I often see people posting about various NPR programs, but during the school year I just don't have much time to give them a listen. Now that I have a little more time available I'd like to try a couple of them, but they have quite the list of podcasts available.

I was wondering if people who have some favourite programs might be able to offer some suggestions. I'm not looking so much for programs on American politics or the dark pit that is the current economy; we get more than enough coverage of those every day. I'm thinking more along the lines of science, tech, lit, travel, media, the environment, social issues, music - that kinda stuff.

The only caveat is that they have to be available as podcasts - we don't get NPR here in Canada. Our version is the CBC and they, too, have some excellent programs. (If you are interested, you can check them out here: www.cbc.ca/podcasting)

This looks like it is much more fun than the research methodologies assignment I'm slogging through this evening. As an added bonus, it helps flesh out the "favourite books" section as I often can't remember the specific titles of fiction that I've read in the past. Here goes:

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Copy this. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read, and 'o' after those you *want* to get to.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - O
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling -
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - X
6 The Bible - Not a chance in hell
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - O (I've read some, but not all)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - O
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot - O
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - O
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - (I think so)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - O
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - O
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - X
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - O
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - X
34 Emma - Jane Austen - X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - X
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - ?
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - X
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 - X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - O
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - X
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - O
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - O
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - O
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie -
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -
76 The Inferno - Dante - O
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - X
80 Possession - AS Byatt -
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - X
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - O
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - X
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -

Hmm, there are some on this list that I've never heard of while there are others, that I would have expected to see, that are missing.

Hello, and welcome to my new journal! I am creating this to help stay in touch with friends. Since I have returned to university, I am finding it difficult to keep up with my email and friends in general during the real crunch times. With any luck, I will have a few moments here and there to post about the latest form of academic torture I am undergoing.

A little about my userpic... That is my best bud, Aimee. She is very clearly the ruler of this house and has me wrapped around her paw. She often studies with me and as such she has become a very edumacated little bunny. She is also a consumer of fine literature!

Okay, that's it for now.