang up is. I know I will try her again and maybe then it will click!
Just snuggle under a quilt and start on those books! That’ll keep you warm. :)
I have been wanting Darla forever!! I was hoping to find it at Road but there was almost nothing new there :( I totally copied your asterisk idea :) I’ve been trying to do that meme for long time but couldn’t underline lol!!!
Anna…great list of books (that you’ve read). I love the needle punch, but have never done any. How do you use your finished projects? As embellishment for…? Since I’m a stone’s throw from you…well, in Michigan anyway, the below freezing temps are here, too. And I say, enough already. Have a super day.
Amy
Hi Anna. I am with you about this weather except my butt-warmer is still working. LOL. As Amy said, enough already.
I enjoyed the book list and may have to do this one myself. It is a good reference list to see what I’ve been missing.
Oooooooo… I love Goulash Soup!! I’ve never made it, but we lived in Germany and ate it frequently. We also had it in Salzburg and Vienna. I wasn’t very adventuresome as I was pregnant for 9 of our months there and gagged on most things… but not Goulash Soup. Thanks for the memory!
My daughter Wendy is in DC for the festivities and I just heard it all start on TV so I must go take a peek to see what she’s experiencing. She has invites for parties and a ball (California,
I believe). My girls never sit still. Kristin leaves Thurs. for a little skiing in CO. I’m just glad to be home.
Warm hugs…
Joni
Oh my goodness. How long did it take you to type out all those books?? I’m impressed.
I love the Darla fabrics. I’ve started that heart quilt with the first line and am including those in with it. I love them!!! Never ordered from that site. I’m going to check it out. Hubby thanks you. And Karen is fabbo in the shipping dept of her site. Love her too!!!! Miss Farmhouse as we call her.
Stay warm.
OMG, I wish it was cold here… but not that cold!
Love your fabrics that sneaked into your house. I also love the sound of your Goulash soup, & wish we had it cold, so I could make some!
There is so much talent out there in the blogosphere isn’t there!!
Love your fabric.
I have an award for you on my blog.
Love your new fabric – so bright and cheerful!
I’m cold and it’s +3 degrees here! I’m a wimp!
What a shame about your terrible accidents ;-)
I had a very similar one at the weekend with two lovely crochet books on Amazon – and they arrived today!!
xxx
Now that I am into sewing, I can truly appreciate those lovely fabrics. Oh my! such cheerful colors, I see visions of lovely patchwork runners lining the center of my table…I am only allowed to buy fabric once a month otherwise things would get out of control like with my yarns.
What a fun post – makes me want to go Internet shopping, take a trip to the library, and start in with a needle and thread, all at once! Wishing you lots of warm weather soon.
It’s cold here too! No coffee for me on Saturday because our water/pipes had frozen. :( But wonderful husband had it flowing by lunchtime!
Phew. Blog is fixed. I LOVE the Darla fabrics and those are on the top of my “To Buy” list. Just have to decide what I’m going to use it for and how much to get! But it will become a lap quilt for ME. I just love it.
As far as the book reading, I have read some of the books on the list. A good handful. Looks like I have to get reading again.
Your pics are darling. Looks like you had a great time together.
I tried to post after you put this post up, and it wasn’t all there, and I couldn’t post to tell you. I was going to email you, and plumb forgot.
Anyhoo, I’m glad it’s fixed. Cute, cute patterns and the fabric is very pretty – I can’t wait to see what you create with your purchases.
I have read many of the books on the list, but so many more I haven’t read. I love “My Antonia” – it may be time to read it again. Thank you for a reminder of books I have wanted to read. Right now, I’m going to catch up on my blog reading.