Our show today has two acts:

Act One: This American Life Live, the Boston Opera House, tonight, with my friends A and B. I'm not trying to make you jealous. (Well, maybe a little bit.) It's just that there are few things I love so completely as this show. It's so fucking well-done I sometimes cry. (As, apparently, Ira Glass did at the last episode of The OC. He and his wife sing along to the theme song. As if I weren't in love already.) Now they're coming out with a TV show on Showtime, and if the previews/excerpts/hilarious outtake of Ira Glass nodding are any indication, it's going to be just as beautiful.

Also, this was said by one of the contributors: "If friends were easy to take and made you feel good, they wouldn't be called friends. They'd be called drugs." Plus there was Joe, a kid from Western Mass. who doesn't believe in love, except maybe if his relationship were based around fighting monsters.

Oh, and Sarah Vowell and Dan Savage were there, too. Okay, now I'm just trying to make you jealous.

Act Two: "Book Meme"

It seems only fitting that the blogger of A Room Full of Books should post this, from Into the Wardrobe. AW is a reader I didn't even know I had, but now I know who AW is, and I will be reading ITW from now on as well. Anyway, here it is. And before you glaze over the list, let me just say: A Room Full of Books is distributed by Blogger, produced by Elizabeth, and funded by the federal government (via student loans), and readers like you.


Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10 foot pole, put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf (I'm taking multiple crosses to mean multiple editions), and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of.

(AW added “indifference” as a category by not marking some at all). (And I don't know how to cross things out, so I'm going to put an "x" on either side of the title.)

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
+2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
+3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
+8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry) *
+11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
x12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)x
+13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
+16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)*
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
+20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
+22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
+23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
+25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
x30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)x
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
x32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)x
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
+34. 1984 (Orwell)
+35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
x36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)x
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)*
+38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
+42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
x43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)x
x44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)x
45. Bible (bolding the amount I think I've read)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
+48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
+50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
+51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
+53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
+54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
+55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)*
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
+59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
+60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger) (extra bold for obsession)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) (Okay, I want to read one of the Ayn Rand books, for educational purposes. But not both.)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
x64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)x
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)*
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
+70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
x71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)x
+72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
+75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)*
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)*
+80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)*
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
+84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
+++85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)*
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)*
+92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
x95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)x
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford) *
x99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)x
x100. Ulysses (James Joyce)x (Yes, I can pick both options for this book.)