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Mar 31

Book meme: Which ones have you read?

Posted on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 in Books

The BBC predicts most people have only read 6 out of 100 of these books.

01 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (seen the movie, tv series and read the book)
02 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien (of course)
03 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
04 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
05 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
06 The Bible (assorted chapters…)
07 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
08 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
09 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (read The Golden Compass. didn’t like it)
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (maybe, don’t remember)

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier (seen the movie)
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot (seen the tv series)

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald (yes, had to for school, but liked it)
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens (seen the tv series, great)
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (saw some of the movie, hated it)
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (had to for school, hated it)
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 (maybe, don’t remember)
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis (and the movie.)
34 Emma – Jane Austen (and the movie and/or tv series)
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen (one of my favorites)
36 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis (and the movie.)
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 (had to for school)
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 – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding (sort of for school, hated it)
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 (will read some day)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (liked it, except for one chapter at the beginning and one at the end)

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 (don’t remember, maybe)
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett (and at least one movie.)
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 (seen the tv series)
80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens (probably saw it as a movie)
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro (had to for school, didn’t like it)
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (most of them)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton (no, but many others)

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 (and the movie)
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

Mar 31

Meme: Which ones have you read?

Posted on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 in Fandom, Other

The BBC predicts most people have only read 6 out of 100 of these books.

01 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (seen the movie, tv series and read the book)
02 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien (of course)
03 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
04 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
05 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
06 The Bible (assorted chapters…)
07 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
08 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
09 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (read The Golden Compass. didn’t like it)
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (maybe, don’t remember)

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier (seen the movie)
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot (seen the tv series)

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald (yes, had to for school, but liked it)
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens (seen the tv series, great)
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (saw some of the movie, hated it)
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (had to for school, hated it)
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 (maybe, don’t remember)
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis (and the movie.)
34 Emma – Jane Austen (and the movie and/or tv series)
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen (one of my favorites)
36 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis (and the movie.)
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 (had to for school)
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 – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding (sort of for school, hated it)
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 (will read some day)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (liked it, except for one chapter at the beginning and one at the end)

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 (don’t remember, maybe)
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett (and at least one movie.)
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 (seen the tv series)
80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens (probably saw it as a movie)
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro (had to for school, didn’t like it)
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (most of them)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton (no, but many others)

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 (and the movie)
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

Feb 22

Listen or read?

Posted on Monday, February 22, 2010 in Other

I haven’t really listened to any podcasts and very few audiobooks. Generally, I prefer to read – ordinary paper books, and tv series and movies. However, I think I could get into podcasts (or video podcasts), at least a little, if the subject was one that I’m very interested in. Audiobooks on the other hand, they’re probably not for me. Mom likes them and I’ve tried to listen to some of hers, but I never really got into them. One reason is that the translated ones are by necessity read by Swedish actors. They’re reading books that have been written in another language – these days almost exclusively English.

I never read the first book in the series about The Ladies’ Detective Agency, I listened to it on a cd player. The actress reading it could be said to be ideal in most ways – like Mma Ramotswe she’s ‘of traditional build’ and she’s very funny, or at least used to. However, when the topic of lady detectives came up, the British mystery writer Agatha Christie was mentioned and the actress pronounced that with the stress on the second syllable. That was it for me… Funnily enough, I think she got the African names about right. At least as far as I can tell.

The other memorable audiobook I tried was one about Jeeves and Wooster (I’ve forgotten the title). Again, the ‘cast’ – a group of famous comedy actors – should have been ideal, and maybe they would have been, if someone had adapted the entire book to a Swedish setting with Swedish names. As it was, naturally they hadn’t. One member of the ‘cast’ was able to correctly pronounce the UK county Worcestershire (I hope I spelled that right), the others couldn’t. No one could pronounce the more unusual personal names – like Bertie’s friend Barmy Fotheringay-something or other (?) which I think is to be pronounced Fungy- Phipps? In any case, they all botched the names. One of them, who is really famous, and a movie maker/director as well as an actor let one of his characters (he played two) use a southern Swedish accent. Never again, that’s all I can say.

Of course, that’s not really why I don’t like audiobooks, I just – well, don’t. For me, books are about reading, not listening. If I want to listen, I’ll turn on my iPod for some music, or I’ll watch tv/dvd.

Sep 3

Original stories

Posted on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 in Writing

I still haven’t worked on my novel, but I did get ideas for two original stories. At first I thought I was going to be able to start writing right away, the same night. The night, after all, is my favorite time for writing.

But no such luck. Still, I have worked out most of the things that will go into the stories. Plot, characters etc. I guess I just have cold feet. After writing a couple of stories I’ve been happy with, I’m afraid of making a mess of these.

The same is true for my novel, but even more so.

Oh, well. Writing is fun, but reading is necessary too. Fortunately, I have a couple of books I can read.

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