Preach

I speak for them.
I speak for the prophets whose voices have grown raspy and hoarse
From shouting truth at people
Who cannot hear them.

I speak to them.
I speak to a people who have been deafened by the pounding drumbeats of “progress”
And the roaring sirens of consumerism
So they cannot hear the truth.

I ask the questions.
I ask the questions of generations to come, who will see a world different from ours,
But a world shaped by our decisions
When we did not think of them.

I voice the ponderings.
I voice the ponderings of philosophers who wonder what our thoughtless actions will do
And write treatises of warning
That will be read too late.

I seek the answers.
I seek the answers that will bring quiet to the sirens of this generation
And replace them with words of truth
Before it’s too late.

I grow weary.
I grow weary of the noise that brings no solutions
And my voice grows raspy and hoarse
Who will speak for me?

Books!!!

One of my friends posted this on facebook, and I wanted to see how I'd do on this list.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

The Rules:
1) Look at the list and put one * by those you have read.
2) Put a % by those you intend to read.
3) Put two ** by the books you LOVE.
4) Put # by the books you HATE.
5) Post. (Don't forget to tag me.)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen**
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien * (does it count if someone read it aloud to me?)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte*
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling **
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*
6 The Bible **
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell**
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott*
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare%* (in progress...)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien** (again with the reading to me...)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell* (that was a really LONG summer!)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald%
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky*
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll%
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia- CS Lewis%
34 Emma - Jane Austen*
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen%
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis**
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**
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell**
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown* (Angels and Demons was better)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery%
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood%
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding*# (Ugh... AP English)
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**
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac%
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding*
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett *
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson%
75 Ulysses - James Joyce*
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath%
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens*
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker%
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White *
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle# (one of these was enough... YUCK!)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery** (in French no less!)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare *
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl *
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo %

I've read 28... not bad, really! Still, there are several great works on here that I should probably pick up once I'm not reading 600 pages of theology every week. If only I had more time...