BBC bookworm quiz

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.
(i have read 11 of them ..7 of them are required texts in eng lit / chin classes..yeah i am literate! )

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen   (movie only)

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien (first chapter, haha)

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (first chapter, haha)

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte (SAT Kaplan version + chinese version)

8 Nighteen 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 (Can I double-bold it? read it 3-4 times already)

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger (movie only)

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 Hitchhiker’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 (movie only)

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 (thanks Hayley!)

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden (This is good)

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  (movie only)

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

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert (chinese version)

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

Every Step Counts

  • 今天香港學生會的活動,undergrad竟然是majority,時代變遷喔。
  • are we all subconsciously motivated by fear?
  • after failing my PE classes every year since primary 1…i finally finished all PE requirements in my life!! oush
  • 無得唔gur,DGS d alumni真係個個都gum犀利同有氣質。//中國來的同學都係個個都gum厲害同有野心。暫時找不到任何counterexample。
  • 周公是我的第一號情人,也是我第一號敵人。因為你,我每天都活在不同時區
  • 方皓玟的新歌wont you stand很好聽。是新港產片婚前試愛的主題曲。垃圾片卻配上這麼有情調的歌,浪費。
  • from MITFML: “As an underclassman, I regularly pulled all-nighters to get work done and study. As an upperclassman, I involuntarily pass out each night by 10pm and have to seriously bust my balls during waking hours to get stuff done. FML and FMElderlyCircadian Rhythm.” ….this is exactly my problem =_=
  • shy, lazy, socially awkward, incompetent. : <

Year 3饑寒交逼的一天

  1. 昨天跟友人到chinatown吃shabushabu,飽暖思睡,才十點多,回到房間跳上床就立刻睡著了。
  2. 早上被哥哥打來的電話吵醒來,說著無聊的話題,講了一個只有我們兩兄妹才明白的gag,笑了兩分鐘。
  3. 外面charles river景色很美,藍天白雲樹枝,拍了一張照。
  4. 然後ss打過來,又是閒聊無聊的話題,不小心又講了很久,5個人的family plan內,不能久聊。
  5. 洗澡,到student center吃午飯。老闆連續三年都例牌的說“靚女,今日又食牛呀?’,‘係呀,同埋珍珠奶茶唔該”
  6. 到athena cluster print lecture notes,也是例牌地ajax, python, pulp, metis, fiber (都為printer的名稱)全部廢晒,燥底。
  7. PE堂,這一次是archery補課,所以會見到bunkie,突然湧現了很多在日本一起玩的時光。好期待星期四把所有pe課K.O.。
  8. 去上finance theory,這個學期的功課全都拜託這位非常有才華的師妹,哈哈。efficient market hypothesis說trading might be hazardous to wealth。我想對health也是吧,容不易心臓麻痺(しんぞうまひ)。
  9. 去stata center的8樓見我的ta聊final paper。我覺得我的ta很像500 days of summer 的Joseph Gordon-Levitt <3。office的白板上寫了一句“this whiteboard is useless”。
  10. 然後由5pm到1am到留在我的新蒲點,24-7 quiet study room。目的是把final paper 改好,submit,然後review一下final的東西。
  11. study room實在太正 (見圖) i)沒有人,好靜,沒有聽歌隔音的需要。 ii)乾淨,沒有餅乾碎,沒有臭味。
  12. 溫先生說他在窗外跟我揮手但我完全無視XDD I am so sorry。但因為你,我知道如何簡單地derive butterfly spread了!
  13. 越來越冷,8點多才發現原來還沒有吃晚飯,走出去饑寒交逼,地上的水都結冰了!!我一邊走,冰冷的寒風呼呼一邊迎面吹過來!!我這個時候才驚覺,一些人會冷死不是開完笑的!!我一邊走,才發現甚麼餐廳都沒有開!!可怒也 (音: call lao yeah~) 吖我快沒有力走下去啦。。
  14. 最後我跑進了kendall square的cosi,叫了一杯熱巧克力,一個我也忘了是甚麼。
  15. 這個時候,爸爸打過來趕緊報告媽媽考試拿了100分!然後我說不夠媽媽厲害,我今天派的midterm也只有97分。哈哈。我說我快冷死了,爸爸又說,為甚麼不穿freshman開學時買那套(重十磅)外套,好貴的。
  16. 吃晚飯後,包裹著暖暖的巧克力,縮起脖子,回去繼續讀書了~~~bot88

香港卡通:3

    你識幾多套? 

  • Sailor Moon
  • 小丸子
  • 忍者亂太郎
  • 為食龍少爺
  • 伙頭仔昆布 (played in 1992!!)
  • 叮噹
  • 毛查查
  • 皇家雙妹嘜
  • 飛天少女豬事丁
  • 怪盗st tail (yeah x 6~ ♪)
  • 幽遊白書
  • 不思議遊戲
  • 幸運超人
  • 咕嚕咕嚕魔法陣
  • 晴天PigPig
  • BB保你大
  • 四驅兄弟
  • 華納動畫天地
  • 中華一番
  • 反斗小王子
  • 哨牙超週記 (おそ松くん!!!! 超難找!)
  • 娛樂金魚眼

//到了此時此刻我還是真的想親手把你煎皮拆骨,替月行動、警惡懲奸!

//my 24.9oo TA: “asking a linguist how many languages he could speak, is like asking a doctor how many diseases he has.”

//my stat professor: “if you don’t want to know what ANOVA is, you can just stand up and leave.”  …
“so why do I have to derive this? (silence..) Well, can you people just not look at me with such blank faces and eyes that say  ‘i jus dont care’ ?”

//a chinese MBA girl next to me in the canteen..:”i am pretty sure New York City is in New Jersey, you don’t believe me? I will google it now for you.”…i hope her interviewer would ask her this question first before anything else……….= =….it’s like saying “u know, Massachusetts Institute of Technology is indeed not in Massachusetts.”

凹=”=凹

(1) Veil Lifted on China’s Next Top Duo:

Often portrayed as solemn, bland and emotionless in public appearances, the Chinese leaders (習近平 and 李克強)for the first time revealed their humanized personalities and characters. Behind the scene, they are just casual people who enjoy watching Hollywood movies and DVDs. It’s also encouraging to know that they are not blind to the corruption, legislation and the east-west income disparity.

“the level of detail in them could still embarrass Messrs. Xi and Li…” how is it so? (besides the ‘man-made’ GDP claim..but i doubt how non-man-made US GDP is)  the US press has tried so hard to play up the China ‘uncivilized dictatorship’ in all these years. Thanks to Wikileaks… this rare unveiling has already backfired to the US media..while they still arrogantly claim that it is a shame for China.

I recalled my friend from China once proudly admitted how he could take advantage on China’s 腐敗 and 黑暗 as his career advances. Changes won’t happen overnight, it’s still a long way for China to make intrinsic differences on its people’s values and working style (the “soft” asset of the country). At least we should be glad that our future leaders are reasonable people..going top-down..hopefully one day such culture would ripple across the entire government.

Anyways, imagine how difficult it is to enforce policies across a country as populous as China..to rise from ruins of the emperor system amidst the years of wars and revolutions (credit to 義海豪情)..salute to our leaders, coz things could have gone far worse.

(2) 名校教了我什麼——女校生的反思“:

校友都在紛紛討論在Yahoo! 新聞上一篇文章”周日話題﹕名校教了我什麼——女校生的反思“,大家都突然感激母校對她們的改變影響。

曾經也是女名校生的我,雖然會有一定程度的共鳴,但我更強烈感覺到的 卻是筆者在字裡行間流露出的inferiority complex,自卑型的自大。筆者都已經是在社會打滾了十多年的成人了,過了這麼多年還是不能get over 一些幼稚自我的想法。內文一面倒地指出種種不公現象,筆者看不過眼,到了現今還是同樣不屑。

筆者身為記者,具有新聞觸覺,理應看透世事,有能力理性分析事情的twofold,pros and cons。豈能加添自己的不憤,如此籠統地一慨而論,為天下每一個名校生冠上”追逐名利,趨炎附勢”的罪名?”反思“自己的過去,卻還是這般積怨重重,與十多年前的那個“o靚妹”毫無改變昇華,這何來叫反思?勉強可以說是“女校生的童年陰影陳述”,筆者在結尾不忘標榜一下自己的“胸襟之廣“,可悲又可笑。

文章裡有大量沒有必要包括的炫耀細節,讓讀者我摸不著頭腦。目的何在?

“我是班長,自發貼了大堆剪報,發起同學手纏黑布”

“我被編入全級最top的A班”

“中六那年,我被同學選了當Head Girl”

”到今天我最好的朋友,雖然她們不讀報、不關心時事,但都有一顆溫柔的心。“ (這是對自己最好的朋友發好人卡嗎?)

as 一個過來人,如果要我寫我對母校的反思,我只會寫一句話,”Sola Nobilitas Virtus,明德惟馨。”11年在mcs的歲月,那些這些不快誤解,早早就風吹雲散了。況且這種競爭環境又非名校獨有,早已見慣司空,不足為奇。