I'm random, thanks for asking.

In 24 hours I'll be somewhere in the Los Angeles area. Actually, probably still well east of it. I just hope it's not raining, as that will make the drive longer. That's not really so bad, but I hate traffic.

Doing laundry, going to Jen's later, then I will pack. I've got Jane Eyre and Tess of the D'Ubervilles on audiobook, plus a few more playlists created on the iPod. Must do my hair so I look presentable.

http://www.amazon.com/Jane-April-Lindner/dp/0316084204/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290831361&sr=1-1

Saw it at B&N today, but didn't want to pay $17.99 for it. Can't print any coupons because stupid printer thinks there's a paper jam.

No, I cannot get enough of Jane Eyre. I'm even considering the audiobook for my drive next month.

Bought it full price from an independent bookstore. Support local businesses, or something. Now, when will I start reading it? Still need to finish Dawn Treader.

Reena and Michelle (and Loch) came over after a bunch of us went to breakfast yesterday. Once again, they were trying to convince me to watch or read the Twilight books.  Why does the word "twilight" suddenly look weird spelled out?  I mentioned reading Eclipse in 15 minutes which they think has prejudiced me against the movies.  Comparisons to Harry Potter were made, and wonder as to why I don't care for them either.  I said that I just never cared for HP, but Twilight I just find...goofy/laughable/mockable for some reason.  It's not even anything to do with vampires.  The plots and/or writing just seem LOL-worthy.   I did read a section of Breaking Dawn, by the way.  As I read, I was pretty incredulous as to what the appeal was.  Reena said I should at least give the book Twilight a try; she almost had me convinced.  Not reading them is sort of like a personal trophy for me, like how I've never smoked at all.  Well, oops, I did read that part of BD, dangit. 

We watched Persuasion 2007, then Reena chose Sense and Sensibility 2008.  Why are Austen men so awesome and yet can be such idiots?  Obviously some characters are exaggerated, but it's sad to think they were based on reality at the time.  Some rich people (Fanny Dashwood) were major snobs, some were complete idiots (Lucy Steele, Mary Musgrove), and the men run the full gamut.  

In other news: I just baked two batches of chocolate chip scones, my oven temperature is way off, I went swimming at Heidi's and got more tan/burned, and I have yet to start the books I bought yesterday.  One is a classroom management book, the other My Lobotomy which I've wanted to read for a long time.  I guess I should get off the computer and get some more chores accomplished. 

Next time I sign up to bring a potluck dish, either a)choose something easier than homemade tomato sauce or b)start cooking it earlier than 6:30 p.m. The number of dishes I managed to get dirty preparing, cooking, and cooling the sauce is mind-boggling, to say nothing of the filthy stove and counter-top. I banged up my hands in the cleaning process too.

Did I run the garbage disposal one last time? Better do it again just in case.

In all, the sauce is yummy.

holbytla! I found Little Dorrit and Oliver Twist in a collector's set for $32. I was going to listen to LD on audiobook soon, but maybe I'll get something else (Gaskell, perhaps?) to listen too now and just watch it on my vacation. I still need to watch Bleak House too.

I really need to go to bed.

Maybe some movie quotes, too. Various parts bolded by me.

"Most true is it that "beauty is in the eye of the gazer." My master's colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth,--all energy, decision, will,--were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me,--that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me."

~~

"'I have to tell you, that for four years you have been growing into your tutor's heart, and that you are rooted there now. I have to declare that you have bewitched me, in spite of sense and experience, and difference of station and estate: you have so looked, and spoken, and moved; so shown me your faults and your virtues - beauties rather; they are hardly so stern as virtues - that I love you - love you with my life and strength. It is out now.'

'She sought what to say, but could not find a word: she tried to rally, but vainly. I passionately repeated that I loved her."

~~

I just saw this trailer for The Lovely Bones http://video.aol.com/aolvideo/AOL Movies/the-lovely-bones-trailer-no-1/32557030001 and I can't wait until December. I read the book 2 years ago after seeing on IMDb that Jackson had the movie rights. Upon reading the beginning, I feared one scene would be too realisticaly creepy, knowing what Peter was capable of putting on film. However, the trailer blew me away. The movie looks fantastic.

Someone remind me come Christmas time that the bargain book section at Barnes and Noble is great for gifts. I found 2 books I wanted for myself today, but didn't buy them.

I got my haircut today, and it's SHORT. I told Pat that I wanted shorter and different. We looked through magazines, and we picked a few I liked. As she cut (and cut and cut) I was freaking out. Pat's been cutting my hair almost 4 years now, and I totally trust her but the hair just kept coming off! In the end it was ok, as I knew it would be. Still way shorter than before, and will require styling instead of my usual wet-down-and-go routine. Hopefully just the flat iron though.

Went to get a baby shower gift for Michelle. I know people are often outspoken about pregnancy-related things, but this woman behind me in line had all sorts of opinions about what everyone was buying. She even commented on how much I spent. Pardon me, but it's *my* friend and her first baby, I can spend as much or as little as I want. It wasn't about price anyway, it was about her registry and what I've heard is actually useful.

I didn't grade my math tests today, and I don't care. I'll do it tomorrow. Can we just skip the last week of school? Please?

Ok, things to do, things to do.

Either it was due to me being starving, or my steak burrito really was the best Chipotle I've ever had.

I seem to have lost my digital camera. Must search the apartment more, but this makes me very sad if it's gone.

Too bad Barnes and Noble is not close to home like Borders, because they usually have what I want without having to order it. Borders, however, is cheaper.

Got North and South in print, though I've already read 44 of 56 chapters online. Totally worth buying the book. I'll be sad when I finish the book though. Why is it I get hooked on this but can't seem to start the 6 other books laying around?

I'm browsing the audiobooks on iTunes looking for something to listen to when I drive to CA in December. It's about 13 hours each way, without traffic, plus I'll be driving a lot to see friends. I've been looking at classics, and also some CS Lewis books have caught my eye.

So, help me, what would you recommend? What have you read and liked?

Book meme from larksong

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-) 
 
My results:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (favorite book ever)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (I intended to read this until I saw a new movie adaptation.  Yeah, that was enough for me)
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 (I have read most but am missing 1 or 2 plays)
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 (listened to the abridged audiobook)
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 (I've read 2 of the 7 so far)
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 (I vaguely remember reading this, but I could be mistaken)
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 (Tried to read this, got bored)
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 - 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
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
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo