Things in Print Thursday :: a play-by-play of how many SparkNoted titles have female narrators (F-H)

Or central protagonists.  Following the “first character listed under the character section” theory from last week.

Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston (with, well, Jeanne Wakatsuki, who wrote it)
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger (with the titular Franny)
A Gathering of Men by Ernest J. Gaines (with Candy Marshall)
Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen (with Mrs. Helene Alving)
Girl by Jamaica Kincaid (with the Mother)
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (with, well, Susanna Kaysen, who wrote it)
leave me alone.  I’m breaking my pattern to go ahead and include The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson, because while Mikael is more central to the first book, maybe, the trilogy (only the first is listed on SparkNotes) is about Lisbeth freaking Salander, and she is brilliant, so whatever.
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (with Amanda Wingfield)
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous (with the titular Alice)
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (with Scarlett O’Hara, and I’ve given up trying to keep track of romances set in the 1800s mostly, but this is one)
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (with the Grandmother)
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (with Offred)
Happy Days by Samuel Beckett (with Winnie)
Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years by Sarah Louise Delaney, Annie Elizabeth Delaney, and Amy Hill Heart (with, well, Sarah Louise Delaney, who helped write it)
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (with the titular Hedda)
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (with Alima)
Hiroshima by John Hersey (with Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura)
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman (with Lyra Belacqua)
Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt (with Dicey Tillerman)
The Hours by Michael Cunningham (with Virginia Woolf)
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (with Lily Bart)
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (with Hepzibah Pyncheon)
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (with Clara)
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (with Esperanza)
Howards End by E.M. Forster (with Margaret Schlegel)
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (with Katniss Everdeen, and why is this on SparkNotes I just have to ask)

26 titles.  3 of which are autobiographical.  13 of which have female authors.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: a play-by-play of how many SparkNoted titles have female narrators (C-E)

Or central protagonists.  Following the “first character listed under the character section” theory from last week.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams (with Maggie… uhm, the Cat.)
Changes: A Love Story by Ama Ati Aidoo (with Esi Sekyi)
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (with Lyuba Ranevsky)
Child of the Dark by Carolina Maria de Jesus (with, well, Carolina Maria de Jesus, who wrote it)
The Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck (with Elisa Allen)
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (with the titular Clarissa)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (with Celie)
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody (with, well, Anne Moody, who wrote it)
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (with Oedipa Maas)
Daisy Miller by Henry James (with the titular Daisy)
Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Ambroise Laclos (with the Marquise de Merteuil)
Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean (with, well, Sister Helen Prejean, who wrote it)
Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (with, well, Anne Frank, who wrote it)
Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt (with the titular Dicey)
Distant View of a Minaret by Alifa Rifaat (with The Wife)
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen (with Nora)
Electra by Sophocles (with the titular Electra)
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons (with the titular Ellen)
Emma by Jane Austen (with the titular Emma)
Everyday Use by Alice Walker (with Mama)

20 titles.  4 of which are autobiographical.  12 of which have female authors.

–your fangirl heroine.

Theatre Thursday :: a play-by-play of Staffordshire University’s Drama, Performance, & Theatre Arts department’s list of 100 plays to read before you die

Obscure?  A bit, but it was the only “plays to read before you die” list I could find, so I’m going to run with it.  It can be found here.

Here, italics represent ones I’ve read, bolded italicized are ones I’ve liked, underlined italicized are ones I’ve read for school, *asterisked* ones are ones I’ve seen the film of and **double asterisked** ones are ones I’ve seen staged.  And I’m fully prepared for my showing here to be woefully inadequate.

Amadeus* by Peter Shaffer
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
The Crucible** by Arthur Miller
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
A Streetcar Named Desire* by Tennessee Williams (I really must explain this: I didn’t actually like the play that much.  I mean, I recognized it as really good, but I didn’t enjoy it a whole lot.  Until a few of my friends and I, when reading it for English, gathered in someone’s living room one weekend afternoon and read the second half aloud in terrible Southern accents.  That, I enjoyed.)
Our Town** by Thornton Wilder
The Cherry Orchard** by Anton Chekhov
The Importance of Being Earnest* by Oscar Wilde (I haven’t actually read it or anything, but I’ve seen the film version half a dozen times and I enjoy the hell out of it?)
Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind (HELL YES.  And sometimes you put the possessive /’s/ on to distinguish from the musical or just because it does [my copy does].  I love the original play to pieces and bits and I still have parts of the Moritat committed to memory and I wrote my AP English essay on this play [because I could quote directly off the top of my head and it made sense, not that I remember the prompt, but it worked] and got a 5, so YES.)
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
The following Shakespeare: Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Twelfth Night, Hamlet*, As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet*, A Midsummer Night’s Dream* **
Everyman (I read this for/at work, so that’s basically like doing so for school)
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
18 out of 100 read.  21 out of 100 somehow witnessed.

I think I see the problem.  A lot of the plays I’ve read for fun (and there are plenty of them) were written more recently than 1998, and that’s when the most recent play on the list is from.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: my success as an English major measured by how many SparkNoted titles I’ve read (F-J)

The list and some numerical analysis, part 2 of several.

Bolded titles are ones I enjoyed.  Underlined titles are ones I did not enjoy.  Plain italic titles are ones I feel neutral about.

F:
The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien (okay, I feel like I should clarify that while I did like this book, I… never read the other two.  Oops.)
Fences by August Wilson
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (can I negative-bold this one?  I hated it.  Hated.  Hated.)
3 of 14 titles.  1 of 14 was sincerely enjoyed.

G:
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (and by “enjoy” I mean dear Jesus it was trashy and awesome for a Civil War story)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5 of 20 titles.  1 of 20 was sincerely enjoyed.

H:
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (MARGARET ATWOOD.  She is my literary goddess.)
every Harry Potter book by J. K. Rowling
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (I wasn’t as fond of this one, but probably because I read it for school, twice, and that beat the fun out)
Holes by Louis Sachar (funny story, we were reading this aloud in fourth grade and halfway through my teacher decided he would rather spend the half-hour after lunch grading papers, so he’d just hand me the book to read from instead)
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (I read this in fifth grade.  Is this a fifth grade book?)
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez (freshman year of high school I went through a Reading Library Books On The Bus Ride Home phase; I think I had a list of books that were good and I kept working off of it, and this was one of those)
15 of 43 read.  11 out of 43 sincerely enjoyed.

I:
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (okay, not all of it, but I’ve studied scenes from it in drama classes, and I’ve seen the movie with Reese Witherspoon at least five times, that’s got to count for something, right?)
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (it’s a short story.  Does that count?  It’s a short story I adore, though)
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell (I don’t remember if I actually liked this book, as it was another elementary school read; I won’t count it just in case)
3 of 21 read.  2 of 21 sincerely enjoyed.

J:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (read voluntarily for a book report; I seem to remember enjoying it?)
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (that damn “friends, Romans, countrymen” speech.  We all had to memorize it, and that was the dullest hour and a half ever: sixteen kids reciting the same monologue, and not even acting, just tl;dr-ing)
3 of 13 read.  1 of 13 sincerely enjoyed.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: my success as an English major measured by how many SparkNoted titles I’ve read (A-E)

Yep, this is just a list and some numerical analysis, part 1 of several.

Bolded titles are ones I enjoyed.  Plain italic titles are ones I feel neutral about.

A:
1984 by George Orwell (this is conditional; I read part of it and saw the movie.  I fail, yes.)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Angels in America by Tony Kushner (holy Christ, do I love this play; I wish I could double-bold it)
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Antigone by Sophocles
As You Like It by William Shakespeare
8 of 44 titles.  4 of 44 were sincerely enjoyed.

B:
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beowulf
Bible: The New Testament (another conditional; I’ve read pieces, ish?)
Bible: The Old Testament (likewise)
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (yeah… when I was like ten, but still.)
5 of 31 titles.  1 of 31 was sincerely enjoyed.

C:
Candide by Voltaire
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
8 of 46 titles.  1 of 46 was sincerely enjoyed.

D:
Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Ambroise Laclos
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
Dubliners by James Joyce (conditional; I’ve read like two of the stories; I enjoyed them, but am not bolding as I’ve not read all of them)
5 of 27 titles  .5 of 27 were sincerely enjoyed.

E:
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.
1 of 12 titles.  0 of 12 were sincerely enjoyed.

I… have strange taste in literature, I suppose.

–your fangirl heroine.