| Books Meme |
[26 Jun 2008|02:21pm] |
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Underline those you intend to read.
3) Italicise the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
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. 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 (Not really sure why this is here as it's part of 33...)
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' 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
29/100 - disappointing.
I can also honestly say that I love four of them, which is also disappointing, especially when you think that there are only two authors in that four. There are a few more on the list that I started to read and gave up on.
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| Shamefully stolen from dogologist |
[31 May 2008|11:14am] |
Shamefully stolen from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) dogologist
Alternative sex education lessons:
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| What do you do with breasts? |
[21 May 2008|12:22pm] |
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I've got a few interviews booked in for finding myself a new job and going through my wardrobe (while Astrid lays on the bed and pulls Jet's ears) I am dismayed to find that my suits no longer cut the muster.
I have skirts a gogo and have a couple of roomy Gap trousers in classic 'mum' cut but my matching jackets leave me no room for either breathing or breast feeding bewbage.
Where can I buy cheap suitage that suits my glamorous stylee and doesn't strain at the buttons?
Help!
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| amused |
[24 Apr 2008|03:37pm] |
I am easily amused as many will verify.
But this message with tick box when signing up to an idiot proof build your own website site has amused me especially greatly:
I confirm that I will wait up to FIVE minutes for the signup process to complete. I will not hit 'refresh', press the 'continue' button multiple times or use the back button on my browser.
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| Long Shot |
[10 Mar 2008|04:19pm] |
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Does anyone have a copy of 'Shamanic Performances on the Urban Scene' by Galina Lindquist that I could borrow or know where I could get hold of one?
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| Camden is on fire |
[09 Feb 2008|09:08pm] |
This is terrible.
They have been trying to close Camden Lock Markets for ages. Let's hope this doesn't give them the chance they needed.
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| Shopping |
[11 Jan 2008|06:07pm] |
I know, it's not politics or anything important but lovers of ASOS and other online throwaway fashion (actually, I think ASOS might be the only one - let me know if you know of any others) will like this new online throwaway fashion site
They currently have a sale on with a choice of five or so really nice simple black Winter coats for £25 each. And skull wellies. I resisted the skull wellies. After all, I am a grown up now.
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| Back Online! |
[09 Jan 2008|03:01pm] |
We have broadband again. The reason we didn't have it is because while big and round and baby brained I canceled my direct debit then called up to set up a new one with my new bank account but for some reason didn't. They might have written, but I don't read mail that looks like bills. They also could have emailed, but we don't have the email set up because I was the one who set it up originally and I forgot our email address.
Still... it didn't excuse the fact that five days after we paid the outstanding debt and set up a new direct debit, we still had no bloody broadband. I had to call and pretend to be arguing the case for canceling before the contract ran out before they did anything. When I did that they sorted it in 30mins. Lazy bastards.
Yesterday I found out that Central London still exists. There it was at the end of a tube line (one that also had delays naturally) and in a pub in Holborn were a group of lovely witch stitchers and chilli and chocolate cake. Mmmm....
Every day I'm getting the hang of this chaos a bit more. Astrid's routine is still cuddle when grizzle, feed when won't stop grizzling after being cuddled, sleep when I remember to put her back in the moses basket, play when the radio plays nice music, nappy change when she smells or splats, bath when she smells, bed when both Gareth and I start keeling over and sleep finally about four hours later. My routine is wake when Astrid does, drink water when the flashy lights and headaches start, eat when the water doesn't help the flashy lights and headaches, bath when I smell, brush hair when it looks like it might dread.
I'm not organised enough to be a mother. Do Mums get to hire themselves a PA? Can you use Outlook reminders for feeding schedules? And how do I eat dinner at my desk when my desk cries and is easy to drop?
(Although I have worked out how to pee, wipe, flush and wash hands while still holding a grouchy baby who wants to scream when put down. She was nearly born down the toilet anyway.)
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| Farewell 2007, Welcome 2008 |
[02 Jan 2008|09:03am] |
I did the review of the year meme but really when you have had a year like I did last year, it seems like something more needs to be said and documented.
Every now and again you have them. Those years that pick you up, shake you around, and spit you out leaving your life almost unrecognisable from your previous incarnation and leaving you dazed and confused. Of course, 90% of changes are for the better and those that aren't are the ones you have no control over but it doesn't make the transitions any easier.
Last year I have:
lost a parent
been very unwell
given birth
bought a house
paid off my debts
had months off work
They say 28 is the Saturn Return. Surely most people can learn adulthood from just one of those things?
This year I have learned many things. How to organise a funeral and keep a grieving family together. How to admit that you are unwell and need a break and allow yourself time off of work and out of life. And that there is such a thing as too thin. Hipbones that stick into mattresses cause you pain. Fat is good. I have discovered that long hours culture at work is a pile of old poo. I could get all of my work done and make just as much commission working 10am - 4pm with a full hour for lunch as I could working 8.30am - 5.30pm and stuffing a sandwich in my mouth at midday. I will never work overtime or skip lunch again. I have also learned that you don't feel any less of a person by NOT going into an office every day.
I finished 2007 with:
a lovely big house
a beautiful new baby
no debts (apart from a big fat mortgage which isn't half as likely to keep you awake at night as credit cards and car loans)
It was tough getting there, and with a new baby 2008 will be sleep deprived and hard work, but I hope that in years to come when I look back on 2007 I will remember the gifts that it gave me and not the hardships and sadness. Saturn has left me reeling but it has left me with the tools to look adulthood in the face and take the step into the next stage of my life.
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| The Astrid has landed |
[08 Dec 2007|10:40am] |
Astrid Birch was born at 5.55am yesterday (7th December 2007) after a rather rushed labour with no pain relief (listening a bit more at fat club and reading about labour might have helped mummy a bit here....)
She weighed 3.4 kg and is a happy contented baby so far, sleeping lots and pulling faces. She has features from so many of mine and Gareth's family that she looks like everyone and no one. Gareth has taken photos which we will post later.
I'll also post my complete gory details in a baby filter post for those of you that are interested in such things.
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| Pimping new Livejournal |
[11 Nov 2007|04:57pm] |
Now that I'm on maternity leave and out of the rat race for a little while (not to mention not being paid rat race rates for awhile) I'm going to be spending more time making pretty things and selling them.
I have always had my personal journals tied in together with my crafting and selling and also with my witchcraft and seidr but I've been increasingly uncomfortable with this over the last few weeks or so.
It's not that I want to segment my life, but more that it keeps things neat and tidy for me.
Hence, new Livejournal for displaying and selling my wares:
babybirchtree
Please show me some love and give me some friends!
I will probably be also creating a 'Katie Gerrard' Livejournal for witch things so that this LJ can be all me :)
My Myspace account will be witchcraft based with a new account The Birch Tree for displaying my pretty things, and my facebook account used for personal photos and general keeping in touch
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| Books Meme |
[04 Oct 2007|09:18pm] |
Stolen from peppapig
These are the top 106 (106?) books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (que?). Bold what you've read, italicise those that you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose (doesn't the film count? I've seen it more than once too)
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Miserables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States:1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short history of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northhanger Abbey
The Catcher In the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakanomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence:An Inquiry Into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood:A True Account of a Multiple Murder and It's Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
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| We've moved |
[12 Sep 2007|05:46pm] |
Well, we are finally in our new house. We've been here for a week and are still in lots of chaos surrounded by boxes. Most of the furniture is now in place though and we're slowly getting there in terms of everything else.
Our road is very quiet and the house is cosy. Having two flights of stairs is an annoyance while I'm feeling fat and tired, but having two bathrooms is lovely (ok, ok, a shower room and a bathroom).
We still don't have broadband. In fact we don't really have a phone line yet. There is a fault on the BT line that BT weren't in any rush to fix and homechoice / tiscali said it would be two weeks at least before they could come round and install the service we are already paying for so we ended up cancelling them both. BT tried to charge me £70 disconnection fee for a phone that didn't work when I've had an account with them for three years! How cheeky is that? Needless to say I whined until they relented although it did take half an hour of my time.
We did however find a Virgin Media line that was still connected so we spoke to them and they are coming to give us phone, tv, and broadband on Friday. All for £20 a month. Result. They also said the connected phone line shouldn't be connected and is therefore untraceable and doesn't belong to us or the lady that used to live here so feel free to keep making calls and hooking it up to the laptop until someone notices and turns it off. That's customer service for you!
The cats are getting along ok. Jet was traumatised for days though poor thing and hid behind a pile of boxes and wouldn't come out. He is still a bit scared of people coming to the door and sings to himself at night (which will make us popular with the neighbours) but he is coming round now. He's even been trying to make friends with Amber but she is having none of it and growls at him on sight still. Amber is more than happy finding many corners to play in and apart from a bit of weird kitten behaviour on the first day (kneading and sucking cushions, sofas, and me) she's been fine.
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| No wait... THIS is cooler: |
[22 Jul 2007|10:21am] |
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| Want it! |
[22 Jul 2007|10:03am] |
I want this!
What would Joe Strummer do? There is also this one:
Admittendly, they cost more than I spend on a tshirt for myself, but they are very cool and you've got to train baby's to like good music when they are young or you'll be suffering with Chav-Star-Rap at high volume when s/he is a teenager! Or maybe not :)
Big thanks to peppapig for the little dolphin cross stitch bib too - it is beautiful, thank you so much!
With a bit of luck we can find out what brand of baby we have tomorrow, the smart money now is on boy. More importantly, we get to check that it is growing well and that all it's organs and the placenta are in the right place. After that, I'm going to start with the spending as I've been wary to do so until the twenty week scan as you just never know.
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| It's Saturday.. |
[30 Jun 2007|11:41am] |
.. and I'm relaxing after a week at work. It was a bit weird going in on Monday but everyone cooed over me lots and I was eased into things gradually. To be honest, I'm not really feeling all that tired either, but then again, I did only work 10:00 - 16:00. Getting out and on the train is easy when you have an hour to eat breakfast, check emails, and work out what to wear before you leave the house. Getting home at 17:00 means you have plenty of time to unwind before thinking about making tea and putting the television on. Sadly, it also means that you aren't really at work long enough to actually get that much done :)
I'm back to normal hours next week, although my work have been very understanding and basically I can have as many days off sick as I like and work the hours that I want. I can even request a change of duties if I find my job too stressful. Then again, working for a recruitment agency, what else would I bloody do? Sit on reception for four months? Now that I would find stressful!
Speaking of work, I have a million jobs to find people for, mostly fundraising. But I do have:
This little beauty working for one of my favourite charities
which might be good for some of you who have volunteered in Treadwells. Christina please feel free to circulate at will! It is taking book and leaflet orders, processing credit cards, and being nice to people who want to adopt children or who are affected by adoption in other ways (like me for example).
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| In other news... |
[24 Jun 2007|02:59pm] |
In other news... the house sale is causing much stress. To be fair, its all pretty much ready to go except for the buying of the freehold, which we need to do in order to sell our flat. And of course, should have done before we thought about selling. The price has been agreed at a huge amount. Not so huge that we can't pay it, but huge enough that the man who owns the flat upstairs and legally has to buy too in order for us to buy can't afford it and doesn't want to pay that much. We've even offered to lend him the extra. If the worst comes to the worst we could always just pay the extra for him but as you can imagine, it's not really what we want to do. The only reason we can even entertain that idea is because my Mum is going to lend us the extra.
I am also now feeling a lot better and am going back to work on Monday. Going to do 10.00 - 16.00 for the first week to make sure I don't overdo it, but the week after that I should be totally back to normality. Well, normality with a mini-bump. I have been away from work for six weeks thereabouts and it is the longest time I have been away from any work at all since I was twenty one. I had a month 'garden leave' when I left Charity People and I had a fortnight 'garden leave' before joining Eden Brown, but that's it. And that is in between jobs rather than returning to the same one. In a job I haven't even taken a fortnight's holiday all in one go! It seems very strange to have been away for so long, but I am looking forward to seeing everyone again and feeling like I'm back in the real world. Sitting at home with the internet for company can really remove you from reality!
When I saw my counsellor on Friday she said I don't need to go back. Of course, I can if I want as I haven't finished my full eight sessions, but really, there is no need. The pre natal depression and anxiety being due more likely to spending six weeks on the edge of consciousness with sickness, dehydration, and iron deficiency rather than actual depression.
And to end...
This is fun!
You can use google to search people's blogs. I won't tell you how I found it... Ok... I was looking for blogs on last night's Doctor Who that I watched on replay this morning... I'm shamed....
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| Witchfest Wales |
[24 Jun 2007|02:34pm] |
We made it to Witchfest Wales in the end! After missing WF England due to heavy duty puke action I was wondering whether I would get there, but the sickness has been easing off dramatically over the last few weeks with (touch wood) no puke action last week at all.
Then again, we very nearly didn't make it even then! You see, we have a new car. Well, a new-old car. My Dad died in February and apart from my brother thinking that he might learn to drive when he gets round to it, it was sitting unused (my Mum has never learned to drive and has no interest in it...) so we decided that since it is a big four door power car and we have a mini two door Ka it made sense for us to swap cars and let James (brother) have the Ka. After all, we will be driving the Mum and James around for now, plus it makes coven outings more comfy for everyone involved (three people in the back of a Ka, masses of equipment in the tiny boot = farce!), not to mention the added space needed for a Mini Gerrard outing. Except, my Dad's car had been standing still with the battery slowly running low for three months. Hence, the battery has been going flat and needing jump starting all week. Was fine Friday.... Saturday morning.... chu-chu-chukk....
We have new battery waiting to go in. Except, neither tyfach or I know how to fit a car battery. So... frantic calls to Merlyn (CoA man not the magician!) "We might be a bit late!" followed by frantic calls to Green Flag "We need to be in Wales!" and an hour later functioning alcoholic break down man appears, fits new car battery for us and we're on our way.
Missed the first half, but got there in time for tyfach 's workshop on the Faces of the God which went very well and was well received. Except, when will people learn not to split people into star signs to achieve things... Air did well, very clever ideas... Fire's invocation very shouty and they over complicated things... Earth were perfectionists and took forever... Water (my group) fussed and got confused and everyone wanted everyone else to take charge and do it for them!
Next was Karin's Pagan Parenting talk. Felt a bit of a fraud being not-quite-a-parent but thoroughly enjoyed it and have lots of ideas for future children friendly seasonal celebrations.
Then we took a break and caught up with lots of lovely people who we seem only to see once a year at Witchfest Wales. The lovely elle_knitwear gave me the most gorgeous present. Knitted baby hat, cardigan, booties, and mittens. So beautiful! Thank you so much little Ellie!
My talk was the last of the day for us and seemed to go down well too, despite me tripping over my words lots! Then we sped off to have food in the lush South Indian Restaurant on Albany Road with tyfach 's Mum, Brother, and Step Father before sleeping all the way back to London. It's lovely being able to sit in restaurants again I have to say. I might not eat all that much anymore, but how nice to sit and enjoy good food and good company and not want to throw up at the smell and sight of other people eating!
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| Wellies! |
[13 Jun 2007|02:39pm] |
River Island have some very funky wellies in stock. I saw them in Heat magazine today. Sadly, it looks like you can't buy them online and as I'm not quite up for a shopping spree at the moment (plus where exactly IS my nearest River Island?????) I shall be funky wellie-less.
Well, except for the polka dot wellies and the Mary Quant esque monochrome beauties I already own... but hey...
So... if anyone goes near a River Island and can pick me up a pair I will love you forever!
Ok so festivals are kind of out for me this year, but all good pagan women need a pair of wellies for crossing rivers and dragging themselves through mud. Not to mention how useful they are for walking to work in the rain with your sixties dress and funky tights. Oh yes... I live for this come September, splashing through the puddles in my plastic. Beats trainers to work any day!
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