Tagging other book nerds as instructed...

Received this from my husband on chat. Thought it was good enough for a post.

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
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Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds.



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x

Total: 8

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy x
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot x

Total: 4

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x
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
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Total: 3

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini x
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Total: 4

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x
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 x
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 5

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel x
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 x
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x

Total: 3

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
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x

Total: 1

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x
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

Total: 1

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
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 x
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 x
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 3

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x
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 x
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo x

Total: 5


I've done my list in this post itself. I've not read even half - read only about 37 in that 100. But hey! definitely more than 6! The husband's read about 49
Do jot down a comment to let me know how many you've read- just for fun! Am sure most of us would have read at least 25 and more.
And some who'd have read maybe half?

Grrrr

6.50: Amma gets up
6.50-7: Acha and Sonny boy get up
7.02: Acha brushes Sonny boy's teeth
by 7.10: Amma boils milk, makes Bournvita for Sonny boy, tea for Acha and maid, decoction coffee for Ammamma and herself
till 7.25: Acha is to sit at the dining table and make Sonny boy drink Bournvita, but actually spreads the newspaper on said table and reads it while sipping tea made by his wife.
by 7.30: Sonny boy makes potty
by 7.40: Amma washes his bum, gives him his bath, gets him dressed, makes him eat min 1 idli, max 2 idlis...
while Acha gets the snacks into the lunchbox
7.40-7.45: Sonny boy says Hi/Bye to the Gods, Acha puts on Sonny boy's shoes, makes him drink a glass of water

and he's off!!!!! The Acha takes him down to the bus.

You notice that it takes 15 min for Sonny boy to drink milk while it takes max 10 min for him to have his bath, eat and get dressed.

Every day it pisses me off that its me(from the kitchen, in between my job) who has to take inititative in shouting at Sonny boy to drink the G*****N milk. While the Acha who sits RIGHT next to him JUST DOESN'T NOTICE IT.

What is it with these men????? Gah!

Hearing me shout at him in a voice fit to kill (lesser mortals than my son and husband), all the Acha will do is utter a token
"Sonny boy, haven't you finished your milk yet?"
This without even raising his eyes from the blasted newspaper.*

To which obviously Sonny boy gives as much heed as the cockroaches in my house do to Hit/Baygon/Lakshman Rekha.

Some days the Acha does his share of shouting, but this is only after Amma maintains a controlled silence till 7.30 and the Acha finds the silence abnormal and raises his head from the damn newspaper. By which time it is already late and the Amma will have to treble her shouting for the next 10 minutes, adding a few smacks for good measure.

The Ammamma is going off this weekend, and come next Mon, yours truly will have to do the boiling of milk, and the making of whatever breakfast before 7.30.to say nothing of making lunch too by 8.15.

The Acha and I are due for some serious talking/arguing. And maybe I better make an appointment with my doctor. For blood pressure control.


Edited to add:
My crib with the Acha is not that he doesn't do things, (he DOES. A lot of things on my requesting him, that maybe other dads wouldn't, and I do appreciate that in him) but that he doesn't think it his responsibility to do it. I need to keep requesting him...
He thinks it is MY responsibility to do certain things (feeding, teaching etc), while it is his to help out. That attitude is what galls me.
Also that I end up being bad cop most of the time, while he stays good cop most of the time.

Free, free, all free!

I love it when the seasons come to an end.
Why, you ask?
Why, because of the end-of-season sales!
Its a different matter that these days seasons are ending all year round!

In B'lore Benetton is having a sale, Central is having a sale, Pantaloon is having a sale, Westside is having a sale, Shoppers Stop just finished theirs, (or is it still on?)...... loads to choose from.


So this weekend sale hopping is what we did.

Bought sarees, contacts, coffee mugs, Ben 10 bubble blowers and then finally landed at Central where the Happiness sale was on.
Rushed about evaluating the 20%s and the 30%s and the 40%s.....!
The buy one-get ones, the buy two-get ones and the buy two-get twos.....!!

The Happiness was infectious. Sonny boy came galloping up with his balloons.
Amma, come here! This place is Buy one, Take 50 free!!!
He'd seen one of Central's placards placed all over saying upto 51% off.

Sigh! If only, Sonny boy, if only….!!!

What takes the cake is the Acha's disgusted remark on mother-daughter shopping habits.
“The two of you shop like you're tourists! Swarming all over the place! Why can’t you just buy what you want and get it over with?”

And not know what all you missed? No way!

Castles in the air

Ok, I don't really want a castle. A medium sized cottage would be fine.

And around that medium sized, cosy, comfy cottage, I would have-

a mango tree
low branches, green leaves turning brown in the autumn, flowers strewn on the ground, kanni maanga for Vishu and for homemade pickles, and lots of ripe mangoes to pluck as well as pick.

a neem tree
a wonderfully healthy breeze all round the year, a swing for me and Sonny boy, that lovely noise of swaying, swishing leaves, and helpful armful to all those chicken poxers (!)

a jackfruit tree
ok, this one is just cos it used to be there in my Mom's ancestral house, and also because it was great fun to make spoons of their leaves and spoon kanji and chammandi. Ate with it once with gusto from a friend's place while at college and have loved that experience. So maybe one day when the husband and I are old, and I'm too lazy to wash spoons, I can go out a pluck a coupla leaves and have a meal to relish.

a banana tree
for all those fresh glistening leaves to eat your meal from, for the bunches of plantains, for the delight of cutting a straight line thru the leaf, for cutlets from the stalk, the kaambu and the koombu...

2 palm trees
I can hardly be a mallu without these around my cottage, can I? Brooms, dish scrubs, tender coconut water, coconut curries, coconut toffee...what all things to make form it.. truly a kalpavriksha! Of course I can do without the fuel for those old fireplaces.

And these flowering plants
a jasmine creeper,
a few hibiscus plants...
that orange creeper that's a feast for the eyes in B'lore during the season- dunno what its called

And these for the veggie garden
tomato, curry leaf, mint, chilli...

And a dog to run amuck around all these and make me scream in mock despair....

Sigh! Time to wake up (to realities), shut down, pack up and go home to Sonny boy.
Ciao, good people!

*popping back for a second* what's your tree wishlist??

yayyyy! Am vindicated!

Sonny boy had been learning about families in school.
A mother who loves everyone
A father who has lots of fun (certainly have it down pat, don't they)
A sister who plays and works
A baby who's growing each day
A dog who chews a bone.

After singing me the song and after due rounds of applause and encore

Me: "Sonny boy, we don't have a sister. So maybe we aren't a family? (Yeah, I sometimes mess with him)
Sonny boy: *looks at me like I'm a total Suppandi*(remember that character in Tinkle who was such a blunderer?)"Silly!! This is about ANOTHER family. Not OUR family."
Me: "Oooh, ok."


Me: *Looking at gaining me a partner well in advance for dog requests to the husband* But Sonny boy, there's a dog also. Maybe we should get a dog..???
Sonny boy: But we already have Tinty!
(Tinty(Trinity) is Ammamma's Labrador that is at Kerala.)
Me: "Yeah, but Tinty is not here, and she's Ammamma's dog...."
Sonny boy: "That's ok, she's our dog also!"


Me: *Very very cautiously, for we don't want to be jumping into hidden potholes* "Sonny boy, there's a baby also. You think we should also have a baby?"
Sonny boy: "We already have one- K!" (my SIL's son, and his most loved enemy when it comes to sharing affections- material and otherwise)
Me: "But K is Chitta's baby, not ours."
Sonny boy. "No, K is my baby also."

Me: "And then, you're always shouting at and fighting with K. If he's your baby, why do you do that?"
Sonny boy*again giving me that Suppandi look* "Silly!!!! That is because I want to teach him all nice things- how to be good and good manners and all that..."
Me: *a slow smile dawning* "Aah.. like how I do to you, Sonny boy?"
Sonny boy: * a wide, happy smile on his face* "YEAH!! Just like you!"

My heart is beating....

the other day, a distant relative passed away suddenly from a heart attack.

And then the next day, MJ passed away, and last weekend, in the evening, I was generally acquainting Sonny boy with all his music that I was playing on Utube.

Sonny boy: "Amma, what is this man's name?"
Me: "Michael Jackson, Sonny boy. He sings very well, doesn't he?"

I think Sonny boy was more inclined to think he danced superbly. But let me not digress.

Me: "He sang, actually. He's now dead, Sonny boy," I said solemnly. Not really thinking about what I said, engrossed in the music and absorbing the fact that there would be no more hits from Michael Jackson.

Sonny boy: "How did he die?"
Me: "Umm..... he had a heart attack." *gradually awakening to the conversation we were having...*
Sonny Boy: Heart attack is what?
Me: *Sigh!* "Heart attack is what happens when the heart stops beating , Sonny boy. And then you can't live any more.

I got up and we got busy with other matters.

That night, after the story was over and we were cuddling to sleep, Sonny boy lifted his head and suddenly laid it on my breast. And then he looked up at me with a smile

Sonny boy: "Amma, I can hear your heart go thup thup thup thup. It is not stopped. So you're not dead, no?"
Amma: *Hugging him close* No, Sonny boy, I am not dead."