Thursday 26 June 2008

RANT!

Two weeks I have been home from University. Two weeks, and already I feel like screaming. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to survive the next ten weeks. Those people who were looking forward to coming home, I am afraid I will never understand you. I'd still be there if I could, and would never come back; at least not for any longer than a visit.

I miss Sam like crazy, I miss my friends like crazy and my grandmother is driving me up the wall. I need a job as much to get me out of the house as for the money, but try as I might I don't seem to be able to get even the most menial of jobs. Which is one of the reasons I wanted to get out of this backwards little town in the first place.

I hate this being stuck back at home, and I resent the loss of my freedom again. I long to be back in my own space, doing things by myself and for myself, according to my rules.

I want to be myself again.

I want a job so that I can afford to get out of here; get back to Nottingham, see my Sam, see other people. I found the perfect job for me; good pay, odd hours that meant I could do what I wanted, but they don't seem to be interested. I'm trying other places but I'm not holding my breath that I'll be any more successful. I'm starting to lose hope and becoming demoralised, wondering if there's even a point to trying to find a job anymore.

The only bright light at the moment is that I am going back to Nottingham tomorrow, but it's only for the weekend. By Monday, I'll be back here, practically climbing the walls again. How am I going to survive until September?

I'll let you know as soon as I do.

The big read

Nicked from jesspallas

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strikethrough ones you started but never finished
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)


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 (read bits and bobs of it)
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 Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
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. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (which is part of the chronicles)
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 - AA Milne
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 (I'd probably get shot if I didn't say I intend to read it!)
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' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker (It's on my extensive reading list)
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
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 - EB 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

Final Score: 16/100

That's respectable I feel, considering most of the books I read aren't considered classics, some books I consider classic are not on this list, and quite a few of these I don't consider classic and wouldn't read if you paid me.

And to be fair, I've a lot of adulthood left in which to catch up :P

Friday 6 June 2008

New Fanfic from the Captain!

Utterly shameless pimpage. Posted my first real fic in over six months at metamorfic_moon and I'm rather pleased with it. Hopefully (and keep your fingers crossed for me) I'll be able to get another one done this weekend in time for the extended deadline. In the meantime, if you'd like to fall for my big puppy dog eyes and mosey on down to check it out. Don't forget to check out the rest of the fiction and art as well. :)

For the Want of Your Love