Friday, August 29, 2008

More evidence that George Clooney should call me...


“I couldn’t do what Brad and Angie are doing. I wouldn’t have the patience or dedication you need to take care of a family. I admire those qualities in other people but it’s not for me. I’m doing exactly what I want to.” George Clooney admits he’s unlikely to ever become a father, while promoting his new film at the Venice Film Festival with good friend Brad Pitt, father of six children with Angelina Jolie.

Gorgeous gorgeous George, I don't like the little rug rats either. Let's talk. In fact, let's not talk. Talking is the last thing we should be doing. Well, maybe a little talking after all the other stuff...

George's reaction?



Dammit!

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

It Works On So Many Levels



More bad tattoos here

http://cityrag.blogs.com/main/2008/08/bad-tattoos-in.html

I'm... what's the word? Impressed by the under boob one as well.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Horses for Courses?


Well, after all that heady literary talk and stretching of my intellectual muscles I've discovered the deep joy of Jilly Cooper novels this week. Man, you get your money's worth with one of her books. I spent every spare waking moment for about five days reading Riders and thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. What a book! "A great rollercoaster of a novel with a couple of hot gypsies thrown in?" Well it's non-stop action all the way through but there's only one gypsy.

The only trouble with reading Riders is that you get the feeling that instead of slogging away in nine to five dreariness you should be guzzling champagne and enjoying the heady and hectic lifestyle of those on the international show jumping circuit. It reinforced my opinion that I should be rich and idle, instead of just poor and idle. Sigh.

I found these smashing Prada boots when browsing all the shoes I can't afford on the Saks Fifth Avenue web site. They would be just the thing for rolling about in the hay with Rupert Campbell Black don'tcherthink?

And check out the back view. How ridiculously sexy does that look? Imagine standing there, purposefully whacking the riding crop against the leather of those boots and telling Rupert he performed abysmally in that last round and will have to be punished....

Gosh. I think I might have to go for a little lie down now.

Friday, August 08, 2008

Y' What?



I thought of several things I wanted to blog about this week (nutrition, war, language, etc.) but somehow never got around to any of it. Dang! Maybe I'll get around to my waffle next week. Hey ho.

So I thought while we were on the subject of good books I'd just share the book that I'm currently reading. I started it two days ago and it's one of those books you can't wait to get home and start reading. Oooh, I love those kinds of books!

The other night I was looking for something a bit more intellectually challenging than the excellently entertaining chick lit I've been gorging on recently. I had just finished re-reading Me and Mr Darcy by Alexandra Potter (Don't judge me! I'm a sucker for trashy chick lit and I love Jane Austen, the mother of all chick lit.) and wasn't in the mood for more happy ever after just at that point. A friend gave me this book for my birthday and I was immediately intrigued by the cover and the fact that the pages are all black around the edges. As soon as you look at it this is an interesting book.

It just gets better from there. In a nutshell it's about Ariel, an unconventional and very interesting woman, who happens across a cursed book in the course of her PhD research. Then it all gets weird and complicated. To quote a user on Amazon: "The central themes of this book are deep and metaphysical; it deals with language, thought and existence, borrowing from Derrida, Heidegger and Samuel Butler. There is also a fair dollop of quantum theory thrown in... That Thomas has even managed to produce anything remotely readable from her heavy subject matter is testament to what a talented novelist she is."

Oh, my poor deprived and starved brain is loving it!

Now if you'll excuse me there's a couch with my name on it waiting at home. I wonder if she dies at the end? 'Tis possible at this point...

Friday, August 01, 2008

Classic Books and Reading and Stuff


One of my friends sent me this list of classic books. You're supposed to follow the instructions below and show the online blogging community what a little bookworm you are.

Well, why the heck not?











Below is a list of classic books and you are supposed to look at the list and:


1. Bold those you have read.
2. Italicise those you intend to read.
3. [Bracket] the books you LOVE.
4. Underline those you HATE.
Or surround with asterisks if blogger won't underline stuff.
5. Reprint this list on your own blog.

[Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen]

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Bible
(Bits of it. That counts right?)
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
[Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell]
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare (Again, most of it!)
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (I read the sequel. Does that count?)
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
[The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams]
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
[Emma - Jane Austen] [Persuasion - Jane Austen]
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden]
[Winnie-the-Pooh - AA Milne]
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood]
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Fire and Hemlock - Dianna Wynne-Jones
Dune - Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen]
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
[Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez]
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding]
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
*Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens* (Had to do it in school. Bah!)
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Germinal - Emile Zola
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession - A. S. Byatt
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web - EB White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
*The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks* (I got SO bored)
Watership Down - Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo