So I think I’m going to do some book reviews and see how I like it. Or something. I’m not really sure yet, but the whole writing-about-my-life thing is pretty dull. My life isn’t that exciting. So… coming up, book reviews? Or movie reviews? Or CD reviews? I don’t know! We’ll see. If I don’t like that, then I’ll figure out something else to do. But until further notice: experimentation time!

Look at the list and:
1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) [Bracket] the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list on your own blog.

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 Faulks
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 Hitchhiker’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’s Adventures 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 (Isn’t this a repetition of #33?)
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
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 High Fidelity – Nick Hornby
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 (Currently Reading)
80 Possession – A. S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo 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 (In French)
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]

I am in need of a revamp. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but expect changes hopefully soon. This blog is getting boring…

I’m supposed to be taking U.S. Constitution Practice Tests. Whatever…. that’s what multiple browsers are for, right? I’m just bored… so I’m updating. I have nothing really to say, life is boring. Yesterday’s little outing was fun. Monica and I probably got a little sunburned but we went shopping and played cards and in general had a pretty fun time! I went to bed so late. I didn’t intend to… it just… happened and then I couldn’t sleep because I put WAY too much sugar in my coffee at Borders. Yum?

I had a lesson this morning. I was super tired, needless to say and so was Adam, so I guess that was good. We didn’t do a lot. Just went over fingerings, talked about college, and gave me some stuff to prepare while we’re both away since I don’t have a lesson till around September-ish.  I’m not excited to do stuff for university. I mean I am, and he seems willing to help me find a good school. But my parents are next to impossible to help me. I know some places, but a lot of them don’t have music. I don’t know what I want to go into! It’s so hard… I like spanish. And viola. But do I REALLY want to go into viola…? I don’t know. I have nothing more to say.

My skillz in Government class have nearly come to an end. Just two more days and I really will be off for the summer. I’m going on a road trip afterwards. We’re going out east… so I’ll look at some universities and just generally see some great cities, some great country, natural wonders, etc. etc. I created a travel blog for my trip since this place doesn’t seem apt to type about my trip. My family will be reading it after all and I don’t think that they really need to be reading all my life miseries before the trip. :/ The url is “http://www.travelmarijke.tk”. Yes. It’s just a redirection from a wordpress blog. I couldn’t force Akash to host me again. That’d be super mean. So yeah. That was interesting creating.

Yesterday we hosted a party for Monica’s going away. It was rather sad, I must say. She goes in a week and I can’t BARE the thought of that. But… we’re heading out for a super-fun day of shopping tomorrow, just us and my convertible. Fun, eh? We should have an awesomely amazing time. We need a fun day out. In theory then we should go get mani-pedis, but we’re not like that… at least me especially. But yesterday was fun. We had tons of food and cake and just generally had a good time at Rupa’s.

Today I basically chilled out, although I’ve been brushing up on my HTML skills and learning some CSS. I need to make my own layouts, since I see so many color schemes that I love, I need to make some layouts. And not like before on Xanga. Those were like… ugh… not pleasant. Anyways. Not much else here. Just relaxing… it’s summer after all.

Hope you all have fun. Remember travel blog: http://travelmarijke.tk.

I’m supposed to be working on my project for government. It’s basically a commentary on a bunch of crap that has happened in the gov’t here in the past few days. I’ve found the articles and all that jazz, but right now I’m far too lazy to do anything. Besides, it’s not due till Wednesday.  Oh the things I do to get ahead on graduation. Yeah. I’m pretending to read the articles that I already did in the car after my lesson while eating Panera. One of the articles I need to respond to is about the whole gun control issue and it’s partially based in San Francisco. There is so much I’d like to write in response to the article and how it affects me. Quotes: ” the chief plaintiff in the suit against the city is a gay man living in a public housing development, owned by the federal government, who wants to have a gun to protect himself against potential hate crimes.” That SO goes two ways, one could say, keep the guns away completely so that these gun crimes aren’t happening, or you could say… give him a gun to shoot the guy about to kill him. I don’t know what to say. Some of those guns are like if you take off the trigger lock, the semi-automatic becomes automatic. And it’s not like having a semi-automatic (SA for now) is very good in the first place. Oh it could so go two ways. I just don’t want people to have guns I guess. Oh the debate. I could go on, but no one really reads this so it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’ll expose it one day… maybe. But until then, it’s just my thoughts and probably 1 or 2 people reading them. I can’t wait to get home though. I have 8 minutes left then I can run out of here. Blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrgh. My stomach hurts majorly. I also didn’t have a great lesson today. My tone was so weak, he said it was, I knew it was. I’m just REALLY tired right now. Parties all weekend. My birthday, Anthony’s, it goes on. Sunday was insane, I just ran around everywhere and Saturday, my actual birthday, I got up super early. Go figure. 6 am. I guess I was excited? It’s just another year gone by… oh well. I finally put together all the furniture in my room. Finally. Except one book case, which should take at most 30 minutes. I’m excellent with IKEA furniture. Really. I’ve been putting it together since I got out of the womb. We have these ancient little tables that we’ve had since I lived in California. Ok. Maybe more later… I should be out of here.

Currently Listening to: Vocalise by Rachmaninoff

I’m finally getting myself sorted out here. I like the little bird at the top, I don’t know about you guys, but I think it’s nice. Until I find another layout. Then maybe it will look a little more Marijke-esque. My room is also coming along nicely here. All the paint is on the walls and I have bedding. Tomorrow I’m putting back up all the closet stuff that we had to take down to mud the drywall. Plus, some other things. Like airing the room out. It still smells of paint. This weekend is going to be busy. But next weekend is party weekend. Anthony is having his birthday and mine. On the same day. That should be muy interesante. Plus Monica’s going away party, etc. So I will have a lot on my hands. Plus, my dad is coming with his pick-up to get my furniture for my birthday. Not much else to say. Class is boring but easy. Oh well. That’s it. I’ll update when something actually happens in my life.

marijke

Currently Listening to: Parachutes by Colplay

I’m going home tomorrow. Finally. This has almost been too much. I like it down here, but I’m starting to get to want to be home… I can only take this type of order for so long. I like coordinating my own days and figuring out what pleases me. I have class starting Monday as well, which is why I need to get back home. It’s only 4 hours a day, but I’m not too excited… Apparently I got my room number in the mail, but of course, I haven’t seen it because I’ve been gone. 

My birthday is so soon… 14 days… but I’m not really that excited. I am, in a little way, but not really. I didn’t celebrate last year, or the year before, or the year before, so I’m really out of the swing of caring. I am having a party for once though. I don’t know if my dad is staying for it though. He said he could come up for the 26-28th of June, but he might leave the 29th, which is when we’re going out for dinner and my mom said she would bake me a nice cake. I guess I’ll see what’s going on. On my actual birthday I am going out though. I think we’re gonna get indian. Yum. I adore indian food. It is delicious. I guess I’ll see what happens. But it’s my party and he can’t bother to stay an extra few hours?? Is his retirement really that much important than me? Maybe he’ll stay. 

I talked to my mom today. It made me cry. I’m kind of miserable down here with my dad. And not to be a debbie downer like I always am or anything, but I was just really sad. I nearly had another mental breakdown, which I have regularly. I had a few this week, in my own privacy, which isn’t normal. Normally it just happens and everything goes out of control. Ugh. I am so unstable… which really really really isn’t good. I’ll sort it out one day, but until then, I’m just gonna sit around in my own dumb feelings…

Welcome to the Country Home.
That’s the weather here. It’s not even the middle of the day yet and it’s already SO hot outside. If I had the bod… I’d be running around in a bikini, it’s that hot. It’s also ridiculously flooded. Driving down here, I had to drive through some water. Now let me tell you, that’s not always a good idea. Thank goodness I was in the truck. I mean, it’s really hard to describe how hot it is. One of my nephews created 2 albums on facebook from where he lives down here and basically, you find highways and roads, and they’ve turned into lakes. With really fast moving water. You cannot visualize the amount of water down through here and how many people they’ve had to evacuate. We’re so lucky we live on a hill or this would be so flooded. The sump pump nearly broke the other night. My dad had to hook it up to an inverter that he keeps in the truck just to keep the basement from flooding. It was so bad. It’s already 83 here. We don’t have air conditioning mind you… so it’s crazy. Fans running. Yet I’m wearing jeans… go figure. I’m too lazy to shave my legs till later. But, I should. Because it really is skirt and dress time. Thank goodness I brought my dress and skirts. But until then it’s jeans for me. I wore sweats last night and it was nice, but when I went to bed I was so hot. Oh my goodness. My dad has this attic fan but all the bugs were getting into my room from the screens so I had to shut the windows and just put my fan on full blast. I had no choice. I hope the predicted rain today cools things off. On the other hand, we DO NOT need more rain. I feel so bad for the people who are flooded out. There are countless houses. Ughh. I should go. I need to go paint some moulding for my room that never got done…
I will talk to you all sometime soon.
Marijke

It’s almost over. I have finals, and I’m done. Done. Done. I can’t wait. I’m so excited for this summer, road trip and all. Plus, my birthday is here in 27 days!! How exciting. I’m going out the day after. I have to interact with the fam on the 28th. I know, a party on the 29th? But… Akash has a wedding to go to, I’m being flexible. I guess my birthday is on an auspicious date. I’ve been quite busy lately. With school and all. Next week I’m heading down to my dad’s for some time while some stuff happens with my room at my mom’s house. I think it’s finally getting painted!! I’m so excited. Well, first we have to finish up the drywall, they’re coming tomorrow I think. So I will be avoiding the house as much as possible. I’ve gotten some more emails lately about teaching, which is good. Soon, I will be in the money. Maybe. That or I will simply be able to afford gas, which will be wonderful. Not much else going on around here.
I’m thinking about switching things around and planning out lessons more and making them more interesting for my students. I feel like I’m being boring. Just playing the same stuff each week, that’s not going to make them want to continue playing. So I’m trying to think of stuff to make lessons more interesting. Stickers? Ehhh… I’m gonna look it up. I want to be successful!!
Anyways, I need to go study some Chemistry so I will blog later.

Marijke