Gloryfades.org

Today was a day I could have used a statutory holiday. Unfortunately, I work for the federal government so I didn’t get the day off.

Last night I tossed and turned in bed until 3 in the morning. It was the same old stuff that usually plagues me in the middle of the night - worrying about things that are absolutely out of my control! I can honestly say that I haven’t had a night like that in awhile, though. I don’t miss them.

The nice thing about working on the holiday was the roads - they were crystal clear. It took me fifteen minutes to get to work this morning. It usually takes me forty. The same thing happened in the afternoon, it was quite nice. I got back into my audio book as well; I had avoided it for about a week simply because I was booked out. I needed a rest from the written word, but now I’m back into it. By the end of this month I’ll have two of my twelve scratched off, which is right on schedule.

I’m tempted to watch another movie tonight but I think I’ll fall asleep in this chair if I attempt it!

In 2007 I took up the To-Be-Read Challenge but ended miserably. I completed two out of the twelve that I set myself to read. How embarrassing! Part of the reason was that I actually forgot about the challenge until October. That’s right, I actually forgot about it entirely until G. mentioned it. However, I still managed to read a whopping 30 books in total last year, which is still quite a few considering I spent the first part of the year in school.

This year, I’ve decided to go with a theme with the books I’ve chosen. I’ve been interested in The Great American Novel ever since I read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. So, in honor of that great book, I have picked 12 novels that have been written by American authors in the past two centuries:

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
2. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
3. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
4. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
5. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
6. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
7. Animal Farm by George Orwell
8. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
9. Beloved by Toni Morrison
10. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
11. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
12. Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

I’ve tried to put an equal mix of male and female writers but it’s hard to be even. It looks like a pretty good list, though. Some of these have been on my master list for years and years.

Alternates include what I didn’t read last year, that is:

1. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
3. Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart
4. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler
5. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
6. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
7. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
8. I’m Not The New Me by Wendy McClure
9. The True Account by Howard Frank Mosher
10. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

You know, I’ve been trying to read The Name of the Rose for about two months but someone keeps requesting it from the library and I have to keep taking it back. Maybe I should just buy it?