Blogiversary!

Dear Friend,

Today is my blogiversary!

And it's also Chocolate Cake Day . . .

And Mozart's birthday.

Such a special day.

To celebrate these wonderful events I'm firing up the ole blog, making my mother's chocolate cake buying a chocolate cake, and taking some time to practice Mozart's Sonata in C Major.

I've made a bit of progress on my quest in the last couple months.

Here's what my WEM novel list looks like now:

1. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
2. The Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan
3. Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
4. Pride and Predjudice - Jane Austen
5. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
6. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
7. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
8. Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
9. Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
10. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
11. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
12. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy  Leo Tolstoy
13. The Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
14. The Portrait of a Lady -- Henry James
15. Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
16. Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
17. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
18. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
19. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
20. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
21. The Trial – Franz Kafka
22. Native Son – Richard Wright
23. The Stranger – Albert Camus
24. 1984 – George Orwell
25. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
26. Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
27. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
28. If on a winter’s night a traveler – Italo Calvino
29. Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
30. White Noise – Don Delillo
31. Possession – A.S. Byatt

Just seven more titles to go!

Hope you're having a lovely winter.

Love,
Adriana

P.S.

Don't forget to listen to Mozart and eat a piece of chocolate cake today. :-)

Big Hairy Audacious Goals

I cannot go one step further on my quest without pausing to recognize the achievements of my friend Carol Weaver from The Well.

I discovered Carol's blog shortly after I started Classical Quest. What a thrill it was to find someone who had actually finished the Well-Educated Mind lists! I discovered that Carol is not only well-educated, she is a well-balanced, largehearted wife, mother, and friend. I love her sense of adventure! I love how her faith in God comes through in her writing. You can't read Carol's blog for long before you notice just how much she loves life!

Carol has read a lot of books. Not only has she completed the WEM lists, she has completed other lists as well. She calls these accomplishments her BHAGs for "Big Hairy Audacious Goals."

In the past 555 weeks she has read 287 classics.

I think all the reading she has done through the years has served her well. Yes, I believe she just might be an example of what reading widely can to for a person of faith. If reading makes us more human, then Carol is very human indeed!

This could be a portrait of Carol Weaver's mind. (Via Pinterest)

Now, hop over to Carol's blog and read this post about her experience with classic literature. Don't forget to comment on her post!