So, Himself and the Little 'Un have gone mackerel fishing. Kitty has been dispatched to the mall to buy some clothes for the autumn. Low is blaring out of the speakers. Hurricane Hanna has announced her imminent arrival with some rain.
Queenie made everyone go out for the day in the rain, goddammit, because she needed to do some housework in peace.
That's what she said anyway.
PUNY MORTALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They fell for it.
Well, there's the fear factor too. Queenie's in that kind of mood lately that when she says I need you all to leave the house so I can do some housework in peace, they do.
It takes forever but.
"I'll clean the bathroom later. You don't gotta do it, Queenie."
"I'll sit here and keep you company for the afternoon."
"Don't you want to come fishin', sweetheart?"
No.
No.
No.
Eventually I convinced them all that housework was what I wanted to do. And by myself. So they all headed off to do their own thing.
Housework, schmousework.
Queenie just wanted them all out of the apartment so she could spend a few hours faffing around pretending like she's the old Queenie still.
The old Queenie.
She disappeared this summer. Caught up in a hurricane and deposited in the Land of Oz, she was.
This is the new Queenie.
All growed up.
About time, I hear some people say.
Probably.
Where are my goddamned ruby slippers, that's what I want to know!
One minute you're cruising along, doing just as you please, and the next you're starring in your very own movie with the Wicked Witch of the West (and East) and the Lion and the Tin Man and Scarecrow and some poxy wizard somewhere in the corner pulling levers and making everything go to hell in a handbasket.
So, Queenie, whatcha do all summer?
Damned if I can remember, the whole thing is a blur.
Let me see.
Well, Colombo opened the summer with a two week visit. We drove to the top of New Brunswick and looked at the mountains of Quebec and slept in a tent.
Then we drove back.
We did other stuff as well, of course, but that's the bit I remember most vividly. We had our first Melwood bonfire of the season too.
------------------------------------
Then Nancy left cos her work was done and Kitty had been hauled into Grade 12, so we took the girls camping to Hubbards.
That was fun.
Not.
Imagine a long narrow field with 147 campsites on it and RVs, camper vans, tents and trucks parked everywhere. Everyone playing their music at top volume. All day.
I thought I was going to lose my mind.
I nearly did.
I yelled at Himself and packed my rucksack and threw it in the car and went to drive home.
Only the battery was dead because the girls had been playing hip hop on the stereo all day.
So I had to stay.
Until Sunday.
Thankfully, when I yell at Himself he pays no heed to me until I calm down.
-----------------------------------
I spent most of June and July going to the dentist.
My teeth are a mess after three years of no medical insurance.
But they're all fixed now.
It took four and a half hours to clean thirty eight years of tartar off my teeth, including up inside my gums.
And none of the four anaesthetic injections they gave me for that part worked.
I tried to meditate and I got through most of it okay.
But eventually, I had to ask them to stop because I couldn't take the pain anymore.
And the hygienist started to cry.
Because her wrist was so sore from digging the tartar off my teeth.
She tells me I'll never have to go through that again.
Good.
--------------------------------------
Himself got divorced in the middle of July.
And we booked our wedding venue for 8th August 2009.
And I woke up one morning shortly after that and thought, I am getting married.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!
Almost everyone I know started telling me how to organize my wedding.
As you can imagine, that went down well with the Queenie.
So I responded by refusing to think/ talk about/ organize my wedding.
So the aaagggghhh factor has subsided slightly.
But we are getting ready together, in our heads and hearts, to be married.
Which feels very grown up and makes me want to run like the wind down the yellow brick road some days.
But we are getting there, piece by piece.
Himself is better at this stuff than me.
Of course, he's had more practice.
Haha.
Both families seem to be genuinely happy about it, though, so that's a big help.
And the kids too.
-------------------------------
Speaking of.
Rearing kids is like having to watch someone play a never-ending game of hockey, using your sanity for a puck and your heart for a net.
At least it's not football. If it were football, there'd be no sin bin, and no sponsor break every 11 minutes.
---------------------------------
We went camping to Bear Cove.
We had a most excellent weekend. All of Himself's brothers and sister, and his sister-in-law turned up, as well as Ms Maggie Beach and some other friends from Halifax. And all our island friends. So we had a massive lobster and crab boil, and a roaring fire and the whales came in and blew at us and the seals.
And Himself went winkle-picking, and boiled a whole pot full, which nobody ate of course. Because nobody had a pin.
Himself and Little 'Un and Robbie have just arrived home, wet, with NO FISH.
Ah well, I got half an hour to myself.
-----------------------------------
We got new neighbours upstairs. Our nutty neighbour and Peter the Lover left at the end of July, and now we have Danny and Venus, who are nice and quiet and friendly and don't have any rows or tantrums or loud showers at three am.
Venus has a Harley and a pink helmet, as well as a cream VW Jetta with pink accessories.
They work on a building crew together.
Which is good because I noticed this morning that their shower is leaking into our hallway.
----------------------------------------
I drove all over Nova Scotia this summer for work.
I went to Queens, Shelburne, Yarmouth (twice), Digby, Cape Breton (twice), Amherst, Kentville, Windsor, Lunenburg and some other places I can't remember.
That's about 5,000 kilometres.
Man, that tired me out.
---------------------------------------
Then Ammonite arrived for a week.
Shopping ensued.
And Ammonite got all the killer killer heels.
She was showing them to Himself one night and he asked whether she wore them when lecturing.
"Yes", said Ammonite, "and a bullet bra."
I thought Himself was going to implode, so completely dumbstruck was he by her response.
Funny.
Not often he's dumbstruck.
We went whale-watching which was probably the one of the high points of the summer for me.
A whole pod of humpbacks hung out with our zodiac for an hour or more, including a frisky calf who kept nudging up to us.
There's something really awe-inspiring, yet peaceful about watching a whale roll to surface one dark eye and take a long, slow look at you.
----------------------------------------
My big mouth got me in trouble at work.
No change there.
Someday, I'll be growed up and that won't happen.
Really.
-------------------------------------------
We spent Labor Day weekend at Long Tusket Lake, deep in the woods.
That's when I found my centre again.
Just us and the loons.
And some nutty French camper van campers that insisted on starting a generator at 6am every morning.
What kind of nutter hauls a camper van deep into the woods and then uses electricity all weekend to shower and shit?
Anyways, it's all over for another year.
Time to tie the canoe down in case Hannah or Ike or Josephine blow it away.
As for Queenie, she almost untied herself in the eye of the storm, and let the hurricane blow her away again.
But she changed her mind.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Zogby's Walmart voters
Colombo tracked down this blog post about the US elections recently. Pretty good stuff.
http://sweatingthroughfog.blogspot.com/2008/09/some-on-left-understand-palin.html
Although, having burrowed further into his blog, he's a little Christian for me. However, Christians aren't all bad, now are they. There are worse people in the world.
Conservatives for one thing.
http://sweatingthroughfog.blogspot.com/2008/09/some-on-left-understand-palin.html
Although, having burrowed further into his blog, he's a little Christian for me. However, Christians aren't all bad, now are they. There are worse people in the world.
Conservatives for one thing.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Listen, everybody!
Nobody has to move out, you know!
We could all just live here together, you know!
Perhaps you are not able to compromise enough.
Well, you know, if neither of you feel you can move out on your own.
That's fine.
I would hate to think that either of you were dependent on me for money.
I am dependent on you for family.
Because you're my family I share my money with you.
There's a give and take to sharing.
We all give.
And we all take.
But we all have to do both.
It's in the bible.
At least I've been told it is.
I never actually saw it there.
But I digress.
Sharing is good.
I remember telling Gypsy that once or a hundred times.
We could all just live here together, you know!
Perhaps you are not able to compromise enough.
Well, you know, if neither of you feel you can move out on your own.
That's fine.
I would hate to think that either of you were dependent on me for money.
I am dependent on you for family.
Because you're my family I share my money with you.
There's a give and take to sharing.
We all give.
And we all take.
But we all have to do both.
It's in the bible.
At least I've been told it is.
I never actually saw it there.
But I digress.
Sharing is good.
I remember telling Gypsy that once or a hundred times.
Electric City Picnic
While everyone in Ireland was busying recycling 30 per cent of the waste they had brought to Electric Picnic, we were all busy recycling our waste (by putting it in the car to bring home) down at our favourite secret camping spot near New France, Electric City.
Not so other people.
Other people arrived in trucks with camper units attached, set up camp, started generators at 6 am in THE FRIGGIN' MORNING and then left all their rubbish piled in their fire pit.
Other people burned pressure treated wood doused in two stroke oil (IN THE FRIGGIN' WOODS).
People who are from the same place as other people left a campsite on the far side of the lake full of rubbish - including ripped tarpaulins, Mr Noodle packets, and other plastic deitrus scattered around an area that is home to some of the most beautiful and rare toadstools in Nova Scotia.
Some people drove around with no helmets and no respect on 4 wheelers all weekend, frightening the children and ripping up fragile bog roads.
Some people should be taken out and shot.
And if that doesn't work, they should be forced to camp at the Shore Club in Hubbards for the rest of their lives.
Queenie hates it when she travels deep into the woods to camp au natural, to live off grid, to wash in the lake, to chill out and mostly to get away from other people and their noise and mess, and due to the inconsiderate bastard nature of most other people, ends up cleaning up after them.
Having said that, once all that was done, and the weird people in the campers had gone home, and the loons had come back to the lake to hang out near the kids, we had a wonderful weekend.
Not so other people.
Other people arrived in trucks with camper units attached, set up camp, started generators at 6 am in THE FRIGGIN' MORNING and then left all their rubbish piled in their fire pit.
Other people burned pressure treated wood doused in two stroke oil (IN THE FRIGGIN' WOODS).
People who are from the same place as other people left a campsite on the far side of the lake full of rubbish - including ripped tarpaulins, Mr Noodle packets, and other plastic deitrus scattered around an area that is home to some of the most beautiful and rare toadstools in Nova Scotia.
Some people drove around with no helmets and no respect on 4 wheelers all weekend, frightening the children and ripping up fragile bog roads.
Some people should be taken out and shot.
And if that doesn't work, they should be forced to camp at the Shore Club in Hubbards for the rest of their lives.
Queenie hates it when she travels deep into the woods to camp au natural, to live off grid, to wash in the lake, to chill out and mostly to get away from other people and their noise and mess, and due to the inconsiderate bastard nature of most other people, ends up cleaning up after them.
Having said that, once all that was done, and the weird people in the campers had gone home, and the loons had come back to the lake to hang out near the kids, we had a wonderful weekend.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Yes, I know I'm a bad Queenie
I do have all kinds of excuses though.
I am kinda busy.
First of all I have the incredibly morphing into a behemoth job that involves lots of travel.
Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly asleep at their desk.
Secondly, I have a busy domestic situation right now, that involves lots of hands on action.
Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly on vacation and relaxing.
And thirdly, I have company.
Well I do this week.
So that's my excuse for this week.
Right now, I have to get dressed so I can do some work, then drive to Yarmouth, go to a meeting, then drive to Digby to get lobster, then drive back to Halifax, then cook the lobster, then do evening stuff, then collapse.
In a good way of course.
Also, it rained for two weeks in August, so there was a lot of 'damn it's too damp to do anything' action going on.
But I'll try to haul my sorry ass into the blogging saddle again soon.
Ammonite is here for a week. Maybe I can get her to guest blog?!
I am kinda busy.
First of all I have the incredibly morphing into a behemoth job that involves lots of travel.
Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly asleep at their desk.
Secondly, I have a busy domestic situation right now, that involves lots of hands on action.
Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly on vacation and relaxing.
And thirdly, I have company.
Well I do this week.
So that's my excuse for this week.
Right now, I have to get dressed so I can do some work, then drive to Yarmouth, go to a meeting, then drive to Digby to get lobster, then drive back to Halifax, then cook the lobster, then do evening stuff, then collapse.
In a good way of course.
Also, it rained for two weeks in August, so there was a lot of 'damn it's too damp to do anything' action going on.
But I'll try to haul my sorry ass into the blogging saddle again soon.
Ammonite is here for a week. Maybe I can get her to guest blog?!
Sunday, July 27, 2008
'Tis almost August
I have gone through a period of intense learning.
And now I have woken up and it is almost August.
That invokes a learning from a previous year.
When it is almost August, it is time to prioritise.
The first summer I was here, nobody called.
The second summer I was here, I called everybody.
And it worked.
This summer, they call me.
But it is only for a specific item.
That's this year's learning.
This year's learning for them is....
... the only package is the whole package.
Thanks to my soul mate for the day off.
Thanks babe.
And now I have woken up and it is almost August.
That invokes a learning from a previous year.
When it is almost August, it is time to prioritise.
The first summer I was here, nobody called.
The second summer I was here, I called everybody.
And it worked.
This summer, they call me.
But it is only for a specific item.
That's this year's learning.
This year's learning for them is....
... the only package is the whole package.
Thanks to my soul mate for the day off.
Thanks babe.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Humae Vitae - differing perspectives
From today's Irish Times:
FORTY YEARS ago today, Pope Paul VI issued probably the most controversial encyclical letter in the history of the Catholic Church. In Humanae Vitae, he reaffirmed the Church's official ban on artificial contraception, stunning the Catholic world at a time when there were strong expectations of some easing in the traditional teaching.
I was talking about this subject with some friends last night. Telling them about the Contraceptive Train events that took place in Ireland in the late sixties/ seventies (can't remember the exact date), and one of them told me a story about a couple getting married in Nova Scotia in the sixties.
The woman was Catholic, so they had to go to the priest for the talk.
Same deal in Ireland.
The priest explained the rhythm method to them.
Same deal in Ireland.
The priest then told them that the rhythm method was pretty unreliable, so what they needed to do was go to the doctor and get a pill (which you could get back then) that 'regulated' the rhythm.
NOT the same deal in Ireland.
In Ireland, the priest was too busy telling you that the rhythm method was to be used only for the mystery of procreation.
In other words, you could only use the rhythm method to conceive.
Not to not conceive.
There was no talk of the miracle pill that you could get to regulate your rhythm.
No sirreebob.
If you wanted talk of that, you had to go see that communist-anarchist-sinner, Dr. Paddy Leahy.
Canada... deep in its soul there is an innate decency and respect for the intelligence of its citizens that we didn't have for a long long time in Ireland ...
A country that gives Dr. Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada for his contribution to society, knowing that a large chunk of citizens will be annoyed about it is a good country.
No wonder half the Irish medical graduates from the sixties moved here to practice.
Medicine that is.
Not the rhythm method.
FORTY YEARS ago today, Pope Paul VI issued probably the most controversial encyclical letter in the history of the Catholic Church. In Humanae Vitae, he reaffirmed the Church's official ban on artificial contraception, stunning the Catholic world at a time when there were strong expectations of some easing in the traditional teaching.
I was talking about this subject with some friends last night. Telling them about the Contraceptive Train events that took place in Ireland in the late sixties/ seventies (can't remember the exact date), and one of them told me a story about a couple getting married in Nova Scotia in the sixties.
The woman was Catholic, so they had to go to the priest for the talk.
Same deal in Ireland.
The priest explained the rhythm method to them.
Same deal in Ireland.
The priest then told them that the rhythm method was pretty unreliable, so what they needed to do was go to the doctor and get a pill (which you could get back then) that 'regulated' the rhythm.
NOT the same deal in Ireland.
In Ireland, the priest was too busy telling you that the rhythm method was to be used only for the mystery of procreation.
In other words, you could only use the rhythm method to conceive.
Not to not conceive.
There was no talk of the miracle pill that you could get to regulate your rhythm.
No sirreebob.
If you wanted talk of that, you had to go see that communist-anarchist-sinner, Dr. Paddy Leahy.
Canada... deep in its soul there is an innate decency and respect for the intelligence of its citizens that we didn't have for a long long time in Ireland ...
A country that gives Dr. Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada for his contribution to society, knowing that a large chunk of citizens will be annoyed about it is a good country.
No wonder half the Irish medical graduates from the sixties moved here to practice.
Medicine that is.
Not the rhythm method.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
The first day of the rest of our lives
So Himself got divorced yesterday.
For those of you who don't know, or who can't keep track (easy enough), Himself got separated in 2004 and met Queenie in mid-2005. Which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, despite what certain shes-who-would-be-married-forever say, that Queenie did not wreck anyone's marriage.
No need to get into all that anymore. IT IS OVER.
OVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVER.
Well, not quite.
The judge granted a divorce and an interim custody order for Little 'Un, and the ridiculous squabbling over the matrimonial assets and liabilities has been delayed for another few months.
Himself got what he wanted.
Queenie is very happy for him.
Queenie is very happy for the other people involved too, because they too get to wake up this morning and enjoy the first day of the rest of their lives.
Everyone deserves to be happy.
Everyone deserves to be left in peace to get on with life.
Maybe that will happen now.
Queenie is happy for the kids, because maybe now the ridiculous chess game in which they have been unhappy pawns for four years is coming to an end.
But mostly, Queenie is happy for herself.
Happy that she stuck it out.
Happy that she didn't give in to the occasional urge to run away from the madness.
Happy that those decisions resulted in a long drive home with her soulmate yesterday watching the load being lifted off his (not inconsiderable) shoulders, and the colour come back into his face, and the lines around his eyes reshape themselves into crinkles as he smiled for the first time in a long time.
Tired today. Soooo tired.
But happy.
For those of you who don't know, or who can't keep track (easy enough), Himself got separated in 2004 and met Queenie in mid-2005. Which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, despite what certain shes-who-would-be-married-forever say, that Queenie did not wreck anyone's marriage.
No need to get into all that anymore. IT IS OVER.
OVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVER.
Well, not quite.
The judge granted a divorce and an interim custody order for Little 'Un, and the ridiculous squabbling over the matrimonial assets and liabilities has been delayed for another few months.
Himself got what he wanted.
Queenie is very happy for him.
Queenie is very happy for the other people involved too, because they too get to wake up this morning and enjoy the first day of the rest of their lives.
Everyone deserves to be happy.
Everyone deserves to be left in peace to get on with life.
Maybe that will happen now.
Queenie is happy for the kids, because maybe now the ridiculous chess game in which they have been unhappy pawns for four years is coming to an end.
But mostly, Queenie is happy for herself.
Happy that she stuck it out.
Happy that she didn't give in to the occasional urge to run away from the madness.
Happy that those decisions resulted in a long drive home with her soulmate yesterday watching the load being lifted off his (not inconsiderable) shoulders, and the colour come back into his face, and the lines around his eyes reshape themselves into crinkles as he smiled for the first time in a long time.
Tired today. Soooo tired.
But happy.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
You know it's your fourth birthday in a place
when you are listening to the morning radio news show and you know the presenter and then you check your birthday greetings online and you have a message from him saying happy birthday, you old boot.
I'm assuming you mistranslated that from the French for happy birthday you ever-young Queenie.
I am.
Bring it on, world!
I'm assuming you mistranslated that from the French for happy birthday you ever-young Queenie.
I am.
Bring it on, world!
Friday, July 04, 2008
Le Weekend est ici, aujourd'hui, etc.
OHMYGOD, I know there's a recession on in Ireland and all that...
...and I know the weather's crappy and we're having a glorious Canada Day/ Quebec 400 week here in Nova Scotia (but not in Quebec apparently) and all...
... but did you have to punish us by sending Minister Dick Roche over to be your representative at the Quebec celebrations????
Could you not have sent one of the Mary's????
Fragrant, sexy, smart, funny women the pair of them (Coughlan and McAleese I'm talking about).
No, no, no.... we got Dick the Roche.
I was standing in the kitchen last night stirring the lovely salmon in a mushroom, pesto and cream sauce that I was making for dinner, thinking about the lovely week I'd had and the nice long weekend to look forward to, with CBC on in the background blabbering on about how Quebec was the beginning of Canada (thinking there was me thinking it was Annapolis Royal, but how wrong am I, OF COURSE it was Quebec and not Nova Scotia), and how terrible that the $90 million celebrations were washed out (you could hear the rest of Canada sniggering in the blazing sunshine) when, suddenly, I hear THAT VOICE.
At least the Queen Dad got a break from him for a while, I suppose that's the silver lining.
And as Ammonite said on her blog, we don't speak Gaelic in Ireland, we speak English mostly, and a bit of IRISH, seeing as we're from IRELAND.
Anyways, enough of the bitching.
The sun came out on Canada Day and I sat in the yard with Ms Maggie Beach for a while, and then Orc, and then our visitors came round and we had a BBQ and salad made with greens FROM THE GARDEN ALREADY and watched the fireworks round the lake.
Mr. Sun has been blazing down ever since with a good forecast for the weekend and I have today off. Hooray. And so has Himself. More Hooray.
So the canoe will be finished for Queenie's birthday. So I shall get my paddle around the lake.
We painted the canoe white and when it is upside down on its stand it looks like a whale, so we are calling it Moby.
Well, I am calling it Moby and Himself is calling it Moby's Dick.
And everyone has to paint something on it before the end of the summer, so it will be a truly communal canoe.
This week I had to go to Baddeck for two days for work.
Boo hiss.
Imagine having to go to Baddeck for two days, two glorious, hot, still, steamy days in July.
Imagine having to spend a day in a workshop with a crowd of funny, smart Cape Breton women.
Imagine doing that and getting loads of development work done in four hours flat and still having a good time.
And then having to sit on a deck overlooking the Bras d'Or lake eating dinner with said women.
Discussing the nature of love and its little quirks.
One of those great female conversations.
Terrible.
Just terrible.
It was such a pain in the ass.
Really.
I hate my job.
Never mind, I have a three day weekend to recover.
Today is yard day, lots of whipper-snipping and weeding to be done. And then tomorrow is Craig's birthday barbeque, up the hill past Red Chair Man's yard, so that should be fun.
I love the weekends. I love the early morning of the first day of a three day weekend, when Himself and Kitty are still fast asleep and I can potter around on my blog and wait for the day to heat up and not have to worry about anything for a while.
Bliss.
...and I know the weather's crappy and we're having a glorious Canada Day/ Quebec 400 week here in Nova Scotia (but not in Quebec apparently) and all...
... but did you have to punish us by sending Minister Dick Roche over to be your representative at the Quebec celebrations????
Could you not have sent one of the Mary's????
Fragrant, sexy, smart, funny women the pair of them (Coughlan and McAleese I'm talking about).
No, no, no.... we got Dick the Roche.
I was standing in the kitchen last night stirring the lovely salmon in a mushroom, pesto and cream sauce that I was making for dinner, thinking about the lovely week I'd had and the nice long weekend to look forward to, with CBC on in the background blabbering on about how Quebec was the beginning of Canada (thinking there was me thinking it was Annapolis Royal, but how wrong am I, OF COURSE it was Quebec and not Nova Scotia), and how terrible that the $90 million celebrations were washed out (you could hear the rest of Canada sniggering in the blazing sunshine) when, suddenly, I hear THAT VOICE.
At least the Queen Dad got a break from him for a while, I suppose that's the silver lining.
And as Ammonite said on her blog, we don't speak Gaelic in Ireland, we speak English mostly, and a bit of IRISH, seeing as we're from IRELAND.
Anyways, enough of the bitching.
The sun came out on Canada Day and I sat in the yard with Ms Maggie Beach for a while, and then Orc, and then our visitors came round and we had a BBQ and salad made with greens FROM THE GARDEN ALREADY and watched the fireworks round the lake.
Mr. Sun has been blazing down ever since with a good forecast for the weekend and I have today off. Hooray. And so has Himself. More Hooray.
So the canoe will be finished for Queenie's birthday. So I shall get my paddle around the lake.
We painted the canoe white and when it is upside down on its stand it looks like a whale, so we are calling it Moby.
Well, I am calling it Moby and Himself is calling it Moby's Dick.
And everyone has to paint something on it before the end of the summer, so it will be a truly communal canoe.
This week I had to go to Baddeck for two days for work.
Boo hiss.
Imagine having to go to Baddeck for two days, two glorious, hot, still, steamy days in July.
Imagine having to spend a day in a workshop with a crowd of funny, smart Cape Breton women.
Imagine doing that and getting loads of development work done in four hours flat and still having a good time.
And then having to sit on a deck overlooking the Bras d'Or lake eating dinner with said women.
Discussing the nature of love and its little quirks.
One of those great female conversations.
Terrible.
Just terrible.
It was such a pain in the ass.
Really.
I hate my job.
Never mind, I have a three day weekend to recover.
Today is yard day, lots of whipper-snipping and weeding to be done. And then tomorrow is Craig's birthday barbeque, up the hill past Red Chair Man's yard, so that should be fun.
I love the weekends. I love the early morning of the first day of a three day weekend, when Himself and Kitty are still fast asleep and I can potter around on my blog and wait for the day to heat up and not have to worry about anything for a while.
Bliss.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
The Frequent and Vigorous Quarterly, Issue 2
I picked up a copy of this in a coffee shop in Antigonish months ago, stuck it in the front pocket of my laptop bag, and forgot about it until I was rummaging for something to read on the bus the other day.
It's Issue 2 of a creative writing collective endeavour, which is always a good thing to pick up and read.
Inside the front cover, it states 'our title is derived from The Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace. Please don't tell and get us into trouble. Instead, read it.'
DFW is all about the importance of ignoring the telly and its malign influence on literature and focusing on earnest self-expression, if I remember The Infinite Jest correctly. I haven't read The Broom of the System, maybe I'll try to find it.
Right so.... earnest self-expression. No telly. Just philosophical thought and literature.
From a group of English students in SFX, by the way.
Switch off your irony button, Queenie, and read on.
I thought some of the stuff was pretty good, actually.
There was a pretty good short story by someone called M Johnston, about a kid in a supermarket who gets one over on the nasty manager. It was funny and well written, which is something Queenie has never managed to pull off.
And there was a poem called The Tibetan Monk which I really liked - interesting theme, really interesting structure, great rhythm. It reminded me of the early poetry of one Gavin Kostick, a heady mix of classical themes and political thought.
Then there was another short story that had its roots in the old Oisin and the land of Tir na nOg myth that I didn't really get, and a transcript of MSN sex talk that we'll just skip over and some very nice photos, particularly one by Philippe Mineau that I really liked, and then I got to Pride of an iPod Generation.
Which I read.
Then I read again.
Then I read again.
And I'm thinking to myself.... if this is David Foster Wallace-inspired then this is not ironic.
And if that is the case, then some gentle teasing of the author is definitely in order.
I hope he doesn't mind.
Yes, of course he was a boy.
But I will start by saying I accept that we were all that young, arrogant in an 'ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek kind of way' soldier at one time.
I'm sure you'll all remember those days boys and girls, fellow passengers on the tail end of GenX....?
Circa 1988 - 94.
Round about the time we saw Public Enemy perform on Trinity College cricket pitch.
Anyways, I thought I'd share iPod man's wisdom with you.
"I come from the generation that, like every other generation, has a vivid history full of grand achievements and terrible horrors. I saw the rise of reality tv. I watched slow but sure acceptance of rap music. I was taken aback by horrid terrorist acts. I was even lucky enough to watch the progression of razor blades from one to the oh-so-necessary six bladed razors that are available today."
Well, correct me if I'm wrong but I think Public Enemy playing on the cricket pitch of a four hundred year old university would be defined as 'acceptance'. And I think it happened the year you started Grade Primary, sweetie.
I'm assuming the author was born in or around 1988, if he's iPod Gen.
I think what you might have witnessed was the commercialisation of rap music, dear.
I will grant you reality tv. You are entitled to that terrible horror. I don't remember reality tv when I was growing up. They just had shows called drama, and documentaries, and current affairs programs, and movies, when I was growing up.
I do remember watching an angry mob of Republicans drag two British soldiers out of a car, beat them to a pulp and then shoot them in the head when they drove their car into a funeral procession live on the news one time. But that doesn't really count as reality tv, as nobody had to audition to be in the car.
Also, to be petty about it, I'm pretty sure that guy from Gillette had four blades in his razor when I was growing up.
But I can't be definite. I'd have to ask a guy. Anyways, I think you were probably being ironic.
I thought you weren't supposed to be ironic...
Am I being too mean? I'm not meaning to be. I'm just feeling old and grouchy these days, trapped as I am between baby boomers and GenY, stuck with a dirty planet, rising air travel costs and no friggin' pension to look forward to when the end times come.
Anyways, back to the text...
"Every generation has their moments, we have plenty of history books to remind us of that, but I feel that we, the media-dubbed iPod generation, have done more than what historians will write down. What do you notice when you compare the people your age to those say, ten years your senior? Twenty years? Thirty years?"
According to an article I found on The Times online, the iPod generation is comprised of people under 26 (today). iPod stands for 'insecure, pressured, overtaxed and debt-ridden'.
That's just about everyone I know, when you think about it.
Perhaps the iPods are the generation that are annoyed about it.
Or more accurately, the iPods are the generation that weren't expecting it to be so.
Bless'em.
Nothing like a decade of recession in your teens to give you that edge on expectations.
Thanks, Mr. Haughey*, you served me well in retrospect.
* Mr. Haughey was an Irish PM who lorded it over us all during a recession in the eighties. Subsequently, we found out that he was using other people's money to live like a king. Irish people got very mad when they found out, but then realised that that was the way to go, and so a good chunk of them got on that bandwagon. Consequently, Ireland is facing another recession right now, but it's okay, the economy is structurally sound, so it won't be like the eighties again.
Anyways, I'm sure you're dying to know what our young author sees when he compares himself to us thirty-somethings and forty-somethings...and fifty-somethings. (anyone older is not worth a comparison, I think, or maybe he was straitened by the word count).
"You may not agree with me, but what I see is nothing short of amazing. I see a generation who almost never looks first at race or gender, who (almost unbeknownst to them) have environmentally friendly routines in their everyday lives, and who are extremely accepting of gay and bisexual communities. There are exceptions and there always will be, but when I compare us to a decade prior (that would be me - Queenie), I feel that we are vastly superior in these areas. Now I cannot speak for our generation globally, this is merely a tiny spot on the planetary spectrum, but does that make it any less significant?
And there you were, wondering why Queenie was picking on some poor, inarticulate little X-er.
Queenie don't pick on no one unless they're askin' for it.
And this kid is ASKIN' FORIT!
Only the fact that I still remember once telling the Queen Dad that my generation was very unlucky because all we had was Thatcher and emigration and war, and his generation got to do the sixties, and him laughing his ass off and saying, I did the sixties in rural Ireland, Queenie, and before that I had to do the fifties there, and me then realising that all generations ARE THE SAME in many ways, is keeping the gloves on.
Soon to be global spokesman for the iPod generation-man should not have used the word superior.
What the word 'superior' says to me is that iPod man may not see colour or gender or sexual orientation when he looks at people, but that's because he's too busy counting the wrinkles on people's faces and judging them thus.
Mr. iPod forgets to mention the Queen Parents generation when he was comparing. I remember the Queen Mum making compost, recycling paper, separating waste, making her own bread, growing vegetables and doing all kinds of other 'green' things way back before there was any mention of green, because it saved money and reduced what went into the bin and was healthy and useful, etc.
How would the iPods compare to that, eh?
Take a pass on the gap year round the globe travel and maybe it'll be a 1-1 draw.
Anyways, back to the text...
"I am an optimist, and like Delta Goodrem* says 'I don't see the point in being anything else'. I firmly believe that we are the most accepting, equal and green generation that the world has ever seen. We have the previous generations (and fantastic programs like Degrassi and Captain Planet of course) to thank for that, but we also have ourselves. I hope that you agree with me and I pray that the next generation will be able to say the same."
*Star of Neighbours, for those of you that don't recognise the name, but today's Neighbours, not the Neighbours we watched in the eighties. A sort of modern-day Kylie if you like. Slight bending of the DFW no-telly rule, too, if you ask me.
Yes well, thanks for the nod to us oldarses for our minor role in the production of the superior generation of which you are a proud member, Mr. iPod. I'm not sure it bolsters your earlier points regarding our malign influence on the world, but that's okay. We take our manna where we can get it.
I truly hope you are the most accepting, equal and green generation that the world has ever seen, cos God knows, you're going to have to be...
I also truly hope that you are an inspired fifth columnist within the community of The Frequent and Vigorous Quarterly, and that the point of your piece is to undermine the David Foster Wallacian theory behind the publication.
Otherwise, I'm a heading 'er for the compound right now. Before you tackle me to the ground and put me on an icefloe with all the other old people.
It's Issue 2 of a creative writing collective endeavour, which is always a good thing to pick up and read.
Inside the front cover, it states 'our title is derived from The Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace. Please don't tell and get us into trouble. Instead, read it.'
DFW is all about the importance of ignoring the telly and its malign influence on literature and focusing on earnest self-expression, if I remember The Infinite Jest correctly. I haven't read The Broom of the System, maybe I'll try to find it.
Right so.... earnest self-expression. No telly. Just philosophical thought and literature.
From a group of English students in SFX, by the way.
Switch off your irony button, Queenie, and read on.
I thought some of the stuff was pretty good, actually.
There was a pretty good short story by someone called M Johnston, about a kid in a supermarket who gets one over on the nasty manager. It was funny and well written, which is something Queenie has never managed to pull off.
And there was a poem called The Tibetan Monk which I really liked - interesting theme, really interesting structure, great rhythm. It reminded me of the early poetry of one Gavin Kostick, a heady mix of classical themes and political thought.
Then there was another short story that had its roots in the old Oisin and the land of Tir na nOg myth that I didn't really get, and a transcript of MSN sex talk that we'll just skip over and some very nice photos, particularly one by Philippe Mineau that I really liked, and then I got to Pride of an iPod Generation.
Which I read.
Then I read again.
Then I read again.
And I'm thinking to myself.... if this is David Foster Wallace-inspired then this is not ironic.
And if that is the case, then some gentle teasing of the author is definitely in order.
I hope he doesn't mind.
Yes, of course he was a boy.
But I will start by saying I accept that we were all that young, arrogant in an 'ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek kind of way' soldier at one time.
I'm sure you'll all remember those days boys and girls, fellow passengers on the tail end of GenX....?
Circa 1988 - 94.
Round about the time we saw Public Enemy perform on Trinity College cricket pitch.
Anyways, I thought I'd share iPod man's wisdom with you.
"I come from the generation that, like every other generation, has a vivid history full of grand achievements and terrible horrors. I saw the rise of reality tv. I watched slow but sure acceptance of rap music. I was taken aback by horrid terrorist acts. I was even lucky enough to watch the progression of razor blades from one to the oh-so-necessary six bladed razors that are available today."
Well, correct me if I'm wrong but I think Public Enemy playing on the cricket pitch of a four hundred year old university would be defined as 'acceptance'. And I think it happened the year you started Grade Primary, sweetie.
I'm assuming the author was born in or around 1988, if he's iPod Gen.
I think what you might have witnessed was the commercialisation of rap music, dear.
I will grant you reality tv. You are entitled to that terrible horror. I don't remember reality tv when I was growing up. They just had shows called drama, and documentaries, and current affairs programs, and movies, when I was growing up.
I do remember watching an angry mob of Republicans drag two British soldiers out of a car, beat them to a pulp and then shoot them in the head when they drove their car into a funeral procession live on the news one time. But that doesn't really count as reality tv, as nobody had to audition to be in the car.
Also, to be petty about it, I'm pretty sure that guy from Gillette had four blades in his razor when I was growing up.
But I can't be definite. I'd have to ask a guy. Anyways, I think you were probably being ironic.
I thought you weren't supposed to be ironic...
Am I being too mean? I'm not meaning to be. I'm just feeling old and grouchy these days, trapped as I am between baby boomers and GenY, stuck with a dirty planet, rising air travel costs and no friggin' pension to look forward to when the end times come.
Anyways, back to the text...
"Every generation has their moments, we have plenty of history books to remind us of that, but I feel that we, the media-dubbed iPod generation, have done more than what historians will write down. What do you notice when you compare the people your age to those say, ten years your senior? Twenty years? Thirty years?"
According to an article I found on The Times online, the iPod generation is comprised of people under 26 (today). iPod stands for 'insecure, pressured, overtaxed and debt-ridden'.
That's just about everyone I know, when you think about it.
Perhaps the iPods are the generation that are annoyed about it.
Or more accurately, the iPods are the generation that weren't expecting it to be so.
Bless'em.
Nothing like a decade of recession in your teens to give you that edge on expectations.
Thanks, Mr. Haughey*, you served me well in retrospect.
* Mr. Haughey was an Irish PM who lorded it over us all during a recession in the eighties. Subsequently, we found out that he was using other people's money to live like a king. Irish people got very mad when they found out, but then realised that that was the way to go, and so a good chunk of them got on that bandwagon. Consequently, Ireland is facing another recession right now, but it's okay, the economy is structurally sound, so it won't be like the eighties again.
Anyways, I'm sure you're dying to know what our young author sees when he compares himself to us thirty-somethings and forty-somethings...and fifty-somethings. (anyone older is not worth a comparison, I think, or maybe he was straitened by the word count).
"You may not agree with me, but what I see is nothing short of amazing. I see a generation who almost never looks first at race or gender, who (almost unbeknownst to them) have environmentally friendly routines in their everyday lives, and who are extremely accepting of gay and bisexual communities. There are exceptions and there always will be, but when I compare us to a decade prior (that would be me - Queenie), I feel that we are vastly superior in these areas. Now I cannot speak for our generation globally, this is merely a tiny spot on the planetary spectrum, but does that make it any less significant?
And there you were, wondering why Queenie was picking on some poor, inarticulate little X-er.
Queenie don't pick on no one unless they're askin' for it.
And this kid is ASKIN' FORIT!
Only the fact that I still remember once telling the Queen Dad that my generation was very unlucky because all we had was Thatcher and emigration and war, and his generation got to do the sixties, and him laughing his ass off and saying, I did the sixties in rural Ireland, Queenie, and before that I had to do the fifties there, and me then realising that all generations ARE THE SAME in many ways, is keeping the gloves on.
Soon to be global spokesman for the iPod generation-man should not have used the word superior.
What the word 'superior' says to me is that iPod man may not see colour or gender or sexual orientation when he looks at people, but that's because he's too busy counting the wrinkles on people's faces and judging them thus.
Mr. iPod forgets to mention the Queen Parents generation when he was comparing. I remember the Queen Mum making compost, recycling paper, separating waste, making her own bread, growing vegetables and doing all kinds of other 'green' things way back before there was any mention of green, because it saved money and reduced what went into the bin and was healthy and useful, etc.
How would the iPods compare to that, eh?
Take a pass on the gap year round the globe travel and maybe it'll be a 1-1 draw.
Anyways, back to the text...
"I am an optimist, and like Delta Goodrem* says 'I don't see the point in being anything else'. I firmly believe that we are the most accepting, equal and green generation that the world has ever seen. We have the previous generations (and fantastic programs like Degrassi and Captain Planet of course) to thank for that, but we also have ourselves. I hope that you agree with me and I pray that the next generation will be able to say the same."
*Star of Neighbours, for those of you that don't recognise the name, but today's Neighbours, not the Neighbours we watched in the eighties. A sort of modern-day Kylie if you like. Slight bending of the DFW no-telly rule, too, if you ask me.
Yes well, thanks for the nod to us oldarses for our minor role in the production of the superior generation of which you are a proud member, Mr. iPod. I'm not sure it bolsters your earlier points regarding our malign influence on the world, but that's okay. We take our manna where we can get it.
I truly hope you are the most accepting, equal and green generation that the world has ever seen, cos God knows, you're going to have to be...
I also truly hope that you are an inspired fifth columnist within the community of The Frequent and Vigorous Quarterly, and that the point of your piece is to undermine the David Foster Wallacian theory behind the publication.
Otherwise, I'm a heading 'er for the compound right now. Before you tackle me to the ground and put me on an icefloe with all the other old people.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Edward's asking forgiveness again. Much better than permission.
Somebody called Edward, who has a private profile on Blogger.com (bad Edward) linked my blog to Infomonkey.net - Halifax. Then added a comment to my blog saying that he (is it even a he, we don't know, because his profile is private) had done so and if I minded that I should tell him so he can remove it.
I didn't minded, so I never said nothin'. See, I write a blog. Which is on the Internet. Which is like putting your diary in your front window with the page open to the previous day's entry.
Except the sun won't fade the writing on the blog, the way it would fade the writing in the diary.
So anyways, last night I wrote a (for me) totally boring piece on my camping trip to New Brunswick.
Lo and behold, up pops Edward in the comments box again.
Still private is Edward.
Reminding me that he linked me to infomonkey.net - Halifax and that some of what I write is personal, so if I mind to let him know straight away.
Well, yes, everything published here is personal to Queenie, but obviously none of it is private because it is on the Internet, so no I don't mind that you paid the blog the compliment of linking it to infomonkey.net - Halifax.
In fact, I found some other interesting blogs there.
If you write a blog and people link to it, that's good.
However, when I post, my traffic doesn't go up extra due to the link, that's not good.
I'm a great believer in asking forgiveness rather than permission. But, if you are concerned about people getting mad, asking permission in advance would reduce the number of times you have to mail people for forgiveness??!!
I didn't minded, so I never said nothin'. See, I write a blog. Which is on the Internet. Which is like putting your diary in your front window with the page open to the previous day's entry.
Except the sun won't fade the writing on the blog, the way it would fade the writing in the diary.
So anyways, last night I wrote a (for me) totally boring piece on my camping trip to New Brunswick.
Lo and behold, up pops Edward in the comments box again.
Still private is Edward.
Reminding me that he linked me to infomonkey.net - Halifax and that some of what I write is personal, so if I mind to let him know straight away.
Well, yes, everything published here is personal to Queenie, but obviously none of it is private because it is on the Internet, so no I don't mind that you paid the blog the compliment of linking it to infomonkey.net - Halifax.
In fact, I found some other interesting blogs there.
If you write a blog and people link to it, that's good.
However, when I post, my traffic doesn't go up extra due to the link, that's not good.
I'm a great believer in asking forgiveness rather than permission. But, if you are concerned about people getting mad, asking permission in advance would reduce the number of times you have to mail people for forgiveness??!!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Sorry about the break... summer's getting busy already
As I said in my last post, Columbo arrived on 9th June for two weeks.
Guests are always a busy time. Well, not that there's extra business, just the fact that there is no lying around thinking about what to blog about time when there are actual friends here.
Not to mention blog time.
This time was particularly busy, as Kitty was doing exams at the same time, so there was coaching and prompting and motivating and of course it'll be fine and there-thereing to be done (having Columbo around helped as she shared the load on that). In addition, it's the start of the summer season so colleagues are coming and going and I generally have to be around in work, as I tend to take vacation in the winter. But still, we got a few days to hit the road and see a little bit of the Maritimes.
We headed off in the sunshine and went north into New Brunswick and got three days great weather, beautiful sunshine and enough wind to make it bearable (but not to get rid of the enormous mosquitos) and camped for two nights in French New Brunswick. Christ the mossies were big. Each morning we awoke at 5.30am to the dawn chorus, after which the sun came up and shone on the three million or so mosquitos circling the tent waiting, waiting, just waiting for us to slip up and open the zip.
A few got into the car and ate me alive the second day. Almost two weeks later, I am still covered in angry red bites all around my ankles.
We spent the first night in Kouchebouguac, a provincial park set on a lagoon about half way up the coast of New Brunswick. The warmest sea water north of Virginia apparently ... I thought that was Pictou County...
About five minutes later we heard a clang as the top was knocked off our saucepan.
So I'm lying there hoping it's not a bear, but there aren't any bear snuffling noises so I hoped not.
More noises.
Eventually I clambered out of the sleeping bag and shone the torch on the cooler.
Nothing.
Next morning we discovered raccoons had opened the cooler, taken out the bananas, peeled them, eaten them and left the skins for us to dispose of.
And they had rolled all the eggs off the camping table to crack them so they could eat the yolks.
And left the shells along with the banana skins.
Raccoons.
Just like teenagers.
Next day we drove the Acadian peninsula and rolled into Caraquet about five, just in time to catch the Acadian living history village.
Nice place, but $15 each is a bit friggin' steep to watch a lot of local people sit around in old clothes pretending to run a farm.
I took careful note of how to make linen clothes from flax.
For the compound.
So we'll have clothes.
We camped just outside Caraquet and headed into town for dinner at the Chocolaterie, which was very nice and then did the fire thing again.
We got an amazing sunset and an amazing sunrise the next morning, over the Choc Choc Mountains in Quebec. That's where we were headed, but I looked at the map and thought about the drive home and we decided not to do it.
Maybe next time...
Still and all, it was nice to see another province for a change.
No moose but.
I'm never going to see a moose.
Guests are always a busy time. Well, not that there's extra business, just the fact that there is no lying around thinking about what to blog about time when there are actual friends here.
Not to mention blog time.
This time was particularly busy, as Kitty was doing exams at the same time, so there was coaching and prompting and motivating and of course it'll be fine and there-thereing to be done (having Columbo around helped as she shared the load on that). In addition, it's the start of the summer season so colleagues are coming and going and I generally have to be around in work, as I tend to take vacation in the winter. But still, we got a few days to hit the road and see a little bit of the Maritimes.
We headed off in the sunshine and went north into New Brunswick and got three days great weather, beautiful sunshine and enough wind to make it bearable (but not to get rid of the enormous mosquitos) and camped for two nights in French New Brunswick. Christ the mossies were big. Each morning we awoke at 5.30am to the dawn chorus, after which the sun came up and shone on the three million or so mosquitos circling the tent waiting, waiting, just waiting for us to slip up and open the zip.
A few got into the car and ate me alive the second day. Almost two weeks later, I am still covered in angry red bites all around my ankles.
We spent the first night in Kouchebouguac, a provincial park set on a lagoon about half way up the coast of New Brunswick. The warmest sea water north of Virginia apparently ... I thought that was Pictou County...
... well they're both in the lee of PEI, so maybe that's what keeps the water warm.
It was nice. Peaceful and the park people left us pretty much alone. We cooked steaks and drank some wine and listened to the wind die down and the birds go to bed and the fire crackle and then we crawled into bed.About five minutes later we heard a clang as the top was knocked off our saucepan.
So I'm lying there hoping it's not a bear, but there aren't any bear snuffling noises so I hoped not.
More noises.
Eventually I clambered out of the sleeping bag and shone the torch on the cooler.
Nothing.
Next morning we discovered raccoons had opened the cooler, taken out the bananas, peeled them, eaten them and left the skins for us to dispose of.
And they had rolled all the eggs off the camping table to crack them so they could eat the yolks.
And left the shells along with the banana skins.
Raccoons.
Just like teenagers.
Next day we drove the Acadian peninsula and rolled into Caraquet about five, just in time to catch the Acadian living history village.
Nice place, but $15 each is a bit friggin' steep to watch a lot of local people sit around in old clothes pretending to run a farm.
I took careful note of how to make linen clothes from flax.
For the compound.
So we'll have clothes.
We camped just outside Caraquet and headed into town for dinner at the Chocolaterie, which was very nice and then did the fire thing again.
We got an amazing sunset and an amazing sunrise the next morning, over the Choc Choc Mountains in Quebec. That's where we were headed, but I looked at the map and thought about the drive home and we decided not to do it.
Maybe next time...
Still and all, it was nice to see another province for a change.
No moose but.
I'm never going to see a moose.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Three years today
I came to Canada three years ago today.
As Yoichi would say (well probably not now as he's probably fluent in English at this stage), as Yoichi would have said three years ago, 'WOW!'
That day three years ago, I stayed with Ammonite and the others in Teach Dusetti the night before I left, and Colombo waved me off at the airport. So it is fitting that Colombo flies in tonight, and that Ammonite is coming to visit in August.
Well, it's probably just a coincidence, but I have decided it is fitting.
Three years.... lots of personal growth... lots of fun... lots of adjusting to a new culture (yes, Nova Scotia is a new culture, it is very different to Ireland)... lots of adjusting to a new work culture... oh yeah...
Lots of heartache...
And I still haven't given up smoking.
Aaghggh!!
I AM JUST GOING TO GIVE THE FRIGGIN' THINGS UP.
I am.
This month.
As Yoichi would say (well probably not now as he's probably fluent in English at this stage), as Yoichi would have said three years ago, 'WOW!'
That day three years ago, I stayed with Ammonite and the others in Teach Dusetti the night before I left, and Colombo waved me off at the airport. So it is fitting that Colombo flies in tonight, and that Ammonite is coming to visit in August.
Well, it's probably just a coincidence, but I have decided it is fitting.
Three years.... lots of personal growth... lots of fun... lots of adjusting to a new culture (yes, Nova Scotia is a new culture, it is very different to Ireland)... lots of adjusting to a new work culture... oh yeah...
Lots of heartache...
And I still haven't given up smoking.
Aaghggh!!
I AM JUST GOING TO GIVE THE FRIGGIN' THINGS UP.
I am.
This month.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
So how do you feel?
The phone rang in work yesterday.
It does ring quite a bit.
I wait to see the number.
Often it is my own. Kitty home from school, bored, wanting to check in. I check in back. We chat a bit. She reconnects then she's happy to wait till quarter past five when one of us is usually home.
Otherwise it's just work usually.
But the phone rang yesterday.
I waited.
Private number.
Ehhhummmmm....
I picked up.
So how do you feel today, Queenie?
It's a woman's voice. It's an older woman. It's a black woman.
Queen.
The other Queenie. Except she's not Queenie. She's just Queen.
Former colleague.
Well, I don't know Queen. How do you feel?
I don't know what to feel, Queenie, that's why I called you.
Well, Queen, I reckon you must be a little bit sad and a little bit excited.
Well, I guess I am. I thought you might know how I feel. How do you feel?
I'm fucking mad, Queen. How in the hell does a smart ass, younger, inexperienced man beat a strong, clever older woman for Presidential candidate, Queen?
I don't know, Queenie.
I guess our time has gone, Queen.
Well, maybe mine anyway, Queenie, you're still young.
But you must be happy, Queen.
I guess I'm excited for the young people, Queenie. I see them all excited and it makes my heart glad.
Yeah, me too.
Shame though...
Yeah...
I'm worried, Queenie, I hear they're going to say something bad about his wife soon.
What?
Something about the church. You know, that's what all those churches are like, Queenie. They all talk like that. It doesn't mean anything. That's how we keep our sanity. You must know. You're from over there.
Over there?
You know what I mean.
Yeah, I know.
I'm worried, Queenie. I'm real worried.
Maybe so, Queen, she looks like a strong woman though.
Maybe.
Sometimes, Queenie, I wonder how strong we've gotta be.
Yeah, I wonder that too.
It does ring quite a bit.
I wait to see the number.
Often it is my own. Kitty home from school, bored, wanting to check in. I check in back. We chat a bit. She reconnects then she's happy to wait till quarter past five when one of us is usually home.
Otherwise it's just work usually.
But the phone rang yesterday.
I waited.
Private number.
Ehhhummmmm....
I picked up.
So how do you feel today, Queenie?
It's a woman's voice. It's an older woman. It's a black woman.
Queen.
The other Queenie. Except she's not Queenie. She's just Queen.
Former colleague.
Well, I don't know Queen. How do you feel?
I don't know what to feel, Queenie, that's why I called you.
Well, Queen, I reckon you must be a little bit sad and a little bit excited.
Well, I guess I am. I thought you might know how I feel. How do you feel?
I'm fucking mad, Queen. How in the hell does a smart ass, younger, inexperienced man beat a strong, clever older woman for Presidential candidate, Queen?
I don't know, Queenie.
I guess our time has gone, Queen.
Well, maybe mine anyway, Queenie, you're still young.
But you must be happy, Queen.
I guess I'm excited for the young people, Queenie. I see them all excited and it makes my heart glad.
Yeah, me too.
Shame though...
Yeah...
I'm worried, Queenie, I hear they're going to say something bad about his wife soon.
What?
Something about the church. You know, that's what all those churches are like, Queenie. They all talk like that. It doesn't mean anything. That's how we keep our sanity. You must know. You're from over there.
Over there?
You know what I mean.
Yeah, I know.
I'm worried, Queenie. I'm real worried.
Maybe so, Queen, she looks like a strong woman though.
Maybe.
Sometimes, Queenie, I wonder how strong we've gotta be.
Yeah, I wonder that too.
To die in your own wee, or on your own wii?
I bet Martin McDonagh never thought there'd be a Wii when he wrote that brilliant passage in A Skull in Connemara about dying in a potty of wee.
I brought Kitty and her friend to see it tonight. A small little company. A rickety stage set up in an abandoned shop. Twenty five people in the audience, scrunched up around the stage. Potting compost and fragments of fake bone flying all over us.
Great.
When the wee bit started, I thought the two girls were going to choke they laughed so much.
Me, I was the only person who laughed at the Eamon Andrew jokes. And the Dana jokes. And the bumpy slides in Leisureland in Galway sketch.
But that was alright.
You're in your own little world in the theatre anyway.
Well done to Obstructed View Plays for taking it on with probably tuppence ha'penny worth of funding. They did a great job of it.
I brought Kitty and her friend to see it tonight. A small little company. A rickety stage set up in an abandoned shop. Twenty five people in the audience, scrunched up around the stage. Potting compost and fragments of fake bone flying all over us.
Great.
When the wee bit started, I thought the two girls were going to choke they laughed so much.
Me, I was the only person who laughed at the Eamon Andrew jokes. And the Dana jokes. And the bumpy slides in Leisureland in Galway sketch.
But that was alright.
You're in your own little world in the theatre anyway.
Well done to Obstructed View Plays for taking it on with probably tuppence ha'penny worth of funding. They did a great job of it.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Maxime makes the news in Ireland
Canada's foreign minister has resigned after it emerged that he left secret documents at his then girlfriend's house.
Prime minister Stephen Harper said yesterday he had accepted the resignation of Maxime Bernier, who came under fire in recent weeks after it was reported that his ex-girlfriend had previous relationships with Hells Angels members and links to organised crime.
Prime minister Stephen Harper said yesterday he had accepted the resignation of Maxime Bernier, who came under fire in recent weeks after it was reported that his ex-girlfriend had previous relationships with Hells Angels members and links to organised crime.
I don't know if the Irish Times printed the picture of DE DRESS.
Which is all that Canada is talking about in this case.
Here it is, in case they didn't.
Naturally, it's all about the dress.
That's why you can't see the kerchief hemming at the bottom.
Apparently, Minister Bernier picked THE DRESS to wear on the day he became a minister.
Hence all the interest in Mdme Cuillard.
Ahaa!! My suspicions were founded!!
From today's Irish Times:
THE LEAVING Cert exam has been significantly "dumbed down" and there is evidence of widespread grade inflation, according to a new study of exam grades.
The study, to be published shortly, is the first to track Leaving Cert grades across 24 subjects over almost two decades.
Its key finding is that the number of students gaining A and B grades in many higher-level subjects has nearly doubled since 1991. But the study finds little evidence to support higher academic standards. "In the most recent European-wide OECD/PISA study, there has been no detectable improvement in mathematics, reading and science in Irish 15-year-olds between 2000 and 2006, and so such an explanation of the increased Leaving Certificate results does not hold up."
...
The study concludes: "That there has been massive grade increase in the Leaving Certificate Examination over the period considered is beyond dispute and even a cursory inspection of the data confirms this . . . There is little evidence of higher academic standards. The increase is simply grade inflation - higher grades being awarded more easily."
The survey shows an astonishing increase in the percentage of students gaining Grade A and B (70-100 per cent) in Leaving Cert higher-level papers since 1991.
...
The study also finds that far fewer students are failing Leaving Cert papers. The new study says the grade inflation is all the more remarkable because the number of students opting for higher level has dramatically increased. It notes how "the lowering of standards in the higher-level subjects has driven this increase".
Queenie has suspected for a long time that the Leaving Cert (Irish exam that is similar to the IB) is for pussies these days. Not like when she were a girl, and there was just the one place in college, and you had to lock yourself in your bedroom and study for six hours a night for ten years to get the place.
IF YOU WERE LUCKY and your questions came up.
Having had several arguments with various people about it, Queenie has come round to the point of view that what's good for the child of the eighties is probably not so good for the child of the nineties.
But it's still effing unfair.
Us survivors of the horror that was the LC in the eighties deserve some respect.
We didn't know there was a lucrative future in VJing ahead of us if we failed.
I get no respect in my house.
I am considered weird because I know so much.
And that's just the stuff I mention.
THE LEAVING Cert exam has been significantly "dumbed down" and there is evidence of widespread grade inflation, according to a new study of exam grades.
The study, to be published shortly, is the first to track Leaving Cert grades across 24 subjects over almost two decades.
Its key finding is that the number of students gaining A and B grades in many higher-level subjects has nearly doubled since 1991. But the study finds little evidence to support higher academic standards. "In the most recent European-wide OECD/PISA study, there has been no detectable improvement in mathematics, reading and science in Irish 15-year-olds between 2000 and 2006, and so such an explanation of the increased Leaving Certificate results does not hold up."
...
The study concludes: "That there has been massive grade increase in the Leaving Certificate Examination over the period considered is beyond dispute and even a cursory inspection of the data confirms this . . . There is little evidence of higher academic standards. The increase is simply grade inflation - higher grades being awarded more easily."
The survey shows an astonishing increase in the percentage of students gaining Grade A and B (70-100 per cent) in Leaving Cert higher-level papers since 1991.
...
The study also finds that far fewer students are failing Leaving Cert papers. The new study says the grade inflation is all the more remarkable because the number of students opting for higher level has dramatically increased. It notes how "the lowering of standards in the higher-level subjects has driven this increase".
Queenie has suspected for a long time that the Leaving Cert (Irish exam that is similar to the IB) is for pussies these days. Not like when she were a girl, and there was just the one place in college, and you had to lock yourself in your bedroom and study for six hours a night for ten years to get the place.
IF YOU WERE LUCKY and your questions came up.
Having had several arguments with various people about it, Queenie has come round to the point of view that what's good for the child of the eighties is probably not so good for the child of the nineties.
But it's still effing unfair.
Us survivors of the horror that was the LC in the eighties deserve some respect.
We didn't know there was a lucrative future in VJing ahead of us if we failed.
I get no respect in my house.
I am considered weird because I know so much.
And that's just the stuff I mention.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
You can take a girl out of her homeland....
... but she'll eventually get back to planting potatoes.
Pumpkin, schmumpkin .... The pratai are in the ground.
Won't it be lovely to have my own potatoes, grown by my own hand, to eat this winter.
I wonder could I get Himself to dig me out a root cellar! For all the potatoes and carrots and beets I'm going to have?!
I'm being super-confident this year, which is always a bad thing in gardening.
If he wakes up ever again of course.
Himself and Kitty are both asleep. Have been for a while. So I'm just sitting here with dinner all prepared waiting for hunger pangs to stir them. Also, Scheherazade is coming over for some food (for those of you who don't remember, Scheh is the first friend I made in Halifax and she is from Turkey originally).
I don't know why they are so tired. It's not like we were up to much last night.
We went all the way downstairs last night. That was about as out as we could manage.
We were hanging with Ms Maggie Beach and her friend and I realised that I don't talk about her friend much, even though he's my friend too (except when we play washer toss, when he turns into my sworn enemy forever) so we were discussing blog names for him.
Maggie Beach picked her own blogname. I'm all for letting people choose their own name. Her's is her porn name I think (you pick your middle name and the street you grew up on).
Queenie is Lizzie Oxmantown, which is a stupid porn name. My pole dancer name is worse, it's Midgie Neill. I would so be the pole dancer on the Canadien ad if that was my name.
Anyways, so our friend had to pick his blog name. First of all he decided on RaCy (because he's building a F1 car in his garage at the moment - I kid you not). Then Maggie decided it had to be his porn name. Which turned out to be Johnny Pleasant.
So after we all stopped falling around laughing at the aptness of it as his porn name, he decided he didn't want that, so we did the pole dancer's name thingummy and it turned out to be Teddy Grainger.
So Teddy Grainger it is.
Anyways, Queenie and Ms Beach go up to Teddy's house a few times a week now (and Kitty too), because he's got a home gym in his basement. Right next to the F1 car in his garage, although I think the car was being collected this morning, so no more throbbing house when I'm running myself to a standstill.
We do an hour - run on the treadmill and the cycling thing and the crosstrainer, and Queenie does some yoga stretches, and then we go home to eat dinner and have a glass of wine.
Very healthy.
Well, it is when you consider the alternative.
Queenie had to start working out. It is THAT TIME IN HER THIRTIES.
I do find it terribly boring though.
Anyways, Teddy had to pick his top bands for the greatest band on earth ever competition so he picked The Eagles (that's the Johnny Pleasant side of his personality coming through I think).
I am going to have to organise some kind of structured weekend of listening for us to arrive at some consensus on which band will get the title.
And the exciting news is, Mike and Cate our previous next door neighbours are coming to Halifax for a month this summer!
Much washer toss/ camping/ sitting around talking about librarianship/ drinking of beer/ BBQ-ing will ensue.
You better pick your blog names, then!!
Pumpkin, schmumpkin .... The pratai are in the ground.
Won't it be lovely to have my own potatoes, grown by my own hand, to eat this winter.
I wonder could I get Himself to dig me out a root cellar! For all the potatoes and carrots and beets I'm going to have?!
I'm being super-confident this year, which is always a bad thing in gardening.
If he wakes up ever again of course.
Himself and Kitty are both asleep. Have been for a while. So I'm just sitting here with dinner all prepared waiting for hunger pangs to stir them. Also, Scheherazade is coming over for some food (for those of you who don't remember, Scheh is the first friend I made in Halifax and she is from Turkey originally).
I don't know why they are so tired. It's not like we were up to much last night.
We went all the way downstairs last night. That was about as out as we could manage.
We were hanging with Ms Maggie Beach and her friend and I realised that I don't talk about her friend much, even though he's my friend too (except when we play washer toss, when he turns into my sworn enemy forever) so we were discussing blog names for him.
Maggie Beach picked her own blogname. I'm all for letting people choose their own name. Her's is her porn name I think (you pick your middle name and the street you grew up on).
Queenie is Lizzie Oxmantown, which is a stupid porn name. My pole dancer name is worse, it's Midgie Neill. I would so be the pole dancer on the Canadien ad if that was my name.
Anyways, so our friend had to pick his blog name. First of all he decided on RaCy (because he's building a F1 car in his garage at the moment - I kid you not). Then Maggie decided it had to be his porn name. Which turned out to be Johnny Pleasant.
So after we all stopped falling around laughing at the aptness of it as his porn name, he decided he didn't want that, so we did the pole dancer's name thingummy and it turned out to be Teddy Grainger.
So Teddy Grainger it is.
Anyways, Queenie and Ms Beach go up to Teddy's house a few times a week now (and Kitty too), because he's got a home gym in his basement. Right next to the F1 car in his garage, although I think the car was being collected this morning, so no more throbbing house when I'm running myself to a standstill.
We do an hour - run on the treadmill and the cycling thing and the crosstrainer, and Queenie does some yoga stretches, and then we go home to eat dinner and have a glass of wine.
Very healthy.
Well, it is when you consider the alternative.
Queenie had to start working out. It is THAT TIME IN HER THIRTIES.
I do find it terribly boring though.
Anyways, Teddy had to pick his top bands for the greatest band on earth ever competition so he picked The Eagles (that's the Johnny Pleasant side of his personality coming through I think).
I am going to have to organise some kind of structured weekend of listening for us to arrive at some consensus on which band will get the title.
And the exciting news is, Mike and Cate our previous next door neighbours are coming to Halifax for a month this summer!
Much washer toss/ camping/ sitting around talking about librarianship/ drinking of beer/ BBQ-ing will ensue.
You better pick your blog names, then!!
Friday, May 23, 2008
The wonders of technology
So, I'm browsing my site meter by referrals, and I come across a google search for a friend of mine, Nadia, who is a teacher in Co. Galway, Ireland.
And what do I find only her teacher ratings!!
Found her the most interesting teacher of the lot. Great communicate with us unlike most. I had her for only one year. to this day and a few years have by since. i still remember her lovely perfume.x
Body Shop White Musk if I remember correctly. Although it might have changed. To this day, if I smell it in a shop or a bus, I whip round, expecting to see her.
11/15/06 lovely person even tho she appears scary in the halls.sucha a nice teacher to have especially for the leaving! bcause of her i really like german and am doing it now in college!
I don't think she appears scary. I think she actually is scary. But you're right, she is a lovely person.
3/29/06 can teach a class and listen to what each student has to say aswell as getting everyone to enjoy class
Wow! When I knew her, back in the day, all she did was talk in class! She must have grown up since.
Hilarious. Spot on. But nothing I didn't already know.
What I don't know is, who got from there to here.
Mysterious....
OKAY!! Am leaving now. Honestly.
And what do I find only her teacher ratings!!
Found her the most interesting teacher of the lot. Great communicate with us unlike most. I had her for only one year. to this day and a few years have by since. i still remember her lovely perfume.x
Body Shop White Musk if I remember correctly. Although it might have changed. To this day, if I smell it in a shop or a bus, I whip round, expecting to see her.
11/15/06 lovely person even tho she appears scary in the halls.sucha a nice teacher to have especially for the leaving! bcause of her i really like german and am doing it now in college!
I don't think she appears scary. I think she actually is scary. But you're right, she is a lovely person.
3/29/06 can teach a class and listen to what each student has to say aswell as getting everyone to enjoy class
Wow! When I knew her, back in the day, all she did was talk in class! She must have grown up since.
Hilarious. Spot on. But nothing I didn't already know.
What I don't know is, who got from there to here.
Mysterious....
OKAY!! Am leaving now. Honestly.
Kitty's room
Kitty ate an entire bowl of high fibre cereal without being prompted to before she went to school this morning.
I was in such a state of delighted shock I pretended not to see.
So I didn't see her not put the bowl in the dishwasher.
... Baby steps...
So I washed her white clothes that got make up on them and changed her sheets and made her bed today and *tidied* her room as a thank you for the baby step.
On my day off.
Day off paid work.
Half a bottle of Febreze later... we're all good.
Judging by the smell in the room, a certain familiar Himself in need of a new pair of shoes damp smell, I think she may need a new pair of trainers.
Why, oh why do we have to purchase an entire wardrobe for her every time she comes up here?
Doesn't anyone else ever buy her any clothes??
Silly question.
Forget I asked.
*tidying involves putting everything on the floor into the trunk, less evidence of whatever teenage preening etc activity to see/ despair over when it's done in a scooping motion.
I was in such a state of delighted shock I pretended not to see.
So I didn't see her not put the bowl in the dishwasher.
... Baby steps...
So I washed her white clothes that got make up on them and changed her sheets and made her bed today and *tidied* her room as a thank you for the baby step.
On my day off.
Day off paid work.
Half a bottle of Febreze later... we're all good.
Judging by the smell in the room, a certain familiar Himself in need of a new pair of shoes damp smell, I think she may need a new pair of trainers.
Why, oh why do we have to purchase an entire wardrobe for her every time she comes up here?
Doesn't anyone else ever buy her any clothes??
Silly question.
Forget I asked.
*tidying involves putting everything on the floor into the trunk, less evidence of whatever teenage preening etc activity to see/ despair over when it's done in a scooping motion.
This is the last one - 1001 books you must read before you die 1700s and previous
This is the list that sorts the English Grads out from the boys.
There are 59 books on this list. Queenie has read 19 of them. Mostly because she had to.
OKAY, we're done ruining my blog with lists of books.... onto more useful activities.
Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
The Nun – Denis Diderot
Camilla – Fanny Burney
The Monk – M.G. Lewis
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
Justine – Marquis de Sade Q
Vathek – William Beckford
The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
Cecilia – Fanny Burney
Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Evelina – Fanny Burney
The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett Q
The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne Q
Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne Q
The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith Q
The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
Candide – Voltaire
The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
Amelia – Henry Fielding Q
Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
Fanny Hill – John Cleland
Tom Jones – Henry Fielding Q
Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett Q
Clarissa – Samuel Richardson Q
Pamela – Samuel Richardson Q
Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift Q
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift Q
Roxana – Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe Q
Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe Q
A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
Pre-1700
Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Q
The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous Q
The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
Aithiopika – Heliodorus
Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
Metamorphoses – Ovid Q
Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus Q
There are 59 books on this list. Queenie has read 19 of them. Mostly because she had to.
OKAY, we're done ruining my blog with lists of books.... onto more useful activities.
Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
The Nun – Denis Diderot
Camilla – Fanny Burney
The Monk – M.G. Lewis
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
Justine – Marquis de Sade Q
Vathek – William Beckford
The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
Cecilia – Fanny Burney
Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Evelina – Fanny Burney
The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett Q
The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne Q
Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne Q
The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith Q
The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
Candide – Voltaire
The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
Amelia – Henry Fielding Q
Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
Fanny Hill – John Cleland
Tom Jones – Henry Fielding Q
Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett Q
Clarissa – Samuel Richardson Q
Pamela – Samuel Richardson Q
Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift Q
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift Q
Roxana – Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe Q
Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe Q
A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
Pre-1700
Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Q
The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous Q
The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
Aithiopika – Heliodorus
Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
Metamorphoses – Ovid Q
Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus Q
1001 books you must read before you die - 1800s
Here are the books on the 1001 books you should read before you die list, published in the 1800s. Queenie promised she wouldn't do this, and then did it anyways..... I have STUFF TO DO TODAY!!!!!!!!!
There are 157 books on this list. Queenie has been very remiss with her Russian giants of literature it would appear.
Maybe I'm grown up enough to get them now.
Q denotes a book read.
Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross Q
The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
The Awakening – Kate Chopin Q
The Turn of the Screw – Henry James Q
The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
What Maisie Knew – Henry James
Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy Q
The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Born in Exile – George Gissing
Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Q
News from Nowhere – William Morris
New Grub Street – George Gissing
Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy Q
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde Q
The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
Hunger – Knut Hamsun
The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy Q
She – H. Rider Haggard
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson Q
The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy Q
Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson Q
King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
Germinal – Émile Zola
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain Q
Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant Q
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson Q
The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James Q
Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
Nana – Émile Zola
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Red Room – August Strindberg
Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy Q
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Drunkard – Émile Zola
Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
Daniel Deronda – George Eliot Q
The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy Q
The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne Q
In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Erewhon – Samuel Butler
Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
Middlemarch – George Eliot Q
Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll Q
King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins Q
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott Q
Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope Q
Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky (tried. and tried. and tried)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll Q
Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens Q
Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley Q
Les Misérables – Victor Hugo Q
Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev Q
Silas Marner – George Eliot Q (Yawwn)
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens Q
On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot Q
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins Q
The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Max Havelaar – Multatuli
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens Q
Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
Adam Bede – George Eliot Q (YAWN)
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert Q
North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell Q
Hard Times – Charles Dickens Q
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Bleak House – Charles Dickens Q
Villette – Charlotte Brontë
Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe Q
The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne Q
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville Q
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne Q
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens Q
Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë Q
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë Q
Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë Q
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë Q
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray Q
The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas Q
La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas Q
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe Q
Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe Q
Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens Q
Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe Q
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens Q
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens Q
The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo Q
The Red and the Black – Stendhal
The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper Q
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg Q
The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott Q
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Q
Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen Q
Persuasion – Jane Austen Q
Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
Emma – Jane Austen Q
Mansfield Park – Jane Austen Q
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen Q
The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen Q
Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth Q
There are 157 books on this list. Queenie has been very remiss with her Russian giants of literature it would appear.
Maybe I'm grown up enough to get them now.
Q denotes a book read.
Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross Q
The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
The Awakening – Kate Chopin Q
The Turn of the Screw – Henry James Q
The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
What Maisie Knew – Henry James
Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy Q
The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Born in Exile – George Gissing
Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Q
News from Nowhere – William Morris
New Grub Street – George Gissing
Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy Q
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde Q
The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
Hunger – Knut Hamsun
The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy Q
She – H. Rider Haggard
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson Q
The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy Q
Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson Q
King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
Germinal – Émile Zola
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain Q
Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant Q
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson Q
The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James Q
Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
Nana – Émile Zola
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Red Room – August Strindberg
Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy Q
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Drunkard – Émile Zola
Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
Daniel Deronda – George Eliot Q
The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy Q
The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne Q
In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Erewhon – Samuel Butler
Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
Middlemarch – George Eliot Q
Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll Q
King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins Q
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott Q
Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope Q
Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky (tried. and tried. and tried)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll Q
Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens Q
Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley Q
Les Misérables – Victor Hugo Q
Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev Q
Silas Marner – George Eliot Q (Yawwn)
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens Q
On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot Q
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins Q
The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Max Havelaar – Multatuli
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens Q
Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
Adam Bede – George Eliot Q (YAWN)
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert Q
North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell Q
Hard Times – Charles Dickens Q
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Bleak House – Charles Dickens Q
Villette – Charlotte Brontë
Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe Q
The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne Q
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville Q
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne Q
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens Q
Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë Q
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë Q
Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë Q
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë Q
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray Q
The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas Q
La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas Q
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe Q
Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe Q
Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens Q
Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe Q
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens Q
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens Q
The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo Q
The Red and the Black – Stendhal
The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper Q
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg Q
The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott Q
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Q
Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen Q
Persuasion – Jane Austen Q
Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
Emma – Jane Austen Q
Mansfield Park – Jane Austen Q
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen Q
The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen Q
Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth Q
Oh, go on then, 1001 books to read before you die - 1900s
There are 716 books on this list, and a lot of the debate on the New York Times site is an erudite discussion about how the books of BEFORE are MUCH BETTER.
Of course.
Queenie has a lot of reading to do methinks....
Timbuktu – Paul Auster
The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee Q
Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters Q
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver Q
Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
Another World – Pat Barker Q
The Hours – Michael Cunningham Q
Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy Q
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden Q
Great Apes – Will Self
Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
Underworld – Don DeLillo Q
Jack Maggs – Peter Carey Q
The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
American Pastoral – Philip Roth
The Untouchable – John Banville
Silk – Alessandro Baricco Q
Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels QQQQQ
The Ghost Road – Pat Barker Q
Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood Q
The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
The Information – Martin Amis
The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie Q
Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald Q
The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry Q
Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
Land – Park Kyong-ni
The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee QQQQQQ
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami QQQQQQ
Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman Q
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres Q
Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor Q
Disappearance – David Dabydeen
The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx QQQQQQ
Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh Q
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks Q
Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
Complicity – Iain Banks
On Love – Alain de Botton Q
What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth Q
The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields Q
The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides Q
The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood Q
The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald Q
The Secret History – Donna Tartt Q
Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
A Heart So White – Javier Marias
Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
Indigo – Marina Warner
The Crow Road – Iain Banks Q
Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
Jazz – Toni Morrison Q
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje Q
Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg Q
The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe Q
Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
Arcadia – Jim Crace
Wild Swans – Jung Chang Q
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis Q
Mao II – Don DeLillo
Typical – Padgett Powell
Regeneration – Pat Barker Q
Downriver – Iain Sinclair
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
Wise Children – Angela Carter
Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard Q
Amongst Women – John McGahern Q
Vineland – Thomas Pynchon Q
Vertigo – W.G. Sebald Q
Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham Q
Like Life – Lorrie Moore
Possession – A.S. Byatt Q
The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
A Disaffection – James Kelman
Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
Moon Palace – Paul Auster
Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro Q
The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago Q
Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel Q
A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving Q
London Fields – Martin Amis Q
The Book of Evidence – John Banville Q
Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood Q
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco Q
The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie Q
The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey Q
Libra – Don DeLillo Q
The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams Q
The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble Q
The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind Q
The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe Q
The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster Q
World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
Beloved – Toni Morrison Q
Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis Q
Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro Q
Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
Foe – J.M. Coetzee
The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez Q
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson Q
The Cider House Rules – John Irving Q
A Maggot – John Fowles
Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
Contact – Carl Sagan Q
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood Q
Perfume – Patrick Süskind Q
Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
White Noise – Don DeLillo
Queer – William Burroughs
Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd Q
Legend – David Gemmell
Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?
The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
The Lover – Marguerite Duras
Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard Q
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks Q
Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera Q
Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
Neuromancer – William Gibson Q
Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes Q
Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
Shame – Salman Rushdie
Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
La Brava – Elmore Leonard
Waterland – Graham Swift Q
The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee QQQQQ
The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
The Color Purple – Alice Walker Q
Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro Q
Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally Q
The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende Q
The Newton Letter – John Banville
On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin Q
Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
The Names – Don DeLillo
Rabbit is Rich – John Updike Q
Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
July’s People – Nadine Gordimer Q
Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
Broken April – Ismail Kadare
Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie Q
Rites of Passage – William Golding
Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco Q
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera Q
Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
Shikasta – Doris Lessing
A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer Q
The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino Q
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams Q
The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
The World According to Garp – John Irving Q
Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch Q
The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
Yes – Thomas Bernhard
The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee Q
The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
The Shining – Stephen King Q
Dispatches – Michael Herr
Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison Q
The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
The Public Burning – Robert Coover
Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez Q
W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
Grimus – Salman Rushdie
The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
Fateless – Imre Kertész
Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
High Rise – J.G. Ballard
Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow Q
Dead Babies – Martin Amis
Correction – Thomas Bernhard
Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré Q
Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Q
Fear of Flying – Erica Jong Q
A Question of Power – Bessie Head
The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
Crash – J.G. Ballard Q
The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene Q
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon Q
The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
Sula – Toni Morrison Q
Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
The Breast – Philip Roth
The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
G – John Berger
Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson Q
Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
Rabbit Redux – John Updike Q
The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
The Ogre – Michael Tournier
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou Q
Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
Troubles – J.G. Farrell
Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. QQQQQQQQ
The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
The Green Man – Kingsley Amis Q
Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth Q
The Godfather – Mario Puzo Q
Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
Them – Joyce Carol Oates Q
A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch Q
Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn Q
The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn Q
2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick Q
Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
Chocky – John Wyndham
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe Q
The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez Q
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov Q
Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
The Joke – Milan Kundera
No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien Q
A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
Trawl – B.S. Johnson
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
The Magus – John Fowles
The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon Q
Things – Georges Perec
The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
Herzog – Saul Bellow Q
V. – Thomas Pynchon Q
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut Q
The Graduate – Charles Webb
Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré Q
The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath Q
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn Q
The Collector – John Fowles
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey Q
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing Q
Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges Q
Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller Q
The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
How It Is – Samuel Beckett
Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien Q
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee Q
Rabbit, Run – John Updike Q
Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee Q
Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
Naked Lunch – William Burroughs Q
The Tin Drum – Günter Grass Q
Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute Q
The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon Q
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
The End of the Road – John Barth
The Once and Future King – T.H. White
The Bell – Iris Murdoch Q
Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
Voss – Patrick White
The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
Homo Faber – Max Frisch
On the Road – Jack Kerouac Q
Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
Justine – Lawrence Durrell Q
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
The Floating Opera – John Barth
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien Q
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov Q
A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
The Quiet American – Graham Greene Q
The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis Q
The Recognitions – William Gaddis
The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
The Story of O – Pauline Réage
A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
Lord of the Flies – William Golding Q
Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler Q
The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
Watt – Samuel Beckett
Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis Q
Junkie – William Burroughs
The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
Casino Royale – Ian Fleming Q
The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway Q
Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Foundation – Isaac Asimov
The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger Q
The Rebel – Albert Camus
Molloy – Samuel Beckett Q
The End of the Affair – Graham Greene Q
The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
The Third Man – Graham Greene Q
The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake Q-ish
The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell Q
All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene Q
Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
The Victim – Saul Bellow
Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
The Plague – Albert Camus
Back – Henry Green
Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh Q
Animal Farm – George Orwell Q
Cannery Row – John Steinbeck Q
The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
Loving – Henry Green
Arcanum 17 – André Breton
Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham Q
Transit – Anna Seghers
Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Caught – Henry Green
The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
Embers – Sandor Marai
Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
The Outsider – Albert Camus Q (IN DEH FRENCH, DONCHA KNOW)
In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
The Living and the Dead – Patrick White Q
Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
The Hamlet – William Faulkner
Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler Q
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway Q
Native Son – Richard Wright
The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene Q
The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
Party Going – Henry Green
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck Q
Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien Q
QComing Up for Air – George Orwell
Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood Q
Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler Q
After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier Q
Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
Brighton Rock – Graham Greene Q
U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
Murphy – Samuel Beckett
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck Q
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien Q
The Years – Virginia Woolf
In Parenthesis – David Jones
The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen) Q
To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell Q
Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell Q
Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
Independent People – Halldór Laxness
Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
England Made Me – Graham Greene
Burmese Days – George Orwell Q
The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers Q
Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller Q - don't tell the Queen Mum
A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
A Day Off – Storm Jameson
The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley Q
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
The Waves – Virginia Woolf
The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh Q
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett Q
Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
Passing – Nella Larsen
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway Q
Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett Q
Living – Henry Green
The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner Q
Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
Orlando – Virginia Woolf Q
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence Q
The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
Quartet – Jean Rhys
Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh Q
Quicksand – Nella Larsen
Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford Q
Nadja – André Breton
Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf Q
Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
Amerika – Franz Kafka
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway Q
Blindness – Henry Green
The Castle – Franz Kafka
The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf Q
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald Q
The Counterfeiters – André Gide Q
The Trial – Franz Kafka Q
The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
A Passage to India – E.M. Forster Q
The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
Cane – Jean Toomer
Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
Amok – Stefan Zweig
The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
Ulysses – James Joyce Q - ish
The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton Q
Main Street – Sinclair Lewis Q
Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence Q
Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West Q
The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
Summer – Edith Wharton
Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
QUnder Fire – Henri Barbusse
Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford Q
The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham Q
The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence Q
The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan Q
Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence Q
Death in Venice – Thomas Mann Q
The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
Howards End – E.M. Forster Q
Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
Martin Eden – Jack London
Strait is the Gate – André Gide
Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
A Room With a View – E.M. Forster Q
The Iron Heel – Jack London
The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
Mother – Maxim Gorky
The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
Young Törless – Robert Musil
The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster Q
Nostromo – Joseph Conrad Q
Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
The Golden Bowl – Henry James
The Ambassadors – Henry James Q
The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers Q
The Immoralist – André Gide
The Wings of the Dove – Henry James Q
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad Q
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Q
Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
Kim – Rudyard Kipling Q
Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad Q
Of course.
Queenie has a lot of reading to do methinks....
Timbuktu – Paul Auster
The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee Q
Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters Q
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver Q
Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
Another World – Pat Barker Q
The Hours – Michael Cunningham Q
Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy Q
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden Q
Great Apes – Will Self
Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
Underworld – Don DeLillo Q
Jack Maggs – Peter Carey Q
The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
American Pastoral – Philip Roth
The Untouchable – John Banville
Silk – Alessandro Baricco Q
Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels QQQQQ
The Ghost Road – Pat Barker Q
Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood Q
The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
The Information – Martin Amis
The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie Q
Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald Q
The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry Q
Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
Land – Park Kyong-ni
The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee QQQQQQ
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami QQQQQQ
Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman Q
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres Q
Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor Q
Disappearance – David Dabydeen
The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx QQQQQQ
Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh Q
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks Q
Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
Complicity – Iain Banks
On Love – Alain de Botton Q
What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth Q
The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields Q
The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides Q
The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood Q
The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald Q
The Secret History – Donna Tartt Q
Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
A Heart So White – Javier Marias
Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
Indigo – Marina Warner
The Crow Road – Iain Banks Q
Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
Jazz – Toni Morrison Q
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje Q
Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg Q
The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe Q
Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
Arcadia – Jim Crace
Wild Swans – Jung Chang Q
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis Q
Mao II – Don DeLillo
Typical – Padgett Powell
Regeneration – Pat Barker Q
Downriver – Iain Sinclair
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
Wise Children – Angela Carter
Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard Q
Amongst Women – John McGahern Q
Vineland – Thomas Pynchon Q
Vertigo – W.G. Sebald Q
Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham Q
Like Life – Lorrie Moore
Possession – A.S. Byatt Q
The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
A Disaffection – James Kelman
Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
Moon Palace – Paul Auster
Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro Q
The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago Q
Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel Q
A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving Q
London Fields – Martin Amis Q
The Book of Evidence – John Banville Q
Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood Q
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco Q
The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie Q
The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey Q
Libra – Don DeLillo Q
The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams Q
The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble Q
The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind Q
The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe Q
The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster Q
World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
Beloved – Toni Morrison Q
Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis Q
Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro Q
Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
Foe – J.M. Coetzee
The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez Q
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson Q
The Cider House Rules – John Irving Q
A Maggot – John Fowles
Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
Contact – Carl Sagan Q
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood Q
Perfume – Patrick Süskind Q
Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
White Noise – Don DeLillo
Queer – William Burroughs
Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd Q
Legend – David Gemmell
Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?
The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
The Lover – Marguerite Duras
Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard Q
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks Q
Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera Q
Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
Neuromancer – William Gibson Q
Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes Q
Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
Shame – Salman Rushdie
Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
La Brava – Elmore Leonard
Waterland – Graham Swift Q
The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee QQQQQ
The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
The Color Purple – Alice Walker Q
Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro Q
Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally Q
The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende Q
The Newton Letter – John Banville
On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin Q
Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
The Names – Don DeLillo
Rabbit is Rich – John Updike Q
Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
July’s People – Nadine Gordimer Q
Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
Broken April – Ismail Kadare
Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie Q
Rites of Passage – William Golding
Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco Q
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera Q
Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
Shikasta – Doris Lessing
A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer Q
The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino Q
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams Q
The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
The World According to Garp – John Irving Q
Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch Q
The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
Yes – Thomas Bernhard
The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee Q
The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
The Shining – Stephen King Q
Dispatches – Michael Herr
Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison Q
The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
The Public Burning – Robert Coover
Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez Q
W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
Grimus – Salman Rushdie
The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
Fateless – Imre Kertész
Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
High Rise – J.G. Ballard
Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow Q
Dead Babies – Martin Amis
Correction – Thomas Bernhard
Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré Q
Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Q
Fear of Flying – Erica Jong Q
A Question of Power – Bessie Head
The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
Crash – J.G. Ballard Q
The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene Q
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon Q
The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
Sula – Toni Morrison Q
Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
The Breast – Philip Roth
The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
G – John Berger
Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson Q
Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
Rabbit Redux – John Updike Q
The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
The Ogre – Michael Tournier
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou Q
Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
Troubles – J.G. Farrell
Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. QQQQQQQQ
The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
The Green Man – Kingsley Amis Q
Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth Q
The Godfather – Mario Puzo Q
Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
Them – Joyce Carol Oates Q
A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch Q
Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn Q
The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn Q
2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick Q
Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
Chocky – John Wyndham
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe Q
The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez Q
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov Q
Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
The Joke – Milan Kundera
No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien Q
A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
Trawl – B.S. Johnson
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
The Magus – John Fowles
The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon Q
Things – Georges Perec
The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
Herzog – Saul Bellow Q
V. – Thomas Pynchon Q
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut Q
The Graduate – Charles Webb
Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré Q
The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath Q
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn Q
The Collector – John Fowles
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey Q
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing Q
Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges Q
Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller Q
The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
How It Is – Samuel Beckett
Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien Q
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee Q
Rabbit, Run – John Updike Q
Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee Q
Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
Naked Lunch – William Burroughs Q
The Tin Drum – Günter Grass Q
Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute Q
The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon Q
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
The End of the Road – John Barth
The Once and Future King – T.H. White
The Bell – Iris Murdoch Q
Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
Voss – Patrick White
The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
Homo Faber – Max Frisch
On the Road – Jack Kerouac Q
Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
Justine – Lawrence Durrell Q
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
The Floating Opera – John Barth
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien Q
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov Q
A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
The Quiet American – Graham Greene Q
The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis Q
The Recognitions – William Gaddis
The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
The Story of O – Pauline Réage
A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
Lord of the Flies – William Golding Q
Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler Q
The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
Watt – Samuel Beckett
Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis Q
Junkie – William Burroughs
The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
Casino Royale – Ian Fleming Q
The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway Q
Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Foundation – Isaac Asimov
The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger Q
The Rebel – Albert Camus
Molloy – Samuel Beckett Q
The End of the Affair – Graham Greene Q
The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
The Third Man – Graham Greene Q
The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake Q-ish
The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell Q
All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene Q
Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
The Victim – Saul Bellow
Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
The Plague – Albert Camus
Back – Henry Green
Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh Q
Animal Farm – George Orwell Q
Cannery Row – John Steinbeck Q
The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
Loving – Henry Green
Arcanum 17 – André Breton
Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham Q
Transit – Anna Seghers
Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Caught – Henry Green
The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
Embers – Sandor Marai
Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
The Outsider – Albert Camus Q (IN DEH FRENCH, DONCHA KNOW)
In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
The Living and the Dead – Patrick White Q
Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
The Hamlet – William Faulkner
Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler Q
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway Q
Native Son – Richard Wright
The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene Q
The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
Party Going – Henry Green
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck Q
Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien Q
QComing Up for Air – George Orwell
Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood Q
Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler Q
After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier Q
Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
Brighton Rock – Graham Greene Q
U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
Murphy – Samuel Beckett
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck Q
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien Q
The Years – Virginia Woolf
In Parenthesis – David Jones
The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen) Q
To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell Q
Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell Q
Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
Independent People – Halldór Laxness
Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
England Made Me – Graham Greene
Burmese Days – George Orwell Q
The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers Q
Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller Q - don't tell the Queen Mum
A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
A Day Off – Storm Jameson
The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley Q
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
The Waves – Virginia Woolf
The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh Q
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett Q
Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
Passing – Nella Larsen
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway Q
Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett Q
Living – Henry Green
The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner Q
Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
Orlando – Virginia Woolf Q
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence Q
The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
Quartet – Jean Rhys
Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh Q
Quicksand – Nella Larsen
Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford Q
Nadja – André Breton
Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf Q
Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
Amerika – Franz Kafka
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway Q
Blindness – Henry Green
The Castle – Franz Kafka
The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf Q
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald Q
The Counterfeiters – André Gide Q
The Trial – Franz Kafka Q
The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
A Passage to India – E.M. Forster Q
The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
Cane – Jean Toomer
Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
Amok – Stefan Zweig
The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
Ulysses – James Joyce Q - ish
The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton Q
Main Street – Sinclair Lewis Q
Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence Q
Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West Q
The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
Summer – Edith Wharton
Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
QUnder Fire – Henri Barbusse
Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford Q
The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham Q
The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence Q
The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan Q
Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence Q
Death in Venice – Thomas Mann Q
The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
Howards End – E.M. Forster Q
Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
Martin Eden – Jack London
Strait is the Gate – André Gide
Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
A Room With a View – E.M. Forster Q
The Iron Heel – Jack London
The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
Mother – Maxim Gorky
The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
Young Törless – Robert Musil
The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster Q
Nostromo – Joseph Conrad Q
Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
The Golden Bowl – Henry James
The Ambassadors – Henry James Q
The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers Q
The Immoralist – André Gide
The Wings of the Dove – Henry James Q
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad Q
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Q
Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
Kim – Rudyard Kipling Q
Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad Q
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
There's an argument going on in the New York Times at the moment about this subject. They are using the Boxall list, which is divided thematically.
Queenie is not going to reprint 1001 book titles as that would ruin her front page, but here for the delectation of readers is the list of sixty nine books on the list that were published in the 2000s.
Queenie has read twenty eight of them, approximately 40 per cent.
How many have you read?
Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro Q
Saturday – Ian McEwan Q
On Beauty – Zadie Smith Q
Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee Q
Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
The Sea – John Banville Q
The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
The Master – Colm Tóibín Q - not quite finished
Vanishing Point – David Markson
The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell Q
Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
The Colour – Rose Tremain
Thursbitch – Alan Garner
The Light of Day – Graham Swift
What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon Q
Islands – Dan Sleigh
Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry Q
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters Q
The Double – José Saramago Q
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer Q
Unless – Carol Shields Q
Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami Q
The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor Q
That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern Q
In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
Shroud – John Banville
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides Q
Youth – J.M. Coetzee Q
Dead Air – Iain Banks
Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald Q
Platform – Michael Houellebecq
Schooling – Heather McGowan
Atonement – Ian McEwan Q
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen Q
Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
The Body Artist – Don DeLillo Q
Fury – Salman Rushdie
At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill Q
Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
Life of Pi – Yann Martel Q
The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
White Teeth – Zadie Smith Q
The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
Under the Skin – Michel Faber
Ignorance – Milan Kundera
Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
City of God – E.L. Doctorow
How the Dead Live – Will Self
The Human Stain – Philip Roth Q
The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood Q
After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates Q
Pastoralia – George Saunders
Queenie is not going to reprint 1001 book titles as that would ruin her front page, but here for the delectation of readers is the list of sixty nine books on the list that were published in the 2000s.
Queenie has read twenty eight of them, approximately 40 per cent.
How many have you read?
Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro Q
Saturday – Ian McEwan Q
On Beauty – Zadie Smith Q
Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee Q
Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
The Sea – John Banville Q
The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
The Master – Colm Tóibín Q - not quite finished
Vanishing Point – David Markson
The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell Q
Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
The Colour – Rose Tremain
Thursbitch – Alan Garner
The Light of Day – Graham Swift
What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon Q
Islands – Dan Sleigh
Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry Q
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters Q
The Double – José Saramago Q
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer Q
Unless – Carol Shields Q
Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami Q
The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor Q
That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern Q
In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
Shroud – John Banville
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides Q
Youth – J.M. Coetzee Q
Dead Air – Iain Banks
Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald Q
Platform – Michael Houellebecq
Schooling – Heather McGowan
Atonement – Ian McEwan Q
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen Q
Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
The Body Artist – Don DeLillo Q
Fury – Salman Rushdie
At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill Q
Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
Life of Pi – Yann Martel Q
The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
White Teeth – Zadie Smith Q
The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
Under the Skin – Michel Faber
Ignorance – Milan Kundera
Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
City of God – E.L. Doctorow
How the Dead Live – Will Self
The Human Stain – Philip Roth Q
The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood Q
After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates Q
Pastoralia – George Saunders
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Galway Bay rocks Russia
"How a Champions League final commentary has turned into extended musings upon Peig Sayers' life is a mystery to me," writes Rob Cotter. "Never mind Man Utd or Chelsea, nostalgic Toasted Heretic fans are the real winners here tonight."
'Xactly.
Thanks Baz. You write good commentary.
Your sister, Queenie.
And thanks Queen Mum for clearing up the strawberry flower pinching issue.
Families and technology.
They're the greatest.
'Xactly.
Thanks Baz. You write good commentary.
Your sister, Queenie.
And thanks Queen Mum for clearing up the strawberry flower pinching issue.
Families and technology.
They're the greatest.
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