"A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, all the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved"
"All this she must possess," added Darcy, "and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading."
Mr. Darcy and Miss Bingly on an accomplished woman. "Pride and Prejudice", by Jane Austin

Whenever I delve into a book such as Pride and Prejudice, I always lament the fact that my life cannot be idly spent reading books, studying languages, and working to make myself all the more accomplished. Instead, my study of languages is interrupted by work, where Italian and Spanish are confused and nothing but a little laugh and an English answer seems able to come from my mouth. Dancing, at least at the level and intensity I practiced at when I was younger, takes too much time and money for this economy.

But books -- there is always a half hour somewhere for a good book. Yesterday I was pleased to find myself with 3 hours of (mostly) uninterrupted reading during the course of the day, and finished Pride and Prejudice, a project of mine which had been interrupted for some time now. The other works of Jane Austin sit on my shelves, waiting to be opened, but must wait until Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is finished.

Reading has always been a great passion of mine, and now that I am finished with school, am pursuing books with greater delight than I had been able to for 4 years. In looking for recommendations, or lists of great books to read, I came across a Wikipedia article, quoting Mortimer Alder's opinion on what makes a great book, well, great.

1: the book has contemporary significance; that is, it has relevance to the problems and issues of our times;
2: the book is inexhaustible; it can be read again and again with benefit;
3: the book is relevant to a large number of the great ideas and great issues that have occupied the minds of thinking individuals for the last 25 centuries.

I suppose my guilty pleasure, The Princess Diaries series, doesn't really fall into this category, but it's good for a giggle anyway.

In any case, I am now developing a list of books that are to be read. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! Below is the list of books I intend on reading, perhaps not all this year, but steadily over time.

"Madame Bovary", Gustave Flaubert
"Anna Karenina", Leo Tolstoy
"Emma", "Sense and Sensibility", "Mansfield Park", "Northanger Abbey", "Persuasion", Jane Austin
"The Faerie Queene", Edmund Spenser (One of my favorites in British Literature, but we unfortunately only covered the first book)
"Captain Corelli's Mandolin", Louis de Bernieres
"Don Juan", Lord Byron
"Tess of the D'Ubervilles", Thomas Hardy
"Paradise Lost", John Milton
"The Canterbury Tales", Geoffrey Chaucer (some were covered in British Literature classes -- will find a list of entire works and go from there)
"The Decameron", Giovanni Boccaccio
"Purgatory", "Paradise", Dante Alighieri.