Avid Reader, or Maybe Just Pretending...

Another one of those fun little memes from the Interwebs. A lot of these I've read parts of, but I won't bold them out until I've finished them...

1. The Bible (King James Version recommended)
2. Gilgamesh, Anonymous
3. Analects, by Confucius
4. The Iliad, by Homer
5. The Odyssey, by Homer
6. The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides
7. Aesop’s Fables
8. Oedipus, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus, by Sophocles
9. The Orestia, by Aeschylus
10. The Republic, by Plato
11. The Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle
12. Histories of Herodotus
13. Hortensius, by Cicero
14. The Aeneid, by Virgil
15. The Metamorphoses, by Ovid
16. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
17. The Confessions of St. Augustine
18. The Consolation of Philosophy, by Boethius
19. On Loving God, by Bernard of Clairvaux
20. The Mind’s Road to God, by Bonaventure
21. Didascalicon, by Hugh of St. Victor
22. The Summa Theologica (selections are okay), by Aquinas
23. Beowulf, Anonymous
24. The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
25. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, by the Pearl Poet
26. The Cloud of Unknowing, Anonymous
27. The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
28. The Fairie Queen, by Edmund Spencer
29. The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli
30. Utopia, by Thomas More
31. Four Great Tragedies (Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, & Lear), by Shakespeare
32. Henriad Tetrology (Richard II, 1-2 Henry IV, & Henry V), by Shakespeare
33. Four Great Comedies (Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night, & The Tempest), by Shakespeare
34. Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin
35. The Temple, by George Herbert
36. Paradise Lost, by John Milton
37. Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan
38. Tartuffe, by Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
39. Groundwork of a Metaphysic of Morals, by Immanuel Kant
40. Pensees, by Blaise Pascal
41. Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift
42. Essay on Man, by Alexander Pope
43. Candide, by Voltaire
44. Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe
45. The Federalist Papers, by various authors
46. The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution Independence Day is coming, cue up 1776 and Gettysburg!
47. The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
48. Lyrical Ballads (2nd ed.), by Wordsworth and Coleridge
49. Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft
50. A Practical View of Christianity, by William Wilberforce
51. Faust, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
52. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
53. Grimm’s Fairy Tales
54. Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville
55. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
56. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
57. Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
58. Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
59. Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
60. Middlemarch, by George Eliot
61. Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope
62. Narrative of the Life of Fred D., an American Slave, by Frederick Douglass
63. In Memoriam, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
64. The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
65. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, by Edgar Allan Poe
66. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens
67. Unspoken Sermons, by George MacDonald
68. The Idea of a University, by John Henry Newman
69. The Brothers Karamazov, by Fydor Dostoyevsky
70. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
71. Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
72. Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
73. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
74. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
75. Genealogy of Morals, by Friedrich Nietzsche
76. The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles
77. The Cherry Orchard, by Anton Chekhov
78. Rerum Novarum, by Pope Leo XIII
79. Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
80. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
81. Howards End, by E.M. Forster
82. Civilization and Its Discontents, by Sigmund Freud
83. Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton
84. Fear and Trembling, by Soren Kierkegaard
85. Four Quartets, by T. S. Eliot
86. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
87. The Plague, by Albert Camus
88. Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett
89. Deus Caritas Est, by Pope John Paul II
90. The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien
91. Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller
92. The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
93. The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis
94. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
95. 1984, by George Orwell
96. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
97. The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
98. Silence, by Endo Shusaku
99. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
100. Complete Short Stories, by Flannery O’Connor
101. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Waterson

Only read 7 completely? I feel like a horrible person...though now that I have this I'll have a nice long list of things to look for audio books of at the library.

Smut for the Masses!

One day I'll be a published author...one day...

Me: what would you do if I became a published author of smut?
Julibean: I really couldn't care less
Julibean: I think it's a little silly
Julibean: but whatever
Julibean: can I pose for the covers?
Julibean: lol
Me: okay, just plain old trashy fiction
Me: hahaha
Me: no, I'm thinking I'd rather just have plain covers with bright colors
Julibean: that's no fun
Me: so you wouldn't feel awkward about reading them in public
Julibean: you've got to hook them in with the cleavage
Me: HAHAHA
Me: but Fabio doesn't do cover art anymore!
Julibean: oh that's too bad

Chasing Windmills

I have an impossible dream.

Perhaps not impossible but definitely improbable.

I want to be a published author. Despite my ramblings and awful syntax here at Persnickety Penny I do have a way with words, I always have. I love to write things. Poems, short stories, haiku, novellas, novels, even a children's picture book!

They all sit in my hard drive mocking me. I guess my main issue is fear. What if someone reads something I've worked so hard on and hates it. They turn around and tell me I am a horrible writer and all I can do is believe them?

Awhile back I wrote (for realz) a children's book. My dad has been pushing me and hinting that I should get it published. Maybe this holiday season I should hunker down and actually illustrate it properly and then send letters out come the new year to see if I can get it published sometime in 2011.

Other than that thrilling picture book I typically just write trashy romance novels, you know, the ones I love to read. But I'm still hesitant. Even though characters are made up there's still a lot of personal things I put into each and every story. I suppose I'll just have to get over myself and just do it.

So I guess I should have put this on my 101 things list. It has been a dream of mine for a long time but it got pushed to the wayside when other things in my life became more important. I guess I really only thought about it because the amazingly wonderful Winona over at Daddy Likey is getting published. Granted she's already a writer and actually does it for a living and I am but a lowly wannabe but maybe, just maybe her exciting news was the spark I needed to light the fire under my ass.

Plus how sweet would it be if on a job application I could write that I was a published author...pretty sweet I say.

Review: The Last Rake in London

This wonderful Harlequin Historical was tucked in my sister's Easter basket and she passed it on to me when she was done enjoying it.

Nicola Cornick's The Last Rake in London was definitely a good mix of interesting characters and a fun plot-line. Jack Kestrel, the rake to out rake any rake, mistakenly thinks night club owner Sally Bowes is the vicious trollop blackmailing his uncle. That vicious trollop is actually her ridiculously childish and annoying sister Connie who attempts to weasle her way into Jack's wealthy family when she isn't working nights as a hostess at Sally's club.

Jack immediately wants to take Sally and winds up later falling in love with her despite his vow to never love again. Sally, who will do anything for vexatious Connie or her other sister suffreget Nell, winds up "selling" her virginity to Jack in order to send much needed money to Nell so she can take care of her children. This act both confuses and infuriates Jack and he decides to secretly buy out Sally's club and bankrupt it to get back at her and Connie for the "scam" they were running on his cousin/uncle.

Long story short Connie gets the shaft and Sally and Jack live happily ever after. But not before jealous fights, near-drownings, and wild goose-chases.

I found this story avidly entertaining and it was the perfect book to read while swinging in a hammock all day. The characters were extremely easy to relate to, even though it was set in the Edwardian era and I enjoyed it from cover to cover.

The ratings:
Raunch Factor: *****
Multiple corsets and dresses were cut and torn off...
Writing Style: *****
Well written. Very similar writing style to No Place for a Lady.
Ridiculousness: *****
It wasn't too ridiculous.
Actual Plot: *****
The plot was pretty interesting.

Review: Rhiannon

Last night was night four in clean/scour the basement for garage sale items extravaganza. Somehow my father, sister and I got onto the topic of trashy romance novels and my father revealed to me that my great-grandmother loved trashy romance novels. And here I always thought that she was reading large print biographies when I went up to her room to visit her...

Anyway, it reminded me that I still have yet to post my review of Rhiannon by Evangelynn Stratton.

After I finished reading No Place for a Lady, my friend Ashley and I decided we'd swap novels. Ash holds this book near and dear to her heart and I was definitely interested in what made her so excited about it.

She warned me it was trash, it was fantastic, and I would love it, so I was anticipating its arrival at my house. On first impression: the cover art made me giggle (image via Amazon.com), as did a fantastic drawing of Jarreth atop his trusty steed on the inside of the book. I believe the drawings were done by one of the author's daughters so I appreciated the work once I realized it wasn't done by a professional. In fact I thought it was kind of sweet Stratton had done that.

This book was so different from the Harlequin Historical I had the pleasure of reading previously. It was well researched and the language helped to portray the story. In a nutshell Rhiannon finds out her father has arranged yet another marriage for her and runs away only to meet the man she's contracted to marry on her escape route, but they both conceal their identity in a very Twelfth Night sort of way.

She is silly and always find the worst ways of getting into trouble, sometimes setting places on fire, sometimes getting attacked by pirates, other times getting attacked by gypsies, sometimes almost drowning...and Jarreth seems to always manage to save her in one way or another. The whole time though, she has no idea that he is her betrothed. Yeah, he plays a dirty trick on her and hilarity ensues.

The ratings:
Raunch Factor: *****
It honestly wasn't that raunchy at all.
Writing Style: *****
As I mentioned, it was decently written.
Ridiculousness: *****
Between the gypsies, the pirates, the nuns and the war-horses, it was mildly ridiculous.
Actual Plot: *****
Although agnoizing at times, the plot was decent. It probably would have been more fun to hide some things from the reader though.

All in all it was pretty fantastic. Ashley did not disappoint in this one. I personally enjoy a little more raunch in my trashy novels, but that's just a personal preference.

Review: No Place for a Lady

It all started with an Easter basket to rival all Easter baskets. It was innocent enough. I like having a book with me whenever I visit Jason's house because I typically wake up before everyone and enjoy sitting in the living room in front of the windows looking at the marvelous view of the forest and the mountains.

However, the night before I had finished Seventh Son and there it was. No Place for a Lady, just sitting there in my Easter basket...taunting me.

As I mentioned, I've never read a trashy romance novel before, so I was hesitant. Within the first five pages I was hooked. Women driving stagecoaches, men running willy nilly around after them, estranged wives coming back from the dead, attempted maulings in a public park...how did I not know these novels were so fantastically awful?!

Within two days I had read the entire novel. For me, that is a very short period of time as I read slowly, but I just couldn't look away!

So if you will allow me to rate this book...
Raunch Factor: *****
after all...she was a lady!
Writing Style: *****
best written romance novel I've ever read...although it is also the first
Ridiculousness: *****
two words...nipple ring...you're hooked too now, right?!
Actual Plot: *****
although predictable, there was a decent story

I am seriously considering purchasing a few more Harlequin Historicals. That and I'm apparently in some sort of trashy romance novel trade-off program with my friend Ashley, we're mailing each other books back and forth. I've already read another one...look for a review of Rhiannon soon!