Sorry I've been MIA

The end of the semester was SOOO busy. When I wasn't writing papers, I was cramming everything I'd miss about New York into my spare time. I'm back home for the summer, which is nice and it just dawned on me that if i have it my way, this will be my last full summer in Pittsburgh :-O! WEIRD. ..and a little intimidating.


So in between writing papers, I managed to go to the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop - which is magical. It is literally a hole in the wall - thank God the first day I went there was a line down the block - and it was WORTH IT. The first day I got something called the Salty Pimp, which was delicious, but the second time I got the Monday Sundae which is so wonderful - twist ice cream, caramel, sea salt, whipped cream all in a Nutella dipped waffle cone - yes, please. It was so yummy.


I made a few trips to Veselka with my friends before I skipped town and saw four shows within a week and met Bethenny Frankel. Yes! She had a book signing at a nearby Barnes and Noble for her book Skinnydipping and of course I stopped mid-paperwriting to get my butt up there, despite all the May Day protests and it was worth it. She was funny and engaging and very sweet. I wish her talk show lots of success, but I hope it gets moved to New York, so she doesn't move to LA and I can work for her hahahaha (but seriously). It was epic, it was like meeting an idol and I told her so.


The shows I saw before I left were Leap of Faith (twice), Newsies, End of the Rainbow, and A Streetcar Named Desire.


I saw Leap of Faith twice because I loved it so much, but I saw it so soon because it unfairly closed before it should have. It was SO much fun and you could tell the cast really loved the show and had fun, which made me have fun. The music was great and I'm so thankful that it seems as though I'll at least get a cast recording of the amazing show, since I can no longer go see it. I'm really hurt that this closed so quickly. Raul Esparza was amazing and the entire cast was just outstanding. I cannot say enough good things about this show.


Newsies... I got a ticket for for my birthday because Jeremy Jordan was in it. That is legit 90% of why I bought a ticket, and at the time it was a limited engagement (now it's an open-run). I never saw the movie, so I'm not part of this cult following or anything. The choreography was amazing, and I really enjoyed listening to the music with it being mostly male parts. I did find myself wondering why they didn't cast more kids in it, because they would say "kids" and such and I didn't buy it. The music was good, but not something I needed. I just find that it's pretty overrated because it has the cast following. I liked it, but it was probably my least favorite show of the week, unfortunately.


End of the Rainbow was AMAZING. I laughed and I cried and I was thoroughly a little disturbed. It's about the end of Judy Garland's career and life, so she's pretty hot mess for the show, but it was just haunting and amazing. It was really outstanding. Tracie Bennett plays Judy and if she doesn't get the Best Tony for an Actress in a Play award, I'm going to be so pissed off. She was really outstanding. It was only a few cast members and it was great and intimate. I loved it, if you can, go see it!


Lastly, A Streetcar Named Desire, which we saw on my birthday. My family wanted to see it more than I did, but I liked it a lot. I never had to read it when I was in high school and I have never seen the movie with Marlon Brando the entire way through, so I had no idea what I was walking into. Similarly, it was heavy and sad and intense, but it was outstanding. Blair Underwood was great. Nicole Ari Parker as Blanche was so disturbing and so sad to watch. She was excellent. I cannot say enough nice things about her. And I finally got to meet Daphne Rubin-Vega, which was fantastic and crazy. I love her. It was great! I loved it. It was very good.


Here's my album, a lot of pictures are on my friend Caitlin's FB, unfortunately.


I had fun and I'm not as sad to be home for the summer as I thought I would be. Time to look for apartments and just enjoy my friends and my family :)

xx.

Tours

You know, those double-decker bus tours are kinda fun. My family came in this weekend and they wanted to do the uptown tour in New York, which we did. They're long and they're kind of nice to just sit and take pictures and get an idea of where things are. I wish we had gone on the night tour or the Brooklyn tour more, but it was what my grandparents wanted.


It was nice that my mom was able to come up so that when my grandparents got too tired, they could go back to the hotel and we were still able to walk around the city and talk and play. I wish they would come up again every weekend I'm here until finals, but not only is that unrealistic, it isn't going to help much when it comes time to write these stupid papers. I also got my mom hooked on Sprinkles, which is reassuring that they are really good cupcakes, since this is the woman who swears she's not that impressed with cupcakes in general.


The thing is, most New Yorkers never want to be hokey. They avoid Times Square like the plague and try to avoid anything mainstream and chains. Yeah, there are times that I get frustrated when I'm trying to walk somewhere and I'm behind people who are stopping to look at everything or who are clearly tourists, however, some of those things are fun. It's nice to take a walk through Central Park in fall and take pictures of the changing leaves. It's fun to sometimes get on a tour bus and be driven around the city, especially when so many people seldom leave their own neighborhoods. Sometimes, it's nice to just go to Times Square and shop up there instead of near your apartment (though, this is the least important one). The thing is that everyone is a little cliche, and by trying sooo hard to not be cliche, you're fulfilling one of the biggest cliches of all and you're being annoying. I'm never going to like slow walkers, but I will make it a point to get to Central Park every fall to see the leaves.


In other news, I'm trying to think of places that my friends and I can live, but it is so nerve-wracking and I'm just scared we're going to end up someplace shady - which I know with Laura, we won't. It's just the first time I'm living in an apartment, paying my own rent without my family and that just feels so final. This could be the last summer that I spend in Pittsburgh for the entire summer and I can't handle that thought. I love New York and I'm so sad to have to start thinking about leaving and heading home for the summer, but it's weird to be thinking about completely changing my life for real.


It's finals time. I really need to just sit down and start pounding out papers, especially my Genre Meets Gender paper because that class feels as though it is a colossal waste of time and I need to just be finished with it all. My goal is to finish it by the end of the weekend (fingers crossed). Clearly, Adrienne and I are going to not be allowed to talk or see each other this weekend or neither of us are getting anything done.


One last thing, before I go to watch Glee and start thinking about my final papers - vote for my friend Kaitlyn? Her book blog, Kaitlyn in Bookland is a fantastic blog, if you haven't checked it out already and it would mean the world to me if you clicked this link and gave her some love: http://www.goodreads.com/book_blogger_award/entry/318


Thanks!!!


xx

April!?!

Okay, so I very clearly dropped the ball on this blog thing - but it's not my fault. Is anyone else SHOCKED that it is already the first week of April? It just dawned on me that these final papers that I feel like are a distant memory are, I realize they're due in just a month. WUT?!


Anyway, not too much has been happening here. Lots of work. Depression over Burger King discontinuing chicken fries. Scoping out the Gossip Girl set. I have been lucky enough to get pictures with Ed Westwick, Leighton Meester, and KayLee Derfer while picking the brains of production assistants on set to see how they got their jobs and how to get into that kind of business. I went to a Careers Outside of Academia panel and that was much less helpful than talking to these two guys for forty-five minutes.


I'm QUITE ready to be done with school. Anything I may have said about continuing on to get my Ph.D is a complete lie (at least for now). I want the hell out of school and to get working and make real money. Even if I'm at the bottom of the income bracket, at least it's more than a part-time, minimum-wage job, though it is going to hurt a little when I have to leave my BBW family.


I'm trying to find apartments for next year, but it is so hard to try and find a place to live, especially in the city. I wish I could just stumble across a great deal in Hell's Kitchen, because that would be my ideal situation. The  Village is nice and I'm really glad I had the opportunity to live here, but I don't like it. It's like living in a little mini-Pittsburgh, pretty much - people walk too slow, things are closed by like 10pm, only things are noisy so it's even worse because it's like living in the South Side on a Friday night every night. I'm looking at Craig's List and in general no-fee rental sites, so hopefully something comes up - but there's no point in really looking right now seeing as I don't want to move until August 1st.


My internship is good and super fun. I've made some great friends there and it's going to be a little sad when we all split up and go our separate ways at the end of the semester. I've learned so much and I'm really happy I got to intern with such a small and fun staff who seems to really care about teaching interns the ins and outs of their job. I also volunteered with the Tribeca Film Festival and that's starting soon, so I'm excited about that. I think it'll be a lot of fun and it'll be nice to see things from a film perspective to see if I'd rather stick around with television or flop to film and film festivals.


I FINALLY won the Wicked lottery, by the way!!! It was amazing. It's $26 for front row seats, which is a good deal. I think a few rows back would be better, but they were amazing and the cast was FANTASTIC. Chandra Lee Schwartz is the most AMAZING Glinda that I've seen (clearly Cheno doesn't count) and she's absolutely wonderful. She's so bubbly and has PIPES. She is absolutely hilarious. Jackie Burns was a GREAT Elphaba. I loved her Fiyero run in No Good Deed and her Defying Gravity. When she's just singing, I was not that impressed by her voice, but she can belt like no one's business and she was just adorable. I also loved Richard H. Blake as Fiyero. I was really excited to see him because I love him in Legally Blonde the Musical and he really shined as Fiyero. He was so adorable and I really loved the way he played him. He had a very good balance between being shallow and pretty for Glinda and secretly smart and caring for Elphaba. You should go see it immediately if you can.


I wish I had been able to get tickets for Seminar before Alan Rickman left :( I feel like that's my biggest NYC fail so far. However, on my bucket list of shows to see there is: The Columnist, The Book of Mormon, End of the Rainbow, Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Newsies, Nice Work if You Can Get It, Once, Peter and the Starcatcher, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and A Streetcar Named Desire - yes, I just went through the list on Playbill.


Anyway, my last month here, I promise I'll get better with blogging. I'll even keep the periodic post while I'm home in Pittsburgh for the summer, with apartment news and whatnot. It's better, I swear.

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year!!!


I can't believe it's 2012 already. If we believe the Mayans, the world ends at the end of the year! This is the year to live it up.


I rang in the New Year with two of my sorority sisters and a sweetheart in Times Square. It was not anywhere as bad as I expected and I'm really glad that we went. It was so fun and we met some awesome people and it was great actually being there and watching everything happen as it happened (except performances, we weren't that close). We left my apartment at like 7p and we were on 7th and 54th Street, so we could actually see the ball and the big screens. It was epic and awesome.


We got up there on Thursday night and it was Emily's first time in NYC, so we did all kinds of fun touristy things for her and she loved it, which made us all so happy and so relieved. My roommate was a rude, psycho to my friends, so that kind of sucks. I'm sorry, if you're not okay with having people stay over for a few days, just say so and we can get a hotel. Don't say you're okay with it and then act like a bitch. Just saying.


However, she did not rain on our parade and we had a lot of fun. I'm really glad that we did it and I think it's definitely something that everyone should do once, especially if the weather ends up being as nice as it was before. Even if you're not on 7th Avenue, there are TVs set up on various streets so that you can still see what is happening but still be in the masses. It was a once in a lifetime experience. It was really great.


Making resolutions is always sometimes silly, but I do think that they help! So, my goals are to get not just thin, but IN SHAPE, which is most important and to just keep working hard to get what I want and to go on a budget, so that I can afford to STAY in New York City forever and ever amen.


I hope you all had a good New Year's!

The three of us waiting to ring in 2012!

Rory Gilmore Book Challenge

Hey, friends! I found this list on a blog that took it from a forum, featuring a big chunk of books that Rory read on Gilmore Girls. I combined that list with three lists I found online: here and here. I'm sure Kaitlyn will join me in this journey :)
Red = Started but not finished
Purple = Finished


1984 by George Orwell
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durell

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
The Ambassadors by Henry James 
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Anthem by Ayn Rand
Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
The Art of Fiction by Henry James
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Babe by Dick King-Smith
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 
Beloved by Toni Morrison
A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
The BFG by Roald Dahl
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks 
Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Candide by Voltaire 
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger 
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
Christine by Stephen King
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein

The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Collected Short Stories by Eudora Welty
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 
Cousin Bette by Honor’e de Balzac
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
The Cunning Man by Robertson Davies
Cujo by Stephen King
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon 
A Dance to the Music of Time (series) by Anthony Powell
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
David and Lisa by Dr. Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Deenie by Judy Blume
Deliverance by James Dickey
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Don Quijote by Cervantes
The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein
Double Act by Jacqueline Wilson

Double Star by Robert Heinlein

Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 
Dune by Frank Herbert
Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
Eloise by Kay Thompson
Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
Emma by Jane Austen 
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Extravagance by Gary Krist
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 
Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Fear by L. Ron Hubbard
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 of The Lord of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien (TBR)
Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
Fletch by Gregory McDonald
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles 
From Here to Eternity by James Jones
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Girls in Love by Jacqueline Wilson
Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin
The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
The Golden Bowl by Henry James
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian

Gormenghast (series) by Mervyn Peake

The Gospel According to Judy Bloom
The Graduate by Charles Webb
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Greenmantle by Charles de Lint
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Guards! Guards by Tery Pratchett
Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling 
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene 
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow 
Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare
Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare
Henry V by William Shakespeare
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Holes by Louis Sachar

Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipual

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III 
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
How the Light Gets In by M. J. Hyland
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
Howard's End by E.M. Forster 
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

I, Claudius by Robert Graves
I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres
The Iliad by Homer
The Illusions by Richard Bach
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy
It by Stephen King
It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 
The Jessica Darling series by Megan McCaffertyThe Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer 

Katherine by Anya Seton

Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 
Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D. H. Lawrence
The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Light in August by William Faulkner
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

The Little Country by Charles de Lint

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 
Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (nor will I probably finish this one)
The Love Story by Erich Segal
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Loving by Henry Green
Macbeth by William Shakespeare 
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
Magician by Raymond E. Feist
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
The Magus by John Fowles
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Manticore by Robertson Davies
Marathon Man by William Goldman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Memory and Dream by Charles de Lint
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken
The Merry Wives of Windsro by William Shakespeare
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
Mission Earth by L. Ron Hubbard
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
Moonheart by Charles de Lint
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Mort by Terry Pratchett
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mulengro by Charles de Lint
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
My Antonia by Willa Cather
My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken
My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult 
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin
Native Son by Richard Wright
Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Night by Elie Wiesel
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen 
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Old School by Tobias Wolff
The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett

On the Beach by Nevil Shute

On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Othello by Shakespeare 
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov 
Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

Property by Valerie Martin
The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein
Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers 
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
The Return of the King: The Lord of the Rings Book 3 by J. R. R. Tolkien 
R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
Roman Holiday by Edith Wharton
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton 
Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller by Henry James
The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd 
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Sexus by Henry Miller
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Shane by Jack Shaefer
The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
The Shining by Stephen King
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Small Island by Andrea Levy 
Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers 
Someplace to be Flying by Charles de Lint

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury 

Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
Songbook by Nick Hornby
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Sonnets from the Portuegese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
The Stand by Stephen King
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson
Stuart Little by E. B. White
The Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. Farrell 

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
Tess of the D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy
Time and Again by Jack Finney
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCollough
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 

Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

Trader by Charles de Lint

The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller 
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom 
The Twits by Roald Dahl
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe 
Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
Unless by Carol Shields
USA (Trilogy) by John Dos Passos 

V. by Thomas Pynchon

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray 
Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
Vicky Angel by Jacqueline Wilson
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Walt Disney’s Bambi by Felix Salten
The Wapshot Chronicles by John Cheever
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Watership Down by Richard Adams (FAVORITE)
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

We the Living by Ayn Rand

What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee 
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire 
Wide Saragasso Sea by Jean Rhys
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
The World According to Garp by John Irving

The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison

The Wood Wife by Terri Windling
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Yarrow by Charles de Lint
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm

Posted: 12/29/2011
Updated: 5/29/2012