Jane Austen’s World published an interesting list of The Big Read’s top 100 books. If you like to participate, just copy and paste this list of books into your own blog, and follow the instructions below.

“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on the list.”

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – 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
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
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
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
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
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
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
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

There were lots of great sales and coupon matchups this week, including some Food Lion produce & deli coupons that my Publix will accept.  Who says you can’t get coupons for vegetables?  I do!

Here’s the rundown:
5 lbs potatoes and 2 lbs bell peppers ($3.98 after $2 coupon)
1/3 lb pancetta, 1/3 lb Swiss cheese, & 1/4 lb prosciutto ($6.06 after $4 in coupons)
4 Zataran rice mixes ($0.77 ea)
1 Taco Bell dinner kit ($0.35)
10 boxes Kelloggs cereal ($1.19 ea)
3 Apple & Eve 3-pack juice boxes (FREE+)
1 McCormick dried parsley ($1.39)
3 McCormick grinders (FREE)
1 Publix brand dried minced onions ($3.69 – the most expensive single item!)
2 gallons Publix milk ($2.79 ea)
1 pkg Kraft shredded cheese ($1.99)
1 bag Gorton’s grilled shrimp ($2.75)
1 box New York garlic breadsticks ($1)
1 box New York garlic toast ($1)
2 Snickers candy bars (FREE)
2 boxes Tampax ($2.99 ea)
12 (yes, 12!) boxes of Band-Aids (FREE+)
2 pkgs Bic mechanical pencils (FREE)
3 Febreeze Noticables ($1.99 ea)
1 Axe hair styling gel ($1.50)
2 Glad Force Flex kitchen bags ($2.69)
2 Listerine ($1.49 ea)

Total before sales, specials & coupons: $219.89
Total paid: $62.09
Total savings: $157.80, or 72%!

Not too bad, huh?  I used the pancetta and shrimp tonight to make shrimp & grits… yumm!!!  And, to round out an already full day, I managed to find time after supper to make six jars of peach jam.  We already went through the first batch I made earlier this summer – I think we’ll have to get Michael to go hide them away from me so we can have them in the middle of winter as a nice, summery surprise.;)

and did *really* well!  There was a Bloom coupon in Friday’s Greenville News good for $10 off steaks that my Publix will honor.  I was lucky enough to get my hands on two papers, so that means free ribeye steaks for the whole family!!

Here’s how I did:

Purchase #1 (Michael’s cart):
1/2 gallon Publix sweet tea
2 Contessa Green Cuisine frozen family meals
7 boxes Starkist Sensation frozen fish fillets
2 bags Keebler Pecan Sandies
1.63 pounds ribeye steaks
4 1-lb bags Water Maid rice
3 1-lb bags Mahatma rice
1 Suave shampoo
1 Suave conditioner
1 Reynolds 100% recycled aluminum foil
Total paid: 18.67
Total saved: 57.22, or 75%

Purchase #2 (my cart):
1/2 gallon Publix sweet tea
2 Fresh Express salad shreds
4 boxes Smart Balance butter blends sticks
4 tubs Smart Balance butter spread
7 Hot Pocket Paninis
2 bags Marzetti croutons
4 bags Back to Nature granola
2 Suave shampoos
2 Suave conditioners
3 boxes Kelloggs Raisin Bran (yumm!)
2 loaves Publix bread
1.58 lb ribeye steaks
Total paid: 6.14 (I kid you not)
Total saved: 98.72, or 94%!!!!

Grand total for the day:  $24.81 paid out of pocket (way under my $60/week budget) and $155.94 in savings.