On being well read

So today my boyfriend linked me to http://1morechapter.com/1percent/ and we have decided to undertake the challenge. Except that! I have read 26 of the 1001 books in the free (I am too poor to fork out for the huger list) excel spreadsheet downloadable here. 26 is 2% of the total 1294 books to read before you die (or whatever) so I have decided to undertake a new challenge.

I pledge to read 5% of the full 1294 books to read before you die. That is 65 books in total. I pledge to do so before April 2011. Should be a fun year...

Anyways. The list of books I shall read is as follows:

• The Rainbow
• Women in Love
• A Farewell to Arms
• American Psycho
• Atonement
• Captain Corelli's Mandolin
  
• Cold Comfort Farm
  
• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
• Doctor Faustus
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Far From the Madding Crowd
• Frankenstein
  
• Gone With the Wind
• Gormenghast
• Great Expectations
• Gulliver's Travels
• Life of Pi
  
• Lord of the Flies
• Love in the time of Cholera
• Middlemarch
  
• Oliver Twist
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• Tarzan
• The 39 steps
• The Cider House Rules
• The Count of Monte-Cristo
• The English Patient
• The Fall of the House of Usher
• The Handmaid's Tale
• The Maltese Falcon
• The Reader
• The Satanic Verses
• The Shining
• The Talented Mr. Ripley
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
• The Thousand and One Nights
• The Three Musketeers
• The Time Machine
• The Wasp Factory
• Wild Swans

These are from a cut down list of roughly 80 and included books that I've heard of, been told I ought to read, know I ought to read, know I ought to have read and plain old books that are already on my bookshelf.

Those are all in alphabetical order save the first two as they come under the category of 'books that are on my bookshelf'. Wish me luck. I reckon I ought to be reading a book every two weeks to finish by next April and I shall endeavour to review each book before starting the next.

Tarrah xx

Magic...duh!

So I deemed it time for a new post lest I forget again for months at a time.

The subject of today's post is: duh moments. I'm reading a book by Tamora Pierce for the umpteenth time, I love them, there are a few things wrong with them but they're great nonetheless. And the time-period she has set her books in is similar to the one I want to set mine in. And she mentioned 'homework by candlelight'. Now, I've worked by candlelight and it is a pain in the BUM. You need a good number of candles to get anything done be it work, reading or making lasagne. Seriously. So that reminded me that *my* characters would have to do work by candlelight. Damn. And then I remembered there was magic in my story so...why not have lights that work by magic? Brilliantly simple and, I suppose, so very obvious. I need to work out the specifics and I'm sure it won't actually come up in the book that often -if ever- but *I* need to know.

Any duh moments when writing you'd like to share?

Willow xx