Katie and her mental meanderings

I never “do” memes, but this one is on books. And I’m really tired and don’t want to work. And I feel nauseous.
I nicked it off Smudgie – no-one ever tags me. But I’m tagging Rosamundi and cal. And I’m very sorry I couldn’t help them find the pub.

Books in bold are ones I’ve read.
Any in bold with an asterisk (*) after them are ones I’ve tried to read but failed.
Any in bold with a caret (^) after them are ones I’ve read and probably never will again — because once is enough [either due to length or my dislike of it]
Books in italics are ones I want to read.
Books in normal print are ones I’m not interested in, or haven’t heard of.
Underlined books are ones I’m really not interested in (thanks, nessa)

1. The DaVinci 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) (I think my dad read it to us, and I then tried to read it again).
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) (either that or I’ve read it – can’t remember!)
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)^ (slight cheat – I borrowed the audio book from a friend and listened to it in the car over a few months, once)
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. The Bible* (I have to confess I have not read every single word)
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) (just finished last week for book group)
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) (Realistically, I know I won’t read this. I don’t get on with Dickens)
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens) (Ditto. But if they had a BBC series á la Bleak House…)
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) (also audio)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy) (but in fact given how long Anna Karenina was…)
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 Traveling 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 (Timoth 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) (can’t remember if I’ve read it! I know I’ve seen the film because it’s in my 11-year-old diary)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer) (I may have read this when very bored once. I know it was one of his books. I was a long way from a bookshop.)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)^ (will never, ever read this again. O level set text)
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) (although it’s possible I read this as a teenager)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) (don’t think I could ever get through it)

Two very sweet little teams are playing on Sunday – the Shrimps versus the Grecians. One is just down the road from where I live now, the other is the city I was born in. What to do???!

“Visual neglect is an attentional disorder what causes patients to neglect one half of space. This usually results from right hemisphere damage but can also occur after damage to the left hemisphere, e.g. for left sided people.”

D, who first marked it, wrote on his notes “Morecambe & Wise”.

I want to know what left-sided people are!

(And Pants – we don’t give feedback on the exams – we just make our own notes, and destroy them after the examiners have decided)

Can I just say:

AAAAAARGGGGHHHHHHH!

And I’ve only just started – and the first set I did weren’t half bad. Probably because I tend to set questions that only a few students understand (because they get very very confused by linguistics) so only the ones who know what they are talking about bother answering them.

We’ve just been for a (portion of) a church weekend away with The Spouse™’s former church. They are all extremely lovely people and do nice things like pray for us. This makes me feel rather guilty when I think nasty thoughts about them e.g.

Why does a church think it’s OK to use disposable plates and bowls? Especially polystyrene bowls and plastic cups – but the paper plates aren’t being recycled, either.

Why do they only ever have male speakers for their weekends away? I know it’s not a rule or anything so it must be a cultural thing (women within that particular Christian subculture don’t put themselves forward as public/paying speakers) but shouldn’t someone be questioning it?

Why do some Christians still think it’s OK to suggest that having a gay couple in the church might be a “problem”, or, worse, feel it’s appropriate to talk about this in the same sentence as what one might do if a convicted paedophile joined one’s church. More to the point, why didn’t I pull people up on this??

I’m not normally given to being too polite!