20 Books

Here are the books that I read from your list:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (Couldn't make it past 5 chapters every time I tried)
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (It's always out of the library)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Tried but couldn't)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (Still reading but I will finish it!)
34 Emma-Jane Austen (Read at school)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (I'm not even sure if I read it, I think I did)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon (Loved it)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (Started but had to return it before I finished it)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (Read most of it before got really bored and skimmed the end)
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

Ok, so counting the ones I've actually completed, the total adds up to 20.

100 Books

Yes that's right followers, I'm finally writing another entry in here hehe! I saw this on a friend's Facebook account, so I thought I'd give it a go too.

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (I tried!)
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 Orwel
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 (I tried this one too...)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (oh look Zoe, it's that book you want to read!)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Argh another one I attempted)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I've got it in front of me right now, but I haven't started!)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams x
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy x (Recently finished, yay!)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x
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 x
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 x
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 (I've read half...)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm
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 x
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - 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 x
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’s Diary - Helen Fielding x
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 x
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
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 x(I'm reading it now, does that count??)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
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 x
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 x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Okay so I've read...18, and I own countless others, and I've attempted to read many and failed...maybe it's time to try again!

Zoe I think you would've read even more! And we can get some good ideas from here for our 'book club'

We are being followed

Ok, so it looks like I'm the only one posting here and I was going to stop but then I checked our email and got notified that we have three followers! Although I was motivated to blog without having readers, now I'm even more enthusiastic.

Not much to report from here other than omg, Caitlyn is going to be 7 months in less than a week and I'm planning on making a sweet potato pie with marshmallows (not because she's turning 7 months). I've been trying to find a good recipe on the internet (apparently an American Thanksgiving favourite and alternative to pumpkin pie) but I think I'm going to combine a couple which I think would make the best outcome. Will let you know how it goes.

UPDATE: I made the sweet potato and marshmallow pie and never will I do so again. Either I did it completely wrong or it really was absolutely disgusting. Did not look good either. (Amazingly, Dan and his family liked it. He said that if you like flan, you would like it too. Eggs, milk and sugar are just not my thing.)

Sweet and Sour

I got a pack of kiwis on the weekend as some healthy snacks for the week. Well, they turned out to be a bit sour so I got inspired and made a sultana pound cake with a layer of strawberry jam and sliced kiwis in the centre and on top. Not such a healthy snack anymore.

Fairytale

So there's the 2009 Eurovision winner. I think they said he got the most points in Eurovision history. Before I even saw him, I was told everyone was betting on him to win so my expectations were very high. When I saw him, they were all met. I loved the song. And he had the charisma (and backup dancers/acrobats) to make it a winner. Congratulations, Norway!

That Time of the Year

Eurovision is on once again and every night of this weekend I will be glued to the TV.

Every year there seems to be more and more countries participating. I don't remember if we even had two semi-finals last year (Amanda, the other Eurovision fan, might remember).

This year, Dan and I watched it together and Eurovision is never fun without throwing jeering comments at all the contestants. Here are some highlights.

Czech Republic

Dan was very disappointed this SuperGypsy (or Hitler in a cape as I see him) didn't get through.

Belarus

I was very disappointed this guy didn't get through. Isn't he the epitome of Eurovision - the hair, the white suit, the shoes and a very seducing song - what more could you ask for?

Armenia

Dan really liked this act but their look totally freaked me out.

Turkey

Catchy tune and a Turkish Shakira. No one was surprised this act got through to the final.

Romania

The best looking girl group always has a place in the finals. Is it me or does the lead singer look like Holly Valance?

Macedonia

An amazing thing happened. When they replayed all the acts of the show, I could not remember seeing this act.

Bosnia and Herzogovina

Dan named this pose "The Revolution". Very disappointed they got through to the finals.

Portugal

Our favourite. I wouldn't mind listening to this song over and over.

Looking forward to tonight's semi-finals.

Note: All photos sourced from http://www.monstersandcritics.com.

My Mother's Day

This year was the first year that I was a mother on Mother's Day. Although Amanda found that quite funny last Saturday, it really wasn't that different for me. As long as you have a mother you still have to do stuff; and now that I'm married there are two mothers to please.

Also, since my child was too young to do anything for me (can't wait to get a picture or some other work of craft), Dan gave me some flowers and a card on her behalf.

Even though we all know that we should appreciate our mothers every day, since most of us don't, it's nice to have a day to remind us.

Speaking of mothers, I recently got into watching Jon & Kate plus Eight about a young couple who have twins and sextuplets. Every time I think looking after one baby is hard enough, I remind myself of her. I bet she thought having twins was tough.

I guess it makes it all worth it when these babies start talking and expressing their own personalities. That's when the real fun begins.