Are you well-rounded? (What does that mean?)

A friend sent this list to me on Facebook and I found it very interesting how much I had NOT read!  Of course, this list is just someone's personal opinion as to what constitutes a well-rounded reader and if I had been making the list, I would have definitely taken out some titles and added in a few others.  Still, it's interesting to see where you fall on someone else's reading list.

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.  You are supposed to copy the list and bold or italicize the ones you have read.

I haven't read nearly as many of these as I would have thought, but I have read tons that are not on here.  Does that count?

Next on my list: "The Bell Jar" #76.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible 

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 Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 

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 - Jane 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

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - 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 - William Golding  

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos 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 Night-time - 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 - Thomas 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 - Kazu 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

Annie Dillard

So....I'm just now reading Annie Dillard.

Where have I been?  Why have I not read her before?

Presently reading "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek."

I have only just begun, so am not in a place to totally recommend it.

But her writing is mesmerizing.

Have you read her?

2011 Book List

Here is where we will share books for our 2011 reading list.

My startup pile includes:

The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me by Bruce Feiler

Faith Begins at Home by Mark Holmen

Gilead: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson (I have started this book twice and can't get past the first chapter. I'm going to give it one more shot.)

On Earth as It Is in heaven: How the Lord's Prayer Teaches Us to Pray by Warren Wiersbe

Raising the Dead: A Doctor Encounters the Miraculous by Chauncey W. Crandall

The Lineage of Grace series by Francine Roberts  (It has 5 volumes)

Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory by William Forstchen

Operation Daybreak by David Norris

Thou Shalt Keep Them: A Biblical Theology of the Perfect Preservation of Scripture by Kent Brandenburg, Editor

Every Prayer in the Bible: Discover God's Patters for Effective Prayer by Larry Richards

How To Read a Book by J. Adler Mortimer and Charles Van Doren

Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp

Instructing a Child's Heart by Tedd and Margy Tripp

The Contemplative Pastor by Eugene Peterson

As you can see, if I am going to read 52 books next year, I have 38 more to go.  So please post your comments with any suggestions.  (Or, if I'm going to be like Rick Warren, I have 349 more to go for 2011!)

reading and such

I am beginning my annual "season of reflection" which will last throughout the month of December.  I do not travel during December and try to keep any speaking to a minimum.  It is my time to draw close to the fire and reflect on the good and bad parts of the year that is ending and make resolutions of what to do better in the year that is ahead.

My resolution for 2010 was to make it "The Year of the Book."  Although I'm an avid book lover, various circumstances had forced reading to the back burner on way too many occasions for several years.  I felt stifled and felt as if a part of me was dying and knew that I had to return to a steady diet of books in order to see past the sameness of the every day.  I resolved to try to average one book per week in 2010.

So, my reflection has revealed that I actually averaged one book for about every 10 days.  I was very pleased about that until I read a tweet from Rick Warren yesterday that said:  "In January, I'm starting a Christian Leader's Library webcast.  For much of my life I've read a book a day."

A BOOK A DAY!!!

What kind of book?  Dr. Seuss or a 300-pager?  Retention rate?  Who pastors the church?  When does he find time to write?  Has his wife seen him lately?  Does he eat?  Does he sleep?  That may be it.  I could read a book a day if I didn't have to sleep.  Is he a speed reader?  A genius?

That just floored me.  Boggled my mind.  Did he mean a book a week?

Well, I will definitely be listening to his library webcast.

In the meantime, check out the Book Club label to get my thoughts on some of the books I have read this year and to add yours to the 2011 list.

A book a day.  How in the world...?

happy thanksgiving!

We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing;

He chastens and hastens His will to make known;

The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing,

Sing praises to His name: He forgets not his own.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,

Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine,

So from the beginning the fight we were winning;

Thou, Lord, wast at our side; all glory be Thine!

We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant!

And pray that thou still our defender wilt be.

Let thy congregation escape tribulation;

Thy Name be ever praised! O Lord make us free!

Amen.

Traditional Thanksgiving Hymn

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Shock Book of the Week! By Michael Pollan.

The choices, preparation, and eating of food has a spiritual connection.  God spent a lot of time discussing food in the Old Testament and much of his earthly ministry and miracles were associated with food.  The Power of the Table has not been adequately addressed in the lives 21st century Christians.

For several years, I have been reading and studying, trying to analyze information vs. propaganda, and have become increasingly convinced that the Western diet is not only killing us, it is hindering our effectiveness in the Kingdom because of the vast amount of energy we must use to fight physical conditions which should not be.  After years spent under the care of doctors trying to find the cause of several physical malfunctions in my own body and ultimately being miraculously healed in March, 2009, I have made it my goal that I will do all in my power to keep my body as healthy as possible in order to fulfill what God has called me to do and to be.

I am also responsible for making sure my family is presented with healthy choices so that their bodies can remain healthy.

Michael Pollan has made more sense about the Western diet and some practical things we can do to cope with the food choices we have in America than anybody I have read in a long time.  He is not radical nor  unreasonable.  This book doesn't leave me with a helpless, hopeless feeling that it's just too hard for me to make right choices because of my lifestyle, my lack of time, and my location.

This book not only increased my knowledge, it left me with hope and some tools to make a difference in what I deem to be a very spiritual area of the lives of me and my family.

Is yo momma rich?

A couple of weeks ago, a group from our church went to the 'hood and set up a snow-cone stand and a grill and gave out hot dogs and hamburgers, cold water, snow-cones, and conversation to anyone who wanted any of it.  My son was among the group and came home telling me about his conversation with some of the kids who came around.  He said one little boy was really cute.  Their conversation went something like this:

Boy: Hey. Whacha doin?

Bradyn:  I'm texting my mom.  I'm telling her about when I'll be home.

Boy:  Oh. She give you that phone?

Bradyn:  Yeah, she did.

Boy:  Oh. You play football?

Bradyn:  No.  But I like it.  I play guitar.

Boy:  Oh.  You gotta guitar?

Bradyn:  Yes.  I have three guitars.  Do you play guitar?

Boy:  No.  But I like it.  Yo momma buy you dem guitars?

Bradyn:  Yes.  Do you go to school?

Boy:  Yeah.  I go to Huddle.  Where you go?

Bradyn:  Well, I'm homeschooled.

Boy:  Homeschooled. What's that mean?  Yo momma teach you?

Bradyn:  Yeah.  Some of it.  Then another lady teaches me some stuff, too.

Boy:  Another lady teaches just you?  Nobody else?

Bradyn:  Yes.

Boy:  Is yo mamma rich?

Bradyn (laughing):  Oh, no!  Not even a little bit!  It's a little complicated.  But we aren't rich at all.

Boy:  Sounds to me like you be rich.

I have heard sermons about it all of my life.  Dogging the rich, young ruler who valued his wealth more than following Christ.

Sitting in judgment from the pew, from behind pulpits, from a disconnected, third-party stance--he wears the black cape, rides the black horse, has the foggy shroud--he is the bad man, the antagonist of the story line--he is the object of the tsk, tsk clucking of our self-righteous tongues as we think that if it would have been US, we would have had eternal perspective and would NEVER have made that choice.

The sermon ends and we are asked to respond to what we have heard, and we kneel or go forward, we cry, we ask God to please show us what to do, we vow within ourselves to give more in the missions offering, we briefly, fleetingly wonder what it would be like to live overseas or to work with the homeless or to be known as the friend of the 'hood, but know that is IMPOSSIBLE and that makes us a little sad. 

We may go one step further and consider leaving our homes, our families, our security--but only for a few minutes because we rationalize that it wouldn't be fair to our families, to our children, to our parents. It's not realistic...and that makes us a little sad, but we can do all we can from here and then we tell someone to save us a place at the restaurant, we'll be there in a few minutes.

Besides that, WE aren't rich.  The guy in the Bible was rich.  Really rich.  That sure isn't me. We know tons of people who have more than we do.  THEY are the ones who are rich.  We don't even think about the people in our churches in Asia or Africa who pray for their bowl of rice to come every morning.  Whose teeth are rotting because of the bad water they drink and whose children die young because of no medical care. We have no concept of a grass or tin roof that totally disintegrates when it rains.

My only answer to that is that if you are reading this on your computer or iPhone or iPad, you're rich. Don't compare yourself to Mr. Fancy Neighborhood.  Compare yourself to some of the ones I know who are praying for rice and shoes and some medicine right this minute.  You're rich.

Matthew 19.  He asked Jesus what to do. Jesus told him to sell what he had, give it to the poor, and follow Him.  He considered it, maybe prayed a few minutes, thought about his family, his home, his security...and was so very sad because it just wasn't realistic for him.  He really, really wanted to respond to the GO!  But the odds were stacked against him and that made him so sad.  So, he slowly walked away.

I know exactly what happened.  Because I watch people walk away with him every week.  I have walked with him, too.

I am the rich, young ruler.

Are you?