Welcome to my blog, Brandy'z Books. Please feel free to look around and make sure to check out the contest list at the botton of the blog for awesome contests at other sites. Enjoy!!!

Friday, July 22, 2011

Top 100 Most Treasured Books???

Hi Everyone.  I saw this post and I thought I would share.  I have seen this list floating around of classic books that everyone should read.  I love to read and had always thought I was an accomplished reader but by this I am soooo behind.  I think that there are a few books that have been left off like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Dante's Inferno, Swiss Family Robinson, some Edgar Allen Poe or the Iliad and the Odyssey.  I have read 18 of these and 2 that I am still working on, one I won't finish (not much of a Shakespeare fan).   I think there are some that shouldn't be on here.

I've completed my list below. Please let me know how many you have read and if you think that they have left some books off :)  Also tell me if you post the list, lol

People who list it on their blogs are supposed to bold-type the books they've actually read and italicize the books they started and never finished. Those they've never read at all are left in the original type.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
8 Nineteen 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
19 The Time Traveller's Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
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 Hitch Hiker'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
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
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
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 Meany – 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
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
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
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


So what did you think?
~Brandy

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Congrats Hotcha12!!!

Congrats Hotcha12 you won a copy of Kristal's new book Burning from Within: Inside Kristal McKerrington!!!



I will be sending Kristal your email Hotcha12.  Thanks to everyone that came and supported Kristal!!!

~Brandy

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Burning From Within: Inside Kristal McKerrington **Contest**

Burning From Within: Inside Kristal McKerrington
Hello all Brandy's Book Readers,
           
Its great to be back, thank you so much Brandy! This time I have a wonderful treat for you all. I have the Release of my latest book. Burning From Within: Inside Kristal McKerrington. Best Comment will win a copy of the Ebook.
           
 This past week I saw the release of my very own story, let loose on the world. I wrote it in the way that I hope will not make people feel sad for me, because all I wanted to do is inspire people. Show them how I got through the Rheumatoid Arthritics and Dyslexia, which is a common thing that I have to deal with on a day to day bases.


           
Here is the blurb from the book and I hope that you will enjoy the teaser about what we will be talking about today.

            Kristal McKerrington, is a young twenty-two year old author, who opens up her heart and her life for her readers in hope to inspire and give hope for Rheumatoid Arthritis and Dyslexia sufferers out there. To show them that there is such a thing of getting your dream. She hopes that by writing this book that she can help raise awareness to all of the sufferers out there and help to show them that determination along with dreaming is all you need sometimes. Learn about this woman, who's over come the odds to become a full time, multi time published author.

I tell all in hope to bring some sort of peace, inspiration and help to the people out there that are fighting a condition that is making there lives hell. In some cases leaving them to believe that there isn't such a thing as a life outside of RA. I can tell them there is and it's amazing. I'm living proof that you can live you dream even though you have a condition.
           
 So far we have all ready received a on review on the book so far and I have copied the link into the blog so that you can check it out below.


Exclusively, I have an excerpt from the book itself. To give you a taste of what the book has instore for you.

            I want to reach out to the RA suffers out there that are about my age or even younger.  To help them see that we can still have a semi normal life. Achieve dreams through being strong within yourselves by fighting the condition and dreaming. I would love to go all over the world some day where they can talk to me and I can say to them the words that helped me more times than not.  To show them dreams are alive and can be reality.
            'Dreams are meant to be dreamt. They can only be achieved from within us and I want to help as many of you as I can achieve those dreams as I can.'  Kristal McKerrington.
            The RA Association aren't the only ones I want to help. There is the Dyslexia suffers out there too who are having their endless talents missed due to the fact that either teachers, bosses, lecturers, parents or anyone else, because they don't know how to spot the learning difficulty and are missing out on discovering the few talents that are floating about this world.  I want to end the hate and fear in school of kids who are different or treated differently by either teachers or students.  I want to reach out and help lead the way for that group as well.
            I want to do all this, because I care and I don't know who else is willing to do this, but I am. I believe and that is all I need to be able to help those out there.

 I hope that you enjoyed having me back on Brandy's Books. I have also gotten myself an Agent, who's handling my bookings and anything related to my career. So if you want to drop by to meet him or want to book me for anything then you can get him on http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002576127907&sk=wall . I'm now making moves to do more than just writing. David's helping me explore the other dreams I have had. I've been so honoured to have him take me on his books.
           
 I want to thank Brandy for having me back. Make sure that you comment below with your email address so that you can have the chance to win a copy of 'Burning From Within: Inside Kristal McKerrington'.  Its been  an honour please feel free to join the fan-page to tell me what you think or you can email me though the XoXo Publishing site also now.
            T
Thank you all again for having me.

Kristal McKerrington


**Contest** please make sure to leave a comment and include your email so that you can be reached.  The contest will go through Friday 7/15 
Thanks...  Brandy
My Kindle ebooks: http://ht.ly/3xbTS
Facebook Fan Page: http://ht.ly/3xc0D