At Work Upstairs

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a…book meme

Instructions: in bold=have read the book; in italics=want to read the book; with crosses=own the book; with asterisks=unfamiliar with the book. (Via Little Professor.)

(There’s no way I’m marking books that I want to read. Such lists breed with “ought-to-do” lists and, wham, most of the fun of a trip to the library is gone.)

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)

2. †Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)

5. †The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)

6. †The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)

7. †The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)

8. †Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)

9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)

10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)

11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)

12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)

13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)

14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)

15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)

16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)

17. †Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)

18. The Stand (Stephen King)

19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)

20. †Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

21. †The Hobbit (Tolkien)

22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

23. †Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

27. †Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)

28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)

29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)

30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)

31. Dune (Frank Herbert)

32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)

33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)

34. 1984 (Orwell)

35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)

36. *The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)

37. *The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)

38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)

39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)

40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)

42. †The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)

44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)

45. †Bible

46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)

47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)

48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)

49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)

51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)

52. †A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)

53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)

54. †Great Expectations (Dickens)

55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)

56. †The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)

57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)

58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)

59. †The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)

60. †The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)

61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)

63. †War and Peace (Tolstoy)

64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)

65. †Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)

66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)

68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

69. Les Miserables (Hugo)

70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)

72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)

73. Shogun (James Clavell)

74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)

75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)

76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)

77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)

78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)

79. †The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)

80. †Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)

81. †Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)

82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)

83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

84. *Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)

85. †Emma (Jane Austen)

86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)

87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)

89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)

90. *Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)

91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)

92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)

93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)

94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)

95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)

96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)

97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)

98. *A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)

99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)

100. †Ulysses (James Joyce)

Heather

About six months ago I bought five or six of these:

I was sick of dealing with the tidal wave of plastic bags. We were already plastic-bag resistant. Most shopping went into knapsacks or into other plastic bags.  And the bags we did end up with, we re-used and “donated” to the library and St. Vinnie’s.  Didn’t seem to make a dent.  Every month or so, we’d end up throwing away a bag full of bags. Drove me crazy.

Now we have these soft cotton bags, strong and capacious. They easily hold all the groceries we schlep and don’t cut off the circulation the way plastic does.  Stuff them in a pocket or in a bag.  Take them along on trips and fill them with the extra stuff that always seems to come back with us. There are still too many plastic bags here but I’d say we’ve reduced the in-flow by about 2/3rds.

You can’t buy them in Ottawa. (The first time I asked about them in the eco-friendly store, the clerk looked at me as I was a loon. Can you say “missed business opportunity”?) But you can buy them online for about 30$ US.

When in doubt, RBOC:

• The flu is a pernicious thing. It zapped me over the holidays and I’m still dragging around. Some people around here think I stay inside too much. It’s the flu, I tell you, the flu, not fear of -30 weather or sloth. The flu.

• Why oh why are people seduced by Flash?

• I seem to have come down with a slight case of compulsive behaviour. First it was cataloging the books (just over 1900, and, no, I don’t really think that’s a lot of books). Then it was Weffriddles which passed quickly. Next up: editing Wikipedia pages. And now, God help me, Second Life looks interesting.

• Inquiring minds want to know: Why does anyone want to be a dental hygienist?

On the reading front

• McCarthy’s The Road was gruesome what with the roasted baby and the basement full of “provisions” and I haven’t read enough apocalyptic science fiction to place it in the range of pessimistic and dire warnings. The ending disappoints in the same way that the end of Beasts of No Nation disappoints. McCarthy’s prose is interesting tho–both spare and lyrical. I’ve not read anything else of his but I can see that I probably should.

• Sangster’s history of women in Canadian Leftist politics was another one of those books that are alternately very interesting since the cover topics I’m dreadfully ignorant about and very frustrating because they’re surveys. I’m still curious about Annie Buller and more curious about Beckie Buhay, who was, it turns out, Tom McEwen‘s common-law wife in the early 30s. Then there’s Gladys MacDonald, who spent a year in the Battleford Jail for her newspaper work and once released she was interned in the Kingston Penn for being a Communist.

• I’m reading other things in a desultory fashion. Not much seems compelling enough to spend large chunks of time on it. That’ll change I hope cause grasshopper brain gets tiring after a while.

One last thing: why do people dislike the bagpipes? How could you sit still to something like this.

Heather