100 Books

Nicked from Lucy's blog

Look at the list of (100) books below.
Bold the ones you’ve read.
Italicise the ones you want to read.
Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.
Movies don’t count.

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 (Audrey 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 Davis)
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)

white coat idolisation...

What is it that leads otherwise educated and sensible people to believe everything that someone says simply because they're wearing a white coat or a nametag that says 'qualified medical professional' on it? I can't wrap my head round it. I've been told in the past couple of days that reminding a pregnant person that she does not have to go to hospital appointments is irresponsible. Really? It's a simple statement of fact. And is it any more irresponsible than telling someone to go when you don't know whether the person they'll see will know their arse from their elbow?

Gosh, couldn't possibly suggest that a mother relies on her instincts over what some white-coated protocol peddler...

Got photos now of the aforementioned tankini. here's the outside...



pretty, no?

And here's the inside...



Now obviously this is simply not designed for going swimming as such. Because people who go to swim don't want pretty cossies, it's only people who go to pose by the hotel pool or on the beach who want pretty. *sigh*

So now I'm going to take my scissors and cut all that unnecessary crap out and hope it still looks ok :|

Did I say sane??

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about not being able to find a tankini without bra support. Well today I went to Meadowhall, to meet a friend and continue the hunt for the elusive support-less cossie. The plan, roughly speaking, was for us to meet there then go on to Decathlon, she'd looked when I ranted before and said there were several, and then we were going to go back to Meadowhall for coffee at Costa and a chat, both of us feeling the need for some RL conversation without children present (slung older babies notwithstanding :) ) J was going to text me with her phone number and I was going to ring when I set off, since she's in the neighbourhood, relatively speaking. So I kept checking my phone, no message. Looked on YahooIM and she's not online, so I pinged a mutual friend to ask if she had her number, which said friend duly gave. So I texted to say I was on my way...

When I arrived, 10 mins after I'd said, which I don't think is too bad for someone used to running on home-ed time, J wasn't there, so I looked round, no sign, I headed off to M&S to look at cossies and tried to ring. 'This number is temporarily unavailable...' hmmmm... Back to Costa, still no sign. I had a good look at the number, there's an extra digit :|

So I rang dh to ask him to check if I've saved the number to my phone properly, and yes... so then can he sign in to Trillian and see if anyone's online who would have had it, he pings a couple of people but no reply. So then can he find out where the Decathlon store is in Sheffield, which he does, and explains to me, and I know roughly where it is so I set off...

And here's where it gets fun...

I was going from Meadowhall (the black circle here) to Bramhall Lane (just about where the red circle is)



On leaving Meadowhall I saw signs for the ring road, so, naturally enough since I knew that I wanted to be on the ring road, I followed them. The thing is, Sheffield has an inner ring road and an outer ring road. You can see on the map of the outer ring road that it's not actually a ring, more like a quarter of an oval. So perhaps there's some explanation somewhere for me ending up in Derbyshire, turning round at the junction where I've drawn a circle on this pic:



Quite a long way away... There's obviously something wrong with stating 'Outer Ring Road' on a road sign when 'ring road' will suffice to confuse the incomers. It seems like Sheffield don't want the supporters of teams visiting Sheffield United to find Bramhall Lane either, going by the lack of signage when I found my way back towards Sheffield itself. Driving through Woodseats reminded me of Bishopston, where Born are based, so if there's anyone in that area, it might well be a good place for a natural/ethical baby products shop *grin*

I got to the *inner* ring road and spotted a sign saying Bramhall Lane, finally. So I made it to Decathlon, which is big, but there weren't any tankinis at all, only triangle and balconette tops and different styles of bottoms. It obviously shows though that people want tankinis without support, since they'd obviously sold out! I had a wander round while I was there, and bought a float belt to help dd3 when learning swimming strokes (she can swim, in as much as she can propel herself through the water, but I thought it would be good if she didn't have to worry about sinking when figuring out how the arms and legs go together for breaststroke...) I had a look at the bike seats while I was there too, but I still want a Wee Ride and while there was mention of front-mounted seats on the bike seat blurb, there wasn't a slot for one.

So from Decathlon back to Meadowhall then, back to M&S to buy the tankini I'd seen there and loved, even though it not only has a support shelf it has sculpted cups, eurgh! I got there and updated dh, who told me that he now had J's phone number, so I rang, and we met up. Turned out J had my number from before I swapped the shop number to my new phone, so when she texted me it was lost in the ether, along with mine to her. She'd been to M'hall and hung around, mooched about feeling bored and eventually left. We'd even hung around in the same bookshop and missed each other, doh! Anyway it was about 4pm, so she made arrangements and came and met me, we had coffee and cake and chatted, it was lovely :) Her son is a little charmer too.

Will blog about the cossie itself in a few when I've taken pics of it...

ugh, gurus...

Morag's blog

Not much more to say really. *sigh*

the only sane woman in the country

Am I really the only sane woman left in Great Britain? Or can someone tell me where I can find two-piece swimwear that doesn't mean that I have to make special dispensation for the fact that *shock horror* I have breasts?

Seriously, I have spent my afternoon trawling my local town with my two older daughters looking for swimwear for all of us. There's some lovely stuff out there, funky patterns, fun details, all that. But we couldn't find a single adult-sized two-piece that didn't have either triangle tops (oh there are plenty of those in the girls' sizes too, and really don't get me started on that little piece of social engineering) or formed cups or halter necks or those really annoying support shelf things, have you tried to take one of those off when it's wet, and you're dealing with a small child? Ridiculous.

A few years ago the shops were filled with tankinis, I had one from River Island that was perfect, plain black long-length top and shorts, little silvery sewn-on badges, no fuss, no stupid 'look at my tits!' malarky. Easy to pull up or down for feeding babies, enough coverage for my ample backside, perfect. But trends change, don't they? Even long-length tops were in short supply today.

All I want is something comfortable, maybe a fun fabric, that doesn't shout 'look, I have breasts!!' and covers my arse. That's all. Oh except that I want something similar for my daughters that doesn't scream soft porn when they're only 10 and 11! Surely it's not too much to ask? Surely I can't be the only mother of pre-teen girls who don't fit the children's sizes any more? Answers on a postcard...

pop quiz - can you name this disease??

symptoms: general mardiness followed by high temp, which settles down to be followed about 36hrs later by vomming and rash. Rash is small spots that are red when child is hot or agitated, vanish when not and leave 'goosebump' type feeling on the skin??

And meanwhile if anyone would come and look after everyone else while I doggedly get k into doing the same thing at the same time each day for a fortnight, please form a queue here 4