Monday, April 30, 2012

Books to Read Before You Die


Okay, So the BBC created a list of 100 books that everyone should read (from user submissions) They believe that most people will have read only 6 of the 100! What?! Well, I decided to create my own list. I actually read 21 of the  BBC list but felt there were some books not listed that should be on it. Here's my comprehensive list I created from google searches and Barnes and Noble's Classics. The list contains books that I have read and think everyone should read OR books that I want to read at some point. If you have any books that you think should be on here, let me know and I may add it.  

P.S. This list is mostly fiction and does not include personal growth books or straight non-fiction. I'd have way too many listed here if it did. :) Also, they are in NO PARTICULAR ORDER (from my perspective, if they were, the Bible would be Numero Uno!) Check back periodically for updates :) It'll take me a while to read all of these. If I read 10 a year then it'll take me a DECADE to finish this list! And I don't anticipate 10 a year :) But you never know...
How many have you read?
 I read 53!! :)
Strikethrough- those books I've read in their entirety,
Italics- the ones I started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. (most likely I just read and excerpt, I generally don't start a book and not finish it)
* Asterisk- I have seen the movie

Books I Read in 2012
Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
The Hunger Games Trilogy: 
Hunger Games
Mockingjay
Catching Fire
The Twilight Series (4 books):
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

What Am I Currently Reading???
Uncle Tom's Cabin- Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Bible

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
2       Fellowship of the Ring*
3      The Two Towers*
4      Return of the King*

5 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

6 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone*
7 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets*
8 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban*
9 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire*
10 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix*
11 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince*
12 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

13 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

14 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *

15 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

16 1984 - George Orwel

17 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens*

18 Great Expectations- Charles Dickens

19 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

20 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *

21 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott *

22 Complete Works of Shakespeare:
               Romeo and Juliet
               Hamlet
               Much Ado About Nothing
               A Mid Summer Night's Dream

23 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

24 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

25 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

26 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

27 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

28 Middlemarch - George Eliot

29 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*

30 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald*

31 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

32 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

33Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

34 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck*

35 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll*

36The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

37Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

38 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

Chronicles of Narnia - - CS Lewis
39        Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe*
40         Prince Caspian*
41         The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*
42        The Silver Chair
43         The Horse and His Boy
44         The Magician's Nephew
45         The Last Battle

46 Emma -Jane Austen*

47 Persuasion - Jane Austen

48 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

49 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

50 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

51Animal Farm - George Orwell

52 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

53 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

54 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

55 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

56 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery*

57 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

58 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

59 Lord of the Flies - William Golding*

60 Atonement - Ian McEwan*

61 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

62 Dune - Frank Herbert

63 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

64 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*

65 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

66 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

67 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

68 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

69 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

70 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

71 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

72 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

73 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

74 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

75 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

76 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

77 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

78 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding*

79 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

80 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

81 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

82 Dracula - Bram Stoker

83 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett*

84 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

85 Ulysses - James Joyce

86 The Inferno - Dante

87 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

88 Germinal - Emile Zola

89 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

90 Possession - AS Byatt

91 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens*

92 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

93 The Color Purple - Alice Walker*

94 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

95 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

96 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

97 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White*

98 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

99 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

100 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

101 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

102 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

103 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

104 Watership Down - Richard Adams

105 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

106 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

107 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas *

108 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

109 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

110 The Odyssey- Homer

111 The Iliad- Homer
  
112 Common Sense- Thomas Paine

113 Beowulf

114 Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe

115 Treasure Island- Robert Louis Stevenson

116 Bleak House- Charles Dickens

117 Grimm's Fairy Tales

118 Republic - Plato

119 The Federalist- Alexander Hamilton

120 The Jungle- Upton Sinclair

121 A Thousand and One Arabian Nights- Anonymous

122 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne

123 Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway
124 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway

125 Cyrano de Bergerac - Edmond Rosmond

126 The Simarillion - J.R.R. Tolkein

127 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn- Mark Twain

128 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain

129 Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls

130 The Crucible Arthur Miller

131 Quo Vadis Henry Seinkewicz*

132 Frankensteinby Mary Shelley

133 Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoevsky

134 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea- Jules Verne*
135 Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
Twilight Series by Stephanie
136      Twilight*
137      New Moon*
138      Eclipse*
139      Breaking Dawn*
The Hunger Games Series:
140      The Hunger Games*
141      Catching Fire
142      Mockingjay
143 The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks*

The Left Behind Series: by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins
144 Left Behind
145 Tribulation Force
146 Nicolae
147 Soul Harvest
148 Appollyon
149 Assassins
150 The Indwelling
151The Mark
152 Desecration
153 The Remnant
154 Armageddon
155 Glorious Appearing

156 Rachel Did It - By E.L. Bailey

157 Tin Walls - By E.L. Bailey

158 Reunion: Ties of Blood- by Fianna Leighton

159 Utopia- Thomas More


Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Books that Changed Me: Personality Plus

Okay, so I have been thinking...(as my dad would say...'careful...don't hurt yourself'...'get it?' lol) but as I was saying...I have been thinking...if any of  you have read my bio in Meet the Princess you'll have noticed that I said I went through a few years of personal growth before coming to understand WHO I am as well as WHOSE I am (Daughter of (God) the King of Kings aka a Princess ;-) ) So, what I decided to do is to start a series of posts with great books that have changed me in some way. Let me tell ya, there are a lot of them. So drum roll please......here is the first book....

Taken from the Barnes and Noble website:
"Each of the following statements relates to one of the four basic personality types:
Melancholy, Phlegmatic, Sanguine, and Choleric.
Which of these statements do you relate to most?
- Whether at home or work, I am well organized and keep everything in its proper place.
- It's difficult for me to express excitement, even about something that's really important to me.
- When shopping at the mall, it's not unusual for me to forget where I parked the car.
- I get annoyed when my employees don't follow my instructions to the letter.
In Personality Plus, Florence Littauer gives you valuable insight for appreciating your one-of-a-kind, God-given personality. She includes a Personality Profile test that reveals how your unique blend of traits affects your emotions, work performance, and relationships. Through humorous anecdotes and straightforward counsel, Personality Plus guides you to improve upon your strengths and correct your weaknesses.
This engaging book also provides keys to understanding those around you. You'll learn how to accept-and even enjoy-the traits that make each of us so different. Personality Plus is the tool you need to change your life, and the lives of those you care about, for the better."

Concerning WHO I am, I must say that there is one particular book that was a life changer for me and DH. One that started it all for us.... SO I thought I would share. This amazing book is called
Personality Plus written by Florence Littauer. It's a book that I would definitely recommend to EVERYONE to read! Littauer categorizes everyone in the world into to four basic personalities. However, keep in mind that everyone is not made from a cookie cutter so many people have a mixture of personalities. I cannot stress enough, though, how much this book influences/has influenced my life...on a day to day basis! It helps me to understand my children's personalities and not be annoyed. It helps me to be understanding and more patient. With other relationships it has given me understanding and patience as well. I am sure y'all all know first hand how people can DRIVE YOU CRAZY be frustrating. Sometimes understanding what makes a person tick can be really enlightening. Let me just say that if I could pick a book that was required reading for every high school this would be it. Seriously. So what am I saying? READ THE DAG ON BOOK!Just sayin...Just check the comments on the Barnes and Noble website and you'll see that I'm not the only one to agree. Please tell me if you've read it or if you do read it after reading my post. Love to hear from you!



Monday, April 2, 2012

Chicken Enchiladas


Okay, so I found this recipe on Pinterest...I know...I'm a total addict. I tweaked it a bit to my liking and absolutely LOVE it! I hope you enjoy it as well!

Ingredients:

1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. onion powder
salt to taste
pepper to taste
2 T. vegetable oil
1 lb. chicken breast tenders or chicken breast cut into strips for quicker cooking
1 small onion, diced
8 medium/large flour tortillas, softened
2 cups Mexican blend cheese
4 T. butter
1/4 cup flour
1-1/2 cups chicken stock
1 cup sour cream
1 (4 oz.) can green chilies


First, preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and then combine the spices in a small bowl.


Sprinkle chicken with the seasoning mix. In a large skillet add oil and saute onions over medium high heat for a couple minutes.

Next, add the seasoned chicken and cook until center is no longer pink.

 

Using two forks, shred the chicken if desired. You may chop with a large knife if you prefer,but I prefer shredded chicken.



Warm the tortillas for 20 seconds in the microwave to make them more pliable. Add chicken and cheese to the center and roll. Place seam side down in a 9x13 baking dish.


In a saucepan melt the butter ove medium to medium high heat and then whisk in the flour.


Continue to stir and cook for a few minutes. Then add the chicken broth.


Stir until thickened and add sour cream. Mix. Then stir in green chilies.


Pour sauce over the rolled tortillas.


Top with remaining cheese next. (I don't ever measure this part. You can never have enough cheese! :) )


Bake in preheated oven for 20-30 minutes.


Serve and enjoy! I usually cook up some Knorr Spanish Rice to go along with it. Delicious!


Here's my picky picky Princess5 enjoying her enchiladas making a silly face.


Enjoy!
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