List of Must-Reads I Haven't Read

As the school year now concludes, my English teacher decided that as a gift of sorts, she would compile a list of her favorite books and present the list to us. After briefly glancing over the list, I recognized the majority of the books listed, but had only read a few. So, if you're looking for something to read, take a look at this list and see if you feel, perhaps...inspired.

(All titles I have read are listed in bold. I didn't bother indicating which works I recognized because that's just about all of them.)

Novels
The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Giver - Lois Lowry
The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlo
Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
The Last Lecture - Mitch Albom
Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran
The Velveteen Rabbit - Margery Williams
Emma - Jane Austen
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
1984 - George Orwell
The Stranger - Albert Camus
War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Doors of Perception - Aldous Huxley
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Rabbit Run - John Updike
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Brothers Karamazov - Fyodore Dostoevsky
The Call of the Wild - Jack London
Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Ulysses - James Joyce
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Charlotte's Web - E.B. White
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Care
Night - Elie Wisel
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Stories of Eva Luna - Isabel Allende
The Art of War - Sun Tzu
The Passionate God - Rosemary Haughton
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - Tom Stoppard
The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
The Odyssey - Homer
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Prince - Machiavelli
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
Inferno - Dante Alighieri
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Cider House Rules - John Irving
The Green Mile - Stephen King
No Country For Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
The Princess Bride - William Goldman

Now that is quite a list. And a long one at that. Also, according to this list, apparently I've been reading the wrong books for my entire life. Now I guess the next thing to do would be to actually read the books on this list. But truthfully, this post should more accurately be titled "List of Must-Have Reads I Haven't Read (and Most Likely Never Will)." And I don't know that for certain, but I'll more likely than not start making my way through this list when I have the time to do so, (as in summer or retirement.) Until then, the best of luck on your journey reading and let me know in the comments which novels you have read too.

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Wallowing in the Water

The day I've been dreading the entire semester has arrived - the day when we started swimming during PE.

Now I must admit that because it was a scorching, blistering day, that swimming was refreshing, at least to an extent. Swimming has never been a great talent or skill of mine. Sure, I know how to swim. But if I had been on the Titanic, I'd guess that my chances of survival would have been close to zero. However, if I was asked to relax in the hot tub with my friends for an hour or two, that I could definitely do (and very well.)

There were a couple swimmers/water polo players in my class that obviously swam competitively from how practiced (and fast) they're laps were, but I was content with wallowing in the water. Then again, I certainly wasn't the worst swimmer in my class since some of my classmates were asking me how to swim certain strokes.
                                                       
The pool at my school is actually pretty nice. As in, there are definitely worse bodies of water to be swimming in during a PE class. My greatest hardship swimming during PE would be breathing. The pool at my school ranges from thirteen feet deep to around six feet deep, and because I'm only about 5'4", I'm sure you can guess how difficult it was to keep my head above the water.

But besides the obvious difficulty I experienced while treading water, swimming was actually a lot better than I had expected. We didn't play any games or something fancy like water polo, but it was hot enough that swimming laps across the pool was perfect.

I was fortunate enough to have remembered both a towel and swimming trunks, because there were several kids in my class that forgot both. The majority of them that forgot these swimming (essentials?) just swam in their PE uniform shorts and called it a day. And I would've thought that drying off would've taken forever too, but with all that heat bearing down, I think just about everyone was dry pretty quickly.

Well, I heard that tomorrow we'll be playing water polo, and I'm not quite sure what my opinion is on that. Hopefully there aren't any (good) water polo players in my period, because I've heard from the classes last semester that the experienced water polo players are no joke, as in, throwing the water polo ball behind their backs to score or something ridiculous. (And by ridiculous I mean that I wish I could do.) As for now, I should probably go and practice my own little water polo routine in the bathtub in preparation for tomorrow.

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My First Ever AP Test

Like many other students across the nation, AP testing began today. However, the AP test I completed this morning was not only the first AP test that was administered this year, but my first AP test ever. And I'll have you know that the test definitely earned the title, "Advanced Placement", because the AP test was hands the most difficult test I have ever taken. And that's saying something considering I've already earned D's on several other AP Chemistry chapter exams.

The test began around 8:45, but we entered the testing room around 8:00, not that it really matters. What does matter is the fact that as my classmates and I waited outside the testing room, nervously laughing and chatting, I realized that I had forgotten both my student identification card as well as the card with my AP number. Consequently, for the next thirty minutes, I was scanning the group of people, looking for someone that didn't have their wallet or that wasn't showing someone else those two items (which I still did not have.) 

I was legitimately concerned that I would not be allowed to take the exam. I mean, it is an AP exam, so I was sure stuff like that has happened before. I briefly thought about walking home, but considering it's a thirty minute drive, I figured that wasn't really an option.

So I just went along with it and by the grace of God, I didn't need either items and was able to just take the exam. On second thought, maybe it would've been better if I had been caught without my identification card and my AP number...

Once we finally entered the building to take the test, we were assigned seats. Yes, assigned seats. But now that I think of it, that actually makes decent sense. Either way, as we were filling in our addresses and our names, I couldn't help but notice that my hand was trembling. Like shuddering, as if shock waves were rippling across my palms. Then, to ineffectively calm my nerves, I clenched my pencil, only for it to snap. Don't worry, I brought around ten in case of that exact situation. 

                                                 

We soon started the multiple choice portion of the test, which was some of the most difficult AP Chemistry material ever presented in front of me. (I'm hoping for around fifty percent. If I'm lucky.) After a quick ten minute break, we then took the free response portion, which was strangely easier than the multiple choice, (probably because I was doing all of it wrong.)

Now to bore you some more, the format of the test was:

 60 Multiple Choice Questions in 90 Minutes

+7 Free Response Questions in 105 Minutes

=a whole lot of time spent being tested on a subject I'm not very fond of

And if you plan on taking AP Chemistry this upcoming year, there's more information about it here. Not quite sure why you'd want to, but to each his own. And next year, when you're crying yourself to sleep every night (like I will be doing tonight), don't say I didn't warn you.

As a side note, I'd like to mention that because this test is such a big deal, my high school gave everyone that took the test this morning the rest of the day off. So I guess that's the major positive, (that and the fact if, if I do well I'll get some college credit.) And to all of y'all that took the AP Chemistry test this morning and still have more to come, I wish you luck! 

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