But of course I always knew...

HT: Atheist Jew

Another Book Meme!

Via Pharyngula, another book meme that's making the round of blogs. Books in bold are those I've read, while those italicized are those I've only partially read:

• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
• Anna Karenina
• Crime and Punishment
• Catch-22
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Wuthering Heights
• The Silmarillion
• Life of Pi : a novel
• The Name of the Rose
• Don Quixote
• Moby Dick
• Ulysses
• Madame Bovary
• The Odyssey
• Pride and Prejudice
• Jane Eyre
• The Tale of Two Cities
• The Brothers Karamazov
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
• War and Peace
• Vanity Fair
• The Time Traveler's Wife
• The Iliad
• Emma
• The Blind Assassin
• The Kite Runner
• Mrs. Dalloway
• Great Expectations
• American Gods
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
• Atlas Shrugged
• Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• Middlesex
• Quicksilver
• Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
• The Canterbury tales
• The Historian : a novel
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Love in the Time of Cholera
• Brave New World
• The Fountainhead
• Foucault's Pendulum
• Middlemarch
• Frankenstein
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Dracula
• A Clockwork Orange
• Anansi Boys
• The Once and Future King
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
• 1984
• Angels & Demons
• The Inferno
• The Satanic Verses
• Sense and Sensibility
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Mansfield Park
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• To the Lighthouse
• Tess of the D'Urbervilles
• Oliver Twist
• Gulliver's Travels
• Les Misérables
• The Corrections
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• Dune
• The Prince
• The Sound and the Fury
• Angela's Ashes : a memoir
• The God of Small Things
• A People's History of the United States : 1492-present
• Cryptonomicon
• Neverwhere
• A Confederacy of Dunces
• A Short History of Nearly Everything
• Dubliners
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• Beloved
• Slaughterhouse-five
• The Scarlet Letter
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves
• The Mists of Avalon
• Oryx and Crake : a novel
• Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
• Cloud Atlas
• The Confusion
• Lolita
• Persuasion
• Northanger Abbey
• The Catcher in the Rye
• On the Road
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame
• Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
• The Aeneid
• Watership Down
• Gravity's Rainbow
• The Hobbit
• In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
• White Teeth
• Treasure Island
• David Copperfield
• The Three Musketeers

Reading through this list, I'm struck by how many I've read only partially. In many cases, books I started and then put down, never to finish again (The Three Musketeers, Wuthering Heights, The Silmarillion). There's nothing necessarily wrong with these, they were either not to my taste, didn't hold my interest long enough, or other things intervened. Many are works to which I definitely want to return someday (The Aeneid, Freakonomics, The God of Small Things)

Some others, like The Satanic Verses and The Brothers Karamazov are ongoing projects. I've been reading the Dostoeyevsky for 2 years now, off and on. Rushdie may yet become one of those I set aside and to which I never return. I find his writing style a bit off-putting and difficult to follow (and this from someone who's read William Burroughs!).

A little research reveals that this is apparently the "the top 106 books most often marked as 'unread' by LibraryThing’s users". Interesting. By my count, I've read 38 with another 18 partially read, so I've delved into a little more than half of these. Some of the "unread" are understandable, but I was especially disheartened to find THREE of Neil Gaiman's books in this list (American Gods, Anansi Boys, & Neverwhere). Why oh why would anyone not read these books?!?

What, such a low rating?

Latest blog meme...

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 92% Spiritual Atheist 83% Agnostic 58% Theist 25% Militant Atheist 25% Apathetic Atheist 25% Angry Atheist 8% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

HT: De Rerum Natura

Two "blogthings" and link...

A couple of funny quiz-type "blogthings" I found:

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Wow. So very, very true...it's like they know me. Just like those people who do the horoscopes...

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

25% Dixie

15% Yankee

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

I suppose that's about right. I was born and raised in the South, but with some stints in Yankee-land during my formative years...hence my lack of the characteristic drawl.

Y'all can find more for your blogs or MySpace pages at Blogthings.

Me, Biblical Scholar....(not!)

How well do you "know" the Bible?

You know the Bible 93%!

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

Who knew?!?

HT: Pharyngula

Another blogging meme...

An hypothetical "library card" for this blog:

Via Good Math, Bad Math