1) Put in bold the ones you’ve read completely.
2) Italicize the ones you’ve read excerpts or abridged versions of or which you recall having started to read and never finished.

1. The Bible
2. Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
3. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes)
4. The Koran
5. Arabian Nights
6. Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
7. Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift)
8. Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)
9. Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
10. Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman)
11. Prince (Niccolò Machiavelli)
12. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
13. Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank)
14. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)
15. Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)
16. Les Misérables (Victor Hugo)
17. Dracula (Bram Stoker)
18. Autobiography (Benjamin Franklin)
19. Tom Jones (Henry Fielding)
20. Essays (Michel de Montaigne)
21. Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
22. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edward Gibbon)
23. Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)
24. Origin of Species (Charles Darwin)
25. Ulysses (James Joyce)
26. Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio)
27. Animal Farm (George Orwell)
28. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell)
29. Candide (Voltaire)
30. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
31. Analects (Confucius)
32. Dubliners (James Joyce)
33. Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
34. Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)
35. Red and the Black (Stendhal)
36. Das Kapital (Karl Marx)
37. Flowers of Evil (Charles Baudelaire)
38. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
39. Lady Chatterley’s Lover (D. H. Lawrence)
40. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
41. Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser)
42. Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
43. Jungle (Upton Sinclair)
44. All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
45. Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
46. Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
47. Diary (Samuel Pepys)
48. Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
49. Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy)
50. Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
51. Doctor Zhivago (Boris Pasternak)
52. Critique of Pure Reason (Immanuel Kant)
53. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey)
54. Praise of Folly (Desiderius Erasmus)
55. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
56. Autobiography of Malcolm X (Malcolm X)
57. The Color Purple (Alice Walker)
58. Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)
59. Essay Concerning Human Understanding (John Locke)
60. Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)
61. Moll Flanders (Daniel Defoe)
62. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
63. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
64. Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
65. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)
66. Confessions (Jean Jacques Rousseau)
67. Gargantua and Pantagruel (François Rabelais)
68. Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes)
69. Talmud
70. Social Contract (Jean Jacques Rousseau)
71. Bridge to Terabithia (Katherine Paterson)
72. Women in Love (D. H. Lawrence)
73. American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser)
74. Mein Kampf (Adolf Hitler)
75. Separate Peace (John Knowles)
76. The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)
77. Red Pony (John Steinbeck)
78. Popol Vuh
79. Affluent Society (John Kenneth Galbraith)
80. Satyricon (Petronius)
81. James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl)
82. Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)
83. Black Boy (Richard Wright)
84. Spirit of the Laws (Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu)
85. Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
86. Julie of the Wolves (Jean Craighead George)
87. Metaphysics (Aristotle)
88. Little House on the Prairie (Laura Ingalls Wilder)
89. Institutes of the Christian Religion (Jean Calvin)
90. Steppenwolf (Hermann Hesse)
91. The Power and the Glory (Graham Greene)
92. Sanctuary (William Faulkner)
93. As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner)
94. Black Like Me (John Howard Griffin)
95. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (William Steig)
96. Sorrows of Young Werther (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
97. General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud)
98. A Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
99. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Dee Alexander Brown)
100. A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess)
101. Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (Ernest J. Gaines)
102. Émile (Jean Jacques Rousseau)
103. Nana (Émile Zola)
104. Chocolate War (Robert Cormier)
105. Go Tell It on the Mountain (James Baldwin)
106. Gulag Archipelago (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
107. Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert A. Heinlein)
108. Day No Pigs Would Die (Robert Peck)
109. Ox-Bow Incident (Walter Van Tilburg Clark)

1. Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)

Not bad for a science geek.

One of the more amusing forwards I’ve received recently (english summary at the end):

Wer erinnert sich nicht an das glorreiche 1:0 der deutschen Fußball-Nationalmannschaft im letzten Spiel vor dem Abriss des altehrwürdigen Wembley-Stadions? (Wie sehr die Engländer diese Niederlage geschmerzt hat, lässt sich übrigens gut in David Beckham “My Side” nachlesen) Nun ist es an der Zeit, Didi Hamann für seinen Sieg-Freistoß (ca. 25 Meter Entfernung, flach über den nassen Rasen ins untere linke Eck!) entsprechend zu würdigen: Mittlerweile ist das Wembley-Stadion wieder aufgebaut und zum Stadion führt eine neue Brücke, die noch namenlos ist. Deswegen hat die London Development Agency einen Wettbewerb ausgeschrieben, bei dem der Name gewinnt, der am häufigsten genannt wird. Und das ist unsere Chance! Also hier für “Dietmar-Hamann-Bridge” voten: http://www.lda.gov.uk/server.php?show=ConForm.9 In der Begründung bitte angeben: ‘In tribute to the player who scored the last goal in the old stadium’ P.S. Schickt den Link mal an alle Freunde und Bekannte und/oder stellt ihn in die bekannten und internen Foren – wäre doch gelacht wenn wir die Tommies nicht noch ein bisschen ärgern könnten…

Who doesn’t remember the glorious 1:0 win for the German team in the last game before the demolition of the venerable Wembly stadium? It’s now the time to properly commerate Didi Hamann’s victorious free kick. The new Stadium is being built, and will have a new bridge to it, which is still nameless. So the London Development Agency is running a competition, where the most popular suggestion wins. This is our chance! So, vote for “Dietmar-Hamann-Bridge”: http://www.lda.gov.uk/server.php?show=ConForm.9 In the reason please put ‘In tribute to the player who scored the last goal in the old stadium’. Send this link on to all your friends, and internet forums etc. It’d be fun if we could annoy the tommies a bit more…

OK, so I’ve been a bit lax in answering the “what should I blog about?” questions. So here goes…

December

Who would you have liked to be?
Myself.

What historical figure(s) do you most despise?
I don’t really despise any of them. There are certainly some people who have done despicable things, but it’s more use to try and understand what happened.

What natural gift would you most like to possess?
Vision that didn’t need glasses.

Do you keep friends once you’ve made them?
I try to, with varying degrees of success.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? From whom?
“If you don’t like your university, try to work out why. Is it the place itself? Is the the course? Is the the people? Once you know that, you can fix it.”, good advice from a chap called Simon Craig Gray. I changed from physics to chemistry, and it was fixed.

Which reality TV show would you be most suited for?
They’re all hideous.

How would you like to die?
Ummm never? I don’t really want to think about it.

What is your motto? Why?
“Actions are the seeds of Fate. Deeds grow into Destiny.” Just because.

Why do you blog?
Geekiness?

Name one web site you’d recommend to others.
http://www.theregister.co.uk for anyone who wants to know about tech news.

Name one blog within WB that you read.
You can see them all on my favourites.

January

What comic book (or cartoon) character would you be? Why?
Tintin. Looks like fun..

What’s the oldest thing you own?
I’m not really into antiques or anything like that. I’ve got some books from the late 60’s, that’s about it.

What’s your favourite word?
At the moment, “piss” which seems to be usable in so many situations.

What word(s) do you hate?
Pretentious ones used by people trying to show off.

Name something you used to like but no longer do. What changed your view?
McDonalds. Surpassed by KFC ;-)

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Chocolate.

February

Write a new couch gag for the opening credits of The Simpsons
The simpsons sit down, except for Bart, who lands in the middle, wearing a leather coat. The screen ripples with a flash of the green text from The Matrix.

Tell me a knock knock joke
Knock Knock.
Who’s there?
Dr.
Dr. Who?
Oh, you guessed!

Describe yourself in five words
Photographic Honest Refocussing Sharp Tired

Who should play James Bond now that the role is vacant?
Samuel L Jackson

Write a haiku (3 lines, 5-7-5 syllables)
It is very late
I would rather be in bed
But now I’m blogging.

March

If you had a big win in the lottery, how long would you wait to tell people?
I’ve no idea. I’d certainly give some cash to a few people, but I don’t think that I’d publicise the happy occasion.

Do you carry a donor card? Why (or why not)?
No, but only because I wore the last one out and haven’t got a replacement yet. My relatives know what I want, and it’s recorded on my driver’s licence.

Where would you like to retire?
Sweden.

What is something you wish you were better at doing?
Playing guitar

What color do you like your pens to write?
Blue or black. Or red for marking.

Are babies cute?
As long as they’re someone else’s and they don’t shit or vomit on me.

Do you subscribe to a magazine? If so, what?
Yeah, National Geographic, and Photography Monthly. I did subscribe to the British Journal of Photography but found that I didn’t have time to read it weekly.

What’s your favorite shape?
The curve of a woman’s breasts down to her hips.

What was the last thing you used a microwave for?
I haven’t used a microwave myself for years. I was present at the microwaving of some butter to melt it a bit, not long ago. Does that count?

What book are you reading?
I just read Stasiland and The German Trauma – both are excellent.

Do you like rollercoasters?
Oh yes.

Which came first – the chicken or the egg?
The paradox came first.

Cite a song lyric that means something to you

I’m just the shadow of the man I used to be
And it seems like there’s no way out of this for me
I used to bring you sunshine
Now all I ever do is bring you down
How would it be if you were standing in my shoes
Can’t you see that it’s impossible to choose
No there’s no making sense of it
Every way I go I’m bound to lose – Queen, Too Much Love will Kill You

What’s the best photo you’ve ever taken?
You tell me…

Writing about: Through the Lens

I was looking at some of the images in Through the Lens yesterday, and a two of them in particular got me thinking somewhat, both taken in the early ‘30s. The first shows three children of around 12, wearing traditional Dutch clothing, all happy and smiling. The second was taken on a flight from Amsterdam to Berlin, and shows the passengers getting their in-flight meal, and I noticed especially a young woman to was looking out of the window, looking nervous.

I wonder what happened to them? I know the woman survived her flight, but did any of them survive the darkness that was about to envelop the world, unbenownst to them? Are any of them still alive? The children would be be around 85 now, the woman pushing a hundred.

Who will be looking at my photos in 70 years’ time? What will they be thinking?

Shot today, from up on Newbold Comyn golf course.

Writing about:GNOME vs. KDE

KDE

A big room somewhere in Europe with lots of chrome and glass and a great big whiteboard in the front with lots of tiny, neat writing on it. There are about 50 desks, each with headphones and pristine workstations, also with a lot of chrome and glass. The faint sound of classical music permeates the room, accompanying the clicky-click of 50 programmers typing or quietly talking in one of the appropriately assigned meeting areas. (Which of course consist of elegant contemporary white pine coffee tables surrounded by contemporary white pine and fine leather meeting chairs.) Coffee, tea, mineral water and fruit juices are available in the break area.

At the end of the day, everyone checks in their code and the project leader does a “make” just to make sure it all compiles cleanly, but it’s mostly only done from tradition anymore since it always compiles cleanly and works flawlessly. When all milestones have been met, and everything has been QA’d, (usually within a day or two of the roadmap that was written up 18 months previous) a new KDE release is packaged up and released to the mirror sites with the appropriate 24-hour delay for distribution before being announced.

KDE developers are generally between the ages of 16 and 25, like art made of lines and squares and the colors white and black. When/if they finally stop taking government subsidies and get around to getting “real jobs,” most of their salary will be taken in taxes so the socialist government can subsidize the care and feeding of the next generation of KDE developers, just like it did for them. A high percentage of KDE developers, during their mandatory 5 years of government military service, crack from their years of cultural dullness and flee Europe to become terrorists for the sheer joy to be found in killing random strangers for no discernible reason.

GNOME

An abandoned warehouse in San Francisco, kitted up as for a rave, electronica playing at 15db louder than “my ears are bleeding and I’m developing an aneurism” volumes and the windows all painted over black so that the strobe and spotlights and lasers can be seen better. Computers, mainly made of whatever stuff has been exchanged for crack or scavenged from dumpsters behind dot-bombs, are scattered around on whatever furniture is available, which also consists of whatever stuff has been exchanged for crack or scavenged from dumpsters behind dot-bombs. There’s no break area, but you may be able to bum a beer (or more likely something harder) off of one of the developers hanging around, and they will probably be too jacked up on X, coke, acid, heroin, ether or all of the above to notice that you’ve taken anything.

Development strategies are generally determined by whatever light show happens to be going on at the moment, when one of the developers will leap up and scream “I WANT IT TO LOOK JUST LIKE THAT” and then straight-arm his laptop against the wall in an hallucinogenic frenzy before vomiting copiously, passing out and falling face-down in the middle of the dance floor. There’s no whiteboard, so developers diagram things out in the puddles of spilt beer, urine and vomit on the floor.

At the end of the day – whenever that is since an equal number of programmers will be passed out at any given time – or really whenever someone happens to think of it (which is rarely), someone might type “make” on some machine somewhere, with mixed results. Generally nothing happens, so he/she shrugs his/her shoulders and wanders off to look for someone who might have more pink/black-striped pills. Once in a great while, generally in the unpleasant time between the come-down from the last thing they took and before whatever it was they took just now comes on fully, someone will tar up a bunch of random files and post it on a website someplace it as the next GNOME release, usually with a reference to some kind of monkey.

GNOME developers rarely live past 25 and prefer “alternative” art – generally stuff made of feces that’s “too edgy” for most people to “understand” or “like.” Core GNOME developers are heavy Ketamine users. The bodies of GNOME developers can often be found in dumpsters or floating face-down in any sufficiently large body of water.

Copyright 2002, Derek Glidden.

Writing about: ThisisLondon

Now This is what I call serious tennis. No, it’s not photoshopped – this is Agassi vs. Federer on the opening day at the Dubai Masters

Writing about: Secret Worlds: The Universe Within

Orders of magnitude, and all that.