I'm reading a book. Pt.2.

It all started when an old school friend sent me this note *(the BBC Book List) from Facebook. No, it probably started before that when upon reconnecting after more than thirty years through facebook my friend got the impression that I was a bit of a book reading nerd, meant in the nicest way of course.
*You may not be able to access this link so I have posted the full list at the bottom of this post.

Now, while I have read plenty of books over the years it seems I've managed to avoid the so called classics and highly acclaimed books that were listed on the BBC Book List. And being only able to say that I've read two books from the list my friend expressed her surprise at the smallness of books I've read, so I've taken it upon myself to catch up on some of my reading of the classics.

Along the way I've also been posting, on facebook, my progress along the way and so it was that my friend posted yesterday's video about reading a book because it's been head down, bum up reading ever since I got the list. And so there you have it. I'm reading a book.

Now if I could only knit and read a book at the same time my life would be complete.


Cheers and happy reading and don't you ever ever interrupt me, cos I'm reading a book, I'm reading a book.

Stewart

The BBC Book List

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!

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
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 Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
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 Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne (probably not the "real" version!)
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 Tartt
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 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
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 - E.B. 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-Exupery
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'm reading a book.

 I'll explain tomorrow but for now, enjoy.



Cheers

Stewart

The Food of Italy by Claudia Roden

Whilst I was out on my training walk for my Mt. Kosciusko climb yesterday, I knew full well I'd be going past the Lifeline second hand Book shop at the Range Shopping center and that I'd find it irresistible to dropping in.

And as usual I came away with a little gem. This one is called The Food of Italy by Claudia Roden.

I've only had this book just on twenty-four hours but already there is half a dozen recipes I'm eager to try.

The inside liner notes suggest 'The Food of Italy' is an original and authoritative record of the world's best loved cuisines.

It goes on to say, 'For her award-winning series 'The Taste of Italy' in the Sunday Times Magazine in 1988, Claudia Roden travelled up and down the country, through every region, to discover the local specialities on their home ground. She spent much of her time in the kitchen of both professional and private cooks, watching them at work and listening to their stories. In this book, which is based on her series but offers a great deal more, she gives us the best of the dishes she discoverd in more than 300 fully tested recipes. Uncomplicated and unaffected, they are part of the authentic regional traditions now being rediscovered'.

I'd go on further to say she gives each region, eighteen in all, its own introduction including some history of the area. The recipies also include a brief introduction along with an Italian and english title ie:-

PATE DI FEGATO

Liver Pate

The recipe for this pate comes from Danilo, the young owner-chef of La Crota at Roddi d'Alba. Most of his customers ask for assaggi-small tastings of everything, a way of eating which has come into fashion in the last ten years.

I'm going to find this book very enjoyable as a read as well as a reference for some good cooking.

Biography

CLAUDIA RODEN was born and brought up in Cairo and educated in Paris and in London, where she now lives. Widely admired as both a great cook and a fine writer, she is the author of several books, including The New Book of Middle Eastern Food and The Book of Jewish Food. The Food of Italy grew out of "The Taste of Italy," a series of articles she wrote for the Sunday Times of London. Her writing has been awarded many prestigious international prizes, including five Glenfiddich Awards, the James Beard Award in the United States, the Versailles Award in France, and the Prince Claus Award for Culture in the Netherlands.

Happy cooking and cheers everyone,

Stewart

'Gardener's Latin'

Here's a bit of fun. I ordered 'Gardener's Latin' by Bill Neal through Amazon.com mainly for hits and giggles, but it is interesting to find the English translation of some of those Latin names and this book hits the nail right on the head.

For instance officia'lis was one I have always been curious about with me thinking it was something official. Turns out it means 'medicinal; of the pharmacopoeia (literally, 'drug-making').

So try me out, is there any botanical names you have always wanted to know what they mean?

The introduction informs me that this is only a partial dictionary of botanical names and includes only species names. Therefore if you want to know the meaning of a genus you'll be up the creek without a paddle.

Cheers for now

Stewart

P.S. Weather for tomorrow. Fine, hot and dry!