Sunday, August 16, 2009

Song for Sunday


U2 – BAD (Live)

Recently I've been listening to an amazing bootleg of U2 live at the Hammersmith Palais from December 6, 1982. This song came a year or two later but both take me back over twenty years to my early teenage years. Although I have to admit that I pretended I didn't actually like U2 until even later, when The Joshua Tree came out and they were already past their peak. Up until then they were always my younger sister's band and it wouldn't have been cool to admit that we liked any of the same music!

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

1000 novels

Another list. This time of 1000 novels that everyone must read. As Mrs Armitage would say 'who needs it?' Well, no-one really, but it did keep me occupied for a few evenings going through the list and ticking off the ones I have read.

The list is split into seven slightly contrived categories with about 140 titles in each one, designed I presume to fill up a dead news week in The Guardian. My top category turned out to be crime, which just edged out science fiction and fantasy (even more impressive when you consider that I have never knowingly read a fantasy novel) and then followed up by war and travel. My least read category was state of the nation, marginally behind love, with family and self and comedy not much higher up.

The precise numbers are as follows and, for anyone who is interested, here is the complete list as a spreadsheet, handily colour coded to show books I've read, am planning to read and planning to avoid.

Comedy - 21 out of 150 (14.0%)
Crime - 31 out of 148 (20.9%)
Family and self - 19 out of 146 (13.0%)
Love - 17 out of 141 (12.1%)
Science fiction and fantasy - 30 out of 149 (20.1%)
State of the nation - 16 out of 134 (11.9%)
War and travel - 25 out of 132 (18.9%)

A not-too-bad total of 159 out of the 1000, or almost 16%, and with another 111 books that I plan to read at some point. Feel free to add your own totals in the comments.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Forgotten bookmarks

Following the recent demise of Aloof from Inspiration (and the mysterious disappearance* of its previous incarnation at fangrrrl) I needed a substitute for the Places to Visit sidebar.

So, here it is: Forgotten Bookmarks. Stuff people have left in books. Brilliant!

* - Hello, is that the FBI? I would like to report a blog vanishing in suspicious circumstances.