Tagged: Bookworm Meme

I have been tagged by The Cwtch, so here goes:

First off is "The Bookworm". The rules are that you have to open the nearest book to page 56. Write out the fifth sentence as well as the following few sentences. It has to be the closest book, not your favourite, or the most intellectual!

Well, the nearest book to me at present is Andrew Marr's A History of Modern Britain and says:

"The Church of England saw one of the sharpest declines in membership in the decade from 1935 to the end of the war, losing half a million communicants, down to just under three million. (Another half million would be lost by 1970 and more than a million by 1990.) The Roman Catholics rose in numbers after the war, perhaps because of Polish, Irish and other European immigration, while the Presbyterians and the smaller churches also suffered decline. Though the first mosque in Britain had been built in Woking, Surrey as early as 1889, there were few Muslims or Hindus."

Two things struck me whilst writing out that passage; (1) how appropriate that on the 11th November that the quote should be about the decade following the war and (2) who knew Woking and Surrey were so liberal as to have built the first mosque, and as early as 1889. Speaking of remembrance day there is another post to come on that subject later today.


Second Tag ( I have changed this to four not six as I have run out of writing time):

Things I Value

• Freedom: As it is Remembrance Day perhaps I should start with this one. Freedom is something I value in many senses: the ability to act and think freely and to not be dictated to by state or religion, not to be subordinate to anyone or anything, the freedom to vote, for freedom of speech, for equal opportunities. Every time we have an election I always make sure that I vote: wars were fought for our democratic freedom, wars are being fought now to free other countries to allow them democratic freedom and less than a century ago women were not allowed to vote. Indeed, it was not until 1928 that women were allowed to vote and stand for election in the UK. But freedom should not be confused with the ability to do what one likes, come what may. That is not something I value.
• Life and limb and being healthy: I value the fact that I am alive, that I am intact and healthy. It may not sound much but it is not something that everyone can take for granted. I also value living in a country with free health care to ensure that everyone has the ability to seek medical help.
• Love and support of my friends and family: I feel so incredibly lucky to have parents who are still together as well as four grandparents, supportive parents-in-law, sisters, a brother and sister-in-law, and soon to be top of this list, a wonderful husband-to-be.
• Sunshine and Rain: Whilst we often moan about the weather in the UK and I am no exception (see yesterdays post) we are so very lucky to live in a country which has seasons, proper seasons, and generally speaking a weather system which is not too extreme, i.e. no real droughts, or flooding of biblical proportions, or winters where everyone is snowed in for days, weeks, months on end.

Things I Don't

• Incompetence: I think this probably goes against what I have said above, but people being incompetent really drives me mad.
• Selfishness: While I could probably do to heed this myself, I also find this extremely irritating.
• People who don't stand their rounds: If you don't want to participate in the round buying, don't accept drinks from other people. Just buy your own, but don't force people to have to point out when it is your round.
• Vendors who add an extra mark-up when they hear the word 'wedding': It either costs that much or it doesn't. Stop trying to extort people for extra. Thankfully I think the lack of funds available to pump into expensive weddings will make vendors realise that they are lucky for the custom at all...

And now I tag: Suzi/Echo, Potty Mummy, Catherine and Rachel. Enjoy!

Books I have read

Diary of a Surprise Mum says that "Someone” reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books "they’ve" printed ( I coudn't work out who 'they' are). It’s not the Big Read though — they don’t publish books, and they’ve only featured these books so far. So here we go…

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read
2) Italicize those you have read part of and will go back and finish when you get some time
3) Underline the books you LOVE
4) Highlight the ones you still want to read but just have not had a chance yet*
5) colour red the ones you own but have yet to read
6) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 or less and force books upon them.


1. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
2. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
3. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
4. Lord of the Flies - William Golding*
5. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
6. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
7. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
8. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*
9. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
10. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
11. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
12. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
13. His Dark Materials (trilogy) - Philip Pullman
14. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
15. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
18. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
19. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
20. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
21. Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
22. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
23. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
24. Animal Farm - George Orwell
25. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
26. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
27. On The Road - Jack Kerouac*
28. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
29. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
30. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
31. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
32. Complete Works of Shakespeare
33. Ulysses - James Joyce
34. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
35. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
36. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
37. The Bible
38. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
39. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
40. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
41. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
42. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
45. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
46. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
47. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
48. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
49. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
50. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
51. Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott
52. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
53. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
54. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
55. Middlemarch - George Eliot
56. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
57. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
58. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
59. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
60. Emma - Jane Austen
61. Persuasion -Jane Austen
62. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
63. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden*
64. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
65. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving*
66. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
67. Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
68. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
69. Atonement - Ian McEwan
70. Dune - Frank Herbert
71. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
72. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
73. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon*
74. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
75. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
76. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
77. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
78. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
79. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
80. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
81. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
82. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
83. Dracula - Bram Stoker
84. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
85. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
86. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
87. Germinal - Emile Zola
88. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
89. Possession - A.S. Byatt
90. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
91. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
92. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
93. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
94. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
95. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
96. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
97. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
98. Watership Down – Richard Adams
99. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
100. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

31
19
6*
11

Book Meme

I read about this on Bub&Pie but since she didn't actually tag me I suppose that it should orginate from the open invitation on Mom-NOS's page.

Total Number of Books Owned:

This figure is rather high although I am not sure the exact number. I have collected books since I was a little girl and then went onto to read English at university followed by 2 years of law school. I have sold one of them. That leaves a lot of books.

They're not all at my present flat though. That would be silly. My long suffering parents allowed me to leave the majority of my childhood books at their house. I brought a few of them with me to London for those dark nights or winter afternoons which are only satisfied by an Arthur Ransome tale or something by Noel Streatfield. Occasionally I will crave a book from the Jinny series by Patricia Leitch and I have been known to re-read Drina Ballerina in bed having sneaked the book into my handbag on a visit home.

The majority of my books from my degree are also at home. I've found my need for Beginning Theory or Seven types of Ambiguity rather more limited now I am working. Although as I write that I do remember that Beginning Theory was another book carried off in my handbag to fill a railway journey back into London. I would estimate that there are two 4 shelf bookcases full of books from my degree, one bookcase of childhood books (including an entire shelf of Sweet Valley High - all bought from jumblesales and second hand shops when 11&12) and another bookshelf of miscellaneous books from which I read when 'at home' and smuggle back to my London flat.

The books which are at my flat in London are in three main categories: law books which take up a bookcase all on their own, a bookcase comprised of 10 wooden wine crates which are arranged by colour and contain a mixture of novels and reference books and a large box under the dining room table which contains poetry and novels which did not fit into the wine crates. One day I may count them and if I do I will update this post.

Last book read:

There are three different interpretations of this question:

1. Book currently reading: At present I am reading Angela Huth's Land Girls and have read 67 pages on the tube on the way to work this morning. When work is particularly busy I crave satisfying but relatively easy reads. Sometimes I will re-read favoured novels to fill this. I am unsure as to whether I have read this book before as I removed it from my sister's bookcase two weekends ago and I have also seen the film.

Before long a link will become apparent - one of my favourite genres is stories about women (in various capacities) on the home front in the Second World War.

2. Book last read (including re-reads): The last book which I read was Nevil Shute's Pastoral. I was unsure as to whether this counted as I have read this book many times and never fail to love the story. It charts the story of a WAAF Signals Officer and a RAF pilot stationed together on an RAF base in Oxfordshire during, yes, the Second World War.

3. Book last read (for the first time): This comes down to three answers - a frivilous chick-lit book which a friend lent me last weekend and which I read in bed on the Sunday night. So meaningful was the storyline that I can only just remember the plotline and I cannot remember either the title or the author. The other two were JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Rachel North's Out of the Tunnel but I cannot remember in which order I read them. I think HP is probably the most recent book which I have read for the first time (and I have also re-read it too!)

Last Book Bought:

This would be either JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows or Rachel North's Out of the Tunnel as I already own or have 'borrowed' in various forms the other books I have read recently. I don't tend to buy a huge number of books and even less of those books are new as I own so many and am so short on funds. If I could have unlimited funds to buy books however I would have bought Esther Freud's Hideous Kinky and all the remaining Libby Purves books last time I was browsing in a book shop.

Five Meaningful Books:

Arthur Ransome's Pigeon Post is probably my favourite book of all time. It is not particularly meaningful in some ways but will always mean a huge amount to me.

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje was a book which I first read when I was 15 and captivated my imagination. I had never really read about love affairs outside of marriage in such a way before nor experienced the kind of love which Count Almaasy has for Katherine. I could really see in my mind's eye (and later the film) Katherine lying in the cave writing in Almaasy's copy of Herodotus that the light was becoming dimmer and soon it would be out, knowing that she was going to die there in that cave. I didn't want to die like that but I did want to know what that kind of love felt like.

Ok. That is two but lunchtime is over so I will return later to finish my list and tag some people!