classics I've read

They say that people who read a lot make the best writers. Below is a list of Barnes & Noble's "classics" that I think makes for a good start to show how much I've read. I have read the ones marked with an "X":

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain - X
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain - X
The Aeneid by Vergil
Aesop's Fables by Aesop
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë - (will read)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll - X
The Ambassadors by Henry James
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Arabian Nights by Anonymous
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Other Writings by James Weldon Johnson
The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction by Kate Chopin - X
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Beowulf Translated by John McNamara - X
Billy Budd and The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville - X
Bleak House by Charles Dickens - X
The Bostonians by Henry James
The Brothers Karamazov byFyodor Dostoevsky - X
Bulfinch's Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch
The Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London
Candide by Voltaire - X
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer - X (some)
A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, & The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens - X (some)
The Collected Oscar Wilde
The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson - X
The Collected Stories of Guy de Maupassant
Common Sense and Other Writings by Thomas Paine - X
The Communist Manifesto and Other Writings by Karl Marx - X
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I by Arthur Conan Doyle - X (some)
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II by Arthur Conan Doyle - (will read)
The Confessions by St. Augustine of Hippo
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky - X
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
Daisy Miller and Washington Square by Henry James
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot - (will read)
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - X
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy - X
The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - X (some - will read all)
Dracula by Bram Stoker - X (some)
Emma by Jane Austen - X
The Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit
Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essential Dialogues of Plato by Plato
Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe - X
Ethan Frome & Selected Stories by Edith Wharton
Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy - X
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay
Founding America: Documents from the Revolution to the Bill of Rights Edited by Jack N. Rakove
The Four Feathers by A. E. W. Mason
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - X
Germinal by Emile Zola
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
Great American Short Stories: From Hawthorne to Hemingway Edited by Corinne Demas
Great Escapes: Four Slave NarrativesIntroduction and notes by Daphne A. Brooks
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - X
Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift - X
Hard Times by Charles Dickens - X
Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction by Joseph Conrad
The Histories by Herodotus
The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The House of the Dead and Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Howards End by E. M. Forster
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Iliad by Homer
The Importance of Being Earnest and Four Other Plays by Oscar Wilde
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
The Inferno by Dante Alighieri - X
The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë - X
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy - X
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - X
The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence - X
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Writings by Washington Irving
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - (will read)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - X
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert - X
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Writings About New York by Stephen Crane
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Man and Superman and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw
The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen - X
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy - (will read)
Metamorphoses by Ovid
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka - X
Middlemarch by George Eliot - X
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
My Ántonia by Willa Cather
My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
Narrative of Sojourner Truth
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave - (maybe?)
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen - X
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky - X (some)
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
The Odyssey by Homer - X
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - X
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
Paradise Lost by John Milton - X
Paradiso by Dante Alighieri - X
Persuasion by Jane Austen - X
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux - X
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - X
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan - X
Poetics and Rhetoric by Aristotle
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James - X
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners by James Joyce - X (some)
Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - X
The Prince and Other Writings by Niccolò Machiavelli - X
The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain
Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri - X
Pygmalion and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Short Fiction by Stephen Crane - X
Republic by Plato
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Rise of Silas Lapham by William D. Howells
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - X
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Selected Stories of O. Henry by O. Henry
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - X
A Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Silas Marner and Two Short Stories by George Eliot
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu - X
Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy - X
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Three Theban Plays by Sophocles
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Time Machine and The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Turn of the Screw, The Aspern Papers, and Two Stories by Henry James
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - X (reading)
Utopia by Thomas More
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - X
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
Villette by Charlotte Brontë - X
The Virginian by Owen Wister
The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - X (booyah!)
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
Ward No. 6 and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot - X
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - X

things I'm doing

I've become motivated to finally do something with the photos I have taken. I had the idea about a sign book before I saw the book I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar, but unfortunately, they beat me to actually getting it published. I have been taking photos of misspelled or confusing signs for as long as I can remember, but I've never done anything with them except add them to my Facebook album. When I saw the Judging book in Joseph-Beth the other day, it made me realize that my idea could actually be accomplished, so it's time to get the photos organized, get them captioned, and get them published!

Does anyone have any suggestions as to where I can go to get my (future) book published? What company to use, etc.? I am a perfectionist, so it has to be done correctly and look professional, while being economical to create. I'll probably try the Writer's Market books for some ideas, but does anyone know a local company who could do this? Thanks!

defining this

Since it seems that not everyone has a working dictionary at his or her fingertips, or knows how to use it, it might be helpful for me to define my blog title for those less word-nerdy than myself.

Pedantic - characterized by a narrow, often ostentatious concern for book learning and formal rules.

Grammarian - a specialist in grammar.

Now, this doesn't mean that I know every part of speech or troublesome spelling by heart, just that I will make fun of you for using words incorrectly, not following conventional grammatical rules, and misspelling words that you could easily have looked up in the dictionary.

Also, since I've used "dictionary" twice in this post before this sentence, let me introduce you to my favorite dictionary, the American Heritage College Dictionary, Fourth Edition (we're up to five uses now!). Not only does it stop me from having to make fun of myself, but it also has pictures!

Anyway, we'll see how this whole blogging thing pans out. I haven't yet decided why I'm doing this, but if Brett Jenkins is doing it, it must be cool.