Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Do American's Read?

Okay I saw this on another blog I read and I to have decided to post this.

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This one is originally from The Big Read. Apparently they reckon that most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Underline those you intend to read (I'm making them red because it's easier)
3. Italicize the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkein
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 (Okay, so I started this one and never finished it because I hated it)
11. Little Women - Lousia M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbevilles - 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 Faulkes
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D 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 Revisted - 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 - Stellla 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 Curios 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 Stroker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Slyvia 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 (this is my all time favorite novel)

So it looks like I've read 44 on the list - not too shabby!

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Sunday, December 14, 2008

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

Yeah, I said it.

Guy & I love to get festive over the holidays - the decorations, the music, the corny Christmas movies, all of it. Is it cheesy? Absolutely! Is it still fun? Definitely! Today we spent the better part of the day finishing up the shopping then I spent the evening wrapping everything up and stuffing it under the tree. From here on out, we can just sitback and take in the holidays - and by that I mean rush around to all of the parties and family events that we have scheduled.



As I wrapped, I realized just how much I'd been downplaying all my holiday knitting. More than a few times I'd said, "I'm not really doing much Christmas knitting this year" and what's worse is that I truly believed it! That is, until today when I counted 19 knitted gifts. 19??!! Oh, yeah, noooo I didn't do any Christmas knitting at all. Barely any! Add in the two Christmas sweaters for the dogs and my count hits 21 (No fake ID needed, thank you very much). I can't wait to see what happens when I actually do put my mind to knitting Christmas gifts - sign me up for carpal tunnel surgery when that happens. Good grief!

Friday, December 5, 2008

Tuesday's Miracle Hat - FREE PATTERN


I started knitting this hat on a Monday, as I sat by my grandmother Nonny’s supposed deathbed. I finished it the next day, Tuesday evening, right about the time that the doctor announced that despite all odds, Nonny was recovering – a “Miracle” he said.

Pattern available as a free Ravelry download: Tuesday's Miracle