BOOKS! I LOVE BOOKS!


I found this on Lickmysticks blog and couldn't resist. (I could've finished those snakey socks and knitted half my stash up if I stopped p*****g about on the net!)

In the list of books below, bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a ten-foot pole, put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of.

1. +The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. +Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. +To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. *A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. +Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) (or then again, maybe not)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden) Or will I? since I've seen the film. But films are never as good, are they?
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald) I've read 'The Way the Crow Flies' - brill!
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) Don't know, having seen the film...
28. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. *Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. *The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. *Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. *The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. *The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. +I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. +The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible (though think I'd skip the begats!)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) (well - nearly finished it. I threw it aside when she threw herself under a train).
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) (Would I read it?, wouldn't I?)
48. +Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. *Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. *The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) (I think I started this once!)
62. *The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy) (but probably won't get round to reading)
64. Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. *Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. *One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. *The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo) (Don't know if I'd get round to reading this really)
70. +The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. +Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. *Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez) (not quite true - have heard of it vaguely)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje) (started and didn't finish)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett) (I'm not sure if I didn't read this as a kid)
76. *The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. *A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)7
9. *The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. *Not Wanted On the Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. *Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) Though never finished it.
88. *The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. *Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. *In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. *The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. *The Outsiders (S. E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch) tried and failed to read this.
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. *The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. +Ulysses (James Joyce) Having seen my DH struggle with this (and he has the patience of Job) - I KNOW I wouldn't be able to crack it.

So where did this list of books come from? I shall have to investigate further! *
I've read 45% and I haven't heard of 23% which is quite a few books for me to look up. I knew Mount Toobie was teeteringly tall before this but is it possible to go higher? Always.
Also quite a number of classics and good reads missing, methinks.

All you folk that have books on your bookshelf that you've read and would probably never read again - haven't you heard of bookcrossing?

* Followed the link back half a dozen blogs (like six degrees of separation!) and it appears to have started with Shana who just says "she borrowed it from someone cool". So there the trail goes cold.

If you have a go at this leave a comment so I can see the result, ta.

Thinking BOOKS...

Just before the New Year closes - I'm back from Thailand (where I had a fab time what seems like years ago already, and took over 400 photos!) and promise to blog a bit more diligently in 2007. (Sounds suspiciously like a new year's resolution to me - I'd better stop that right away! Get a grip!).

One of my all time favourite authors:
Octavia E. Butler has published 10 science fiction novels over the last 20 years and has been nominated for numerous awards in the field, winning three of its highest honors: the Hugo, Nebula and James Tiptree awards. In 1995 she was awarded a MacArthur Grant -- part of the genius program to reward those who push the boundaries of their fields.
Novels & Series:
Patternmaster (1976)
Mind of My Mind (1977)
Kindred (1979)
Survivor (1978)
Wild Seed (1980) (Tiptree Award winner)
Clay's Ark (1984)
Xenogenesis Series:Dawn (1987)Adulthood Rites (1988)Imago (1989)
Parable of the Sower (1994)
Collections:
Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995)
Short Fiction:
"Speech Sounds" (1983) (Hugo Award winner)
"Bloodchild" (1984) (Hugo and Nebula award winner)

I've just finished 'Clay's Ark' - a short but thought provoking tale of alien invasion and a bleak look at the future of humanity. I find it's selling for over £18 on Amazon! And I'm offering it up for nothing on the next Bookswap here (That'll be the 'B' one)
Hmm - I've also read 'Kindred' and the xenogenesis series. Still leaves a few more.

Amazon has a place to make LISTS soooo,

Here's my 21 all time favourite unputdownable reads... (my age? - I wish!)


The World According to Garp (Black Swan) by John Irving

£6.39 Used & New from: £2.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5*
The first Irving novel I read - an epic of women, wrestling, humour, tragedy.



The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

£4.49 Used & New from: £1.14
Average Customer Rating: 4.5*
Absolutely compelling - I learnt so much about the Belgian Congo, and Africa.



The Stand (The Complete and Uncut Edition) by Stephen King

£6.29 Used & New from: £2.39
Average Customer Rating: 4.5*
I've been a Stephen King fan since I found Carrie in a second hand bookshop. This is probably his best: Apocalyptic, huge! King tells a thumping good yarn.



His Dark Materials Gift Set: "Northern Lights", "The Subtle Knife", "The Amber Spyglass" : His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

£13.86 Used & New from: £13.71
Average Customer Rating: 4.5*
Was recommended this by the teenager next door: fab, escapist and better than Harry Potter.



Kindred (Bluestreak) by Octavia E. Butler

£6.41 Used & New from: £3.91
Average Customer Rating: 5*
First Butler book I read: sadly she died this year, so there'll be no more from this brilliant author. Butler explores race and gender in this magic story.



Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

£6.39 Used & New from: £2.98
Average Customer Rating: 5*
I was trapped in hospital with nothing else to read or I probably wouldn't have finished this classic anti war tale: I was so glad I did - wow.



The Lord of the Rings (3 Book Box set) by J.R.R. Tolkien

Used & New from: £20.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5*
As a hardened fantasy reader, I've got to include this! Just skip the tedious historical battle stories and stick to the nitty gritty.




The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake

£10.40 Used & New from: £4.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.5*
Another blockbuster and cult classic that I adore. These books had me laughing out loud at times. Totally surreal - the last book in the trilogy upsets all your assumptions. Masterpiece.



The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey

£5.99 Used & New from: £0.01
Average Customer Rating: 5*
Read this years ago, but it has stood the test of time. Romantic but good escapist stuff of the kind I eat up.



The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper

Used & New from: £30.00
Average Customer Rating: 5*
Another of my favourite authors: interesting questions posed in a great story.




The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

£6.39 Used & New from: £3.52
Average Customer Rating: 5*
Steinbeck is another excellent storyteller - this tale is the story of a family forced to evacuate the 'Dust Bowl' during the Great Depression in USA.



Fear Nothing by Dean R. Koontz

£6.39 Used & New from: £0.01
Average Customer Rating: 4*
Couldn't include King without putting in Koontz. This story features one of my favourite characters, Christopher Snow, and I love Koontz' humour.



Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore

£5.59 Used & New from: £0.60
Average Customer Rating: 4*
No 13 - how appropriate. I was introduced to Mr Moore by bookcrossing. He makes me laugh out LOUD. This was the first I read - but go read em all.



American Gods by Neil Gaiman

£7.99 Used & New from: £4.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5*
I sense themes emerging in my list. This book is a bit of horror, scifi, fantasy, and humour but, above all, a bloomin' good yarn.



Dune by Frank Herbert

£6.39 Used & New from: £0.01
Average Customer Rating: 5*
I wasn't that bothered by the sequels, but this first book is masterful. Herbert creates an entirely believable, fascinating new world called Arrakis.



Watership Down (Puffin Books) by Richard Adams

£5.59 Used & New from: £0.01
Average Customer Rating: 4.5*
An epic tale of bunnies with all my favourite components.



Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

£6.39 Used & New from: £0.67
Average Customer Rating: 4*
This is the only book by Mieville I've read, but I'll be back, to be sure. Fantastic, wierd imaginings - brilliant writing, and British too!



The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid

£5.59 Used & New from: £0.01
Average Customer Rating: 4*
Hard to know which of McDermid's novels to choose - they're all great, but in the end I went for the Tony Hill (psychological profiler) + Carol Jordan (DI) no. 1. McDermid was my intro to this genre.



Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

£6.79 Used & New from: £5.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5*
Read this whilst traipsing around China. It is the story of three generations of women with the huge backdrop of China's tumultous history in the twentieth century.



Merlin Trilogy by Mary Stewart

£14.27 Used & New from: £12.19
Average Customer Rating: 5*
I read this a long time ago - and remember being entranced. I lived not far from Caerfyrddin (Merlin's hill) hence my interest. Stewart puts a new twist on the Arthurian legend..



Toxic Shock (A V. I. Warshawski Novel) by Sara Paretsky

Used & New from: £0.01
Which VI Warshawski novel to pick? could have been any of them! VI is my kind of hero - tough, sassy, James Bond kind of luck but my kind of politics.

Bookcrossing, or ‘How to turn the world into a library’.

Have you a shelf full of books gathering dust, that you are unlikely ever to read again? Or have you a book that you loved so much that you want to share it with everybody? Would you like to find a free book lying on a park bench one day, waiting for you to pick it up and take it home? If any of these apply, then ‘Bookcrossing’ could well be for you… So what’s it all about?

How It Started:
Bookcrossing.com is a labour of love, conceived and maintained by an American company called ‘Humankind Systems Inc.’ which develops software and exploits the internet. Seeking a break from the boredom of creating yet another e-commerce website, and yet another email server application, Humankind company director Ron Hornbaker wanted to create an internet community site that would be innovative, that would give back to the world at large and that would give him warm, fuzzy feelings whenever he worked on it. Bookcrossing.com was the result.

In March, 2001 Hornbaker and his wife Kaori were inspired by two websites: the Phototag.org website, which tracks disposable cameras loosed into the wild, and WheresGeorge.com, which tracks U.S. currency by serial number. They realised that the same premise could be applied to books. It was a great surprise to Ron when he discovered that BookCrossing had not been done on any significant scale before. By 3 A.M. the same night as the idea was born, they had decided on the name (zero hits for "bookcrossing" on Google), registered the domain, and Kaori had sketched the running book logo on a crossing sign. The rest is history.
The BookCrossing site went live in April 2001, and since then thousands have joined up (currently 466,677) and millions of books have been registered (currently 3,027,361). No doubt because of its American beginnings, BookCrossing is much more popular in English-speaking countries than elsewhere, but numbers worldwide are steadily growing, and there are bookcrossers in most areas of the globe. Articles have been written about the site in countless magazines, and it has appeared regularly on TV and radio. In 2004, the word 'bookcrossing' was even added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary! (n. the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.).


How Does It Work?
If you want to join up and start releasing and tracking your books obviously you need access to the Internet – but with free access available in libraries, and internet cafes springing up in many places, this isn’t too difficult even without a home PC. Visit www.bookcrossing.com and register by providing a username and password, along with a few other details, and you're set. All your details are kept completely private - it's up to you how much you reveal about yourself onsite.
Next you will need to decide which books you’d like to ‘release in the wild’ and track, and register them. You will do this by clicking on the 'register book' link and following the simple instructions. Remember to write the Book Crossing Identification Number (BCID) you are given somewhere inside the book - people generally write it inside the front cover, along with the BookCrossing web address and instructions ( the three ‘R’s: READ, REGISTER, RELEASE) - so that hopefully your finder will know it is a special book and will know how to ‘journal’ it themselves when they find it. To make this identification easier, you can download labels to print off and stick inside the book cover, or even buy beautifully illustrated bookplates with bookcrossing instructions ready made from the Bookcrossing website supply shop.
When you register your book on the website you will be requested to write a ‘journal entry’ which can be as brief or long as you like: for example you can say whether you liked it or not (there is an optional scale out of ten), and/or give a brief synopsis of the story.
The next step is to release it into ‘the wild’, otherwise known as leaving it somewhere for someone else to find, so the book can start its journey.

Releasing Books
You need to make it clear that the book is not left where you release it by mistake (sadly, there are many registered books languishing in ‘lost property’) so put a ‘Post it’ Note (or similar) on the front cover of the book to let everyone knows it's there for the taking. There are plenty of examples of what to write on the website, but something like 'This is a free book, it isn't lost, please pick it up and take it home!' will get the message across.
You then need to think about where to release the book. This is fun. Anywhere folk are likely to linger will do - books have been released in cafés, in university lecture theatres, in waiting rooms. Obviously one needs to be aware of sensitive locations such as airports and train stations where a left book could cause a security alert. More exotic release locations have included a book being lodged in a crack half way up Haytor Rock (s’true) to another being wedged in a wreck at the bottom of The Mull of Sound in Scotland (scuba diving skills essential). I have released books in the Reception area at Bovey Tracey Community Hospital (very successful – waves to ‘Viking Maiden’!) and the Pizza Place (not so successful).

If abandoning your book to its fate doesn’t appeal, you can visit the bookcrossing ‘forums’ where other bookcrossers from all over the world meet to chat. Within the forums there are places to trade books, or offer them up as a ‘ring’ or ‘ray’. There are no rules – you can still give your registered book to a charity shop if that is your wish, or even pass it on to friends (who may decide to join bookcrossing themselves!). Either way, once the book has left your hands, you sit back and wait for the email saying someone else has 'caught' (found) it and made a journal entry of their own. If they go on to release it, you can follow its travels all over the world.

A lot of BookCrossing books are sadly never heard from again once they've been released. But don't give up if this happens to your book, just remember that someone somewhere may be reading and enjoying it, even if they haven't come online to say so. And there are many stories of bookcrossers receiving journal entries from books that they thought lost years before, having travelled around the world in the meantime.

Release Challenges
To vary the theme, many bookcrossers enjoy setting release challenges for themselves and others. An example might be 'Books about Christmas' to be released every week in December, or releasing gardening books in Public Parks and Gardens. Some Bookcrossers have attempted to release 'one book for every letter of the alphabet'. The website has a forum to discuss such adventures.

Finding Books
Lucky you if you are fortunate enough to find a BookCrossing book lying around somewhere. Its former owner will be anxious to hear what has happened to it, so head on over to the BookCrossing website and enter the BCID on the home page. You can join up if you want, or remain an Anonymous Finder. Then you can read the book and release the book yourself, or keep it as part of your permanent collection on your bookshelf: it's entirely up to you!
You can increase your chances of finding a released book by signing up for release notifications. Look for the ‘Go Hunting’ section of the bookcrossing website, where you can follow simple instructions to allow you to receive emails every time someone releases a book in your area. When you receive your release alert, finding the book is like participating in a treasure hunt!
Other Ways to BookCross
Releasing a book in the wild isn't the only way of letting your book travel. There are various methods of sharing your book with other bookcrossers, all of which can be organised through the BookCrossing forum:
- Bookrays: a bookray is a single book posted from one bookcrosser to another, following an order usually set in advance but often added to along the way. The final member of the bookray is usually at liberty to do whatever they want with the book once they receive it.
- Bookrings: a bookring is similar to a bookray, except that the final member of a bookring should send the book back to the first person in the list once they have read it. This person can then either release the book or keep it.
- RABCK: a 'Random Act Of BookCrossing Kindness' - is where a bookcrosser will send a fellow bookcrosser a book without being part of a ray or ring, and without expecting anything in return. The recipient is then free do what they like with the book. Many bookcrossers’ bookshelves on the site have a ‘wishlist’ which makes the sending of RABCK much simpler. I have received books full of glitter, and books with CHOCOLATE tucked inside. Mmm. Bookcrossers are such a generous lot.
- Trades: a trade is where two bookcrossers agree to exchange books, which they can then either keep or release.
- Bookboxes: a bookbox is exactly what it sounds like - a box of books. These work in a similar way to bookrings, except that each recipient should remove the books from the box that they wish to read, and replace them with other books before posting it on to the next person on the list. Many bookboxes are devoted to a particular genre such as science fiction, or chick lit, in which case books put into the box should fit the theme.
- OBCZ: an OBCZ, or ‘Official BookCrossing Zone’, is usually a bookshelf or box in the corner of a café, pub, library, internet café, or a multitude of other places, where BookCrossing books can be released and caught. If there is an OBCZ near you, feel free to take a book or two (remember to journal them), and maybe leave a couple in their place. I manage an OBCZ at South Devon College in Courtenay Street in Newton Abbot. There is another OBCZ in Hudson’s Coffee House in Plymouth managed by Mytilus.
- Geocaching: some bookcrossers have combined BookCrossing with Geocaching.
Social Bookcrossing
BookCrossing doesn't have to be a solitary activity and many towns and cities in the UK and around the world have regular BookCrossing meetups. Devon Bookcrossers meet up monthly approximately, in Hudson’s coffee house in Plymouth and the Boston Tea Party in Exeter. There has also been a bookreleasing walk at Drogo Castle to which over a dozen bookcrossers turned up. I have been pleased to meet ‘Pyxis’, ‘Europea’, ‘Anglersrest’, ‘Mytilus’ and ‘Sufiboy’ amongst others. (WAVES - Hiya!) Some meetups also include a mass release, where everyone will bring a few books and will release them around the local area. In addition to these meetups, there are also various Conventions around the world. The UK has its own ‘Unconvention’, held annually in Birmingham - which let bookcrossers get together en masse and enjoy themselves. The next one will be in July 2006 and is already sold out and I'm going!
Information about all these meet-ups can be found on the BookCrossing Forum or on Yahoo mailing lists devoted to Bookcrossing such as BCUK.

There has been some controversy in the past over whether BookCrossing is a bad idea from the point of view of authors and publishers (another ‘Napster’?) - surely if people are sharing books in this way then there will be fewer books being purchased? Much the same argument was used against libraries at one time. The general consensus from Bookcrossers is that they actually buy more books than they did prior to BookCrossing - if they really like a book they'll buy a copy for themselves and another to release! My own experience is that I’ve been introduced to many new authors and genres as a result of Bookcrossing and have bought more books as a result. As with libraries and second-hand bookshops, BookCrossing is just another way for many people to read the same book, perhaps a book that they wouldn't have thought of reading otherwise.
Many authors are themselves bookcrossers and have released some of their own books.

Bookcrossing is the internet at its best – it is fun, it is free and also a fascinating excercise in fate, karma, or whatever you want to call the chain of events that can occur between two or more lives and one piece of literature. If you’d like to see what books are available on my bookshelf then please do visit
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/tutleymutley
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/s-devon-college


I’ve cribbed much of this – from the Bookcrossing website and from an article by a bookcrosser (Cyzaki I think) which was a H2G2 entry on the BBC website.
I’ve changed it in most places but it’s still heavily plagiarized!!!

Me? Obsessed? Nah!

I just visited Shelley's blog and spotted this fun way to spell out my name. If you'd like to do the same you can do it here

I also found out, from the same source, that my all time favourite sci fi author, Octavia E Butler died at a comparitively young age last February. I'm shocked. I first read 'Kindred' years ago - and went on to enjoy the Xenogenesis trilogy which I've just sent in one volume (Lilith's Brood) to my convict penpal in the States. I'm going to have to get it for myself now.

Took a look at a book...

Over on BCUK they've been discussing Mondegreens. For anyone that doesn't know what this means - A "mondegreen" (also sometimes spelt 'mondagreen') is the mishearing (usually accidental) of a phrase, such that it acquires a new meaning. Mondegreen is in itself a mondegreen - coined by the writer Sylvia Wright in 1954, in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen". As a child she had heard the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray" and had believed that one stanza went like this:

"Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands

Oh where hae you been?

They hae slay the Earl aMurray (sic),

And Lady Mondegreen."

Poor Lady Mondegreen, thought Sylvia Wright - how poetic to die with your true love. When she discovered some years later, that the actual line was "and laid him on the Green", Wright was so distraught by the sudden disappearance of her heroine that she memorialized her with a neologism... Wright gives other examples of what she says "I shall hereafter call mondegreens", such as:-

"Surely Good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life"
("Surely goodness and mercy…" from Psalm23

The columnist Jon Carroll of the "San Francisco Chronicle" has long been a popularizer of the term and a collector of mondegreens. He is probably the chief link between Wright's work and the general popularity of the notion today. He points out that the overwhelming majority of Mondegreens come from song lyrics. Examples include the Bob Dylan song with the memorable refrain: "Dead ants are my friends, they're blowin' in the wind", the great Crystal Gayle song "Doughnuts Make Your Brown Eyes Blue" and the not forgetting the equally wonderful Maria Muldaur song "Midnight After You're Wasted." (I'm showing my age - I can remember all these songs!).

My dh has been trying to get a neologism accepted into the english language for YEARS. Maybe anyone who reads this will help it along.

You know those woody, green bits you get on some tomatoes? They are henceforth to be known as ARLOES ('arlo', n. sing.). This is from the root Arlo Guthrie, son of Woody Guthrie. Geddit? I like the way Tomato becomes Tomatoes and Arlo becomes Arloes. But I am easily amused.

Books!

I've been reading "The Bookseller of Kabul" by Asne Seierstad and it's making me mad! Grrr. Probably not the best book to be reading against a backdrop of the Islamic Brigade raging about a cartoon of Mohammed rather insensitively published by a Danish newspaper... It's a DRAWING for goodness sake. Isn't life itself more sacrosant than anything that could be said or written? And Peace and Happiness...

These women portrayed in the book - kept ignorant and illiterate, trapped in the house or under a burka, virtual slaves to their men. Now I might CHOOSE to be ignorant and housebound but to have my choice taken away? I'd rather be chained to the railings outside the Houses of Parliament.

On to a 'lighter' topic:

My diet. I've been doing fairly well, eating healthily, avoiding sugar etc.

Maybe my downfall is following these diet rules too slavishly:

1.~If noone sees you eating something, it has no calories.
2.~Food eaten for medical reasons does NOT count (eg hot chocolate, toast, cheesecake, vodka, wine) (Definitely a BCUKer one that).
3.~Biscuits have no calories because breaking the biscuits causes the calories to leak out.
4.~While you are cooking, food licked from knives and spoons has no fat content.
5.~Food eaten from someone elses plate has no fat as it rightly
belongs to the other person.
6.~If you eat standing up the food has no calories because of gravity.
7.~When you eat with someone else, calories don't count if you don't eat more than they do.
8~You will look slimmer if you fatten up the people around you.

Bookcrossing - the Devon Bookcrossers' Meetup, February 5th

BOOKCROSSING! What is it?

bookcrossing n. the practice of leaving a book in a public
place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.

The "3 Rs" of BookCrossing...

Read a good book (you already know how to do that)
Register it here (along with your journal
comments), get a unique BCID (BookCrossing ID number), and label the book
Release it for someone else to read (give it to a friend,
leave it on a park bench, donate it to charity, "forget" it in a coffee shop, etc.), and get notified by email each time someone comes here and records journal entries for that book. And if you make Release Notes on the book, others can Go Hunting for it and try to find it!

Beginning of this month I decided that the Devon Bookcrossers needed another meetup - but this one ought to be a walk, inspired by Weebly's walk in Salcey Forest. I decided that we should walk from Castle Drogo to Fingle Bridge Inn, and back to the Castle. So I set about emailing the hundreds of Devon Bookcrossers, but got bored after 35. This was the result:

The weather was crisp and cold, with watery, winter sunshine creating a haze in the distance. I got to the carpark at Drogo Castle at 11am prompt (yeah, most unlike me) to find everybody I was expecting already waiting: Anglersrest and Craftyangler, Europea and her partner Malcolm with chocolate Labrador, Toffee; Pyxis and his son, Joshua and last but not least – Msoma. Only Mytilus was missing – maybe because she didn’t find her dog?! We elected to wait for 10 mins. or so, just in case, and lo and behold a couple more bookcrossers turned up – Sufiboy and his partner Alison, and an American duo: Diane (whose bookcrossing name I can’t remember) and her mum who has had a knee op. so didn’t do the stroll with us, and their two dogs (whose names I do remember and what does that say about me?) – Monty and Gizmo.
And so there were a dozen of us, with four dogs walking and one dog going straight to the pub with his mum.

Walking down Hunter’s Path is quite awe-inspiring – even with the trees across the valley reduced to a violet, green smudge and the river invisible but audible in the depths below. Craftangler thought it very atmospheric but had left his camera in the car. WE discussed bookcrossing names on the way down – Joshua wants to have his own bookshelf but all the names of Egyptian gods are taken. The possibility of Anub1s was mentioned or Anubis2 but Msoma wouldn’t want to be second at anything :-p

Drogo Castle seen up the valley





We made it down to the pub in one piece and got the books out. Diane’s mum was there with Gizmo and reading her newspaper in the sunshine. Joshua was kept busy throwing sticks into the river Teign for the dogs who were all in doggy heaven. Diane’s books hadn’t been registered yet – so we all took them away to make sure they ended up with a BCID. There was even a copy of the famous 'Wild Animus' (who had that???). In fact all the books disappeared!

Diane and her mum went back home at this stage (as the car was at the pub) and Malcolm and Europea had guests coming for dinner so took off before everyone else too. The rest of us were ready to set off back along the river – when mistake number one occurred: Craftyangler said he would catch us up and disappeared off to the loo. With the benefit of hindsight we should have waited for him. Or at least made sure he knew which way we were returning to the castle. Never make assumptions.

About a quarter of a mile along the river – only one path, difficult to get lost – Anglersrest decides to go back to get Craftyangler. Mistake number two. We walked on slowly then stopped to wait for them both in a patch of sunshine. There were lots of other walkers out that day – the footpath was quite crowded, but no anglers two came along. The river is beautiful down here, clear, flat and trout filled in places, tumbling over granite boulders in others. After quarter of an hour of chat, still no anglers. We collared the next person who was walking back and asked him to tell the Anglers that we had gone on. The guy was wearing a sheriff’s hat so I thought he was probably reliable. I figured the way was well signposted.

ON we trudged – the way back is more gradual but still definitely UP. The path swings around the bottom of Drogo Castle – The castle was built in The Castle Drogo was designed by the great English architect Edwin Lutyens for Julius Drewe, the founder of the Home and Colonial Stores. He had made his fortune and retired to Wadhurst Hall in Sussex in 1899. After researching his ancestry, he assumed a relationship with the Norman baron, Drogo de Teign and the land at Drewsteignton in Devon became his chosen site for a grand castle (and beautiful it is too). Lutyens' original plans show the ambition the commission inspired; it would have been three times the size of the present castle, but practical building problems and the shortage of workforce caused by the First World War meant that a smaller castle than was originally intended was built. Lutyens didn't give up his grand design easily however, and at one stage built a full-size timber and tarpaulin mock-up of his proposed Barbican, a four storey gate tower. Photographs of the construction and plans of the castle are displayed in the subterranean Gun Room next to the Chapel.
Castle Drogo is built of granite and resembles a medieval castle with Tudor embellishments. It is stark and unornamented on the outside, with mullioned and transomed windows lighting the higher status family rooms, smaller, deep cut windows for the servants’ rooms. The walls are battered, inclined to increase the sense of height, and without external guttering and down-pipes. At the entrance, a working portcullis is operated from a winch in one of the turrets. (got this last paragraph and pic from http://www.heritage.me.uk/castles/drogo.htm). Despite all this, Alison and Sufiboy thought it resembled a concrete observational post left over from World War 2! Alison hails from Northumberland where it is (apparently) overrun with all manner of castles and fortified mansions. She knows a castle when she sees one, and Castle Drogo isn’t. This debate took us merrily to the top where we met with Craftyangler who had come back the same way we went DOWN (giving himself terrible indigestion while doing so) – and NO ANGLERSREST to be seen. Disaster!

We swopped mobile phone numbers (no signal down in the valley) and organised search parties. Craftyangler took his car to check back down at the Fingle Bridge pub. He soon returned with the news that she wasn’t there. Sufiboy and Alison decide to go at this point as there was no point in all of us hanging around in the cold (and Sufiboy was a closet trekkie and guess what was on telly?). The tea shoppe was still closed (how inconsiderate of the National Trust). Just as we were splitting up into various groups – Craftyangler’s car screeched back into the carpark – Anglersrest was back! She was very bemused too. She had made it to the top of the path, the same way we had come, only to see her dh take off in his car and leave her there! His thought was to stop us driving off to search for her when she was already found. HUGE sighs of relief and huggles all round.

We all agreed that we would do it again – but not lose anyone next time. I made mental note not to assume that everyone knows where we are going. The Anglers and I retreated to pub in SandyPark to warmup and debrief.

Thanks for coming, everyone.