Four Things

I've seen this one going around, most recently at Iliana's, and I think it's really fun. Plus, since book reviews have been lacking from this blog and since things won't get any better until after our handfasting this weekend, I thought this would be a nice, quick post to do.

Four jobs I've had in my life:
1. Waitress
2. Marketing Officer
3. Au Pair
4. Translator

Four books I would read over and over:
1. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
2. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
3. The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Four places I have lived:
1. Queens, New York, USA
2. Manila, The Philippines
3. Seoul, South Korea,
4. Warsaw, Poland

Four books I would recommend (that I read in 2011):
1. The Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale (audiobook)
2. The Little Lady Agency by Hester Browne
3. The Rights of the Reader by Daniel Pennac
4. The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson

Four places I have been:
1. Barcelona, Spain
2. Dublin, Ireland
3. Beijing, China
4. Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Pizza
2. Peanut butter
3. Falafel
4. The Chili con Carne my husband makes

Four of my favorite drinks:
1. Red wine
2. Lemonade
3. Ginger Ale
4. Mango juice

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. At home with my family
2. Wherever, catching up with my girlfriends
3. Visiting my parents in Poland
4. On our upcoming vacation in Wales

Four things that are very special in my life:
1. My family
2. My health
3. My books
4. My theatre activities

Four bloggers I hope will do this meme - why don't you all do it? It's fun! :-)

Diversity in Reading

I saw this meme over at Iliana's and was curious to see how I'd do. I tend to think that I'm quite good at reading a variety of authors, but let's see!

1. Name the last book by a female author that you’ve read.
I read mostly female authors so the answer to this is The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale, which I finished this week. And actually, looking at my list of books read this year, the balance between male and female authors isn't as bad as I thought!

2. Name the last book by an African or African-American author that you’ve read.
I know that this is terrible to admit but Africa is last on my list of regions that interest me. I just don't connect with it and I only have natural curiosity for it, but no passion. Asia, especially the Far East, is the region that I'm drawn to most, for some reason. Strange, eh? Having said that, I have several books by African authors on my TBR shelf, because I do want to find out more about this continent... so I am trying to branch out! The last book I read in this category was in December - Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

Do you connect with certain regions more than with others?

3. Name one from a Latino/a author.
I read The Witch of Portobello by Paolo Coelho earlier this year. I keep meaning to read more Latino/a authors, especially those of magical realism. Any suggestions?

4. How about one from an Asian country or Asian-American?
The Good Women of China by Xinran - fantastic book.

5. What about a GLBT writer?
Hmmm... this might be where my weakness is. I read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson last year... I'm not always aware if the authors I read are or are not GLBT, to be perfectly honest.

6. Why not name an Israeli/Arab/Turk/Persian writer, if you’re feeling lucky?
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi was one my first graphic novels and I now love the genre and the author.

7. Any other “marginalized” authors you’ve read lately?
I suppose that Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky would count, since the author was a Jew during WWII, so definitely marginalised.

I didn't do too badly! Go on, fill this in yourselves, you know you want to! And make sure you let me know in the comments so I can check out your answers! :-)

BBC Book Meme

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here... I'd bet some of us book bloggers can prove them wrong! ;-)

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. (i put mine in bold)
2) Tally your total at the bottom.
2) Put in a note with your total in the subject

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible S
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tart
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read 35... so many good books still left to read!!!

How many have you read?

One Book Meme

I saw this at Iliana's and thought it sounded fun!

One book you're currently reading: Out by Natsuo Kirino
One book that changed your life: The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (hmm, must re-read that soon!)
One book you'd want on a deserted island: an anthology of literature of some sort...
One book you've read more than once: Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
One book you've never been able to finish: Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
One book that made you laugh: The Secret Dreamlife of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
One book that made you cry: The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
One book you keep re-reading: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
One book you've been meaning to read: The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama
One book you believe everyone should read: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Finally,
Grab the nearest book. Open it to page 56. Find the fifth sentence…

"She shook her head and the naked woman in the mirror shook hers as well." - from Out by Natsuo Kirino

Let me know if you play along, I wouldn't want to miss your answers!

Meme: A-Z of favorites

I saw this meme over at Bookgirl's Nightstand and here I am - as you know I cannot resist making another list, even if it's of books I already read! Th original idea comes from Simon at Stuck in a Book and it looks like it's been picked up by many blogs - thanks Simon! The point is to make an alphabetical list of favorite books, by author. I didn't think of books for each letter, but since they're meant to be favorite books I'd rather leave them blank than fill in just anything. Anyone else want to play? I'm sure you all need more book ideas as much as I do! :-)

Axelsson, Majgull - April Witch
Beecher Stowe, Harriet - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Coelho, Paolo - Veronika Decides To Die
Davidson, MaryJanice - Undead and Unwed
E?
Fowles, John - The Magus
Gaiman, Neil - American Gods
Haddon, Mark - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Ishiguro, Kazuo - Never Let Me Go
J?
Kinsella, Sophie - Confessions of a Shopaholic
Levycka, Marina - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Mitchell, David - Cloud Atlas
Niffenegger, Audrey - The Time Traveller's Wife
O?
Pierre, DBC - Vernon God Little
Q?
Robinson, Elisabeth - The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters
Setterfield, Diane - The Thirteenth Tale
Tan, Amy - The Joy Luck Club
U?
V?
Wells, Rebecca - The Divines Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Yamada, Taichi - Strangers
Z?