Passages

Reading worthwhile literature one month at a time

Monday, July 23, 2012

Zorba the Greek

Zorba: the eat, drink, and be merry mascot.

Enjoy life now; it doesn't last.

Serve the self, lose the family.

Zorba, Falstaff, Sancho: silly, simple, and happy.

Dance wildly, love freely, eat simply.

Posted by Rebecca

Labels: Six-word Memoirs

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"I decided, well, if this is my life, I'd better educate myself. And I worked hard at it. I read and I read and I read." (Marjorie Pay Hinckley)

IN ADDITION TO REVIEWS...

...we'll document our reading with six-word memoirs, haikus, limericks, single sentences, or favorite passages.

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LABELS

Book Choices (9)
Haiku (1)
Passage (12)
Poems (1)
Reviews (10)
Six-word Memoirs (7)

ORIGINS

We wanted to read "100 Best Books" but couldn't find an adequate list. So we created our own. Each month of the school year, (9 months per year), we each read a notable piece of literature. We are opinionated, morally-driven English junkies. We demand well-crafted language. We are homemakers and independent scholars determined to read the world's best literature. Read along with us.

"We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination." (Madeline L'Engle)

NOTE

The scriptures, particularly the Book of Mormon, stand apart from all other books as most valuable and true. Also, Shakespeare has no equal in the English (or possibly any) language.

REBECCA

“Best books” are beautiful and uplifting, but never trite. They give the reader a sense of experiencing other lifetimes and overcoming tragedies with a kind of growth that ends in refinement of soul instead of bitterness. Often, they allow the reader to see a whole new corner of the world or a new way of thinking. One is always a better person after reading such a book.

Rebecca's Goodreads

Best Literary Fiction

A Tale of Two Cities
Don Quixote
Madame Bovary
Pride and Prejudice
Robinson Crusoe
The Death of Ivan Ilych
The Good Earth
The Grapes of Wrath

Best Ancient Classics

Odes of Horace
Ovid's Metamorphosis
The Aenid
The Iliad
The Odyssey

Best Poetry Collections

Billy Collins
e.e. cummings
Emily Dickinson
The Norton Anthology of Poetry

Worthwhile Popular Fiction

Bel Canto
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
The Help
The Poisonwood Bible
Under the Tuscan Sun

Best Biographies

A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary
Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer
Go Forward With Faith: The Biography of Gordon B. Hinckley
Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson
Such a Vision of the Streets: Mother Teresa
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Hiding Place

Most Beautiful

Omeros

Best Juvenile Fiction

A Little Princess
Alice in Wonderland
Charlotte's Web
Little Women
No Flying in the House
Peter and the Starcatchers
The Secret Garden

Best Picture Books

Extra Yarn
Falling for Rapunzel
Sally and the Something
Socks for Supper
The Pout Pout Fish
The Runaway Bunny
Tuesday
Where the Wild Things Are

Funniest

My Family and Other Animals
The Egg and I

Best Psycho

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
The Bell Jar

Creepiest

Dracula
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The Lovely Bones
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Wouldn't Recommend

Love in the Time of Cholera
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Winter's Bone

JESSICA

"Best books" ask more questions than they answer. They don't release us from the world but make us to think more deeply about it. They don't tell us what to think but give us an experience and invite us to feel. They say something well but also have something to say--something enduring, universal, and preferably redemptive about the human experience.

Jessica's Bookish Pinterest Board
Jessica's Bookshelf Blog

Best Literary Fiction

Crime and Punishment
Cry, The Beloved Country
Fahrenheit 451
Lord of the Flies
The Grapes of Wrath
The Light Between Oceans
The Poisonwood Bible

Best Juvenile Fiction

Hatchet
Hattie Big Sky
Julie of the Wolves
My Side of the Mountain
The Bronze Bow
The Giver
The Island of Blue Dolphins

Best Poets/Poetry

Norton Anthology of Poetry
Billy Collins
Emily Dickinson
Shakespeare

Best Memoir

The Glass Castle

Best Picture Books

Tuesday
Museum Shapes
Museum 123
Extra Yarn
Cat's Colors
Moonflute
"You Can't Take a Balloon" books

Best Nonfiction

Kershisnik: Painting from Life
Succulent Container Gardens

Nostalgic Books

Emily of New Moon Trilogy
Little Women
Tales of Hans Christen Andersen
The Blue Castle
We Help Mommy
Webster's Thesaurus
Where Did the Baby Go?

Wish List

All the Light We Cannot See
Parenting with Love and Logic, by Foster Cline and Jim Fay
The Company They Kept: Writers on Unforgettable Friendships
The Giver Quartet, by Lois Lowry
Wind, Sand and Stars, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Don't Bother

A Severed Wasp
All of It Singing
Bald Mermaid
Remains of the Day
Serena
The Seventeen Second Miracle
The Small Rain

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