Breen In Boston

Living life in Boston

Books I’ve Read on BBC top 100 list November 4, 2011

Filed under: My Life — Breen @ 2:13 pm

Some time ago, the BBC published a list of what they say are the Top 100 Books ever written.  I saw this post at The Bookworm Wife and thought I would participate. I have read 59 of the books on this list, not too bad I think.

(The books I’ve read on this list are italicized and bolded)

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien


3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 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 – 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 – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
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 –
I re-read this every year at Christmas time!
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

How many books on this list have you read?

 

Fall Fair September 15, 2011

Filed under: My Life — Breen @ 11:56 am

On labor day weekend one of the things we did was attend the Woodstock Fair in CT. I love the fair for it’s food, displays, music and events. It’s such a great childhood memory and I am so glad I get to share it with Scott.

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Art in the city August 10, 2011

Filed under: My Life — Breen @ 1:08 pm

Last Friday I went with my friend to the MFA to see an amazing exhibit by Chully. Here are just some of the pics I took of his amazing work, but the pics don’t do it justice.

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Announcement August 4, 2011

Filed under: My Life — Breen @ 5:37 pm

Sorry posting has been light of late, but I have big news.

Scott and I are engaged!  Follow us on my wedding planning blog at http://frombostontothebarn.wordpress.com.

 

Tourists in our own neighborhood June 13, 2011

Filed under: 30_for_30,My Life — Breen @ 6:02 pm
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Despite the fact that we live less than a 20 minute walk away from both the MFA and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum we had yet to visit either of them since moving to our apartment in the winter of 2009. I had been to the Gardner Museum once in college on a “field trip” for my Art History class and had loved it then and wanted to share the experience with Scott.

We got the motivation we needed in the form of a Groupon for 2 adult tickets with a “postcard package” for $15. Yesterday was a rather dismal day so after our run and an episode of Flight of the Conchords watched while we ate lunch, we decided to mosey on over to the museum.

It was even more incredible than I remembered. My favorite is still the courtyard.


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Prague Vacation Remembered: Part 2 June 9, 2011

Filed under: My Life — Breen @ 6:52 pm
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I know I am really slow with the updates on this, but I have been busy working on some side projects for a friend’s wedding. I will be sure to post once those are complete (and the ones that are completed are revealed to the bride at her surprise shower at the end of this month).

In the mean time, I will show you more of the “postcards” I created for my final project in my Book Art Class (which I got an A in- yay!). This is a picture heavy post- see more after the break!

 

Stormy Thursday

Filed under: My Life — Breen @ 1:45 pm

The weather here in Boston has been so nice for the past few days but now it is storming. Poor Youk had a hard time with the heat yesterday and the thunder today, he is NOT a fan of summer!

I feel like the weather has been affecting my moods a lot lately. When it was hot out, I was feeling lazy and unproductive, especially at work where I have a lot less to do right now since it is that magical in between time before semesters. Today I am feeling kind of blah- I think it is because of the weather as well. Plus I work in a basement where things are always the same so maybe I feel like I am missing out on some of the views of the world- even if it is just a little piece outside of a window.

At least the Bruins won last night though so that series seems to be taking a turn (hopefully). It would be great to see the Stanley Cup come back to Boston after 42 years. I wonder what crazy hi-jinx the Bruins players would do with their day with the Cup. There’s a great feature on Boston.com on some of the wilder things the cup has seen. My favorite two are the cup as a planter and the cup being used to baptize Sylvain Lefebvre’s child.

What’s your favorite story of the Stanley Cup?

 

Bruins Fever in Boston June 2, 2011

Filed under: My Life — Breen @ 12:49 am

Throughout the city there is an incredible excitement about the Bruins in the Stanley Cup.  There has been a plethora of people walking around in their Bruins gear and we saw flags and Bruins paraphernalia everywhere in the North End when we were there on Monday (Memorial Day).   One fan even created custom Jerseys for some of the statues in the Boston Public Garden.

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Creative Crafting with Friends June 1, 2011

Filed under: My Life — Breen @ 4:00 pm
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One of my friends is getting married in September of this year. This past Memorial Day weekend, all the “college friends” got together to help her cross some items of her DIY list for her wedding.

Bride to be demonstrating some of the materials we will use

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Celebrating 4 years May 25, 2011

Filed under: My Life — Breen @ 8:07 pm

Today, Scott and I celebrate our four year dating anniversary.

March 2009 at Scott's friends' wedding in NY

It was 4 years ago today that I met Scott at what has become “our bar”- Beer Works at Fenway.

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