Feeling pants, so here's some books.

I've just spent two hours standing in the waiting room of our local emergency doctors.
My right eye has been sore for a week and last night it started in with shooting pains whenever I looked at light. So this morning we phoned NHS Direct, then went to the centre, then went to the eye infirmary. I haven't got any scratches or anything but it might be an infection...so I have to go back tomorrow for a swab. Since I'm working tomorrow I have to be there at 9 or they can't see me. This Bank Holiday is being a bit crap.

It was also a life changing day. It's the first time I've worn my glasses out of the house since 1997. Seriously. The only reason I did back then was cos I'd lost a lens and had a driving lesson. Even when we went to Spain I put my lenses in to go from the room to the pool, and walked round the water park half-blind.

Before I get evicted to the sofa (where I can't read or sew according to Anthony) here is something I stole from Michelle.

The Top 106 Books Most Often Marked As “Unread” By LibraryThing’s Users.

Strike-through books you’ve read before.
Italicize books you’ve read before but haven’t finished.
Copy and paste on your blog to see how “pretentious” you are.


Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Aeneid
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The 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
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
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 : a novel
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 Misérables
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 : a memoir
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 & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Total: read 28, unfinished 7. Michelle got a percentage but I can't be bothered trying to sort it out. Basically this list tells me that I try to finish books and that I don't read things "just because I should" - I don't even own things because I should!

Douze Points

Yes I know I know I know.

7. I've finished reading The Margarets which was very good if slightly confusing at times. So of course I have started rereading, starting with The Fresco.

8. My mother's present has hit a brick wall at the moment...



...it's just too big and I have burn-out.

9. So I have started doing one of these Art Deco ones. They are small and therefore quick, and I've decided to do them on card which is a nice change.

The set. (with the cover of The Margarets visible on the right)



Daffodils in progress.



It's very satisfying doing the black outlines and then filling them in.

10. I've read two more S&A's books, We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea and Secret Water

11. I've been really enjoying the Worlds of Fantasy series on BBC4. This weeks one had both Pratchett and WoW in it, and last weeks was talking about LOTR and Gormenghast. I realised I'd never actually read Gormenghast so sent Emily a text...

Kate to Emily - Have you got Gormenghast? Can I borrow it?
E to K - The BBC series or my play?
K to E - The book...
E to K - LOL, yes, will bring next week.

This is because we'd sold our copy at work (which I'd been going to buy) to a guy who was buying it cos he'd seen the Worlds of Fantasy programme and decided to read it...

12. Other nice work coincidences include the fact that a bloke wanted a copy of The Children of Green Knowe on the same day that I'd had a conversation with Anthony about kids names. Apparently Toseland can't be used as a first name...(we were trying to find a first name that will go with Ayrton as a middle name...)

13. The above conversation also included the fact that we have to name one of the boys (in our undecided number of future children) Jack Daniel, "because if we don't do it you know your bloody sister will!".

14. Work has been quiet as Gavin had a few days holiday, also RichieFingers and Chris have both been suffering from evil zombie plague (named by Gavin) which turns its sufferers into the walking dead. The fact it's just been affecting the men is obviously just a Midlands thing as mum has been dealing with the Southern version. I just hope I don't get it for next week - I'm on holiday!

15. I've finally bought the brilliant Michael Rosen's Sad Book. On days when I need a little help this works wonders. It makes me cry my eyes out at the same time as consoling me that feeling like this is allowed.

16. I'm feeling very sorry for poor Kimi, as this (16) is his starting slot for tomorrow mornings GP. I will be getting up to watch it, hopefully with more success than my attempt at watching the qualifying this morning when I slept straight through my (very noisy) alarm. Thanks to the video, I am watching it now though.

17. Every now and again I buy myself the Cross Country Stitching magazine. I have discovered that I love that kind of stuff (although I draw the line at the religious/USA is the best ones). My Welcome Birdhouse cross-stitch is very much in that style.

18. Phew! (I was struggling). I'm on holiday for a week or so now and will be away from the internet for a good chunk of that. It's making me sad as I don't want to miss any news from Michelle <--- the baby's due any day now!!!

There's your 18 things Jen, even though I cheated a little sorry.

If I'm awake enough I shall do some liveblogging during the GP tomorrow morning, nice race start time of 4.30am...

Assorted Assortments

My keyboard feels funny...this is because we just popped all the keys off, hoovered all the cat hair out of it, wiped it down and then stuck all the keys back in again. This means that some of them now feel worse than they did before, of course.

I had several things I wanted to post about this week, and then by the time I got home from work I was too tired to do anything except quickly check my email and other folks blogs and then flake out on the sofa. My sofa flaking was ably assisted by Anthony fetching me drinks, the cats being fuzzy and cuddly and the new series' of CSI and ER starting. Next week is Torchwood too!

We went to see Leyton Orient play at Nottingham Forest yesterday as a late birthday present for me. (we went to visit Anthony's sister too). I wore both my Orient tops (my black top with glitter logo underneath the team strip), tights under my jeans, my lovely scarf from mum and my big Christmas coat...and I was still freezing! But it didn't rain which was appreciated.
The score was 4-0 to Forest. Bugger. But hey, we beat them 4-0 at Forest last season so it's just karma (and we were bottom of the league at the time, they were in the top three). Best chants of the match have to be "one nil to the famous team", "you're not famous anymore" and "you're not famous anyway", attributed to Forest, Orient and Forest fans respectively.
Now I just have to persuade Anthony that going to the Walsall match in a couple of weeks is a good idea...

I spoke to Miss Campbelli the other day and she told me I had to blog so she'd know what I was doing. So just for Campbelli.

This week I have been mostly...

...taking Nytol so that I can go to sleep at a sensible time.
...watching ER on DVD.
...trying to decide how to decorate the drawer unit I got from Ikea. I like this one. (Mine is the version with two big drawers at the bottom).
...finding myself in fiction.
...ooohing over this book at work.
...trying to help Anthony choose whether to buy a lap-top, or a big TV that he can connect a tower to so that we can play WoW together at my house.*
...working on the sunflower cross-stitch.
...thinking about which cross-stitch I might do next!
...eating Creme Eggs.

*The WoW thing may sound more than a little bit geekish, but we like it.

Reading my subconscious

I'm reading all sorts of things at the moment. After Potter I picked up Hexwood to reread as I wanted something fantasyish but not too over the top. I then reread her latest book The Pinhoe Egg which means that in the next few weeks I'll probably go through all of the Diana Wynne Jones books.

I also read Flora Segunda of Crackpot Hall which Campbelli had a proof of. It was ok, took a while for me to get into it and it's made me want to read some Sheri S. Tepper which I'll probably move onto after I've finished all the DWJ books.

I've bought, but not read yet, the fantastic reissues of Just Another Angel, Angel Touch and Angel Hunt by Mike Ripley. I can still remember when the third one of these had just been published and dad found it in Chelmsford library. The grin on his face as he said "Look what I've found" and flashed the front cover at me. I'm so glad they've been reissued at last.
They also have nice introductions by him which talk about how he started writing them, the tv rights and all sorts of other interesting asides. (This more than makes up for the fact that the insides are not as beautiful as the covers).

I also shot through Lean Mean Thirteen last night, Janet Evanovich's latest Stephanie Plum novel. All good fun as usual, shootouts, Grandma looking for a man and the eternal dilemma of Morelli or Ranger...
Extra: Keris has an essay in Perfectly Plum which I'm planning to buy in August.

My reading matter yesterday affected my brain...no honestly! I've been rereading Books, Baguettes & Bedbugs and The Child That Books Built and reading The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop for the first time. This means that I had a fabulous dream this morning.

I was walking down a little arcade alleyway when it started to rain. I ducked into a dress shop that I'd been in before to find a prom dress (not in real life, in another dream. I seem to have a remarkable internal world in dreams, places pop up repeatedly). I looked at the clothes for a while and then wandered through a door into this huge bookshop (again, I'd been in there before). It's in a huge stone market hall and most of the stuff is second-hand. Big old bookcases just leaning against the stone walls and everything all mixed in.

I walked through the halls looking at the shelves and found copies of all three of the books above, then I turned out into a small courtyard. I asked if I could take the books into the stall on the other side (it's like lots of separate bookstalls in there) and then went over there for a look around.

I found a large box of Chalet School paperbacks, 60's Armada covers (the ones I love) and all brand new and shiny - and all 10p each! I handed my sister (who'd just appeared) the list of the ones I already own (which I don't actually carry with me, I'm not quite that bad) and then spotted a big shelf of foreign children's books.

On there were a selection of Moomin flashcards (which I'm pretty sure don't exist) and lots of Babapapa books. I was just about to take my armfuls of books to the counter when my flipping alarm went off and they were lost to me! I shall get back into that shop at some point and try to sit and read them!

I have a craving for a visit to a second-hand bookshop now, not one of the charity shops that never have anything good, a proper twisty stair cased shop with treasure waiting to be discovered. Now I just have to find one, I wonder if Anthony would like to go on a drive on Saturday...

Reading not essays

When I was at home for the weekend my mum announced that she always thinking that it's a shame I didn't do English A-Level. "But you never liked writing essays did you" she suddenly said at the dinner table - just after my dad had attempted to increase the intelligence level of our wittering by asking what the best book we'd read so far this year was.

Me - "It wasn't because I didn't like writing essays, it was because I couldn't stand the way that 1984 got ruined for me when I did it for GCSE and I didn't want that to happen with something else."

Mum - "Rubbish. Don't you love talking over a book with someone and discovering new layers of the story and the characters. It's wonderful."

There speaks a woman with a first class degree (honours) in English. (Done through the OU too, so while she was bringing us up).

I conceded that I do like talking through books with people, but that it was probably a combination of my English teacher and the fact that we didn't look at the text that way (have to extract the maximum juice for your essays, not ENJOY discussing it) that put me off doing English for A-Level.

(I actually got quite lucky with the conversation as she then didn't go into her "I wish you'd done the IB" speech, when I would have had to throw things at her).

I read books that catch my attention. Sometimes they're recommended to me by people, or there's a link from another book that makes me hunt down something obscure. Sometimes it's just pure chance. I only read Animal Farm and 1984 all those years ago (I was about 9) because they happened to be on the bottom shelves of the bookcase next to the sofa. Animal Farm had a bright cover and I liked reading it, so I read the other book there by that author. I did read some random stuff off my parents bookshelves by cover choice - strangely the black covered "classics" never got picked up.

Anyway, this whole post came about because I started reading one of my newest batch of library books last night - The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice. I picked that up because Mark had recommended it but since it also states on the back that it is "in the tradition of Nancy Mitford and I Capture the Castle" I would probably have picked it up at some point. I found a brilliant bit in it last night that summed it all up perfectly.

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"I had been looking forward to the English course, but soon found the endless dissection and analysis of the books utterly destructive. I wanted to read, but not to write about what I had read. Shakespeare was the greatest trial. I had adored watching The Merchant of Venice and The Winter's Tale, but had no interest at all in talking about the minutiae of the text."

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That's it! I can read something and enjoy it, maybe write a review of it for work and wiffle about it on here. What I can't do is go "why did the writer choose those words in that passage?", "why was she writing in the kitchen sink?", "what is the significance of the dog being called Heloise?". ARRRGGGHHH!!!

I have tried rereading 1984 a couple of times, but I just can't get into it anymore. I can hear Mrs Jemmerson's voice in my head as I try to read about Winston in his flat and the magic of the words gets chewed up and lost. Maybe it's a subconscious reason I avoid the classics so I don't get into a discussion of exactly what the author meant by this or that.

Every now and again I think of doing an OU English course, thinking that I was pretty good at writing essays (I was, I just never got the hang of the endless rewriting) and that I'd end up reading some interesting and important things. Then I hear Mrs Jemmerson in my head and shudder, flicking back to the science degrees instead.

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BTW, I haven't read a single one of my new library books yet, been too busy. I am about halfway through Special Topics in Calamity Physics (I have to keep stopping to let it settle in my head) and, as stated above, started The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets last night. It's this having time off work thing, I have lots of other things to do at home and so lose my guaranteed (lunch) hour a day of reading time.

Best books of the year so far: Anthony and mum passed on answering, Emily said the new Tamora Pierce, I went with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and dad chose The Tenderness of Wolves which won this years Costa Prize.

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Ooh, and that 100 again post was my 500th post on this blog. That's rather scary.

Thursday....

Yup, today was a Thursday...

But I did get a nicely eclectic selection (try saying that pissed) of library books.

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
Happy Ever After - Adele Geras
Bad Kitty - Michelle Jaffe
Elsewhere - Gabrielle Zevin
French Women for all Seasons - Mireille Guiliano
The Good, The Bad and The Undead - Kim Harrison
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon
Behind with the Laundry and Living off Chocolate - Lynette Allen
Thunderball - Ian Fleming
Full Dark House - Christopher Fowler

So they should keep me busy for a little while at least.

Fictional fiction

I read this yesterday.

It was a bit pants to be honest, I only picked it up from the library because of all the fuss. The bits I liked best were the bits about Indian culture, describing the food and the family connections, that kinda thing.* The rest of it was same old teen novel...well several teen novels as it turned out. I knew some bits would be familiar, I just didn't expect it to all be familiar!

Opal Mehta vs Sloppy Firsts
Opal Mehta Controversy
Kaavya Viswanathan

*and it turns out that the Wiki article says they were pinched too!

Girly jeans, proofs and the Burning Crusade

Anthony bought me some girls jeans on Sunday. I haven't had any for years. The ones I've been wearing have been blokes ones (good old M&S) as they are so much easier to size. But we went into Dorothy Perkins and I tried on 5 or 6 different pairs until I found a style I liked. Anthony loves them, apparently they give me a "proper girls bottom". (I'm not sure what type of bottom I usually have in that case).
I haven't worn them to work yet as they sit a lot lower than my other jeans and since work is mainly pulling returns at the moment (lots of bending over) I'm not quite ready to reveal quite so much of my nice new short pants to the world.

I've also had a bit of luck (although nothing compared to the jammy git who won himself £26 on a scratchcard and £100 on the Premium Bonds on Mon) in that I managed to find the proof of The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters lurking in Goods In today. I didn't think it would be something I'd be interested in from what I'd heard about it, but we've had some samplers for customers so I had a flick through one and quite liked it. GI Chris had seen a set of the proofs in Goods In but didn't know where they'd gone to. Today I found them and have them sitting on the sofa waiting to be delved into.

I shall have some time to be reading them in this week, as Anthony is working "normal" hours (7-4) and so is monopolising the computer. Since The Burning Crusade expansion pack has just come out I sense that he'll be rather preoccupied with it for a few days/weeks/months (but then again, me too!) so I shall inflict Buffy on him and perhaps actually do some of my sadly neglected cross-stitch.

It's been partly neglected because I've been having lots of baths and showers due to my rediscovered love of hot water - which I dearly missed for the week I was without it. My stash of Lush goodies (32 things) has been taking a hammering, although I've been trying bits of all the solid bubble baths rather than using up all my precious ballistics all in one go.

Right, I'm being evicted...