Read any good books lately?

Well would'ya look at that... a whole month since my last blog. I'm sorry. 'Just been totally swamped with lots of life stuff. Though that's no excuse...

Anyway, 'found this list thing on Expensive Mistakes and Cheap Thrills' blog and thought it was kinda fun. Take a look:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you started but did not finish.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Highlight the ones you still want to read but just have not had a chance yet!
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 or less and force books upon them.

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

Cool, there you have it.

By the way, I've just finished reading the latest Marian Keyes - good read! (This Charming Man). If you're into her stuff and haven't yet read it, well, what are you waiting for? :)

Okay, bye for now.

More nice, less nasty

It's not surprising that everyone's feeling a little down about everything from political doom & gloom, an ever-increasing petrol price (up another 55c this morning) and the scary inflation that's part of the vicious circle. I've certainly been doing my fair share of moaning) though I don't think that's a bad thing. On the contrary, I think it's important that people talk about issues and tackle them head-on instead of the government style head-in-the-sand routine). Nonetheless, I think it's time for an arb post with more of the positive and less of the nasty. So here goes...

The other week, I joined some of my closest friends for a seriously fabulous evening at Madame Zingara - and what a party! I'd heard from others who had been before that it was a good evening out but it completely exceeded all of my expectations. (In case you've never heard of Madame Zingara before, here's a little background info... A few years ago, Cape Town was home to two sister restaurants - Madame Zingara and Cara Lazuli. Both were gorgeously decadent venues - hugely popular, until Madame Zingara was pretty much razed to the ground in a fire (very dramatic!). It really was very sad. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the Madame Zingara guys found themselves in Belgium where they bought a big circus tent and hired a bunch of talented perfomers. They then brought them back to South Africa where they set up the tent (the Theatre of Dreams) and started sell-out shows where they feed and entertain 400 people a night. Very cool.

The second you enter the marquee, you're transported into a Moulin-Rouge-esque world of costumes and gaiety (for lack of a better word). The atmosphere is insanely jovial and all the people who work there are in fancy dress. Not to be left out, there's a little shop where you can stock up on wigs, masks, boas and whatever else takes your fancy - and all at a very reasonable price. (I went with a tiara which was a lot more subtle than the cow hat and 70s afro wig my friends bought. Anyway...) The food is amazing!!! (I had the chocolate chilli steak - incredible!) And the show is awesome (think Cirque de Soleil, though on a smaller scale). The music ranges from dramatic to beautiful to seductive and is the perfect accompaniment to the mind and body-bending feats performed by the artists. Though to be fair, even as I write this, I know I'm not doing it nearly enough justice. Please, do yourself a favour and go see for yourself! One of the bonuses of performing in a tent is that it makes the show mobile. I went to Madame Zingara's when it was in Cape Town, but it has since moved to Durban. Ticket's aren't cheap - they range from R300 to R350 but trust me, it's well worth it! Book early though. Tickets are scarce. Like chicken teeth.

We took a ridiculous amount of photos that night, but considering our attire and state, I'll spare my buddies (and I) the indignity of public humiliation and instead, show you what the tent looks like from the inside. Now close your eyes and picture it with people.

Hmmmm... let's see - what other good stuff is happening? Well, I'm off to the James Blunt concert soon (at the end of May) - looking forward to that. And of course, the girls are back with a vengeance in the Sex and the City movie - out May 30th! Can't wait. I've missed them! More good news is that Marian Keyes' latest novel has been released. (Overseas, that is.) It's available from online shops but I'm hoping they'll publish it locally because it's horribly expensive at the moment. Keyes is one of my all-time favourite authors and I can't wait to read her latest offering!

Other cool stuff... I was checking out the SA blogging forum I'm on and one of the other bloggers had a post about Aardman's 'Animals Save the Planet' shorts. (Aardman - ring a bell? Wallace and Gromit, Angry Kid, Creature Comforts, Morph [back in the day!!!] to name but a few.) Anyway, they've put together a few shorts with handy 'save the planet' tips. Educational and entertaining to boot! Check it out. (Thanks to Darrin at http://www.dazland.com/. That's where I spotted it.)


Other positive stuff? I woke up to the sounds of Abba this morning. Before you start dry heaving, I'll have you know I think Abba is great, so BRING IT! It was especially surprising to hear Abba as my alarm radio is tuned to a talk radio station - but they're doing this 'feel-good-morning-song' thing and today Dancing Queen cracked the nod. 'Made this Sleeping Queen's morning a little less ugly.

And now for the parting gift: hidden in between all the nasty and depressing stories on News 24 today, I came across this one. Am I the only one who thinks it's hilarious? Watch out boys and girls of London-town - don't let your ass fall victim to the mysterious butt-grabber. Word to the wise. Out.