Literary Meme

This is cool. I just discovered it on the That Rabbit Girl blog Here's what you are supposed to do: Copy the list below and bold the titles you've read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won't, underline the ones on your book shelf, and (place parentheses) around the ones you've never heard of.


The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - Scott F. Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
The Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
(Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut)
(The Secret History - Donna Tartt)
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
(Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell)
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Atonement - Ian McEwan
(The Shadow of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert

I really hesitated to put any of the titles in italics, but in the end, there are a few books that have no appeal for me. I also realize how few of the classics I have in my bookshelf, and that I read many of them only because I had to in college. I guess I should go to the bookstore and buya few so I can at least say they are in my library and look like a bit more of an intellectual.

I Exercize to Stay Fit , I mean, Fat

So we exercise to stay fit, right? Well apparently, our best intentions can backfire on us. Back in December I started training really hard in preparation for my test for my green belt in kung fu. By the time I tested in February I was in good shape. I didn't really feel like I had lost a whole lot of weight or anything, but I could tell that I was stronger, and that my cardiovascular conditioning was better. Being human and all, once I had earned my new belt, I let up on the accelerator, and quit training so hard. I still try to work out for an hour four times a week, so it’s not as though I’m sitting around on my fat lazy can, stuffing down bon bons or anything. Now it seems, I have put on a few pounds as a reward for my hard work. Weight, which I might add, I never lost whilst training! Damn it!!

After whining talking about this (as I am wont to do) to my friend Lori, who tested for her belt at the same time I did, and my sister, who trains in frantic bursts for triathlons, apparently this weight gain thing is not abnormal. Apparently Lori has put on weight as well, and my sister’s friend who does marathons, actually quit running said marathons because she put on so much dang weight. Obviously, the take-home message here is: keep your training at a consistent level. I'm hoping that my body, realizing that I am going to be much lazier for the time being, will decide to cooperate and give up some of those extra inches around my belt line!