THE BIG READ

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed. Well, let's see.
1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Underline those you intend to read.
3. Reprint this list in your own journal, so we can try and track down these people who've read six... and force books upon them!



1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
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
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - I've read SOME, not ALL!
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
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 Revisited - 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 - C.S. Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe - C.S. 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 - A.A. 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 - L.M. 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 - Stella 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 Curious 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's Diary - Helen Fielding
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
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - A.S. 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 - E.B. 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

Total: 53


Since I'm still at the library now with half an hour to go till closing time, maybe it's time to put some of these books on hold OR check them out! :D

Fruitless expeditions with grapes!

Eric picked me up yesterday at our usual place, and then we went on a fruitless expedition to T&T. It was fruitless even though we did get grapes, because the huge $46 cake wasn't there - we had to go to Yaohan instead! I reminded him to be sure I got pork fluff / shredded pork, so he said NO... haha. Then I decided to get Pho when we got to church - thank goodness I found an arrangement that worked for both of us to get dinner! Talked to Jen, Raymond, Jeremy, both Teresas, Vivian, Martin, Cindy, Connie, Kevin, and others about the picnic / hiking / program changes / Steph's emails (she just sent us another one!) / allergies / Scrabble words / Facebook groups / messages / more stuff. It was an interesting time out, that's for sure!


Erin's cousin Jason tagged a picture of me on Facebook. This is from a couple of weeks ago when he was in town. I'm wearing my lovely Awana uniform because it was Children's Ministry Sunday.

What can I do?! / Love Languages

Had a weird dream that involved Karen and Ben going around Zellers and ending up in the shoe section in the back room. Then we were made to watch repetitive videos before I had to go around the mall on a scooter and grab pink stickers from every retail outlet I could think of, especially Chapters. Afterwards, Vivian joined us and we yelled at someone for talking to "Lisa" all the time. I have almost no idea where THAT one came from! o_O [except for Korey spending all his time with Lisa, of course!]


At least Eric's cake won't be wasted tonight! Yay for him and Dylan agreeing to step into the breach for me! (next time, I should plan better - that, or get people I see OFTEN to be speakers!) Also got a souvenir offer, heh. Tonight should be fun! (I wish I had better mental fortitude!)

I feel loved when...

The Five Love Languages

I have multiple love languages!

My Detailed Results:
Acts of Service:	7
Words of Affirmation:	7
Physical Touch:	7
Quality Time:	6
Receiving Gifts:	3

About this quiz

Unhappiness in relationships is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. It can be helpful to know what language you speak and what language those around you speak.

Tag 3 people so they can find out what their love language is.

Take the Quiz!
Check out the Book

This sounds about right. I value physical touch a lot, as well as acts of service and words of affirmation. Maybe I'm more complicated than some people think... ;)

Flip-flops don't necessarily indicate SEVERED FEET!

Bingos of the day so far:

EULACHAN (72 points) - against Matt H.
UNMARKED (67 points) - against Matt H. [different game]
FORCEDLY (66 points) - against Josephine S.
FATWOODS (72 points) - against Raymond


Grandma and I went to Dairy Queen for lunch, after she complained that I took too long getting to the house. That's what happens when you just miss a bus! I was reading a newspaper article about flip-flops and the pain they cause people, complete with picture of someone wearing them. She looked over and made a comment about the article being on those severed feet! Hahahaha, nope!

Mom will make quails, scallops, and frozen silver pomfret for dinner - I'll get chocolate / pumpkin seeds and such, too. Yay for redrum's advent... :P

Monthly Bingo Update thread

Snorks, for future reference. Thanks, Corey! "A Snork is nothing like a snort; it is somewhat like a Smurf though. What's no longer available? The video? I just watched it, and it's still on my screen... so I'm pretty sure it is. Well, click the link harder or something! Or just search for SNORKS on Youtube.. that should work."

I've been getting spam that sounds like news headlines lately. Two of the most recent ones are "MLB player's skull crushed by pitch" and "Brad Pitt confesses to betrayal" - yay for Gmail's spam filter!

Mom, on the Shaw representative who came to the townhouse earlier: "Do you like that guy? I'm always on the lookout for my darling!" That is just wrong!

"I'm not special enough to be on the mass email list!"

Went to church early with my family, so went to sit and rest in the basement with Cordia (on piano), Citrus (playing some ZELDA-like game on his cell phone), and Chris (resting head on table). Jessica joined us later, and I gave Chris and Cordia their birthday cards. Cordia marveled at the amount of tape I'd sealed hers with, and commented to Jessica that she couldn't dismember it. Seizing the opportunity for a morbid conversation with one who's just like me (demonic laughter goes here), I remarked that an envelope doesn't have limbs, which would be a prerequisite for dismemberment. She knew that, of course - too bad she couldn't actually do it, though! That would be something... an envelope with limbs, oh my!

Raymond and I talked about what we'd done yesterday: I'd watched part of THE GREEN MILE, and a bit of AGNES OF GOD - murders in convents, ahoy! Talked about Benjamin for a bit, and about the church being on the news. We knew that at least one Pho place was dodgy / shady a LONG TIME AGO! He said that the police were asking my dad if we had any surveillance cameras - he was about to say definitely not, haha. Later, John said that the news was kind enough to just show the building from certain angles, and not show the actual name - phew! Maybe our new location will be better, unless there are Pho places around! Reminds me of the time when Adela saw someone with a gun at the shady Pho, heh. John thought that he'd actually see a chalk outline of a dead body, oh my.

Jeremy noticed "NO CLASS TODAY" in the bulletin written next to the Sunday School announcements, and remarked that it could also be applied to the church picnic... "Picnic at Belcarra Park - NO PICNIC TODAY!" I joked that it could be applied to the short-term missions blurbs on the other side, haha. "NO TRIPS TO HONG KONG OR THE INNER CITY TODAY!" Had the communal Communion again today, which was cool. Started a series on Deuteronomy - why not? Keenan and Joshua were being cute, so Danielle and Vanessa took pictures. Sought Eric out after service, and we made plans which took longer than usual to effect because offering took a long time to count today!

Talked to the kids (Hannah with dolphin stickers, Annie's Chinese-Scottish kids Ewan and Rowan, Nicholas, Benjamin, Noah) in the back parking lot. Told Billy that his son Noah had dropped his pacifier and such on the ground - not good for babies! Tony remarked that Jon was gone, and almost thought I was referring to his and Harmony's 400th anniversary! "What?! It's been 400 years, and they're not married yet?!" (I was really talking about another road trip they took to Quebec to celebrate that city's 400th) Met Tony's brother Sonny, who's here for school in the fall. After saying hi to Mike (with his keychain loop around his head - NICE LOOK!), I was talking to Darren about the mass email my sister sent out yesterday. Chris remarked that HE got that email, and Darren lamented his exclusion from the list! A bunch of people went to McDonalds, and I waited for Eric till 12:10-ish. It was good to ride with him - I'll have to do so next week too! (darn board meetings... heh)