Monday, July 28, 2008

The Big Read

“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”

1) Bold: I have read.

2) Underline: Books I love.

3) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them. (31 is my count...but there are several titles that leave me saying, "I can't believe I haven't read that!"...alas, maybe when I finish school!)


1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling

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 – Phillip 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 . The Complete works of Shakespeare (I've read many of them, but not all.)

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit --J.R.R. Tolkien

17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveller's Wife

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 (my VERY favourite 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

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

78. Germinal - Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession - AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

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 St. 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 (and mostly in French as I recall!)

98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Monday, March 17, 2008

Middle of March...how did this happen?

Well, things are coming along. I've got 10 pages of 25 for my IPIAT paper. And I'm hoping to get a few more written today. (Have already written two or three this morning and it's not yet 10am!)

Other project for this week? Figure out what to wear to the presentation. No idea.

Final project? Organize ushers, musicians, cd table & food people for the big night. Am thinking I'll rent glasses and linens so that it looks nice in the Upper East Hall for the reception. Of course, planning like this begs the question, "How many are you execting?" And the answer is, "No idea."

Oh well. Back to it. Meanwhile, if you didn't fall for the link at the beginning, check out www.andreatisher.com

Saturday, March 01, 2008

updates on several fronts...

1. Recording is almost done. One more guitar track and a few straggling bass and organ lines.

(Phew.)

It's been fun, but kind of all-consuming and I've found myself resenting how my "normal life" has been getting in the way. :)

Lesson #1: Next time, I'm going to quit my normal life for the duration of recording.

2. I have been privileged to have friends and family play on this album - and it's been fantastic.

Lesson #2: It's a very good idea to have talented friends and family.

3. Concert is set for Saturday, March 29th, 7:30pm at Tenth Avenue Church. If all goes well, it should be a CD release as well! So March holds concert prep and paper-writing. I'm just starting to work on spreading the word about the concert as I'd really like to play to as full a house as possible...feel free to spread the word yourselves; it's definitely a 'come one, come all' kind of event! (There's a facebook event if that's an easier way.)

Lesson #3: There's a lot of admin to do for a CD project, concert, etc. If only there weren't also a paper to write!

4. Pastors' Conference brochure is out (see http://www.regent-college.edu/events/conferences/pastors/speakers.php )

Lesson #4: Don't assume that listing people together makes them peers... Marva Dawn, Bruce Hindmarsh, Darrell Johnson, Andrea Tisher (one of these is not like the others!)

Saturday, February 16, 2008

5 things I could blog about...

1. Spent 9 hours at Creation Studios in Burnaby on Wednesday. Recorded 40 takes of 14 tracks for the cd that will be part of my IPIAT.
2. An IPIAT is an Integrative Project in the Arts and Theology. It used to be called an "Arts Thesis Project" which was helpful in that people could quickly understand what it was...but which apparently annoyed some academic types who don't think that artistic work is academic enough to be considered on par with a thesis. I'm not sure what I think of this, but I do know that IPIAT is a mouthful, even as an acronym. :)
3. Spent 3 hours at Saga Recording last night which is where I'll record all the vocals and where my instrumentalists will record guitar, cello, percussion and flute.
4. Gordon has come down with some sort of cold/flu. Needless to say, I'm trying my best not to breathe his air. Quite the project in a small condo.
5. I'm off to make West African Peanut Stew... Sweet potatoes! Beets! Carrots! Onions! Ginger! Garlic! .... let the chopping commence!

Friday, January 18, 2008

Friday Five: Read Any Good Books Lately?

1. What book have you read in the last six months that has really stayed with you? Why? I re-read "My Name is Asher Lev" in the fall and found it painfully delightful once again. There is such angst in this book. The theme of responsibility to both one's creativity and one's community has stayed with me as I've been writing music over these past months. How can I serve my community, but also seek to stretch their artistic parameters?

2. What is one of your favorite childhood books? As a very young child I LOVED "The Pokey Little Puppy" and before I could read I would "read" it to my dog, making up the story as best I remembered it as I went along.

3. Do you have a favorite book of the Bible? Do tell! The Psalms. They're easily the book I've read the most times and they are such a source of comfort/agitation/praise/confession...I can't seem to tire of them.

4. What is one book you could read again and again? The Small Rain and A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L'Engle. The novels tell the story of a character, but with many years passing in between. So the first ends in her early adulthood and then second picks up the story from there, but told by the woman to her grand-daughter. They're lovely books in which really horrible life events occur and yet so does transformation and grace. They're not pain-free but they're not despairing either. I highly recommend them.

5. Is there a book you would suggest for Lenten reading? What is it and why? My friend Steven Purcell published a book called "Even Among These Rocks" which I like to re-read every Lent. He includes poetry, visual art (historical pieces as well as originals) hymns, and reflection on Lenten themes and ideas. It's available at the Regent Bookstore https://shop3.gospelcom.net/epages/RegentCollegeBookstore.storefront/4790c6e200a1f3b4271d45579e7b0720/Search/Run