Friday Fill-Ins (1)

Friday Fill-Ins:

1. When will I ever finish Pride and Prejudice?

2. Say Anything was the last good book I read or movie I saw or tv show I watched. (It was on TV last night. Can you believe I've never seen the whole thing until now?)

3. Everything has its beauty but beauty isn't everything.

4. Pasta is what I had for dinner.

5. I'd like your calm, unflappable nature.

6. Hawaii is where I want to be right now.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep, tomorrow my plans include reading and Sunday, I want to do something at least moderately interesting!

How Many Have You Read?

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

I saw this on Nikola's Book Blog:

Instructions: Copy this into your blog. Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds.

Tag me as well so I can see your responses!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X) I'm reading it right now... and I will finish it!

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien ()

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X)

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)

6 The Bible ()

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ()

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell ()

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (X) Only the first two books...

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X) Sort of. I was supposed to read it for school. I read bits of it.

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ()

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ()

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ()

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier()

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X)

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ()

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger ()

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (X)

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 (X)

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (X) I don't remember if I finished this one. I tried to read it when I was 10. So boring!

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ()

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis ()

34 Emma-Jane Austen ()

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ()

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein ()

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ()

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ()

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (X)

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)

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 (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 ()

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 ()

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 (X)

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ()

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ()

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (X)

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 ()

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 ()

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 (X)

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (X)

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ()

I've read 22 (if I counted correctly). What about you?

Tag... you're it! (If you want to do this, great. I look forward to seeing how many books you've read.)

Booking Through Thursday (1)

Booking Through Thursday asks:

What’s the worst book you’ve read recently?
(I figure it’s easier than asking your all-time worst, because, well, it’s recent!)

I haven't read that many books recently. Unfortunately, most of them have been dismal. But I'm going to say Blue Moon (you can read my review of it here).

Please Pass The Lemonade...

I got my first award today! It was the Lemonade Award from Kate (thanks, Kate!) at The Neverending Shelf.

The Lemonade Award is a feel good award that shows great attitude or gratitude. Here are the rules for accepting this award:

Put the Lemonade Award logo on your blog or post.
Nominate at least 10 blogs that show great attitude or gratitude.

Wow... 10 blogs! Well, that shouldn't be too hard. I've found so many great ones out there. Here goes:

1. Khy at Frenetic Reader
2. Paradox at Paradoxical
3. Lenore at Presenting Lenore
4. Kelsey at Reading Keeps You Sane
5. Alea at Pop Culture Junkie
6. Casey at A Passion For Books
7. Sara at The Hiding Spot
8. Prophecygirl at Wondrous Reads
9. Juju at Tales of whimsy...
10. Steph Su at Steph Su Reads

In My Mailbox (1)

This is the first time I've done this. That's mainly because, at the moment, not many new books are coming my way. I'm still trying to finish Pride and Prejudice. I've got other books waiting, but I refuse to let myself start them before I've finished P&P (because I know that, if I set aside P&P, I might not come back to it... I tend to do that with some classics).

So, in my "mailbox" this week, I only have one book. And that book is:

Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston

I'm looking forward to reading this one! I've heard lots of good things about it.


In My Mailbox was started by Kristi of The Story Siren.

Teaser Tuesdays (1)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Today's Teaser:

"Eliza Bennet," said Miss Bingley, when the door was closed on her, "is one of those young ladies who seek to recommend themselves to the other sex by undervaluing their own; and with many men, I daresay, it succeeds; but, in my opinion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art."

"Undoubtedly," replied Darcy, to whom this remark was chiefly addressed, "there is a meanness in all the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation. Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable."

~ page 33 (probably varies by edition) - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Meow! I guess catty women aren't a new phenomenon. And yes, I know that was three sentences; I didn't want to cut Mr. Darcy off in mid-thought.

The Book Was Better!

That seems to be a common lament after the screen adaptation comes out. But it seems to be a bigger issue if you've already read the book. I'm finding that there are quite a few movies or TV series that I've seen or watched where I haven't read the original book first. I saw Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring without having read the book (I still haven't read those books... but I have read The Hobbit, so I'm not completely unfamiliar with Middle Earth). I watched The Princess Bride and The Neverending Story long before I read the books they were based upon. And I've just finished watching the first season of True Blood... without ever having held Dead Before Dark in my hands.

On the flip side, there are plenty of movies or TV shows that I've watched where I'd read the book first. More often than not, they're a disappointment. I suppose it's the inevitable comparisons, and the fact that you can cram more into a novel than you can into a screenplay. Plus, some moviemakers feel the need to put their own spin on the story, which can often be disastrous... at least in the eyes of the fans of the original book(s). I was very disappointed with the movie version of Howl's Moving Castle (one of my favourite books). I'm not an anime fan anyway, and I really didn't think that style suited the story. I can only imagine how awesome it would have been if someone like Tim Burton had done it, or if it had been given a treatment similar to that of the movie version of Coraline. I Capture the Castle was another disappointment. On its own, the movie is fine. But for me, it failed to capture the magic of the book.

As someone who likes to read books and watch movies, it seems that it's almost better if I watch first and read second. Then there are fewer expectations. The comparisons are still there, but there's also the fun of reading the book and discovering great little bits of the story that weren't included in the movie version (I'm experiencing this now as I'm reading Pride and Prejudice). I don't hate the movie if I enjoyed the book more... at least, not if I watched the movie first. However, if the book was awesome and then I'm disappointed by the movie, I'm liable to be more critical of the movie. So I'm a bit nervous about The Time Traveler's Wife. I read the book years ago, and I've been eagerly awaiting the movie version ever since. I guess we'll see if it can live up to people's expectations. At least the casting looks fairly good (that's pretty much how I imagined Henry and Clare)...

Anyway, after seeing a movie (or TV show) I enjoy, I often want to read the book it was based on. So I guess I'm going to have to add Dead Until Dark to my TBR pile. How many books are in that series again?