China - Ancient Banyan

Postcard from China from lachlan

Description: Ancient Banyan

Germany - Hannover

Postcard from Germany from Lindwurm59

Description: Hannover an der Leine...and a long German description

Finland - Lappeenranta

Postcard from Finland from mmombasa

Description: Lappeenranta Villmanstrand Suomi Finland

Six percent?

Okay, I stole this from Hans' Facebook page...apparently most people will only have read 6 of the books on the list. Hans has read 16 which I think is pretty impressive since most, but not all, were originally written in English which is not Hans' first language.

Thanks for giving me something to blog about Hans!

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - Yes, in high school, university, for my book club and just because I liked the book
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - No...I've read The Hobbit a couple of times, but could never get into Lord of the Rings for some reason
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - Yes - In university
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - Multiple times
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - Yes, many times. I love this book!
6. The Bible - Yes, most of it actually because I took one class devoted to the entire Bible and its literary influences and one class devoted to the New Testament in university.
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - Yes, in university
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - Nope. I've read Animal Farm though.
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - No
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - Yes, this was the first Dickens novel I read and I love it. I read it in high school first, then university twice and at least once, maybe twice, just because I felt like it.
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - Yes! Lots and lots and lots and then once in university for a class and then lots and lots and lots more!
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - Most of it. I liked Far from the Madding Crowd better.
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - No
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - Not the complete works, but a large portion of them
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - No, but not because I didn't try, many many times! I just couldn't get into it.
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - Yes. I loved it.
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk - No
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - No
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - Yes!!!!
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot - Yes. For university. I hated it!
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - Yes
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - Yes, for the first time for my book club.
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens - No
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - No
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - No
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - Yes. For a university class.
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - No
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - No
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - Yes
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - Yes
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - No
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - No
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - Yes, a long, long time ago!
34. Emma - Jane Austen - Yes
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen - No
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - Yes
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - Yes
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - Yes
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - Yes
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - Yes
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell - Yes
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - Yes
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - Tried to many times, but never finished it.
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - No
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - YES! I think I've read almost all of her novels.
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - Yes
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - Yes
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding - No
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan - Yes
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel - Yes
52. Dune - Frank Herbert - No
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - No
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - Yes
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - No
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - No
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - No
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - No
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon - No
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - No
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - Yes. But it was hard to read.
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt - No
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - Yes
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - No
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac - No
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - No
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - Yes
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - No
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Yes
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - No
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker - No
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - YES!!! I loved this book so much, mine barely has a spine left!
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - No
75. Ulysses - James Joyce - No
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - Yes
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - Yes
78. Germinal - Emile Zola - No
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - Yes
80. Possession - AS Byatt - Most of it.
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - Yes
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - No
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker - Yes - for summer reading at HPA
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - No
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - No
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - No
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White - Yes...for the first time not as a child, but in Children's Lit. I liked it then, but never got into it when I was little.
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - No
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - No
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - No
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - No
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - Yes in English and French
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - No
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams - No
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - No
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - No
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - No
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare - Yes (Isn't this part of the Complete Works of Shakespeare?
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - YES!!! I still love this story. Danny the Champion of the World was probably my favourite Roald Dahl book though.
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - No

I think that's 45/100 plus six that I've attempted or haven't read all of (Complete Works of Shakespeare), but I should qualify that by saying I did do a degree in English Literature.

So, it appears I have my reading cut out for me. There are a bunch of books that I would likely put on my own favourite 100 books of all time...and many on this list that wouldn't be on my list, but that's for another day!

How many have you read?

Germany - Hambacher Schloss

Postcard from Germany from komet83

Description: Hambacher Schloss - with a lengthy description in German...

My Baby

As photographed by Heddy.

Time to blog?

Huh? what? blog? I wish! I didn't realize how much of an outlet blogging was for me. It gives me a place to write and to work out whatever is rattling around in my brain, but lately, well, there just doesn't seem to be time. When Baby J goes down for the night, I usually have 2-3 hours for myself before I need to crawl between the sheets, because, really, she might sleep until 7:00, but it may only be 6:00 or if I'm lucky it could be 8:00, but I won't know until I hear the summons ...waaa ... waaaaaaaaaaaaah ... waaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAH ... WWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH ... and then, believe me, I know!

But I think I've missed it. Lots.

The last few months have obviously been full of change. Baby J has been a part of our lives for almost six months now...well, longer than that, but before six months ago, she just pummelled my internal organs and gave me heart burn, she didn't require attention. Five minutes ago. Jeepers Mom, can't you read my mind?

Now, six months in, I think maybe I have a handle on things. It helps that Baby J pretty much sleeps through the night. Not having to drag myself out of bed at 2:00 and 5:00 to feed her means most days I can handle getting up with her and staying up for the day. I still occasionally need a nap when she naps, but not every time like I did for a few months. The kitchen has been clean almost every night this week hours before bedtime. For a while there it felt like dishes were a once a week kind of job and thank goodness we had a dishwasher. We're not eating out of the freezer anymore, although I still make double batches of soup, chili and other freezable foods because, inevitably, when the freezer is empty we have a day that forbids cooking!

I have started reading again...it took me two and a half months to read The Flying Troutmans. It took me six weeks to read The Hour I First Believed. Then I read Gods Behaving Badly in three days and I'm on another book (bad Brit Chick Lit with a title I can't remember) that will only take three nights too.

I have a routine! and being able to read for half an hour to an hour every night before I go to sleep means I sleep better and I get to read more. Both important things for me!

So, maybe, just maybe, I'll be around more in the next little while. We'll see. I'm rusty, so posts could be blah, but bear with me! That is if you're still out there. I've been gone so long I might not have any readers left!!

Finland - Churches

Postcard from Finland from Suhina

Description: 1 - Turku domchurch, 2 - Tampere domchurch, 3 - Porvoo domchurch, 4 - Helsinki domchurch, 5 - Oulu domchurch

The Hour I First Believed

I just finished reading The Hour I First Believed and I was a little surprised at how long it took me. I read I Know This Much Is True and She's Come Undone a couple of times each and they were both fast reads. Now, there are 700+ pages in The Hour I First Believed and I do have a baby, but it took me six weeks! I found it was a bit long and there almost seemed to be too many threads. I did like it and will probably reread it at some point, but it wasn't as good as I had hoped.

Switzerland - Snoopy

Postcard from Switzerland from amala

Description: Snoopy.

I'm amazed by people like this woman - she has sent almost a card a day for over two years - that's a pretty darn expensive hobby. Especially when stamps in Switzerland are almost $2 Canadian each!