A letter to my friends..day one

My dear friends,

It behoves me to write this day to inform you of recent events in our lives, so you can, if you should so desire, share our adventure. I wish to recount our journey to the beautiful city of Sydney and what befell us there.

On the first day of our venture, we set forth in high hopes and mild agitation at the journey to come. Flying high in the skies is always a breathtaking experience considering it is not a natural state for man to fly, however it is a necessary step to cross this great land of ours. Fast horse drawn carriages have nothing on the speed and might of these metal birds that take us on these journeys.

After having taken the time to oversee the maid in the packing of my trunk, (alas, she is sometimes forgetful and a small trial to me), to ensure that nothing would be left behind and my best outfits were included, and fortified with a small imbibe at the local hostelry, we set off.

Included in our journey was to be a small break in the city of Adelaide, a fine place and one of, so it is said, many churches. We did not stay long in this fine state, only long enough to partake of a light refreshment and change carriages, for the next stage of our journey. I entertain hopes of a longer visit on our return journey.

Mr Bennett was in a fine fettle and our dear Victoria was excited about the coming treat to visit the finer establishements in the city and take in the views of the much lauded opera house and the bay on which it sits.

The staff who attended  to our needs on the journey and the captain of the ship were very pleasing and kept us entertained and comfortable. Mr Bennett was delighted on being regularly apprised of the weather conditions and speed and height our conveyance would reach.

After many hours we arrived at our destination. Mr Bennett secured another conveyance to take us into the city and we were soon at our lodgings. The building itself was large and had many twinkling lights, which possibly gave it its name, "The Star". Our rooms were perfectly suited to our needs and the bathing room was more than adequate, boasting a deep bath in which to wash off the rigours of our journey. (I blush as I convey this to you, however I know you would want to know we were comfortable.)

A welcome from our hosts was on the picture box on the wall, and we decided on a short walk to try the air and prepare for our rest. We admired a goodly number of fine establishments and purveyors of goods on the walk, esp. an exquisite patissier. The ladies in the party determined to return over the next few days for a closer look at the many items on display.

After this we retired for the night and I will leave the events of the next day for another page.
I do hope that this missive finds you all well and that no-one has succumbed to the summer heat.

Yours in fine fettle,

Mrs Bennett

Postscriptum,  I should also mention that the maid packed my favourite perfume incorrectly (as I said a trial to me, but she has been with the family for a long time) and it had spilled in my trunk, thankfully not through my clothes, but enough to make it necessary to air out the smaller trunk for a number of days.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@kalgrl
#blog5daysAustenese

I am in a blog challenge with other librarians, that is, to write 5 blog posts in the style of Jane Austen, I cannot but say that I have indeed found it a difficult challenge.

the other participants are:
@KRidwyn, blogging at Hmmmm
@Girlwithshoess, blogging at Justgirlwithshoes
@jobeaz, blogging at Macaronic
@jzgarnett, blogging at Randomly Yours, Julia

#blogjune Day 14 - 5 book meme

What am I reading now?
Twitter links mainly, to blogs for June!

The last book I finished?
The City Who Fought - Stirling & McCaffrey

What do I want to read next?
The Mary Smokes Boys (started, not yet finished)

The last book I bought?
Agatha Christie "murder at the vicarage' (paper)
The second ship -book one of the Rho Agenda (e-book)

The last book i was given?
50th anniversary copy of
'To Kill a Mocking Bird'
present from my Mum as she knows I love the book.

The quiz needs a lighter vein so, Musicals!
Song & musical please...

'What they want is what you see,
Keep the best of you,
Do the rest of you...'

Goodnight
@kalgrl
#blogjune

#blogjune Day 10 "To meme or not to meme..."

Just to finish the meme...

Seven things I can do well

1.Bake - I can bake
2.stage manage a play
3.keyboarding - (not typing - I haven't used one of those in years)
4.read
5.quick study on new shiney things
6.listen
7.tea, I can make a good cup of tea

Seven things I can’t do but wish that I could

1.Build a garden (attempting this right now)
2.patchwork quilting
3.haiku
4.write
5.remember names of people I have just met (it is a disease, what can I say)
6.sing well ('well' being the 'key' word here - i sing badly all the time)
7.cook (not the same thing as baking quite different)

Seven phrases I’m known to use

1.Holy crap!
2.bollocks
3.can I help you?
4.shitake mushrooms
5.murphy is alive and well
6.good decision
7.how's that going for you?


Ok now I'm going to start a small quiz to copy shamelessly the Bun-toting Librarian's quiz idea and start one of my own.

a quote...(easy one to start)
and I would like - characters name and play

"but soft, what light through yonder window breaks"?

Goodnight
@kalgrl

#blogjune Day 9. -meming continued...

Seven random facts about me

1. I used to shoot air pistol at targets.
2. I ran a coffee shop, with my parents.
3. My favourite style of firing clay pots is pit firing. Had some beautiful results in black firing.
4. Big geek - read , watch and enjoy sci fi.
5. I have very few housekeeping skills.
6. Lived in Manapouri for two years as a child. Near Milford Sound in NZ.
7. Performed 'Everyman' at the Dolphin Theatre at a UWA summer school, taught by a colourful character called -Maggie Wild West.

Seven things I want to do before I die

1. Paris
2. Make a heritage quilt (can't sew much)
3. Go to the space station
4. Write an interesting sci fi short story
5. Go to 'interesting theatre' at the west end London
6. Sleep a night through ( I live with a snorer)
7. Ensure my children have the best start we can give them.

That's all with meming... Goodnight
@kalgrl
#blogjune

Two Things Meme

A meme by any other name is still a blog post :-)

Two names you go by:
1) TB
2) kalgrl

Two things you are wearing right now:
1) gold bangle from JB for wedding anniversary
2) staff ID

Two things you would want (or have) in a relationship:
1) trust
2) humour

Two things you like to do:
1) read
2) paint on fabric

Two things you want very badly at the moment:
1) test the sound on the interactive white board with Queen song
2) another truffle (presi from US)

Two things you did last night:
1) looked at Singapore hotels online
2) watched NCIS

Two things you ate today:
1) Apple
2) cheese and tomato sandwich

Two people you last talked to:
1) FeralMB
2) JB

Two things you’re doing tomorrow:
1) work
2) buying 'Sound of Music' tickets

Two Favorite Holidays
1) Melbourne in Autumn
2) Southwest WA in spring

Two favourite beverages:
1) tea
2) brewed ginger beer

Two things about me you may not have known:
1) I was the 'Ghost of Christmas Present' in Scrooge the musical
2) I can throw pots - *on a wheel

Two jobs I have had in my life:
1) research assistant
2) health food shop assistant

Two movies I would watch over and over:
1) Cabaret
2) Stargate

Two places I have lived:
1) Manapori - NZ
2) Mt Beauty - Victoria

Two of my favourite foods:
1) sticky black rice
2) fresh mango

Two places I’d rather be right now:
1) Singapore with family (going soon)
2) France

@kalgrl
#blogeverydayforjune

What's unread by the bed....

Meme
10 titles I haven't read on the shelf near the bed... and why...

1. Breath by Tim Winton
not sure why I haven't read this yet, think I need a space of time.
2. Incite magazine
came in the mail today
3. Uglies by Scott Westerfield
brought for Ms13 - in my patch for some reason
4. Nancy Wake - by Peter Fitzsimons
bio of our greatest war heroine (born in NZ :-) not in the mood yet
5.Infernal Devices - Philip Reeve
Saving for the holidays
6. The ship of Brides - Jojo Moyes
Recommendation from friend -not sure its my type of book
7. Deep Water - Peter Corris
new author for me - started sort of
8. Life of Pi - Yann marterl
Bought cheap at a student bookshop in Melbourne - next on the list
9. The Canterbury Tales - Chaucer
impulse pick from work catalogue
10. The Black Madonna - Traci Harding
book three in a series - losing its appeal

There are at least 10 more...
Whats unread by your bed? and why?

@kalgrl
#blogeverydayforjune

meme for Day 7 - busy

Day 6 - Prince of Persia and sundry Sunday things....

from Ruminations a meme for Holiday Monday...

Do you snack while reading? Yes. usually something small and not messy to be lifted from a bowl so I don't have to pay attention to the action.

What is your favourite drink while reading? Tea.

Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you? I have trouble marking books. I simply don't see it as something i can do as they possibly won't always be mine.

How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book open flat? I use what is handy, a bookmark if I have one, receipt for the book, shopping list etc.

Fiction, non-fiction or both? Both, mainly fiction.

Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere? End of the next chapter.. can't stop easily.

Least favourite way of stopping? interruption i.e. not my choice to stop.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you? I only ever threw one book, and that was because it was a perfect story up until the last chapter. The author let you have full control of what you wanted to make from the story and then, he explained! in the last chapter, virtually ruining the entire story, well for me anyway. I felt I didn't need it explained.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away? No I usually just guess from the surrounding words the meaning. If it really bothers me I will have a look later. (in Fiction. In non-fiction I have the dictionary beside me.)

What are you currently reading? Makers - Cory Doctorow, The girl who played with fire - Stieg Larsson and a few more and Blogs, lots of blogs.

What is the last book you bought? $5 special from the newsagent on Saturday - "Hidden Power" by Judith Cutler

Do you have a favourite time/place to read? in the morning.

Do you prefer series books or stand-alones? no preference.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over? I read a lot, and only recommend if asked. I unfortunately have a terrible memory for authors and proper titles. I remember the stories and my experience when reading. Can't recommend if you can't remember what it is called.
As a classic science fiction reader, I probably 'talk about' the short stories of Ray Bradbury, "There will come soft rains", or "Flowers for Algenon" by Daniel Keyes and "Yesterday was Monday" by Theodore Sturgeon. (online search as aid to memory here:-). I do remember recommending "I Robot" (Asimov) recently, however forgot to tell them it was short stories.

How do you organize your books (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)? fiction by Author...non fiction by where I place it on the shelf (or more rightly, where it fits on the shelf), no oganization.

Barbara’s additional question: background noise or silence?
Depends what I am doing, usually quiet hum of household if concentrating.

Egads! this has taken me longer then I wanted it to take...bye.
@kalgrl

Where Was I?

Where was I?

A meme.

Princess Diana’s death - August 31, 1997
On holiday, driving across the Nullabor to NSW. Didn't really believe that it was real until they announced she had died. I remember feeling very sad for her children.

Margaret Thatcher’s Resignation - November 22, 1990
Huh? did she resign?

Attack on the Twin Towers - September 11, 2001
Tuesday night - just arrived home from night class to find my cat 'Samantha' having been run over on the road next to our house. Spent an hour recovering the body, burial and blubbering... Sat down to recover a little and thought the movie on was a disaster thing, until I was shocked to realise it was real!

England’s World Cup Semi-Final against Germany - July 4, 1990
Had to blog this...my husband, both English and an FA cup soccer fiend had no idea. Apparently, it was a penalty shootout with Germany winning, but the big memory thing is the fact one of the English players cried on the field when he was yellow carded and not able to play in the final, if they got in...or something.

President Kennedy’s assassination - November 22, 1963
huh?

Where were you?

From
Ruminations

FeralTB

Unread....meme

The106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicise the ones you started but didn’t finish and underline the ones read for school.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
A Tale of Two Cities
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
A Canterbury Tale
Tess of the D’urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Well I had read more than I thought, and in a strange way, less.
FeralTB

Book Meme...

awk! tagged by CW go to the nearest book....
Rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pgs.)
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Tag five people

Robert Silverberg "Science Fiction 101" pg. 123
Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester (great story, written in 1954)

""Christ!" I cried and searched desperately for safety. He ran, dragging me with him, until their feet crunched through the surface of the pool. He trampled the ice furiously, then flung himself in the numbing water, pulling the android with us."

This was a really interesting story about a man and his android and how the gradual, increasing madness in the android was a reflection of the man himself, until they become one...

The opening line on page 100. "He doesn't know which one of us I am these days..."

I tag Sputty, Snail...and you three...

FeralTB-)