Bookstore Book List

So I was thinking about the books that a bookstore employee really should know about, and I started making up this list with one of my co-workers. I was hoping for something succinct, but of course when you start making a book list it's never as short as you think. So here's the 70-ish books a self-respecting bookstore employee "should" know.

1. How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie

2. Crucial Conversations Kerry Patterson

3. Man’s Search for Meaning Victor Frankl

4. Sand County Almanac Aldo Leopold

5. Origin of Species Charles Darwin

6. The Numerati Stephen Baker

7. Walden Henry David Thoreau

8. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

9. Great Expectations Charles Dickens

10. Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens

11. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen

12. Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett

13. For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway

14. No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Alexander McCall Smith

15. War and Peace Leo Tolstoy

16. The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien

17. Witches Abroad Terry Pratchett

18. Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville

19. Post-American World Fareed Zakaria

20. Common Sense Thomas Paine

21. The Prince Machiavelli

22. The World is Flat Thomas Friedman

23. Audacity of Hope Barack Obama

24. Bird by Bird Annie Lamott

25. Washington: The Indispensable Man James Thomas Flexner

26. Frankenstein Mary Shelley

27. Dracula Bram Stoker

28. Les Miserables Victor Hugo

29. World History for Dummies

30. The Giver Lois Lowry

31. The Book Thief Markus Zusak

32. Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis

33. Chronicles of Prydain Lloyd Alexander

34. Lincoln: A Photobiography Russell Freedman

35. A Wrinkle in Time Madeleine L’Engle

36. Circle of Quiet Madeleine L’Engle

37. Anne of Green Gables L.M. Montgomery

38. House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne

39. Beowulf Anonymous

40. The Iliad Homer

41. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

42. To the Castle and Back Vaclav Havel

43. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Agatha Christie

44. Last of the Breed Louis L’Amour

45. Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt

46. Hamlet William Shakespeare

47. The Merchant of Venice William Shakespeare

48. Henry V William Shakespeare

49. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

50. Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift

51. The Republic Plato

52. Foundation Isaac Asimov

53. The Color Purple Alice Walker

54. Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman

55. Continuous Harmony Wendell Berry

56. The End of Education Neil Postman

57. Fugitive Pieces Anne Michaels

58. Family J. California Cooper

59. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe

60. Tuesdays with Morrie Mitch Albom

61. The Americans: The Colonial Experience Daniel J. Boorstein

62. To Know as we are Known Parker J. Palmer

63. Paradise Lost John Milton

64. A World Lit Only by Fire William Manchester

65. Writing Down the Bones Natalie Goldberg

66. My Grandfather's Blessings Rachel Naomi Remen

67. Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

There were a few more, but I forgot which ones I had already taken off. I was trying to keep it to fifty, but now I'm thinking maybe 70 or 75, so it's still a work in progress.

Perfect

So the other night my roommate's ex-(sort-of)boyfriend was over, he's been jerking her around all year, I think the dude's bi-polar and ridiculously self-centered. Anyway he was hanging out at our apartment and quote a line from Houseguest. I identified it, of course, and he was so shocked that I knew what it was! Shawnee (my roommate) said, Kate's a movie buff, try some other quotes, she'll get them! He thought he could beat me, but check out how perfectly he set himself up:
Him: "Oops! There goes my napkin!"
Me: "What's Up, Doc?"
Him: You know that film? No way! No one knows that film!
Me: Evidently I do.
Him: Hm...okay I've got one! "It would appear we are at an impasse."
Me: I'm afraid so. I can't compete with you physically, and you're no match for my brain!
Is that just perfect or what? By the way after that I gave him one quote from Live Free or Die Hard and he was stumped. So much for dumb boyfriends. :)

Crazy Weekend

You know those days where you don't seem to have a spare minute? That's been the past four days for me, and it's not over yet. Not even that I have work or school all day, they're not unpleasant things, there's just a lot going on.
Friday I had class, where I was supposed to give my presentation, but the other girl who was presenting took the whole hour. Then I skipped my next class and went home, just in time to get Daddy's call asking me if I wanted to go to a movie with him and the guys. So I went and saw Taken with them, which I actually saw the day before too, but it was still fun. That is a seriously intense movie. Then I went home, grabbed my stuff, and went back up to campus because I had to go to a play for my acting class. I got there a little early, so I checked my e-mail. Bad idea. I had e-mails from a job I interviewed for, telling me they weren't hiring me, and also from the language scholarship thing, saying that they weren't choosing me. Ouch. It's okay, though, I need to stay here for summer anyway. So I went to the play, then went with Marisa to Lehi, where I spent the night with her and two of our mission buddies. Naturally we talked until about 2 in the morning. :)
Saturday morning we got up and had breakfast, then they dropped me off in Provo where I changed clothes and went and did yard work for this lady in Alpine. That was fun, but a little cold. Julia, who was just released as RS president, went with me, and we had a good time because we've both read most of the same books and seen a lot of the same movies, so we just talked the whole time. And, strangely enough, got sunburned! We got home a little after five, and I spent the rest of the night doing laundry, cleaning my room, and freaking out about the fact that I was going to be put in as RS president the next day. I did get to relax a little and watch Australia, which, by the way, was FANTASTIC!! I loved it!
Yesterday, Sunday, was the real interesting day. We usually have Ward Council at 8, but no one told me until I was already up and getting ready, so I was up an hour earlier than I had to, and it was Daylight Savings time to boot. Not happy. I was sustained in Sacrament Meeting, no one even opposed! It was kind of weird, people I've barely talked to were coming up and giving me hugs and saying "congratulations," and I was thinking, first of all, who are you? second of all, do you really think this is a congratulations kind of job? It was funny, though, when two of my roommates showed up late for Sacrament Meeting and I got to lean over and say, by the way, I just got put in as RS president. Their faces were pretty comical. I was supposed to teach in RS, but we ended up not having time, because the bishop wanted the old presidency as well as the new to bear their testimonies, and that took up the whole hour. There was a lot of crying, too, it was pretty sad. I'm going to miss those girls.
After church we got set apart, which took about half an hour and was really great, then I had a meeting on emergency preparedness that took another hour or so, then I went home, changed clothes, and ran up to Julia's apartment to get all the president paraphernalia from her. By the time we'd finished with that it was time for choir, which was fun, then I watched the second half of North and South with the girls in the apartment above us. Okay so I slept through part of it, but that's all the sleep I got. From there we went to the ward break-the-fast, from there to my presidency meeting, from there to ward prayer, and then I spent about three hours after ward prayer dealing with issues in the ward.
This week I still have that presentation, a midterm, a final performance in my acting class, training with the stake relief society presidency, an emergency preparedness planning meeting, the Relief Society Birthday party, re-organizing visiting teaching assignments, my roommate's birthday, a quiz and two papers, and the continuation of all those issues with girls in the ward that I need to sort out or at least address in some way.
So that's my gripe for the week, hope you enjoyed it!

Dash of Cold Water

So don't let it get back to my ward, but I got a new calling! The Bishop called me into his office after Ward Council yesterday morning, and I thought it was about my application thing to be a temple worker. Boy was I surprised when instead he turned and asked me to be Relief Society President!! Please understand, we have the largest relief society at BYU, we have over 120 girls! I kind of stared at him for a minute, then I said, "Bishop, I feel like you just threw cold water over me!"
I was pretty distracted through Sacrament Meeting, obviously! This poor kid who is not that socially gifted under normal circumstances, came and sat by me and I'm afraid I made him feel rather unwanted because I was NOT up for chit-chat, and I couldn't tell him why I was distracted. I picked my presidency during Sacrament meeting (what did the speakers talk about? no idea), and they were all called before the end of the block, and they were all really excited about it, so that lowered my stress level a lot. It also helped that when I told the bishop who I wanted for secretary he said "I was thinking of her too." Really? Great!
We won't actually be set apart for another two weeks, because stake conference is next week. But I'll probably want to meet with the presidency before that to get them squared away on what they'll be doing. I was sorry I couldn't keep any of the old presidency members in with me, but they're all moving out soon...
I feel like I'm going senior companion again, but in a much bigger setting. It's kind of like moving up to school for the first time, the same kind of everything-is-new-and-I'm-in-charge feeling. But it's gonna be okay, right?

Quick on the Draw

So today in my Intro to Film class we were talking about International Film, and the TA decided to make a point about subtitles vs. dubbing. To do so, he showed us a clip from The Simpsons, then showed us the same clip again, this time with English subtitles and dubbed over in a language he didn't think anyone would understand. You guessed it. Czech.
After the clip was finished, he made fun of not only the dubbing, but the language, and instructed the class to laugh at anyone they ever heard speaking Czech.
What I said: Hey! No Czech jokes!
What I wish I had said- Hele! Nemluv takhle o Cestine, ja te ZABIJU!!
Translation: Hey! Don't talk about Czech that way or I'll kill you!
So yeah, I've just gotta be quicker on the draw.

Funny Story

Okay so last night I was trying to watch a movie when all of my roommates' really really loud friends came over, so I retreated to my roommates' room to watch it on her computer. We were trying to get it working when we overheard this conversation:
Guy: I'll give you a hundred million pesos if you can name the person on this bill.
Girl: I don't know, who is it?
Guy: Only the most famous Mexican in the whole world!
Girl: I'm an idiot, I really don't know.
Guy: Fidel Castro!
Amanda and I just stared at each other. Even for BS, that's pretty bad.
Amanda and me in unison: FIDEL CASTRO IS CUBAN!!
Guy: Oh...

Four Things

1) Four Places I go over and over:
The HFAC (Theatre Building), the library, the Wilk, the grocery store

2) Four people who email me regularly:
Mike, BYU, Kvasnickovi, the MTC

3)Four of my favorite places to eat: Carabbas, Olive Garden, Arby's, Little Ceasar's

4)Four places I would rather be right now: Czech Republic, Hawaii, home reading a fun book, at a movie theater

5)Four people I tag: Anyone who hasn't done this already

6) Four TV shows I watch: House, What Not to Wear, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Charmed