I'm enjoying my honours studies way too much...

I'm Baaaaaack!

Today marks the return of your faithful narrator to the world of the internets! It has been a long 6 weeks without it, slowly reducing my uni internet allotment on a combination of uni research, amazon buying and blog reading just wasn't the same when stuck in a corner of the library on my laptop surrounded by students who look like they haven't washed in a month.

This is just the briefest of entries to let you know that i'm back, yes, finally I can return to writing tedious updates and flooding the interwebs with images and youtube clips. I simply cannot wait.

Keep an eye out for me, I'll be spamming you reading lists real soon.

Top 10 Tuesday: Books I just had to buy but are still on my bookcase

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers’ answers. Everyone is welcome to join.



How cute is the new button for Top 10 Tuesday! After a few weeks away and far too busy I'm finally back and ready to display my top 10 books that I simply had to buy but am yet to read! I am one of those people who can't not buy books, I constantly have books pouring in from Amazon and if there is a second hand booksale on then I'll walk out with my arms full, so it would be impossible for my bookcases to not have a single unread novel in them. In fact I have quite a few books, so in no particular order...

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy- This book has caused me quite a headache. I hold certain books up quite highly and am unable to then just sit on a bus and flick through it on my way to class or for 10 minutes while I wait for dinner to cook. I was determed to find a beautiful old edition of this novel because I simply wasn't interested in reading a current publication available in the bookstores around the city, the covers being too dull or tacky or the paper quality thin and, well they weren't right. Finally after months and months of endless searching (apparently no one likes to get rid of their copies of Anna Karenina) I just gave up and picked up the least crappy current edition at Borders and took it home. It sat in my bookcase for months until I picked it up at the beginning of my uni holidays and got about 10 pages in before I put it down. Like I said I feel like I need to experience this book, not just read it, so it has remained in my bookcase, awaiting the time where I can take a fortnight to lock myself in a room and devour it in the way it needs to be devoured.

2. Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada - I heard this book mentioned on a blog or radio show and decided I had to read it, so while it was still fresh in my mind I snapped it up and added it to my collection. I intend to read this next after I finish the graphic novel interpretation of Stephen King's The Stand but since it has been well over six months since I bought it, who knows if it will actually be opened and read next!

3. Blindness by Jose Saramago - I had heard about Saramego and had wanted to read something of his and happened across this book while I was on holiday down in Melbourne for $5. Obviously I couldn't not buy it, so I paid my money and stuck it in my suitcase and have basically forgotten about it ever since.

4. A compilation of Dylan Thomas poety - I bought this on a whim, as I often buy poetry, and it was a stupid buy because it doesn't matter how good their poetry is, I'm always going to get bored after one poem and never finish it.

5. Psychogeography by Will Self and Ralph Steadman - I am a huge Ralph Steadman fan and seeing his name on the cover was enough for me to buy this book. I actually started reading it on my way home but because it is fairly large and didn't fit into any of my handbags it moved back to the bookcase and there it has settled.

6. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx - I bought this at a second-hand book fair for something like $2 and added it to my pile simply because I'd heard the title mentioned before and the price was too good to say no to. Annie Proulx is actually coming to speak at my university soon so perhaps I should pick it up and give it a read!

7. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens - I bought this from the same book fair I bought The Shipping News and it was a steal for not only a Dickens novel I hadn't yet read but an absolutely beautiful leather bound edition from the 1920s. I don't even care if I never read it, I'll continue to sit and admire it on my bookcase for years to come.

8. Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin -  I bought this just after the movie came out and I had been to see it. By the time it arrived in the mail my interest had completely evaporated and never rekindled. Oh well.

That's it for me this week. I'm at my university using a computer so I'm writing this list from memory and my memory has failed to provide me another 2 books! So what books are lingering in your bookcases with their spines uncracked and pages unmarked?

A brief hello and book challege update

My life is a mess of stress right now, I moved into my beautiful new house and had two friends come up to stay the day after we moved in (while our house was still a maze of boxes!) and on the first day of their trip I found out I had been accepted into my post-grad studies and had to come to the orientation which was to happen at 12pm that day. It was 10am at that point! Since then I've been running around trying to enrol and sort out classes, unpack the new house, clean the old house, work, organise internet at the new place (which we're still without) and at some point manage to get at least 2 or 3 hours of sleep a night! Unfortunately even as I tick things off my to-do list more things are added or other items stubbornly refuse to leave the list so my presence on this blog has well and truly suffered.

Amazingly I have actually managed to get some reading in, mostly graphic novels and mostly late, late at night when I can't sleep because of the stress whirring through my body or at the crack of dawn when I am up and unable to do half of the things on the list because nowhere is open! Other than helping me calm down and de-stress these books are helping me cut down on my target for the 2011 book challenge!

I've added the Goodreads challenge widget to my sidebar, keep an eye on my progress and keep your eyes peeled for the reviews that I'll start posting once I have the internet at my house and less that 100 things bearing down on me!!

Edit: It appears that Goodreads don't count graphic novels towards your total books read which I think is a pretty terrible offence so I'm going to keep a separate running tally here on my blog where I will count graphic novels because I do count them as books!

So far in 2011 I have read:

7/75
The Walking Dead, book 1. (Robert Kirkman)
30 Days of Night (Steve Niles)
30 Days of Night: Dark Days (Steve Niles)
30 Days of Night: Return to Barrow (Steve Niles)
Freakangels, book 1 (Warren Ellis)
Skin and other Stories  (Roald Dahl)
No Hope For Gomez (Graham Parke)

Edit #2: I'm an idiot! I had been entering the books I'd read straight into Goodreads as 'read' rather than 'currently reading' then moving on to 'read' so there is the answer to my problem! It came to me last night in bed, so now I've rectified the issue on Goodreads and my little side bar widget should be all up to date now. Idiot!

Happy Valentines Day!!

Happy Valentines Day people of the inter-webs!! 

Regardless of whether you're spending this with someone special or just treating it like any old day I hope the 14th of February is a day of happiness and other good things.

Here in Australia it is just about over, and it certainly has been a wonderful day for me. Like so many people I spent it at work but when I finished at 5.30 I was greeted by my smiling boyfriend (and soon to be roomie) Tom with a bouquet of daisies and a lovely kiss. We spent the night together quietly eating the tasty dinner I made and watching TV. But the shining star of the day came in the special housewarming/Valentines gift I bought for Tom and myself.

The wonderfully talented and beautiful miss Lauren Carney, a dear friend and local artist extraordinaire created a customised portrait of Tom and myself tumbling down the rabbit hole á la Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It's an amazing piece of work that perfectly sums up both Tom and my individual personalities and the whimsical nature of our relationship. This picture will be taking pride of place in our lounge room, and every time I look at the darling caricatures I'll be transported back to this lovely Valentines Day on the eve of our co-habitation, in the relative early days of what will be a long and wonderful life together.

Image courtesy of the fancy miss Lauren Carney, visit her shop here

Top Ten Tuesday: Character's I'd name my children after

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!