Reading List

The truth is that I never understood - and I still don't understand - Shakespeare.

It's actually quite embarrassing. I never "got" the language of his plays or why someone would read plays at all. Isn't the point to see it performed?

I do remember in English class, when my teacher said that "even if you never ever take English again, you must read Shakespeare. It's the sign of a cultured individual and you will be terribly embarrassed at a cocktail party if you have never read Hamlet."

Darn it.

Well, reading is a bit different from understanding it, right?

One of my goals is to become more well-read. There are so many references to famous novels everywhere and many things in arts, humanities, whatever you're studying becomes easier if you've read more books. I looked up (on Wikipedia) the list of the best 100 books picked out by authors and my goal is to read them all before I graduate :)

1. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
2. Fairy tales – Hans Christian Andersen
3. The Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri
4. Epic of Gilgamesh – Unknown
5. Book of Job – Unknown
6. One Thousand and One Nights – Unknown
7. Njál's Saga – Unknown
8. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
9. Le Père Goriot - Honoré de Balzac
10. Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable (a trilogy) – Samuel Beckett
11. The Decameron – Giovanni Boccaccio
12. Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
13. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
14. The Stranger – Albert Camus
15. Poems – Paul Celan
16. Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
17. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
18. The Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer
19. Stories – Anton Chekhov
20. Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
21. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
22. Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
23. Berlin Alexanderplatz - Alfred Döblin
24. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
25. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
26. The Possessed - Fyodor Dostoevsky
27. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
28. Middlemarch – George Eliot
29. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
30. Medea – Euipides
31. Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
32. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
33. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
34. Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert
35. Gypsy Ballads - Federico García Lorca
36. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
37. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez
38. Faust – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
39. Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol
40. The Tin Drum - Günter Grass
41. The Devil to Pay in the Backlands - João Guimarães Rosa
42. Hunger – Knut Hamsun
43. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
44. Illiad – Homer
45. Odyssey – Homer
46. A Doll’s House – Henrik Ibsen
47. Ulyssees – James Joyce
48. Stories – Franz Kafka
49. The Trial - Franz Kafka
50. The Castle - Franz Kafka
51. Shakuntala – Kālidāsa
52. The Sound of the Mountain - Yasunari Kawabata
53. Zorba the Greek - Nikos Kazantzakis
54. Sons and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence
55. Independent People - Halldór Laxness
56. Poems - Giacomo Leopardi
57. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
58. Pippi Longstocking – Astrid Lindgren
59. A Madman’s Diary – Lu Xun
60. Children of Gebelawi - Naguib Mahfouz
61. Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
62. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
63. Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
64. Essays – Michel de Montaigne
65. History – Elsa Morante
66. Beloved – Toni Morrison
67. The Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu
68. The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
69. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
70. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
71. Metamorphoses – Ovid
72. The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
73. Tales – Edgar Allan Poe
74. In Search of Lost Time – Marcel Proust
75. The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel - François Rabelais
76. Pedro Páramo - Juan Rulfo
77. Masnavi – Rumi
78. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
79. Bostan – Saadi
80. Season of Migration to the North – Tayeb Salih
81. Blindess - José Saramago
82. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
83. King Lear - William Shakespeare
84. Othello - William Shakespeare
85. Oedipus the King – Sophocles
86. The Red and the Black – Stendhal
87. Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
88. Confessions of Zeno – Italo Svevo
89. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
90. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
91. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
92. The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy
93. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
94. Ramayana – Valmiki
95. Aeneid – Virgil
96. Mahabharata – Vyasa
97. Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman
98. Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
99. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
100. Memoirs of Hadrian - Marguerite Yourcenar

The more that you read, the more things you'll know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. 

-Dr. Seuss

Summer's Almost Over?!

It's been a while since I've written or posted anything but I really don't want to just give up on this blog! I'm much less stressed in the summer so that's been my excuse for not writing as much, but I have just as much stuff to think about. I recently finished my internship at the Church of the Redeemer's Drop-In Meal Program and it's been quite the experience. You can read more about it here:
http://www.theredeemer.ca/Page/LunchProgram.html
My supervisor asked me to write a reflection for the monthly newsletter and I didn't know what to write so I ended up whipping something together last minute. So, here is a little bit about my summer:

I remember stepping into the Drop-In Centre for the first time at the beginning of May. Having grown up in a suburban, middle-class neighbourhood, I really didn't know what to expect in the next two months. I was extremely nervous on my first day. Sitting at the first table—the one second closest to the door—I asked a man if the seat beside him was taken and he had said, “No, it’s for you.” Seeing the amused expression on his face, I wanted to say something more, start up a conversation, but I just couldn't think of anything to say. What if what I said was offensive or ignorant? What do we even have in common that we could talk about? Instead, I kept quiet and just observed.

What I came to learn during and after that first day is that the people I met at the Drop-In are extremely honest and open. “I have a drinking problem.” “I have a mental illness.” “I used to be a painter.” I came to realize that none of the people I met wanted my sympathy or pity; they simply wanted a friend—someone to listen to their stories, opinions and ideas because there are so many. Never before had I been to a place where people are so open to chat with strangers and so passionate about what they cared about. I chatted with people about the same subjects that I’m studying, but I had never felt as excited about the same topics when I chatted with classmates. I also learned—about history, politics, art, sports and cultures. I've learned to start up conversations with strangers and to just listen.

One morning, I chatted with a man I had never seen before. He could seem to remember my name but all he said to me before leaving is that even if I have a terrible rest of the day, I should know that I have made one at least one person’s day better and that should be enough. The past two months have been an extremely rewarding and inspiring experience and I have learned so much more than I could ever give back.

“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Here are some photos from the book sale fundraiser as well:

Psalm 143:8

I came across this verse this past week and really at the right time.

Let morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
   for I have put my trust in You.
Show me the way I should go,
   for to You I entrust my life.

Psalm 143:8

Here again

I'm here again. Sitting at a desk at Robarts on a Sunday afternoon. Trying to think up the words to type. For the right ones to appear on my computer screen.

Here's the first piece from this school year.

Let's go back.

Happy Studying Everyone!

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Somewhere like this

So, Wongfu Productions released a new video on Monday called "Somewhere Like This." It's beautiful, thoughtful and, as usual, drew me into the story of these two people. The short film was written and directed by Wes and the shots are stunning and kind of nostalgic.

Anyways, enough of my crappy reviewing, take some time to watch it :)

"Across clear skies. Among glowing stars. That's where I'll find us."

Let's pretend

I wanted to be someone different tonight. I tried something new.
A short draft turned into a long one.
More words than I had anticipated or predicted.
This is the first "piece of writing" that I have formally written not for a school assignment.
Although I suppose blog posts count, so it actually isn't.

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Feeling good and looking up

And knowing that everything

everything has its purpose and its time

and God--

He is the most perfect writer of all stories.

As for God, his way is perfect:

The LORD's word is flawless;

he shields all who take refuge in him.

Psalm 18:30

Today is just one page of mine.

I must say that on days like these, I am sure that He has a wonderfully plan for me.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding.

Proverbs 3:5

For there really is a time for everything.

A perfect timing.

Thankful for my team.

Thankful that I can't get too cocky about today.