Abbey Hill Literary Quick Lit Challenge - Big Fat Prize::View Prize

Abbey Hill Literary Quick Lit Challenge - Big Fat Prize::View Prize

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The BBC Meme-100 Books List

Meme [meem--rhymes with gene, dream, cream)
n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another; a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.

One of the latest Memes to hit Facebook and email is the "BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books listed." It then asks, "How do your reading habits stack up?" I have not been able to authenticate this and there seem to be a lot of theories on how it has become established; generally though, its basis is thought to be the 2003 BBC Big Read search for the nation's best loved novels but it has obviously morphed to include a number of more current books as well. There are several incarnations of this "test" and since it looks like fun and has to do with books I've decided to try it. Special thanks to M for sending it to me!

1) Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read.

2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.

3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X+ (re-read at least once a year)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (never read and never will)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible (all of it!) X++ (several times-a continuous lifetime project)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X+
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier*
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X* (working on right now)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens*
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy X
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carrol X

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy X
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (read some of them)
34 Emma - Jane Austen X+ (re-read once a year)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X+ (re-read once a year)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden*
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
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 X* (working on)
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X (loved it until the end-then hated it)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X+ (re-read once a year)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X+
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray*
80 Possession - AS Byatt*
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro X
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert*
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry*
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X+
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X+
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X

Total Books Read: 58

Obviously, the "test" doesn't mean anything--if you look at the books that you have to read in school most people will reach the six and beyond. If anything it was a good exercise in reminding me of a few books that I've been wanting to read and have neglected. Time to get out my library card.

I'd love to see your list!

Salynne©

Pawns in a Political Game

My apologies for not blogging. Life has completely taken over and my time has not been my own. I'm writing in my head and have had snippets of time to get some words on paper each day but I just have not had the energy to blog.

The first thing that happened is that my husbands company told us to go ahead and start making plans for a move September 1st. We actually went house hunting and found a home in Kamloops but were leery of putting in an offer until we had written confirmation. We also started manically working on our home to get it ready for sale. My hands are raw from gardening and moving bricks as well as painting and staining-not to mention a myriad of colors. It's amazing how much "clean" up work must be done before you sell a house.

So we were all gearing up and then we got a call that things are stalled. The company and union seem to agree but the labour board is involved and there are some political goings on that are hampering our case. It's contract time and there are a lot of tactical operations going on. Then several of the key people involved left for holidays on Monday meaning we will have to wait at least three weeks until they get back.

It was extremely disappointing-we were all geared up emotionally and had started gearing up our physical environments too so it has been quite a let down. The Union representative is saying they are "cautiously optimistic" about our case but the company representative says that it may not happen at all due to the maneuvering. We appear to be stuck in the middle of a political game.

Our life is completely upside down, we don't know what is happening but we are keeping the same schedule and getting everything into place in our current home just in case. My husband will be able to apply for job postings in the area but we may be delayed in our quest to get to Kamloops.

I wrote a couple of posts last night and have scheduled them for the next few days. We also decided last night that we need to slow down a little and live a little in between all that needs to be done--that should mean I will have more time for writing.

Salynne ©2009

Eskimos and Rainbows

Marc's Daily Writing Practice. He's written for 400 days and that inspires me!
Here is my comment and story that was inspired by his prompt Eskimos and Rainbows.
Be sure to check out his poem too!
http://daily-writing.blogspot.com/

Marc-Congratulations on 400 days! You're an inspiration to those of us who hope to get there ourselves.

Your prompt totally inspired me the moment I read it and I knew instantly that I had to write down a story based about something that happened in my childhood. Funny though how your poem is not far off from my experience and perhaps its a coincidence but today I'm supposed to painting my bathroom instead of writing.....Hope you enjoy...


Emily was four and a half years old. Clad in her puffy little snowsuit and sparkly fuchsia skidoo boots she looked like a miniature pink version of the Michelin man. Her pink scarf wrapped around her head so that only her eyes showed and she toddled rather walked from the front door of her home towards the snow fort she and her older brother had built the day before.

In Emily’s mind she was not Emily, the little girl who lived at 242 Gladmoren Park in Regina, Saskatchewan. She knew where she lived that was for sure. Her mommy and daddy were so happy and proud that she could recite her address and on normal, everyday days, she was Emily who lived at 242 Gladmoren Park in Regina, Saskatchewan. Today though was a special day and she wasn’t Emily at all; she was Anuk the Eskimo living at the North Pole.

She bent down and crawled through the entrance of her frosty little home. The room was not large but big enough to fit her and her ten year old brother, John. They had spent almost the entire day yesterday burrowing into one of the large snow banks at the edge of the yard. John had smoothed the inside of the igloo fort, created a couple of stools for sitting on and had even poked a stick through the wall to create a small window. Today John was at school which made Emily sad because she wasn’t old enough to go there yet. “Next year”, mommy said. “You’ll go to school when it is fall time and the leaves turn orange and red.” It wasn’t fall time today, Emily thought. This was winter because there was lots of bright, white snow and there were no leaves on the trees and that meant that John was at school and she had to play by herself today.

The sun shone boldly through the little opening and illuminated the all white décor of her North Pole home. Emily perched herself on one of the stools and then with her mitten clad hand reached into her pocket, clasped the hard irregularly shaped object within and slowly drew it out. Her grandma’s rhinestone brooch lay in her palm. Grandma had given it to her for her dress up box and she had told Emily it had magical powers. Slowly and very carefully so as not to drop her precious cargo she moved her hand into the beam of light.

Sparkling jewelled colors burst around the room; rainbows of blue, green, red and purple splashed everywhere across the walls, the floor, across Emily herself. The colours danced and moved covering every surface. Anuk the Eskimo’s eyes sparkled as brightly as the colours surrounding her, her lips parted in a smile and her head titled back as she laughed in delight at what a clever little girl she was to paint her igloo in magic rainbows.

Salynne ©2009

The Cat is Out of the Bag

The cat is out of the bag--Yes, it is true-we are leaving Vancouver and moving to Kamloops. It is with a great deal of mixed emotion that I say that. Everything that I detailed in yesterday's story or some version of it has really happened. The only thing that has not taken place yet is the my father-in-law's brain scan and the resulting Doctor's letter. That will not arrive until next week and is a formality but a necessity as far as my husbands company & union are concerned.

My husband's transfer has been approved and he will be given a position in Kamloops. We asked the company to provide something by early September so that our daughter can be enrolled in school and will make the transition easier for her. The only issue is that it does not leave us with a great deal of time; they chose to leave the approval until the eleventh hour.

This is not a decision that we have made lightly; some of you know that it has been brewing for over a year. Dear hubby grew up in Kamloops and we started our married life in Cache Creek. In the mid-1980's he was forcibly transferred to Vancouver; it was a case of move or don't work for the company any more. Being a young and "married without children" couple we enjoyed living in New Westminster, Burnaby and Kitsilano. After both our children were born and our oldest daughter was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease we moved closer to BC Children's Hospital. Kamloops became our refuge and during those difficult years all we could think about was returning to live closer to family. A move never seemed to work out though and we resigned ourselves to living in the Lower Mainland.

Eventually, when we moved back to New Westminster and purchased our 1910 Arts & Crafts bungalow we felt as though we had come almost full circle. After becoming very involved with the local deaf community and finding friends we chose as family we were content with our life and circumstances. Three years ago my father, who lived in Kelowna at the time, started to have memory lapses and could no longer care well for himself; it meant that we looked after him long distance for a time but he eventually moved into a suite in our basement and we adjusted from being a family of three to four.

Then last year my husbands 91 year old grandmother had to be put into a care facility due to Alzheimer's and at the same time we became aware of the fact that my father-in-law was also starting to have memory issues. Within weeks my mother-in-law was diagnosed with a heart condition.

The writing was on the wall. My husband's brother has never been in a position to assist his parents and we knew that the responsibility for care would fall on us. Having gone through looking after my father long distance we remember all too well the physical and emotional toll it took on our family. We started to consider moving back to Kamloops as an option last year and made inquiries. Things did not work out at that time but after receiving a panicked call from my mother-in-law in March about my father-in-laws memory we decided it was time to gird up and try again. This time our request has been successful.

I will be leaving my position at the hospital, some really great co-workers and my writing buddies which does make me sad. Thank goodness for email and blogs--even if I cannot be present in person we can still communicate! We will also be leaving our very, very, dear chosen family although those relationships are cemented and they will continue no matter where we live. We also have dear friends in Kamloops too, we'll be closer to our family and able to help them out plus this moves means we are starting an exciting new chapter in our life.

In one of my previous blogs I talked about how my writing often parallels what is happening in my sphere of influence and how recent stories have included people who are symbolically going through doors to a new life. My characters went through their doors, now its my turn.

Salynne ©2009

*Some Names have been Changed

Salynne's husband David* handed her the sheet of paper and gave her a tight lipped smile. The letter had an unfamiliar doctors letterhead on it and the words on the page did not portend good things. The first paragraph described how Allen*, Salynne's father-in-law, was having memory issues and that a brain scan showed degeneration. Alzheimer's was no longer a guess but a reality. Marina*, his wife, after a myriad of tests and an EKG, showed signs of stress and a weakened heart muscle. The conclusion summed everything up by saying that these two elderly people were definitely needing assistance and support and would continue to do so.

Her hands shaking slightly, Salynne sat down on the chair in her dining room and placed the paper on the table. "So, I guess its final then". She flashed a glance at the expectant look on her sixteen year old daughter, Eliza's* face.

"Yes, is looks like it." said David. "The company and the union have agreed to give me a compassionate move in light of everything that we're going to be facing. We should be in Kamloops by September 1st and Eliza should be able to start Grade 11 in her new school. This isn't exactly the way I thought we would get back to my home town though. Somehow I'd always imagined that we would move there only when we retired. "

"I know what you mean, but we have been wanting to go back there for over twenty years. It's true its not the way we thought it would be but we've got friends there and it will be so much easier to care for your parents."

"Yes, but how are you feeling about giving up your job here?"

"We've talked about that before and I am really ready to move on." Salynne reflected for a moment on their oldest daughter who had died over ten years earlier and how her experiences as the mother of child who'd used the hospital system had prepared her for her current position. "Working at the hospital has kept me connected to Raven* on certain levels but I feel I'm at a point in my life where I'm wanting to grow and change. Sometimes I've felt that my work has drained me so much emotionally that I don't have anything left to give to either you or Eliza."

Eliza spoke up, "It hasn't been that bad Mom, but I think a change would be good for us all. I'm looking forward to spending some time with my friends there and I'm kind of excited about making some new friends. There are things I'm unsure about but on the whole I think moving will be a good thing."

"Too true. With selling our house here we'll be able to buy something that can meet our needs in Kamloops and it may be that with the reduction in our mortgage I may not have to work at all!" said Salynne with a twinkle in her eye. "Can you imagine me as a lady of leisure?"

"Somehow I don't think that will happen" laughed David. "You have too many dreams and too much energy to just sit on your butt all of the time. Somehow I can't see you being on the next installment of "The Real Housewives of Kamloops".

"Hey mom, that would be really funny. Can't you just see a camera man following you around as you go to your weight watchers meetings or shopping at Value Village? It could be a whole new reality show!"

"Ok, you two, enough. I think you're right though, sitting around and doing nothing isn't my style. A change is in order. Maybe I'll work in a bookstore or spend some more time writing and getting published. I kind of feel like the whole world is opening up before us and our choices are endless. Who knows what lies ahead."

"Well, I know what's coming for the next month, that's for sure". David put one hand down and leaned on the kitchen counter; with his other he rubbed his temples. "I've got to finish off whatever renovating we've started on this house and get it ready for sale. By this time next month, let's say August 15th, we'd better be seeing a "For Sale" sign out on the boulevard. At the same time we'll have to travel up to Kamloops and start looking for a house".

"I want a bedroom with a window seat and I'm putting in my order in for a pool. It would be totally, totally awesome to have my friends over for pool parties and even just for hanging out."

Salynne smiled at Eliza. "I'm sure that we can see about the pool-no promises mind you, but I'll find a real estate agent tomorrow and we'll see what we can find in our price range. This whole moving thing; it's exciting and terrifying all at the same time isn't it?"

"Totally", admitted Eliza. David nodded.

"It's like we've been standing in front of a door and waiting. Now, we're reaching out to turn the knob and open the door onto our new lives in Kamloops. I guess the next step, before we actually open the door and step through, is to tie up any loose ends and start packing."

"Well, I don't know about you mom, but the first thing I have to do is tell my friends here that we're moving. You should probably tell yours too."

Salynne let out a sigh. "You're right. I'm not sure how I'll do it though. I guess I could phone everyone individually or email; then again maybe I should write a story in my blog...

Salynne ©2009

Childhood - The One-Minute Writer Prompt

Today's Writing Prompt: Childhood

http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com/

Complete this thought: "If everyone had grown up the way I did, this world would be..."

just as interesting a place as it is now. We all have different inherent qualities as well as learned behaviors and each of us reacts to circumstances and events differently. I came out of childhood with both strengths and insecurities. Experiences that energized and pushed me could have caused someone with a different disposition grief and anguish. Something that was overwhelming for me may have made another person rise to the challenge. It makes me appreciate the incredible variety of humankind all the more.

Salynne ©2009

Two Haiku Tuesday on Saturday

Just a quick piece of work written on Two Haiku Tuesday last week-be sure to check out the blog. Theme for this week - The Doctor's Office.

http://daily-writing.blogspot.com/

A flu brings me here
Waiting to see the Doctor
“It’s nothing, relax!”

Built up in my mind
Never something that is benign
Could it be cancer?

Salynne 2009

Reprieve in Kamloops

It's been a crazy week and a lot of things have happened, including taking my daughter to the doctor for more tests. She was finally diagnosed with a syndrome that is rare in children and teenagers. It's called Mal de Dubarquement and is a condition that makes you feel as though you are constantly on a boat. Thankfully it is not life-threatening but something that she will have to live with.

Our family is also in the middle of renovations so my daughter and I have run away from home to beautiful Kamloops. Today we enjoyed culture at their annual festival called Art in Park and for the rest of the week we are planning on reading, writing and relaxing. I've got my camera so will take some photos and perhaps blog about the area and what I've seen.

Salynne ©2009