more lists

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (1933)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome (1889)
Wilt by Tom Sharpe (1976)
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse (1938)
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (1996)
Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall by Spike Milligan (1971) - 940.953 M621A

Spending less time online now, and finding it restorative.
Kid loves Spike Milligan.

More Rollicking Irish Wit:
1. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
2. The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
3. The Portable James Joyce by James Joyce
4. Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett
5. The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
6. The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson
7. Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
8. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
9. Murphy by Samuel Beckett
10. At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill

Club Read: http://www.librarything.com/topic/58190 - Funniest Reads
Walking Seattle
My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl
The Monkey Wrench Gang (Perennial Classics) by Edward Abbey
Sunset and Sawdust by Joe R. Lansdale
The Power of Now by Eckhard Tolle
Crotchet Castle by Thomas Love Peacock

French!
Children of Clay: Raymond Queneau.
Balzac's short stories

James 1: 19-20

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.

This is so true. I feel my rage in the morning, know I can't put it to constructive use for very long and tell myself something inside me wants to blind me to the Kingdom of God. I am trying to see the Christ in everyone but maybe I'm trying to see what I feel should be idealized?

How are cyclists who run red lights like Christ?
How are neighbors who neglect their dogs to the point where they become neurotic like Christ?
How are people who drive at night without their headlights on like Christ?

banned and challenged books

I am choosing banned and challenged books for me and my son to read. As I note the encroaching spectre of anti-intellectualism and parental censorship.

Each year, the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from libraries shelves and from classrooms.

According to the Office for Intellectual Freedom, at least 42 of the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts.

Here are the yet unread of those 100 books

5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
44. Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

catholic novel reading list

Silence, by Shusaku Endo.
Mariette in Ecstasy, by Ron Hansen
Beloved, by Toni Morrison.
The Lieutenant, by Andre Dubus.
The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner.
The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene.

Today, for the first time in 17 months, we watched a little bit of television. Our antenna is not terrific and I got bored of the Sunday afternoon sitcom patter within 2 minutes. Canned track + 38-word joke buildup = weak.

more reading

American gothic tales / edited by Joyce Carol Oates.
Esquire's big book of fiction / edited by Adrienne Miller.
Gogh's room at Arles : [three novellas] / Stanley Elkin.
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Mapp and Lucia / E.F. Benson ; with a new introduction by Stephen Pile.
Rediscovering values : on Wall Street, Main Street, and your street : a moral compass for the new economy / Jim Wallis.

Burning your boats : the collected short stories / Angela Carter ; with an introduction by Salman Rushdie.

A bit of Fry & Laurie. Season four [videorecording] / BBC Video ; 2 Entertain Video Ltd. ; written by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie ; producer, Jon Plowman ; director, Bob Spiers.

Based on a dream I had today

It's a doozy. Not armageddon, nor apocalyptic, but spiritually very powerful and deep.

Would someone please tell me why my spiritual connection does not talk to me in English, but rather Hebrew, which I do not understand, and French?

Facebook Political Fights are a waste of time and bandwidth

I know people who post political comments on Facebook, but I find they tend to be the type of people who don't have an opinion so much as an affiliation with a party that leads to negative comments about anyone who opposes that party.

If we don’t reevaluate our opinions every time we receive new information, they stop being opinions and start becoming beliefs.

A belief is acceptance of truth, while an opinion is judgement of truth.

Opinions are ongoing judgements of new information, while beliefs are acceptance of old information with disregard to new information. A key element to growing as a person is forming opinions, then challenging them.

Opinion leads to politics and politics does not contain truth. Anyone who can stay silent and challenge their own ideas by staying committed to their search for truth has no need for opinion and must eventually give it up completely.