Missalexgreenturtle - Seasons, Teaching, And Adventures

48. I got more to read!

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I want to do this at the new year and see what I can take people up on.

• ask your friends to teach you something new •

if you follow me, you may know that have been making a real effort to actively engage in my own existence - to recognize and do away with the things in my life that do not matter, to work harder, to have higher standards when it comes to the company I keep and what sort of treatment I am going to put up with (see my post Notes to Self). it has been a battle against myself, social media, and my unwillingness to face the feelings that the internet distracts me from, but one I ultimately believe I will win.

I’ve decided that instead of leaving social media completely, I’m going to use it to further my connection with people and hope that it catches on (we’ll see). I asked my facebook friends “what is a skill that you can teach me?” expecting a few jokes and maybe one real reply.

all these people came out of the woodwork; folks I met once or twice and friends I’ve known for years, excitedly offering to teach me skills I did not know they had because I never thought to ask. mending, scrapbooking, dance, CPR, organization techniques, canning, wedding planning, dyeing and spinning wool.

ask your friends what they can teach you.

if, like me, you yearn for connection beyond just shopping trips and movie nights and going out for drinks, just ask. you get to learn (which is knowing), your friend gets to teach (which is sharing), and a real conversation is so valuable.

a friend and I met at her house for a meal and a mending lesson a few weeks ago. we ate together and caught up on lost time while she showed me how to repair the torn sweater I brought from home. there was so much peace - sitting on the living room floor with her and laughing at my crooked stitches. I’ve since mended a pair of my husband’s pants, patched a hole in my dad’s jacket, and gave my dress some stronger buttons.

a crooked stitch still strengthens the cloth. I am that much closer to needing less.

what could you teach me?

Hungry: 

If your body is asking for food, the hunger will gradually develop. Emotional hunger is a response to some sort of negative experience or feeling and is usually more of a sudden onset of a craving for a specific food. With emotional hunger you will also feel the need to eat immediately.  If you’re still not sure, wait a few minutes and see what happens. As you do this more and more it will become easier for you to distinguish between the two.

Angry:

One thing that can help with anger is feeling a sense of power. Things like running, dancing, or other strong physical activities are a great way to get that energy out of your body.  Depending on what works for you- you may also want to try something more calming. Slow down, let your mind relax… sometimes that can help you to organize your thoughts which may bring on the realization that whatever your angry about isn’t all that bad or is something you can work on by staying focused.  Don’t forget to address your anger. None of this means to disregard it, push it back, or try to completely forget about it. You can’t bottle these things up inside. What you want to do is calm yourself, release that negative energy, and organize your thoughts so you can handle the anger in a safe and effective way.

Lonely:

If you’re lonely, reach out to someone. Text, phone, video chat, in person. Even just going outside for a walk or going to a coffee shop with your laptop. You don’t always have to be directly socializing with people as long as you’re around them. Short term loneliness is sometimes alleviated by simply being in the presence of other people.

Tired:

If you’re tired, take a look at your schedule. Are you overworking yourself? You may need to make set times within your schedule to take a break. Scheduling breaks may sound weird… but you need it. Don’t burn yourself out. Don’t take on more than you can handle. Also take a look at your sleep schedule. Are you getting the rest you need? Maybe you need to set an earlier time to get to bed in order to wake up feeling refreshed. Your body will thank you. The last thing is that you can’t be afraid take time for yourself or say no to things. 

This is fantastic