Back in 2003 the BBC conducted a poll on reader's favourite books. This list, the BBC Big Read Top 100, has been circulating the internets since it's inception in 2003. As the poll was conducted in Britain, it's no surprise that about 60 of the books are Brittish.
There are scads of "best book" lists out there, but this one had the most titles that I am honestly interested in. Maybe it's because I like British tales.
Apparently the BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of these 100 books. When I first received the list, I had read only 14 or 15. I shared the list with JB, who ticked off 35 titles himself. Goody two-shoes!
I am an avid reader but when I tried to read classics in high school, I was BORED. I preferred my detective novels, thank you. So I never gave them another try. I didn't really believe that many people actually liked these stories and that they just raved about them so that they'd look smart and trendy. You know, like people who rave about "classic" black and white movies that in reality have light plotlines and so-so acting (Gone With the Wind excluded!!).
In 7th grade I did read all 1036 pages of Gone With the Wind of my own choosing. I loved it. My English teacher, Mr. Coopes, then assigned me to read To Kill a Mockingbird, believing I'd enjoy another Southern tale. After page 3 I was dreadfully bored and refused to read it. I took an E on the assignment. Nobody tells ME what to read! After that I left everyone else to their classics while I read REAL books, like Nancy Drew.
Then when JB and I were living with Grandma and Grandpa Hunt (during the Calvin restoration) I saw To Kill a Mockingbird on one of their bookshelves. It had a cool cover and I was itching to read, so I cracked it open.
And couldn't put it down.
How had I ever thought that this book was BORING??? Probably because I was a child. I don't think that teenagers can really get most classics.
Ever since then I've been interested in classic books but as there are so many, I never knew where to start.
JB and I are working our way through this BBC list together. Only I'm the only one that has started. Then again, maybe he's just waiting for me to catch up to him.
My sister Annie has graciously lent me several of her classics from this list, dubbing it my "winter reading." Annie, I won't let you down!
Here's the full list, for any of you fellow readers who care to see where you stack up and perhaps even read along with me! (I've bolded the ones I've read. I've started several others, but they don't count until I read the last page!)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK 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
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD 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 - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS 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 - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (JB has read this, but I shall not)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - 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
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 Zifon
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 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
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (Mitch is too self-important, so I'm not reading this one, either.)
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 Factoy - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
In celebration of JB's new job, I made him a sweet dinner when he got home from his first day. Well, I often make a sweet dinner, because I'm cool like that, but as we had just seen the movie Julie and Julia last Saturday, I was inspired to channel my inner Julia Child and make something super good.
So I donned my pearl necklace and raided my butter stores.
And made Chicken Archduke, with carrots and mashed potatoes on the side. For dessert, I made Chocolate Cream Pie (not Julia's recipe, though--didn't find it).
After a flurry of preparations (because my pie recipe did not include cooking times so I had no idea how long it would take, causing me to make dessert and dinner at the same time), we sat down to eat.
Woah.
That was the best chicken I have ever eaten.
I licked every bit of sauce off of my plate. It was so tasty that I have dubbed it The Peacemaker.
If you have someone in your life who you just can't seem to get along with, or who is unwilling to forgive you a wrong, make this meal for them. I guarantee that they'll fall in love with you and completely forget what they were mad at you about.
Conversely, if you have someone you'd like to see dead, but are concerned that the presence of arsenic or other poisonous substances found in their bloodstream would cast unwelcome suspicion on you, make this meal for them. Every day. For a week. It's that rich. (And if you're lucky, on about day 2 or 3 of your plan, your target will be so enamored with you that they will rewrite their will to give you EVERYTHING and will tell the whole world how AMAZING you are, thus giving authorities no reason to suspect you whatsoever in the untimely death.)
BTW, any chocolate cream pie recipe will do. I had never had chocolate cream pie before, and I loved it so much that I ate the last piece for breakfast the next morning. I didn't mean to. I meant to just have one bite. Until there were no bites left. I love it so much I'm making it for Thanksgiving.
Without further ado, may I present The Peacemaker (it's not as difficult to make as you may think):
CHICKEN BREASTS ARCHDUKE
4 T butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 T paprika
4 - 6 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1/4 cup chicken stock (broth)
1/4 cup dry vermouth or white wine
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Chopped fresh parsley for garnish
Heat the butter in a skillet large enough to hold the chicken in a single layer. Sauté the onions until tender but not brown, about 10 minutes. Stir in the paprika. Lightly brown the chicken in the butter mixture, about 2 minutes per side. Place the skillet in a preheated 400° F. oven until the chicken is firm to the touch, about 6 to 8 minutes. Remove the chicken and keep warm. Add the chicken broth and vermouth or wine to the skillet and reduce over high heat until the liquid is almost evaporated. Add the cream and reduce until the sauce has thickened slightly. Season with salt and pepper. Spoon the sauce over the chicken and garnish with chopped parsley. Serves 4 to 6.
From Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Volume 1), by Julia Child et al, Random House, 1989
It's my brother's birthday today. Every few years it falls on Friday the 13th. Ooooh! Spooky!
I remember when we were living in the Lapeer house and our cat ran away from home. It was an outdoors cat, so I don't know why we were so surprised when he took off. I was sooo sad about it! For days I waited for that cat to come home.
Then Tommy's birthday came. On Friday the 13th. And we were all getting ready for his birthday party when the neighbor calls to say he found our cat. Or something like that. I was little. I just remember that after Mom got off the phone with someone, she said that our cat was found. So that Friday the 13th was actually a LUCKY day.
Hopefully this was another lucky one for you, brother!
In honor of his birthday, I did a Mohawk photo shoot with Olivia and Lucy for his birthday card. Unfortuately Lucy's 'hawk did not translate well onto film. Oh well!
As soon as I gave my name to the girl at the photo counter at Walgreens, where I was picking up my prints, she said, "I LOVE the mohawk photos! They are so cool!" Then she went on to tell me that she did the same thing with her son (who is same age as O) and how her fiance went bananas over them. He insisted that they be made into 8x10's and framed.
What can I say? Mohawks are awesome.
And mohawks on babies are priceless.
Here are some gems from the photo shoot. I hope you got your card already, brother, so that this doesn't spoil the surprise. But I couldn't wait any longer to post!!:
Getting started:
"Mother, are we doing ANOTHER photo shoot? Seriously. If you make me do another one of these I swear I'm going to feed Piglet to the dog."
"You shall put the camera down and stack blocks with me instead!"
The one baby and dog shot. Lucy was kind of nervous about sitting in a rocking chair. She had been even more nervous at the sound of hairspray being dispensed into her fur. She is so obedient!
Reflections in being a caged baby...
Oh, crap. Now that I've busted all my friends out of jail, who's gonna get ME out??
You know it's hard out here for a punk...
I know that all of my blogs these days are about Olivia. And for those of you without children, it's probably a drag. I am sorry. You can judge me. I'd judge you if you did the same. :)
But, well, Olivia is entertaining to me. And I'm not in a writing season right now. I'm in a "crafting for Christmas" season, which means that witty stories are collecting dust in the recesses of my mind, while I am busy sewing and gluing. There's always something to keep me from writing, isn't there?
So last night was Bath Night for the Bird. JB is the appointed bather, so I can have a break from that silly girl. I brought O upstairs while JB checked his internets. I closed the shades in her room. I picked up her toys. I got out her pajamas. I got out her towel. Then I came into the office to tell JB that everything was ready.
However, JB wasn't ready. So he did not take up watching duties right away. And I had mentally checked out, so I assumed that JB would watch her and I forgot all about her.
Everything was quiet until we heard wimpering in the bathroom. Olivia does not cry. Even when she fell down the side entry stairs last week, she barely cried. Instead, she wimpers. I can't exactly spell out the sound, but it was "Uhh...help, please...uhhh...I'm stuck and I don't know what to do...uhhhh..."
JB sprung up from his chair and raced to the bathroom, and upon arrival, hollered for me to make haste. I was quick on my feet, with my camera in tow.
This is what we saw:
Yes, Olivia had gotten stuck half-in, half-out of the bathtub.
Yes, that is the toilet brush next to her foot, and the brush's holder in the tub.
Yes, those were her toys until she half-fell into the tub.
Yes, JB and I are the best parents ever.
I can't stop laughing...
One of Olivia’s new pastimes is to put things into something else. Placing her graduated plastic cups into one another, collecting her alphabet magnets into a pot to make alphabet soup, putting shapes into the Tupperware Shape-O Toy at Mark and Marian’s house, etc. Until I realized how much she did this, I had some trouble locating some of her toys. I had begun to think I was losing my mind one night, as I was certain that I brought her Weebles into the kitchen for her to play with. But they were nowhere. I eventually found them in my large dutch oven pot. In the lazy susan.
This afternoon I was trying to get some craft time in. I usually do it in the morning during O’s 40 minutes of
My goal was to cut one rectangle out of a piece of material. ONE RECTANGLE, people.
In that very short period of time, Olivia covered a lot of ground. She read a few books aloud in the living room. Then she crawled over to the large crock that sits by the fireplace. It looked like just the kind of thing to put things in to. So she crawled back to her pile of toys, and brought over a few things that went into the crock. (Note to self: when I can’t find a certain toy of Olivia’s, look in crock.)
Then she came into the dining room where I was working. She tried reaching a ceramic chicken on a shelf (she's pulling herself up now). Realizing that it was too high, she set her sights on the red ceramic pot of mums. Too high again. Take THAT, curious baby! Then she crawled under the dining room table to do her daily grunting alone, where I couldn't see her. (Do anyone else’s kids do that? Go to a quiet place to take a crap?)
Once that was done, she was off again. I had finished cutting the third side of the rectangle when I caught sight of her out of the corner of my eye. She was sitting in the kitchen, next to the dog bowl. She was waving her hand at me. Her shiny wet hand.
I have been teaching her NOT to splash the dog’s water or eat the dog’s food. So she knows better, and that was why she was looking at me with her hand in the air like that. As if to say, “yes, I put my hands in the water, but you didn’t SEE me doing it, so I’m not in trouble.” I came over and told her no, and that was when I noticed it. The two pink baby socks chilling in Lucy’s water bowl. Olivia had deemed the water bowl worthy of “putting something in” and pulled off her socks, since she didn’t have any toys at hand.
I admire her intelligence, for realizing that you can put something into something, even if something (like water) is already in it.
But I’d really appreciate it if she could wait until craft time is over. My gimpy rectangle is still laying on the table, waiting…
Before I post pics from Olivia's birthday (you'll just have to wait, heh heh heh!), I wanted to share the "Birthday Surprise" that JB and I worked on in preparation for Olivia's and Dad's birthday party. I was motivated to do this after seeing photos of other parties in our dining room, and realizing the sheer ugliness of that room. A dining room should be a focal point, but ours was more of a "try to ignore it" point.
Evidence:
Now, before you start judging me or the previous owners for the stellar color choice, please note that it was a group effort. The purply-mauve trim was from the previous owners, but I picked the blue. Called "animation blue" and it makes me think of Disney. The intent was to strip the oak woodwork at some point. But we never got around to that, and just let the blue walls clash with the purply trim. And neither of those paint jobs were done very nicely to begin with. It was just one big garish blob.
Here it is before I got a hold of Animation Blue. Don't you love the plastic chandelier?:
This was the heat vent. For one thing, 2 wrong vents do not make a right! Secondly, if you're going to have a hole for a heat duct, you might as well have an actual heat duct hooked up to it, and not have a hole that drops straight to the basement. I believe that it was these owners (and not someone before them) who redirected this duct to go somewhere else. WHY????
So, firstly, Mark and Marian got us a lovely register cover for Christmas one year, after we had the heat duct restored: 
And THEN, here is the room that Olivia and my Dad got to party in on Saturday! We think it's much better. We painted that lovely green as we listened to MSU school Michigan in our annual football showdown. It felt good to be a Spartan that day. Go Green!
I consider our work to be a small feat, as we did this while dog/house sitting for the in-laws for 2 weeks. So we balanced living at their place and living/painting at ours. Lots of long days, but it's worth it!
We spent Labor Day weekend up at the cabin. We had vacationed there in July, when it was cold and rainy. When we returned in September, it was bright and sunny and the water was 70 degrees! Weird!
Day 1:
Mark kept throwing a ball far into the bay for Lexi to chase, and then another ball near to the shore for Lucy, who doesn't like going into the water if she can't touch the bottom (she usually just jumps from rock to rock). Most of the time she did not feel that the ball was well-placed enough for her preferences, and would just stand on a rock, staring alternately between the ball and us, as if to say, "You'll have to do better than that."
...and she would do that until Lexi, having fetched her own ball out in the bay, swam back to snatch Lucy's ball, too. Of course, no water is deep enough to keep Lucy from besting Lexi.
O played with Grandma:
and read with Nana:
I took photos of pretty things. Surprised?
That night JB, Grandpa, Mark, Marty Feldhake and I went salmon fishing. Well, I did not fish; I was the staff photographer. No fish were injured in the making of this trip, much probably to PETA's pleasure, but our dismay.
Grandpa and Mark fished from Pooh Bear. The lake was smooth as glass!
JB and I took to the waters in Marty's boat.
Us girls also went shopping in Detour, where Olivia wowed the shoppers and shopkeeper with her love of jewelry. Marian would put a bracelet on Olivia's wrist and Olivia would hold out her arm to admire it. She's a girl through and through!
We also stopped at my favorite jeweler's: Dave's Up North. He seems to have erratic hours, so it was a treat to see him open. Oh, the treasures! There were 3 pendants that I loved, totaling $375. That's affordable, right? :)
All in all, it was a fun first day!
