Up and awake

So, first, my life. Then, a meme.

Research goes on. It's possible I'll get done in plenty of time. It's possible that it will all blow up in my face. I'll let you know in a month. The important thing is that in a month I have to be done so I will be. This lack of structure, lack of accomplishment, lack of meaning is really getting to me. Luckily, I'm exercising a little more, so that's helping to compensate the ennui and the crazy that research seems to engender in me. I don't know why, it just does.

Also, B is gone for a week. He's in Portland, running the marathon on Sunday. I'm proud of him, but I'm lonely. It doesn't help that two other friends are also basically unavailable this weekend. I'm planning on getting a lot of writing done (the research kind, not the fun kind) and watching Freedom Writers and knitting. It won't be awful, but I can imagine better weekends.

Okay, meme. Normally, I don't do memes, but this one is kind of interesting, albeit long. My friend Christina did it on her blog, and I liked seeing what she liked and didn't like, so maybe someone will like seeing what I like? Or maybe you'll all skip over it. That's fine too.

"What follows is a list of the top 150 titles marked "Unread" on LibraryThing, with the number of books so marked in parentheses. I have made bold things I've read, italicized the ones I've started but didn't finish, and colored red the ones I couldn't stand and green the ones I loved. Feel free to play, too!" -Christina

I deleted the ones I haven't read because the list was too long. Go to Christina's blog for the whole list if you care to.

Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and prejudice (83)
A tale of two cities (80)
Jane Eyre (80)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79)
The time traveler's wife (73)
The Iliad (73)
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (67)
Atlas shrugged (67)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
Middlesex (66)
The Canterbury tales (64)
Brave new world (61)
The Fountainhead (61)
A clockwork orange (59)
The poisonwood Bible : a novel (57)
1984 (57)
Sense and sensibility (55)
The picture of Dorian Gray (55)
One flew over the cuckoo's nest (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (52)
The god of small things (51)
The unbearable lightness of being (49)
Beloved : a novel (49)
Slaughterhouse-five (49)
The scarlet letter (48)
Oryx and Crake : a novel (47)
The catcher in the rye (46)
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of… (45)
The Aeneid (45)
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its … (44)
The bell jar (43)
Beowulf : a new verse translation (43)
The plague (43)
The handmaid's tale (42)
Little Women (41)
A brief history of time : from the big bang to black holes (41)
The chronicles of Narnia (40)
Possession : a romance (40)
Fast food nation : the dark side of the all-American meal (40)
Alias Grace (39)
The great Gatsby (39)
To kill a mockingbird (39)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Gla… (39)
The alchemist (39)
Candide, or, Optimism (39)
Snow falling on cedars (39)
Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story (39)
The lovely bones : a novel (38)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (38)

I don't dislike very many of those books, but I also haven't read many good works of fiction recently. I like Anita Shreve, but her books leave me too depressed. Does anyone have any great suggestions?