quote of however-long-I-feel-like:

Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars.

Suppose we have.

Then all I can say is that, in any case, the made - up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones.

-Puddleglum, The Silver Chair

Monday, December 28, 2009

pokemon.

yeah. i still play it. what about it?




anyway, i'd just like to say that when starting a new game all of the introductory stuff is so annoying.



really? are you going to spend five minutes teaching me how to catch a pokemon? playa please. i've been catching them all since i was nine.



anyway, if you don't know, i'm a nerd. and i love emulators. and the fact that it's necessary to teach your pokemon FLASH to get past the first fifth of the game is annoying.

also, remember to save your game before you turn it off.


 *bangs head on wall*

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

title unknown

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street, 
and being the noise.


Drink all your passion, 
and be a disgrace.


Close both eyes 
to see with the other eye.


Open your hands,
if you want to be held.


Sit down in this circle.


Quit acting like a wolf, and feel 
the shepherd's love filling you.


At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.


Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.


You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come. 


Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!


Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?


Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.


Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

-Rumi

excerpts from songs that i'm diggin right now:


I have lost myself again

Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found,
Yeah I think that I might break
Lost myself again and I feel unsafe

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
and needy







I fell in love again
all things go, all things go
drove to Chicago
all things know, all things know
we sold our clothes to the state
I don't mind, I don't mind
I made a lot of mistakes
in my mind, in my mind 



if I was crying
in the van, with my friend
it was for freedom
from myself and from the land
I made a lot of mistakes 




Its 16 miles, to the promise land

and I promise you, I'm doing the best I can

now don't fool yourself

in thinking you're more than a man

cause you'll probably end up dead



so i came inside to be with you
and we talked all night,
about everything we could imagine
cause come the morning i'll be gone
and as our eyes start to close,
i turn to you and i let you know,
that i love you



and me i ran,
i couldnt even look at him,
for fear i'd have to say goodbye
and as i start to leave he grabs me by the shoulder and he tells me,

whats left to lose,
you've done enough
and if you fail well then you fail,
but not to us
cause these last three years,
i know they've been hard
but now it's time to get out of the desert and into the sun
even if it's alone




Then you hang up the phone and feel badly for upsetting things

Crawl back into bed to dream of a time

When your heart was open wide and you love things just because
Like the sick and dying

I can't help but remember James Dean
See we are part of the few who agree
that hey, he lived life fast
but he died.
he died.
he died.

Me, I'm gonna live forever.

Now all the barlights are blinking in time
to Mexican music, it's taunting the pavement
and for the first time,
in a long time,
I feel alive.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

thoughtful thursday.

help.
i have done it again.
i have been here many times before.
hurt myself again today.
and the worst part is there's no one else to blame.

be my friend.
hold me.
wrap me up.
unfold me.
i am small.
and needy.
warm me up.
and breathe me.

ouch. i have lost myself again.
lost myself and i am nowhere to be found.
yeah. i think that i might break.
lost myself again.
and i feel unsafe.

be my friend.
hold me.
wrap me up.
unfold me.
i am small.
and needy.
warm me up.
and breathe me.

be my friend.
hold me.
wrap me up.
unfold me.
i am small.
and needy.
warm me up.
and breathe me.



sia. breathe me.


Monday, December 14, 2009

quotes of the week

while sitting on the counter in the bathroom, jutting his chin out towards the mirror, 7 year old gaebriel states, very seriously,

 "hm. i think i'm growing a beard."



earlier in the day, after splashing a full cup of water on his younger sister, he explains,

 "but mom, i didn't do it on purpose. i just flung my cup at her, and all of a sudden there was a big wave of water coming out."

magical monday






i was talking with a friend about art and creation, and i realized that i don't really ever make anything that is mine. and i want to.



i wish i could make beautiful calligraphy.




That's how you came here, like a star 






without a name.  Move across the night sky


with those anonymous lights.







i wish i could write books, poetry, music, anything.





i wish i could paint.




but i cannot. this is my goal for next year.

to create.


Sunday, December 13, 2009

spotlight sunday

music spotlight:


imogen heap







art spotlight:








Thursday, December 10, 2009

thoughtful thursday

so this is what's on my mind. in the form of mini letters. yes, i did copy other blogs, but whatever.


dear american heritage,
        
     please die. 8 am labs. what was i thinking? thank heaven for the GRE.

dear ucky snow mush,





     please disappear. you're  ruining my shoes, pants, and my knees.

dear five week cough,

     i'm sick of you. you make it hard for me to go to school in the mornings. really, who likes to cough so hard they throw up? not i. and yes, i have busted blood vessels in my throat because of you.

dear fall semester,

    i've actually loved you the entire time. i've been productive, learned so much, and enjoyed myself the most out of all the other semesters (except for the class previously mentioned). i feel like i'm slowly forming a direction with my life.

dear hair,

    there still hasn't been one moment where i've regretted cutting you. even though that little girl in the airport turned to her mom, and while pointing to me said, "mommy, that boy likes to dress like a girl." or when i was in line to get my hot bread from the cougar eat, and the man serving me looks me straight in the eyes and says, "and what can i get for you today, sir?" and despite his reaction of complete shock and disbelief when i corrected him, i still love you. in my opinion, you make me look more feminine. sure, you may be poofy at times, and you might love to get all gnarly when i wake up, but overall, you are my favorite haircut so far. thanks for the good times. (no worries, the parents will learn to love you).

dear arabic,



   i am sad our first semester together is over. also, your alphabet is exceptionally beautiful, and i love writing and writing and writing. you have taught me much in the ways of studying. even though you require so much time, i feel right about you. for some reason, i feel so drawn to the middle east. it interests me so much. maybe because it was so much of the past, and will be so much of the future. maybe because of this story:

 A cabinet minister in Egypt, aware of the common ground shared by Muslims and Latter-day Saints, once remarked to Elder Howard W. Hunter of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles that “if a bridge is ever built between Christianity and Islam it must be built by the Mormon Church.” - link


maybe because i want to be a bridge builder. our class became so much like a family. (of course, because of my faux hawk, i was labelled the family rebel.) i learned about loving. 


dear brother merrill,






    you are my favorite religion teacher, and possibly the best (i've had 5, so i feel this is a valid statement.) thank you for not making everything all nice and fluffy for your students. thank you for telling us straight up, the first day of every semester that, "liars go to hell." it just sets the standard for your class the rest of the semester. thank you for teaching in such a way that i not only feel the spirit in class, but when i'm studying at home as well. some of my favorite quotes:

"moral relativism requires no sacrifice at all, and you can't be saved without sacrifice." (in response to korihor's argument.)

"everything in the universe obeys the laws given unto it, so far as i know of, except man."

"it's more blessed to marry a peacemaker than a model. but it's pretty good if you can get both."

"it's okay to let your light shine, just don't toot your own horn."

"if you don't forgive, you just assumed the role of christ."

"he chose to be alienated from the world, rather than isolated from God." - referring to moroni

"a coincidence is a miracle in which God remains anonymous."

"big miracles are internal, not external."

"The miracle wasn't that the Lehi saw a burning bush, it was that he saw a bush."





anyway, thanks again. 






dear sleep, 





   i'm coming. 


Tuesday, December 8, 2009

wednesday wishes

 so, i found a book list of a friend of mine. now i feel very unread. 








- Abbey, Edward - Desert Solitaire 
- Abe, Kobo - The Woman in the Dunes 
- Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart 
- Adams, Henry - The Education of Henry Adams 
- Addams, Jane - Twenty Years at Hull House 
- Aeschylus - The Oresteia; Prometheus Bound
- Agee, James - A Death in the Family 
- Agee, James and Walker Evans - Let Us Now Praise Famous Men 
- Albee, Edward - Three Tall Women; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 
- Alcott, Louisa May - Little Women 
- Alger, Horatio - Ragged Dick, or Street Life in New York 
- Alighiere, Dante - The Divine Comedy 
- Allende, Isabel - The House of the Spirits; Paula 
- Allison, Dorothy -Bastard Out of Carolina 
- Alvarez, Julia - In the Time of Butterflies 
- Alvarez, Walter - T. Rex and the Crater of Doom 
- Ambrose, Stephen E. - Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West 
- Anderson, Sherwood - Winesburg, Ohio 
- Angelou, Maya - All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 
- Ansay, Manette A. - Sister 
- Aquinas, Thomas - Summa Theologica 
- Aristophanes - The Birds; The Clouds; Lysistrata 
- Aristotle - Ethics (Ethica Nicomahcea) ; Poetics; Politics 
- Arnim, Elizabeth von - Enchanted April 
- Aronson, Marc - Art Attack: A Short Cultural History of the Avant-Garde 
- Asinof, Eliot - Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series 
- Atkin, S. Beth - Voices from the Streets: Young Former Gang Members Tell Their Stories 
- Atwood, Margaret - Alias Grace; Handmaid's Tale 
- Auden, W.H. - Collected Poems; "Musee des Beaux Arts "
- St. Augustine - The Confessions 
- Aurelius, Marcus - Meditations 
- Austen, Jane - Emma; Mansfield Park; Northanger Abbey; Pride and Prejudice; Sense and Sensibility 
- Baker, Russell - Growing Up 
- Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain; The Fire Next Time 
- Balzac, Honore de - Cousin Bette; Eugene Grandet; Pere Goriot 
- Barrie, James M. - Peter Pan 
- Barth, John - The Sot-Weed Factor 
- Barton, Bruce - The Man Nobody Knows 
- Basho, Matsuo - The Narrow Road to the Deep North 
- Baudelaire, Charles - The Flowers of Evil 
- Beard, Charles A. - An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States 
- Beaumont, William - Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion 
- Beck, Martha - Expecting Adam 
- Becker, Ernest - Denial of Death 
- Beckett, Samuel - Endgame; Krapp's Last Tape; Waiting for Godot 
- Bellamy, Edward-Looking Backward 
- Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March; Herzog; Humboldt's Gift; Seize the Day 
- Bernstein, Leonard - Joy of Music; West Side Story 
- Bierce, Ambrose - "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" 
- Blackstone, Harry, Jr. - Blackstone Book of Magic and Illusion 
- Blais, Madeleine - In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle 
- Blake, William - Selected Works; Songs of Innocence and Experience 
- Boccaccio, Giovanni - The Decameron 
- Bodanis, David - Secret Family 
- Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus - The Consolation of Philosophy 
- ten Boom, Corrie - The Hiding Place 
- Boorstin, Jon - Making Movies Work: Thinking Like a Filmmaker 
- Borges, Jorge Luis - Dreamtigers; Ficciones; Labyrinths 
- Boswell, James - Boswell's London Journal: 1762-1763; The Life of Samuel Johnson 
- Boyle, T. Coraghessan - Tortilla Curtain 
- Bradbury, Ray - Dandelion Wine; Fahrenheit 451; The Martian Chronicles 
- Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre 
- Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights 
- Brown, Dee - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee 
- Browning, Elisabeth Barrett - Sonnets from the Portuguese 
- Browning, Robert - The Ring and the Book 
- Brumberg, Joan - Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls 
- Bunyan, John - Pilgrim's Progress 
- Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Sower 
- Butler, Robert N. - Why Survive Being Old in America 
- Butler, Robert Olen - Good Scent from a Strange Mountain 
- Butler, Samuel - The Way of All Flesh 
- Byatt, A.S. - Babel Tower 
- Cain, James M. - The Postman Always Rings Twice 
- Calderon de la Barca, Pedro - Life is a Dream 
- Camus, Albert - The Fall; The Plague; The Rebel; The Stranger 
- Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Game 
- Cardozo, Benjamin - The Nature of the Judicial Process 
- Carnegie, Dale - How to Win Friends and Influence People 
- Carson, Rachel - Silent Spring 
- Carroll, Lewis - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass 
- Cash, Wilbur J. - The Mind of the South 
- Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop; My Antonia; O Pioneers!; "Paul's Case" 
- Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de -   Don Quixote de la Mancha 
- Chang, Iris - Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II 
- Chang, Jung - Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China 
- Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales 
- Cheever, John - "The Enormous Radio"; "The Five-Forty-Eight"; "The Swimmer" 
- Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard; "The Kiss"; The Seagull; The Three Sisters; Uncle Vanya 
- Cheng, Nien - Life and Death in Shanghai 
- Chopin, Kate - The Awakening 
- Christie, Agatha - Mousetrap 
- Cisneros, Sandra - House on Mango Street 
- Claiborne, Craig - The New York Times Cook Book 
- Clark, Kenneth - Civilization 
- Cleary, Beverly - My Own Two Feet: A Memoir 
- Cohen, Leah Hager - Heat Lightning 
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor -   Biographia Literaria; Christabel; "Kubla Khan"; "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"; Writings on Shakespeare 
- Coles, Robert - Children of Crisis 
- Collins, Wilkie - The Moonstone 
- Conroy, Pat - Beach Music 
- Cook, Blanch Wiesen - Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 1 
- Cooke, Mervyn - Chronicle of Jazz 
- Copland, Aaron - What to Listen for in Music 
- Coward, Noel - Blithe Spirit; Private Lives 
- Confucius - The Analects
- Congreve, William - The Way of the World 
- Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness; Lord Jim; Nostromo; "The Secret Sharer" 
- Cooper, James F. - The Deerslayer; The Last of the Mohicans 
- Corneille, Pierre - The Cid 
- Crane, Stephen - "The Blue Hotel"; "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky"; Maggie: A Girl of the Streets; "The Open Boat"; The Red Badge of Courage 
- Cumming, Robert - Annotated Art 
- Cunningham, Michael - Hours 
- Curie, Eve - Madame Curie: A Biography 
- Dana, Richard Henry, Jr. - Two Years Before the Mast 
- Danticat, Edwidge - Breath, Eyes, Memory 
- Darwin, Charles - The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex; The Origin of Species; The Voyage of the Beagle 
- Davis, David Brion - Problem of Slavery in Western Culture 
- Davies, Roberston - What's Bred in the Bone 
- Day, David - Search for King Arthur 
- Defoe, Daniel - Moll Flanders; Robinson Crusoe 
- Descartes, Rene - Discourse on Method 
- Dexter, Pete - Paper boy 
- Diamond, Jared - Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies 
- Dickens, Charles - Bleak House; "A Christmas Carol"; David Copperfield; Great Expectations; Hard Times; Little Dorrit; Nicholas Nickleby; The Old Curiosity Shop; Oliver Twist; Our Mutual Friend; Pickwick Papers; A Tale of Two Cities 
- Dickinson, Emily - Collected Poems 
- Dillard, Annie - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 
- Dineson, Isak - Seven Gothic Tales; Out of Africa 
- Dixon, Thomas - The Clansman 
- Donne, John - "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"; Selected Works 
- Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich - The Brothers Karamazov; Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; Notes from the Underground; The Possessed 
- Dorris, Michael - Broken Cord 
- Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself 
- Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy, Sister Carrie 
- Dryden, John - Absalom and Achitophel 
- DuBois, W.E.B.-The Souls of Black Folk 
- Dubos, Rene Jules - So Human an Animal 
- Durant, Will - Rousseau and Revolution 
- Durrell, Lawrence - The Alexandria Quartet 
- Edelman, Bernard - Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam 
- Edelman, Marion W. - Measure of our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours 
- Eliot, George - Adam Bede; The Mill on the Floss; Middlemarch; Silas Marner 
- Eliot, T.S. - Collected Plays; "Ash Wednesday"; "Four Quartets"; "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"; "The Waste Land" 
- Elkin, Stanley - Mrs. Ted Bliss 
- Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
- Emecheta, Buchi - Bride Price 
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Works 
- Epictetus and Sharon Labell - Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness 
- Erasmus, Desiderius - The Praise of Folly 
- Erikson, Erik H. - Gandhi's Truth 
- Euripides - Alcestis; Andromache; The Bacchae; Electra; Hippolytus; Medea; The Trojan Women; 
- Faludi, Susan - Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women 
- Farmer, Fannie - The Boston Cooking School Cookbook 
- Farrell, James T. - Studs Lonigan 
- Fast, Howard - April Morning 
- Faulkner, William - Absalom, Absalom; As I Lay Dying; Bear; Light in August; Reivers; "A Rose for Emily"; Sanctuary; The Sound and the Fury 
- Feynman, Richard - Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman 
- Fielding, Henry - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 
- Finn, David - How to Look at Sculpture 
- Finney, Jack - Time and Again 
- Firdausi - Shah Nameh 
- Fitzgerald, Edward - The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam 
- Fitzgerald, Francis - Fire in the Lake 
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby; Tender is the Night 
- Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary; A Sentimental Education; "A Simple Heart" 
- Flexner, Abraham - Medical Education in the United States and Canada 
- Ford, Ford Madox - "The Celestial Omnibus"; The Good Soldier 
- Ford, Michael Thomas - Voices of AIDS 
- Ford, Richard - Independence Day 
- Forster, E. M. - "The Eternal Moment"; A Passage to India 
- Fouts, Roger - Next of Kin: What Chimpanzees Have Taught Me about Who We Are 
- Fowles, John - The French Lieutenant's Woman; The Magus 
- Frank, Anne - The Diary of Anne Frank 
- Frankl, Viktor E. - Man's Search for Meaning 
- Frazier, Charles - Cold Mountain 
- Freedman, Samuel G. - Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students, and Their High School 
- Fremon, Celeste - Father Greg & the Homeboys 
- Friedan, Betty - The Feminine Mystique 
- Frost, Robert - Collected Poems 
- Fugard, Athol - Master Harold and the Boys 
- Gage, Nicholas - Eleni 
- Gaines, Ernest - Gathering of Old Men; Lesson before Dying 
- Galbraith, John K. - The Affluent Society 
- Galilei, Galileo - Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems 
- Galsworth, John - The Forsythe Saga 
- Galvin, James - Meadow 
- Gardner, John - Grendel 
- Garfunkel, Trudy - On Wings of Joy: the Story of Ballet 
- Gay, John - The Beggar's Opera 
- Gibbons, Kaye - Charms for the Easy Life; Ellen Foster 
- Gide, Andre - The Counterfeiters 
- Gilmore, Mikal - Shot in the Heart 
- Ginzburg, Eugenia - Within the Whirlwind 
- Glasgow, Ellen - Barren Ground 
- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von -   Faust; The Sorrows of Young Werther 
- Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich - Dead Souls; "The Diary of a Madman"; "The Overcoat" 
- Golberg, Vicki - Power of Photographs: How Photography Changed Our Lives 
- Golding, William - Lord of the Flies 
-Goldsmith, Oliver - She Stoops to Conquer; The Vicar of Wakefield 
- Gombrich, E.H. - Story of Art 
- Gould, Stephen Jay - Mismeasure of a Man 
- Grahame, Kenneth - The Wind in the Willows 
- Grass, Gunter - The Tin Drum 
- Grau, Shirley Ann - Keepers of the House 
- Green, Bill - Water, Ice, and Stone: Science and Memory on the Antarctic Lakes 
- Greene, Melissa - Praying for Sheetrock 
- Guterson, David - East of hte Mountains; Snow Falling on Cedars 
- Hafner, Katie - Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet 
- Haley, Alex - Roots 
- Hamilton, Madison and Jay - The Federalist Papers 
- Hamilton, Edith - Mythology 
- Hamilton, Jane - Book of Ruth 
- Hammett, Dashiell - The Maltese Falcon
- Hamsun, Knut - Growth of the Soil, Hunger 
- Hanff, Helene - 84 Charring Cross Road 
- Hansberry, Lorraine - A Raisin in the Sun 
- Hardy, Thomas - Far from the Madding Crowd; Jude the Obscure; The Mayor of Casterbridge; The Return of the Native; Tess of the D'Urbervilles 
- Harrison, Kathryn - Poison 
- Harte, Bret - "The Luck of Roaring Camp"; "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" 
- Hawking, Stephen - Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to Black Holes 
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter; Selected Tales 
- Heller, Joseph - Catch-22 
- Hellman, Lillian - Little Foxes 
- Helprin, Mark - Memoir from Antproof Case 
- Hemingway, Ernest - "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"; A Farewell to Arms; The Old Man and the Sea; In Our Time; The Sun Also Rises; For Whom the Bell Tolls 
- Henry, O. - "The Gift of the Magi" 
- Herbert, Frank - Dune 
- Herodotus - The Histories 
- Hersey, John - Hiroshima 
- Hesse, Hermann - Demian; Siddartha; Steppenwolf 
- Hijuelos, Oscar - Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love 
- Hobbes, Thomas - Leviathan 
- Hochschild, Adam - King Leopold's Ghost 
- Hockenberry, John - Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence 
- Hofstadter, Douglas - Godel, Escher, Bach 
- Hofstadter, Richard - Anti-Intellectualism in American Life 
- Holldobler, Bert - Ants 
- Holmes, Oliver W. - The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever 
- Homer - The Illiad; The Odyssey 
- Howells, William Dean - The Rise of Silas Lapham 
- Hsun, Lu - Collected Short Stories 
- Hubbell, Sue - Country Year: Living the Questions 
- Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame; Les Miserables 
- Hui-neng - The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch 
- Hume, David - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 
- Humes, Edward - No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court 
- Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World 
- Ibsen, Henrick - A Doll's House; An Enemy of the People; Ghosts; Hedda Gabler; Peer Gynt 
- Irving, Washington - "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"; "Rip Van Winkle" 
- Isherwood, Christopher - The Berlin Stories 
- Jackson, Shirley - "The Lottery" 
- Jacobs, Jane - The Death and Life of Great American Cities 
- James, Henry - The Ambassadors; The Bostonians; Daisy Miller; The Turn of the Screw; Washington Square 
- James, William - four essays from the Meaning of Truth; Pragmatism; The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience 
- Jefferson, Thomas et al. - Basic Documents in American History 
- Jewett, Sarah Orne - The Country of the Pointed Firs 
- Jiang, Ji-Li - Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution 
- Johnson, Charles - Middle Passage 
- Johnson, Samuel - Lives of the Poets; Rasselas 
- Jonas, Gerald - Dancing: The Pleasure, Power, and Art of Movement 
- Jones, K. Maurice - Say It Loud! The Story of Rap Music 
- Jones, Howard M. - O Strange New World 
- Jonson, Ben - The Alchemist; Bartholomew Fair; Volpone 
- Joyce, James - Dubliners; Finnegans Wake; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses 
- Junichiro, Tanizaki - The Makioka Sisters 
- Junger, Sebastian - Perfect Storm 
- Kafka, Franz - The Castle; The Metamorphosis; The Trial 
- Kalidasa - The Cloud Messenger and Sakuntala 
- Kant, Immanuel - Critique of Pure Reason 
- Karnos, David D. - Falling in Love with Wisdom: Philosophers Talk about Their Calling 
- Karr, Mary - Liars' Club 
- Kawabata, Yasunari - The Old Capital 
- Kazantzakis, Nikos - The Last Temptation of Christ, Zorba the Greek 
- Keats, John - "The Eve of St. Agnes"; "Hyperion"; "Ode on a Grecian Urn"; "Ode to a Nightingale" 
- Keller, Helen - Story of My Life 
- Kendall, Elizabeth - Where She Danced 
- Keneally, Thomas - Schindler's List 
- Kennedy, William - Ironweed 
- Kerner, Mary - Barefoot to Balanchine: How to Watch Dance 
- Kerouac, Jack - On the Road 
- Kesey, Ken - One Flew over the Cukoo's Nest 
- Khanga, Yelena - Soul to Soul: A Black Russian-American Family, 1865-1992 
- Khayyam, Omar - The Rubaiyat 
- Kidder, Tracy - Soul of a New Machine 
- Kierkegaard, Soren - Fear and Trembling; The Sickness unto Death 
- King, Laurie R. - Beekeeper's Apprentice, or, on the Segregation of the Queen 
- Kingsolver, Barbara - Poisonwood Bible 
- Kipling, Rudyard - Captains Courageous; Kim; The Jungle Book 
- Kluger, Richard - Ashes to Ashes 
- Knowles, John - A Separate Peace 
- Kolb, Rocky - Blind Watchers of the Sky: The People and Ideas that Shaped Our View of the Universe 
- Kosinski, Jerzy - Painted Bird 
- Kotlowitz, Alex - Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death, and America's Dilemma 
- Kozol, Jonathan - Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools 
- Krakauer, Jon - Into Thin Air 
- Kuan-chung, Luo - The Romance of the Three Kingdoms 
- Kuhn, Thomas - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 
- Kushner, Tony - Angels in America; Perestroika 
- Kyd, Thomas - The Spanish Tragedy 
- Lagerkvist, Par - Barabbas 
- Lampedusa, Guiseppe di - The Leopard 
- Lao-tzu - Tao Te Ching 
- Larson, Jonathan - Rent 
- Lawrence, D.H. - Lady Chatterly's Lover; "The Prussian Officer"; "The Rocking-Horse Winner"; Sons and Lovers; Women in Love 
- Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird 
- LeGuin, Ursula - Left Hand of Darkness 
- L'Engle, Madeleine - Two Part Invention 
- Lessing, Doris - The Golden Notebook; The Good Terrorist 
- Levi, Primo - Periodic Table 
- Lewis, Meriwether and William Clark -   History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark 
- Lewis, Sinclair - Arrowsmith; Babbitt, Main Street 
- Locke, John - Second Treatise on Government 
- London, Jack - The Call of the Wild; The Sea Wolf 
- Longfellow, Henry W. - The Song of Hiawatha 
- Lord Byron - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; Don Juan; Manfred 
- Lowell, Robert - For the Union Dead 
- Lowry, Malcolm - Under the Volcano 
- Lucas, J. Anthony - Common Ground 
- Lucretius - On the Nature of Things 
- Lurie, Alison - Foreign Affairs 
- Lynd, Robert - Middletown 
- McBride, James - Color of Water: A Black man's Tribute to His White Mother 
- McCarthy, Cormac - All the Pretty Horses; Blood Meridian 
- McCloud, Scott - Understanding Comics 
- McCourt, Frank - Angela's Ashes 
- McCullers, Carson - The Ballad of the Sad Café; The Member of the Wedding 
- McCullough, David G. - Truman 
- Machiavelli, Niccolo - The Prince 
- McKinley, Robin - Beauty 
- McMurtry, Larry - Lonesome Dove 
- McPhee, John - Annals of the Former World; In Suspect Terrain 
- McPherson, James - Elbow Room 
- Mahan, Alfred T. - The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783 
- Maharidge, Dale - And Their Children after Them 
- Mailer, Norman - Armies of the Night; Executioner's Song 
- Malamud, Bernard - The Assistant; The Fixer; The Natural 
- Malan, Rian - My Traitor's Heart 
- Malcolm X - Autobiography of Malcolm X 
- Mallon, Thomas - Henry and Clara 
- Malory, Thomas, Sir - Le Morte d'Arthur 
- Malraux, Andre - Man's Fate 
- Manchester, William - Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill 
- Mann, Horace - Reports 
- Mann, Thomas - Death in Venice; The Magic Mountain 
- Markandaya, Kamala - Nectar in a Sieve 
- Marlowe, Christopher - Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine the Great 
- Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude 
- Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels -   The Communist Manifesto 
- Mason, Bobbi Ann - In Country 
- Massie, Robert K. - Nicholas and Alexandra 
- Mathabane, Mark - Kaffir Boy 
- Matthiessen, Peter - Killing Mr. Watson 
- Maugham, W. Somerset - Of Human Bondage 
- Maurier, Daphne du - Rebecca 
- Mehta, Ved - Sound-Shadows of the New World 
- Melville, Herman - "Bartelby the Scrivener"; Billy Budd, Foretopman; Mobey Dick 
- Mencius - The Book of Mencius 
- Mencken, H.L. - Prejudices 
- Metalious, Grace - Peyton Place 
- Mill, John Stuart - On Liberty; The Subjection of Women 
- Miller, Arthur - The Crucible; Death of a Salesman 
- Miller, Henry - Tropic of Capricorn 
- Millhauser, Stephen - Martin Dressler 
- Milton, John - Areopagitica; Lycidas; On the Morning of Christ's Nativity; Paradise Lost; Paradise Regained; Samson Agonistes; Sonnets 
- Mishima, Yukio - Spring Snow 
- Moliere - The Misanthrope; Tartuffe 
- Momaday, N. Scott - House Made of Dawn 
- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de -   Essays 
- Moody, Ann - Coming of Age in Missisippi 
- Mora, Pat - House of Houses 
- More, Thomas, Sir - Utopia 
- Mori, Kyoko - Shizuko's Daughter 
- Morrison, Toni - Beloved 
- Muhammad - The Koran 
- Murasaki, Lady - The Tale of Genji 
- Murray, Albert - Stomping the Blues 
- Myrdal, Gunnar - An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy 
- Nabokov, Vladimir - Lolita; Memory; Pale Fire; Pnin; "Signs and Symbols"; Speak 
- Narayan, R.K. - The English Teacher; The Vendor of Sweets 
- Nietsche, Friedrich Wilhelm - Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals; Thus Spake Zarathustra; other works 
- Nordstrom, Ursula - Dear Genius 
- O'Brien, Tim - Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction 
- O'Conner, Flannery - "A Good Man is Hard to Find" "Everything that Rises Must Converge" 
- O'Connor - Edge of Sadness 
- O'Gorman, James F. - ABC of Architecture 
- O'Hara, John - Appointment in Samarra 
- O'Neill, Eugene - Anna Christie; Desire Under the Elms; The Iceman Cometh; Long Day's Journey into Night; Mourning Becomes Electra; Strange Interlude 
- O'Toole, John K. - Confederacy of Dunces 
- Oats, Joyce Carol - We Were the Mulvaney's   
- Occiogrosso, Peter - Joy of Sects: A Spirit Guide to the World's Religious Traditions 
- Orwell, George - 1984; Animal Farm; Burmese Days 
- Ovid - The Metamorphoses 
- Paine, Thomas - Common Sense, Addressed to the Inhabitants of America; Rights of Man 
- Pascal, Blaise - Pensees 
- Passos, John Dos - U.S.A. 
- Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago 
- Paton, Alan - Cry, the Beloved Country 
- Paulos, John Allen - Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and   Its Consequences 
- Penn, W.S. - Telling of the World: Native American Stories and Art 
- Petroski, Henry - Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing 
- Phillips, Jayne Anne - Shelter 
- Pipher, Mary - Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolsecent Girls 
- Pirandello, Luigi - Six Characters in Search of an Author 
- Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar 
- Plato - The Dialogues of Plato; The Republic 
- Plutarch - The Lives of the Noble Romans 
- Poe, Edgar Allan - "The Cask of Amontillado"; "The Fall of the House of Usher"; "Ligeia"; "The Masque of the Red Death"; "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"; "The Pit and the Pendulum"; "The Purloined Letter"; "The Tell-Tale Heart
- Pope, Alexander - "The Dunciad"; "Essay on Man"; "The Rape of the Lock" 
- Porter, Katherine Anne - Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter; Pale Horse, Pale Rider; Ship of fools 
- Post, Emily - Etiquette: the Blue Book of Social Usage 
- Potok, Chaim - Chosen 
- Pound, Ezra - The Cantos 
- Power, Susan - Grass Dancer 
- Proulx, E. Annie - Accordion Crimes; Shipping News 
- Proust, Marcel - Remembrance of Things Past 
- Pushkin, Alexander - Eugene Onegin 
- Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49; Gravity's Rainbow; Mason & Dixon 
- Quindlen, Anna - One True Thing 
- Rabelais, Francois - Gargantua and Pantagruel 
- Racine, Jean Baptiste -   Andromahce; Phedra 
- Radcliffe, Ann, Mrs. - The Mysteries of Udolpho 
- Rand, Ayn - Atlas Shrugged 
- Ratushinskaya, Irina - Grey is the Color of Hope 
- Rawlings, Marjorie - Cross Creek 
- Real, Terrence - I Don't Want to Talk about It 
- Reed, John - Ten Days that Shook the World 
- Regis, Ed - Virus Ground Zero: Stalking the Killer Viruses with the Centers for Disease Control 
- Remarque, Reich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front 
- Remnick, David - Lenin's Tomb 
- Rhodes, Richard - Making of the Atomic Bomb 
- Richardson, Samuel - Clarissa; Pamela 
- Riesman, David - The Lonely Crowd 
- Rilke, Ranier Maria - Sonnets to Orpheus 
- Robertson, James I. - Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend 
- Robinson, Marilynne - Housekeeping 
- Rodriguez, Luis - Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. 
- Rodriguez, Richard - Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez 
- Rosenberg, Tina - Haunted Land 
- Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac 
- Roth, Philip - American Pastoral 
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques - The Confessions 
- Rushdie, Salman - Moor's Last Sigh 
- Rybczynski, Witold - Most Beautiful House in the World 
- Sacks, Oliver - A Leg to Stand on; The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat 
- Sagan, Carl - Dragons of Eden 
- Saki-"The Open Window" 
- Salinger, J.D. - Catcher in the Rye; "For Esme-With Love and Squalor"; Franny and Zooey; "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" 
- Sappho-"Ode to Aphrodite" 
- Saroyan, William - "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" 
- Sartre, Jean-Paul - Nausea; No Exit; "The Wall" 
- Schorske, Carl E. - Fin de Siecle Vienna 
- Schumacher, Julie - Body is Water 
- SeiShonagon - The Pillow-Book 
- Shaara, Michael - Killer Angels 
- Shaffer, Peter - Equus 
- Shakespeare, William - All's Well that Ends Well; Antony and Cleopatra; As You Like It; The Comedy of Errors; Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; Henry the Fourth, Part One; Henry the Fourth, Par Two; Henry the Fifth; Julius Caesar; King Lear; Macbeth; Measure for Measure; The Merchant of Venice; A Midsummer Night's Dream; Much Ado about Nothing; Othello; Richard The Second; Richard the Third; Romeo and Juliet; Sonnets; The Taming of the Shrew; the Tempest; Twelfth Night; The Winter's Tale 
- Shaw, George Bernard - Candida; Major Barbara; Man and Superman; Pygmalion; Saint Joan 
- Shaw, Irwin - "The Eighty-Yard Run" 
- Sheehan, Neil - Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam 
- Sheehan, Susan - Is There No Place on Earth for Me 
- Shelley, Mary Godwin - Frankenstein 
- Shelley, Percy Bysshe - "Adonais"; "Ozymandias"; "Prometheus Unbound" 
- Sherman, Robert - Complete Idiot's Guide to Music 
- Shields, Carol - Stone Diaries 
- Shipler, David K. - Arab and Jew 
- Sholokov, Mikhail - The Silent Don 
- Simon, David - Comer: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood 
- Sinclair, April - Coffee Will Make You Black 
- Sinclair, Upton - The Jungle 
- Singer, Chirstopher - African Exodus 
- Singh, Simon - Fermat's Enigma 
- Smiley, Jane - Thousand Acres 
- Smith, Joseph - The Book of Mormon 
- Smith, Scott B. - Simple Plan 
- Sobel, Dava - Longitude 
- Solzhenitsyn, Aleksander - Cancer Ward; The First Circle; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich 
- Sophocles - Antigone; Oedipus at Colonus; Oedipus Rex (Oedipus Tyrannus) 
- Soseki, Natsume - Kokoro 
- Spark, Muriel - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 
- Spenser, Edmund - The Faerie Queene 
- Spiegelman, Art - Maus and Maus II 
- Spinoza, Benedictus de - Ethics 
- Spock, Benjamin, M.D. - The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care 
- Stafford, Jean - Collected Stories
- Starr, Paul - Social Transformation of American Medicine 
- Steele, Shelby - Content of Our Character 
- Steffens, Lincoln - The Shame of the Cities 
- Stegner, Wallace - Angle of Repose 
- Steinbeck, John - East of Eden; The Grapes of Wrath; Of Mice and Men; The Red Pony 
- Stendhal-The Charterhouse of Parma; The Red and the Black 
- Sterne, Laurence - Tristram Shandy 
- Stevenson, Robert L. - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Kidnapped; Treasure Island 
- Stoker, Bram - Dracula 
- Stoppard, Tom - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead 
- Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin 
- Strickland, Carol - Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History 
- Strindberg, August - Miss Julie 
- Styron, William - Confessions of Nat Turner; Sophie's Choice 
- Su-ma Ch'ien - Records of the Grand Historian 
- Sun-tzu - The Art of War 
- Swanwick, Michael - Jack Faust 
- Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels; "A Modest Proposal" 
- Synge, John Millington - The Playboy of the Western World 
- Tannen, Deborah - You Just Don't Understand 
- Taylor, Frederick W. - The Principles of Scientific Management 
- Taylor, Peter - Summons to Memphis 
- Teale, Edwin Way - Wandering Through Winter 
- Tennyson, Alfred, Lord - The Idylls of the King; "In Memoriam" 
- Terkel, Studs - Good War: An Oral History of World War II 
- Thackeray, William Makepeace -   Vanity Fair 
- Thomas, Dylan - Under Milk Wood 
- Thomas, Lewis - Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher 
- Thoreau, Henry David - Civil Disobedience; Walden 
- Thornton, Yvonne - Ditchdigger's Daughter 
- Thucydides - The History of the Peloponnesian War 
- Tocqueville, Alexis de - Democracy in America 
- Toland, John - Rising Sun 
- Tolkein, J.R.R. - The Lord of the Rings 
- Tolstoy, Leo Nikolayevich - Anna Karenina; The Death of Ivan Ilyich; War and Peace 
- Troloppe, Anthony - Autobiography; Barchester Towers; The Eustace Diamonds; The Last Chronocle of Barset; The Warden; The Way We Live Now 
- Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in - The Dream of the Red Chamber 
- Tuchman, Barbara - Guns of August; Sitwell and the American Experience in China 
- Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich - Fathers and Sons 
- Turner, Frederick J. - The Significance of the Frontier in American History 
- Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court; The Prince and the Pauper 
- Tyler, Anne - Breathing Lessons; Ladder of Years 
- Uchida, Yoshiko - Picture Bride 
- Undset, Sigrid - Kristin Lavransdatter 
- Updike, John - The Centaur; Rabbit at Rest; Rabbit is Rich 
- Valmiki (attr.) - The Ramayana 
- Veblen, Thorstein - The Theory of the Leisure Class 
- Verne, Jules - Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea 
- Virgil - The Aeneid 
- Voltaire - Candide 
- Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. - Cat's Cradle; Slaughterhouse Five 
- Vyasa (attr.) - The Mahabharata 
- Walker, Alice - The Color Purple 
- Warner, William W. - Beautiful Swimmers 
- Warren, Robert Penn - All the King's Men 
- Watson, James D. - Double Helix 
- Watson, Larry - Montana 1948 
- Waugh, Evelyn - Brideshead Revisited; A Handful of Dust
- Webb, Mary - Precious Bane 
- Weems, Mason L. - The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington 
- Weiner, Jonathan - Beak of the Finch 
- Wells, H.G. - The Time Machine; The War of the Worlds 
- Welty, Eudora - Optimist's Daughter 
- Wharton, Edith - The Age of Innocence; The Custom of the Country; Ethan Frome; The House of Mirth 
- White, Bailey - Mama makes Up Her Mind, and Other Dangers of Southern Living 
- White, T.H. - The Once and Future King 
- White, Theodore H. - Making of the President 1960 
- Whiteley, Opal - Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow 
- Whitman, Walt - A Backward Glance O'er Travelled Roads; Democratic Vistas; Leaves of Grass; Preface to the First Issue of Leaves of Grass; Selected Poems 
- Wiesel, Elie - Night 
- Wilde, Oscar - The Importance of Being Earnest; Lady Windermere's Fan; The Picture of Dorian Gray 
- Wilder, Thornton - Our Town 
- Williams, Brooke - Halflives: Reconciling Work and Wildness 
- Williams, Juan - Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 
- Williams, Tennessee - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; The Glass Menagerie; A Streetcar Named Desire 
- Williams, Terry T. - Refuge 
- Williams, William C. - "In the American Grain"; "Paterson"; "Pictures from the Breughel" 
- Wills, Garry - Lincoln at Gettysburg 
- Wilson, August - Fences 
- Wilson, Colin - The Outsider 
- Wilson, Edward O. - On Human nature 
- Wolfe, Thomas - Look Homeward Angel; You Can't Go Home Again 
- Wolff, Tobias - This Boy's Life 
- Wolstonecraft, Mary - A Vindication of the Rights of Women 
- Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse; Mrs. Dalloway; Orlando; The Waves 
- Wordsworth, William - "Lines: Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"; "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"; Preface to Lyrical Ballads; The Prelude; 
- Wright, Richard - Black Boy; Native Son 
- Wu Ch'eng-em (attr.) - Journey to the West 
- Wycherley, William - The Country Wife 
- Yasunari, Kawabata - Beauty and Sadness 
- Yeats, W.B. - Autobiography; Collected Plays; "Easter 1916"; "Leda and the Swan"; "Sailing to Byzantium"; "The Wild Swans at Coole" 
- Yergen, Daniel - Prize 
- Yolen, Jane - Briar Rose; Favorite Folktales from around the World 
- Yukio, Mishima - Confessions of a Mask; The Temple of the Golden Pavillion 
- Zinsser, Hans - Rats, Lice and History 
- Zola, Emile - Germinal 
- Anonymous/Unknown - Beowulf; The Bhagavad Gita; The Bible; The Epic of Gilgamesh; Everyman; Pearl; The Plum in the Golden Vase; The Thousand and One Nights; The Wanderer 




what i've read, i've crossed off.....
.....
yeah. i have a long way to go.