The List

Jen posted this on her blog and I thought it would be interesting with all the time Peace Corps has left me with to read and being a Lit minor how I would fare up. Keep in mind BBC believes most people have only read 6 of the 100. Check out where you stand too!


Look at the list and put an 'x' next those you have read.

x 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
x 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
x 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
x 6 The Bible
x 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
x 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
x 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
x 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
x 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
x 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
x 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
x 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
x 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
x 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
x 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
x 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
x 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
x 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (Does the pop-up version count?)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
x 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
x 34 Emma - Jane Austen
x 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
x 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
x 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
x 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
x 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
x 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
x 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
x 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
x 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
x 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
x 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
x 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
x 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
x 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
x 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Naboko
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
x 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
x 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
x 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
x 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
x 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
x 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
x 80 Possession - AS Byatt
x 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
x 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
x 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
x 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
x 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


I have some reading goals now! Wohoo!

The Blogger Looses Her Way

As many have noticed my blog has been somewhat lacking entries for some time. I cannot tell a lie. I have no excuse. It may be for a while there that I was a little unhappy or later, a little two busy to write. After that I was so overwhelmed with all the writing I would have to catch up that I didn’t write anything which was also not very productive. I have there for decided to write a top ten list of my last two months in Honduras.

1.) I attended the REF Meeting in December which is one of the few Peace Corps support groups available. REF stands for Religious Equality Forum. We got together to discuss different points of view and also how to field questions in our sites where sometimes religious plurality is not seen as positive or interesting. The highlight of the whole meeting was when a tree fell onto our cabin and a board smacked me in the head. I proceeded to run outside and yell at the Hondurans standing around, “What the hell?” Yes, I yelled at them in English. I was in shock, give me a break.

2.) December was crazy. Not much work but lots of cultural learning. For example: I participated in the gift exchange at the municipality, “Amigos Secretos.” And this is how it went. The guy who chose me went first. They forced him to stand up and say something nice about me and then we took a picture together with the present. After that, he handed me the present and everyone watched me sit down. And then I thought to myself, “Do I open it now or are we going to wait until everyone has a gift?” My thoughts were interrupted by one of the ladies telling me it was my turn to give my gift. So this continued around the table, some nice words, the obligatory picture with said gift, and more passing. THEN, we all put our gifts aside to eat! Everyone took there presents home later to open up in secret. I have to tell you, as a selfish gift giver who likes to see the surprise, and displayed (sometimes fake) appreciation, it was a let down. However, I definitely learned a lot about Honduran culture and the act of gift giving.

3.) I threw a Christmas party for the youth group I am working with. Lots of silliness but overall, a great time. Especially since they kept insisting that they wanted to dance but actually meant that they wanted to watch me dance!

4.) Went to Roatan with the folks and my Aunt Cathy for a wonderful, beautiful, restful Caribbean vacation. I can’t really give justice to the great time had by all or the beauty of the island and its’ coral reef.

5.) In six months I have graduated from trainee, to baby volunteer, to full-fledged, full privilege having volunteer. I can now travel for personal reasons and visit my super, awesome volunteer buddies around Honduras.

6.) To celebrate, I visited Mark and Lauren (a married MuniD – Youth (wish I was MuniD) couple) in their new home in La Esperanza. La Esperanza is one of the highest points in Honduras and definitely one of the coldest. I wore a hat and many layers all weekend (even inside the house). La Esperanza has a really large Lenca population and really gives the town a different feeling then anywhere else I have been in Honduras.

7.) I watched inauguration coverage from my couch in Spanish. It was a really great day in American History and its amazing how more American I feel since joining the Peace Corps.

8.) I have recently become obsessed with people who post the “25 random things about Me” on Facebook. Its amazing hat you learn and the list is starting to feel a little random…..

9.) Last week was our yearly Reconnect meeting in which all the Municipal Development volunteers get together for a three day conference to share what we are working on and to hear updates from Peace Corps Staff. It was a great week. I love seeing all my friends together and meeting some new people. I was inspired by all the support we have been able to offer here in Honduras and I feel ready to tackle some new projects!

10.) I am officially moving into my own house this week! I hope to take some pictures and post them soon. It’s got three bedrooms, a living room, and a large kitchen. It’s more space then I know what to do with and hope that I can make it homey and loved.

That’s it for now, signing off until next time (which will surely come faster than the last time)!

B