Books

In my 101 things, one of my goals was to finish 50 novels. So far I’ve completed

1.“For some people, getting pregnant is as easy as catching cold.” And there certainly was an analogy there: Colds and babies were both caused by germs which loved nothing so much as a mucous membrane.”

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

2. He told me to look at my hand, for a part of it came from a star that exploded too long ago to imagine. This part of me was formed from a tongue of fire that screamed through the heavens until there was our sun. And this part of me – this tiny part of me was on the sun when it itself exploded and whirled in a great storm until the planets came to be.  And this small part of me was then a whisper of the earth. When there was life, perhaps this part of me got lost in a fern that was crushed and covered until it was coal. And then it was a diamond millions of year later – it must have been a diamond as beautiful as the star from which it had first come. Or perhaps this part of me became lost in a terrible beast, or became part of a huge bird that flew above the primeval swamps. And he said this thing was so small – this part of me was so small it couldn’t be seen… but it was there from the beginning of the world.

And he called this bit of me an atom. And when he wrote the word, I fell in love with it. Atom. Atom. What a beautiful word.

The Effect of Gamma Rays and Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel

3. Oil! by Upton Sinclair

4. “The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.”

Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger

5. “I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me, and I have followed the source of rivers towards their source or plunged into forests, always making for other cities. I have had women, I have fought with men ; and I could never turn back any more than a record can spin in reverse. And all that was leading me where ? To this very moment…”

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

6. “Give me lust, baby.
Flash.
Give me malice.
Flash.
Give me detached existentialist ennui.
Flash.
Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.”

Invisible Monster by Chuck Palahniuk

7. How Luxury Lost Its Luster by Dana Thomas

8. “You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don’t count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.”

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

9. Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable by Samuel Beckett

10. God Sleeps in Rwanda by Joseph Sebarenzi

11. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

12. “All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

13.”One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

14.“Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.”

Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

15. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

16.“People were always getting ready for tomorrow.
I didnt believe in that.
Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them.
It didnt even know they were there.”

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

17. The Devil in the White City by Eric Larsen

18. Feminine Appeal by Carolyn Mahaney

19. The Female Brain by Louann Brezendine

20. Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

21. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

22. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

23. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

24. The Help Kathryn Stockett

25. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

26. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson

27. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
…still growing–I hope!