No, seriously, I could literally read all the time. Which is one of the reasons why I had such a hard time with babies --
1) I never found time to read and
2) When I did find time (aka on the toilet) I generally couldn't make sense of the written words on the page and
3) any quiet time with babies generally meant I took a nap and DID NOT pick up a new book.
But now that my kids are 7 and 5 my reading ability has come back with a vengeance. I read all day -- blogs, magazines, scripts, books, etc. I read in any spare moment I have (on the treadmill, during my children's gymnastic's classes, on the before mentioned-toilet).
One big change in my reading is that I now tend to read a lot more non-fiction, than fiction. And in fact, most of the great fiction (i.e. the classics) I read for school or when I was a voracious young reader.
In college, I majored in Communication and minored in English. I focused on a lot of Shakespeare during that time (I even began to get it). All of this introductory stuff is just a way of saying that I found this Meme over at Round and Round She Goes, and as a bookworm I had to copy it and see for myself just how much reading I have in fact done in my lifetime.
Here's the master list. The books I've read are highlighted bold. Beowulf Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart Agee, James - A Death in the Family Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights Camus, Albert - The Stranger Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard Chopin, Kate - The Awakening Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage Dante - Inferno de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust Golding, William - Lord of the Flies Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter Heller, Joseph - Catch 22 Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms Homer - The Iliad (I do not heart Homer) Homer - The Odyssey Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt London, Jack - The Call of the Wild Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain Marquez, Gabriel Garc?a - One Hundred Years of Solitude Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener Melville, Herman - Moby Dick Miller, Arthur - The Crucible Morrison, Toni - Beloved O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night Orwell, George - Animal Farm Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49 Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye Shakespeare, William - Hamlet Shakespeare, William - Macbeth Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Sophocles - Antigone Sophocles - Oedipus Rex Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair Thoreau, Henry David - Walden Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Voltaire - Candide Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five Walker, Alice - The Color Purple Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse Wright, Richard - Native Son
I definitely didn't read as much as I thought, and I now have a good reading list to pursue. In my own defense, I sometimes got sidetracked by favorite authors and thus read a lot of Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Shakespeare when I could have been spreading the love around.
Oh yeah, and in college I read a lot more contemporary stuff (i.e R-rated stuff that I've since had to "hide" from prying young eyes -- things like Marquis de Sade, Anais Nin, Lady Chatterly's Lover, Portnoy's Complaint).
I loved Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. If I remember correctly, though, she had no formal education and she never made anything from her writing. But there is such life in her writing.
Posted by: toni | Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 12:39 PM