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

Or central protagonists.  This is easy, because I can go by who’s listed first in their Character List section.  (Oh, SparkNotes.)  I was going to do it A-E, like my previous SparkNotes list, but the SparkNotes website is acting up, so I’m just doing these first two letters.  Smaller groups!

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (with the titular Alice; this is about a child in the 1800s)
All But My Life by Gerda Weissman Klein (with, well, Gerda Weissmann Klein, who wrote it)
All’s Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare (well, they list Helena first, so whatever)
American Dream by Edward Albee (with, apparently, Grandma?)
Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver (with, apparently, Codi)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (with the titular Anna; this is a romance of sorts from the 1800s)
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery (with the titular Anne; this is about a child in the 1800s)
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid (with the titular Annie)
Antigone by Sophocles (with the titular Antigone)
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard (with Thomasina Coverly)
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (with Addie Bundren; I feel weird counting this, but she is first listed)
As You Like It by William Shakespeare (with Rosalind, hell yeah)
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (with Dagny Taggart)
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines (with the titular Jane)
The Awakening by Kate Chopin (with Edna Pontellier; this is about the 1800s)
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (with Taylor Greer)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (with Esther Greenwood)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (with Sethe; this is set in the 1800s)
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (with, well, Anne Lamott, who wrote it)
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (with Esther Summerson; this is from the 1800s)
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (with Pecola Breedlove)
The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan (with, well, Christine de Pizan, who wrote it)
The Book of Margery Kemp by Margery Kemp (with, well, Margery Kemp, who wrote it)
A Border Passage by Leila Ahmed (with, well, Leila Ahmed, who wrote it)
Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska (with Sara Smolinsky)
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat (with Sophie)

26 titles.  4 of which are autobiographical.  Several of which have appeared on analyzed lists previously. 15 of which have female authors.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: a play-by-play of how many of someone else’s 100 books to read before you die have female narrators

Or female central protagonists.  Groups of multiple protagonists don’t count unless the group is strictly female.

Antigone by Sophocles (with the titular Antigone)
A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollestonecraft (well, I’m counting it anyway)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (with Lizzy Bennet; this is a romance from the 1800s)
I’ll count Grimm’s fairy tales, I guess (…sigh, yeah, fairy tale princesses and stuff)
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (with Hester Prynne; this was written in the 1800s)
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (with Esther Summerson; this is from the 1800s)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (with the titular Anna; this is a somewhat a romance from the 1800s)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (with the titular Emma Bovary; this is a romance from the 1800s)
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (with the titular Tess; this is apparently sexual, and is from the 1800s)
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (with Madame Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya)
I’m also counting Flannery O’Connor short stories (with a variety of women)

11 out of 100 titles.  6 of which are from and/or about the 1800s.  But considering how many of these were nonfiction, religious or philosophical texts, I’m not wholly surprised.

–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 :: a play-by-play of someone else’s list of 100 books to read before you die

This week, the list comes from Literary Workshop at Blogspot.

Italicized titles are ones I’ve read.  Bolded italicized titles are ones I liked.  Underlined italicized titles are ones I read for school.

The Bible (ish)
The Odyssey by Homer
Oedipus, Antigone by Sophocles
Beowulf by Anonymous
Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear by Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night by Shakespeare
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (I read… parts.)
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (again, parts.)
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (again, the blasphemous explanation)
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
and I’ve read like… two Flannery O’Connor stories.
14 out of 100 read.  4.5 out of 100 sincerely enjoyed.  10 out of 100 read for school. 

–your fangirl heroine.

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

O:
The Odyssey by Homer
The Oedipus Plays by Sophocles
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Old Testament
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Othello by William Shakespeare
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (well, I enjoyed it in seventh grade?)
8 of 24 titles.  3 of 24 were sincerely enjoyed.

P:
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (does this count?  I read… the first four chapters or something, I’ve seen the miniseries and the 2005 one with Keira Knightley, I’ve read …and Zombies and god knows how many made-up sequels?)
3 of 26 titles.  0 of 26 were sincerely enjoyed.

R:
The Red-Headed League by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
4 of 25 titles.  2 of 25 were sincerely enjoyed.

S:
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (I’m almost positive, anyway?)
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (…and Sea Monsters?)
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares (I had no idea anyone taught this in school, ever.  I read it when it was a twelve-year-old who ate up teenage girl books.)
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (I feel like I’d like it if I read it again, maybe)
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
8 of 44 titles.  2 of 44 were sincerely enjoyed.

–your fangirl heroine.