The One Where I Have An Hourglass Figure

I had my first appointment with the midwife on Wednesday - it was an hour long and very useful. She reassured me that the things I was feeling and experiencing can be a normal part of pregnancy, explained why they were happening and when I could expect them to stop. Blood was taken, urine was checked, my weight was measured. I was very relieved to see that I have only put on a kilo since I was last weighed at the doctors (in February) it doesn't stop me feeling like I've already expanded in every which way I possibly could already, but just nice to know that it's just the body redistributing itself. Right now I've almost got an hourglass figure but that won't last long, within the next month or so junior and my uterus will rise up from the pelvic region I will be able to say that the tub isn't all me.

I'm a bit of the school that you can't have too much background information so I have been buying pregnancy/baby magazines even though I know that really they are a bit shit and I have a couple of pregnancy manuals and I got Simon "the blokes guide to pregnancy" too. I guess I better join a library here, as all those "baby bibles" could turn out to be more than a bit expensive.

I Can Haz A Reading List

From Notes From Evil Bender (which has to be a one of the best blog names I've seen in a while), Welcome to the “106 Books of Pretension,” meme which is really “the top 106 books most often marked as ‘unread’ by LibraryThing’s users.” I wouldn't rate a lot of these books as being pretentious some of them are very good and not at all up themselves a few are probable shite - Altas Shrugged comes to mind for one. Anyway copying Evil Bender's style, books I’ve read are in italics and books I began but didn't finished are crossed out:

* 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 I got it out of the school libary it was probably a bit too dense for me as a 13 yo
* Moby Dick
* Ulysses
* Madame Bovary found it dull
* The Odyssey
* Pride and Prejudice
* Jane Eyre
* The Tale of Two Cities
* The Brothers Karamazov
* Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
* War and Peace
* Vanity Fair
* The Time Traveler’s Wife
* The Iliad
* Emma
* The Blind Assassin I had to pack it away when I moved here.
* 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 Canterbury tales
* 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 not sure why I haven't finished this, I've rather enjoyed what I've read so far
* The Once and Future King
* The Grapes of Wrath
* The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
* 1984
* Angels & Demons
* The Inferno
* The Satanic Verses
* Sense and Sensibility
* The Picture of Dorian Gray
* Mansfield Park
* One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
* To the Lighthouse
* Tess of the D’Urbervilles
* Oliver Twist
* Gulliver’s Travels
* Les Misérables
* The Corrections
* 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 : a novel
* Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
* Cloud Atlas
* The Confusion
* Lolita
* Persuasion
* Northanger Abbey
*The Catcher in the Rye to my shame
* 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 thought it was rubbish
* 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
* The Three Musketeers

Not A Reference Book

Not A Reference Book, originally uploaded by Jane Goth.

I used to think that Waterstones was a relatively decent book shop but that opinion has been evaporating recently. The popular science section has books about the human soul and the afterlife slotted in, the academic science section had books about "The Law of Attraction" aka "The Secret" stocked there. The Secret is not science ffs it's woo of the highest order. Now you can just about understand that book shops are pretty poor on what is science after all their employees are not trained librarians and they tend to work there because they love reading (classics, literature) not because they love the science, but surely they should be able to recognise a reference book from entertainment.

The One With The Clutter Busting

Seeing as Simon and I are getting married this year and I will be moving to King's Lynn, we've decided that the sooner I move in the better. There are plenty of good reasons for this - we get to be together, only have one household to feed and it will make getting my flat into a ready state for selling easier as there will be less stuff in it. Most of my stuff will go into storage until we get a house together, so with that in mind I've started the rationalisation of stuff. I went through my wardrobe: end result several bags for charity, one pile of clothes for Si to take home with him because I won't be wearing them in the near future and a much emptier closet.

Then we tackled the first of the bookshelves, no point in have two copies of a book, so we rationalised what was on the bookcase as a consequence one young girl is going to get almost the complete set of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels published to date and more bags of books to go into the Registry's perpetual second hand book fair at work.

Tomorrow I'm going to make several families of dust bunnies homeless when the boxes under the bed get hoiked out from under there for Si to take back with him for storing.

It's a start at least, there are more bookshelves to go, the music (duplicates to be got rid of), DVDs and videos likewise, the "woodshed", linen and then the kitchen stuff to be thinned out. And that's before we go through roughly 20 tonnes of wedding ephemera needs to collected together and taken to Lynn

I Bought Some Books Today

Tis true, I succumbed, I am supposed to be thinning out the number of books I have, as I have "too many."

"Too many" is a concept that I don't really understand, how can anyone have too many books? Surely it is not possible, even the most trashy sci fi, romance, police actioner or spy novel will bring delight to someone. Books contain knowledge and imagination, easily portable by the smallest toddler, they do not need electricity to work, notes can be made in the margin and a well made book can be a thing of beauty in itself. Nope, the concept of too many books does not make sense. I will admit that the concepts of "Not Enough Space" and "And You've Said Yourself, That Book's Rubbish" do have some validity so I have been slowly weeding out some of books I've no intention of reading again. In the registry we have a permanent book sale and Di the lady who runs it, always welcomes contributions.

Today she did a swap of books that hadn't shifted with another section who have a permanent book sale, because my office are her best customers she gave us first dibs. I've got poetry, 1970's cook book, what could be rubbish chick lit or something better and two murder stories, they may be fun.

I don't normally do poetry but for 50p how could I resist "The Penguin Book Of English Verse", it's got examples of the work of almost every major English language poet of the last 450 years. No McGonagall though, so it isn't perfect.

I found this by Sir Philip Sidney (1554 - 1586) So beautiful.

"Just Exchange"

My true love hath my heart and I have his,
By just exchange one for another geven:
I holde his deare, and mine he cannot misse,
There never was a better bargaine driven.
My true love hath my heart and I have his.
My heart in me keepes him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and sences guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his owne,
I cherish his because in me it bides.
My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

One Book and A Person Meme

I got pinged for a meme by Gordon so being a good girl I dun it.

1. One book that changed your life.
I don't think that any book I've read has changed me. The strong influences in my life have been friends and family. I can't even say "The Highway Code" because although I have a driving license I don't own a car and I don't drive. I suppose "The Female Eunuch" was an eye opener when I read it aged 16

2. One book that you’ve read more than once.
Ahh, this is the question that is supposed to illicit a deep and meaningful answer. Unfortunately that won't work with me because unless the book is absolute shite the chances are I'll read it a few times. However to play along one book that I've read over and over and enjoyed greatly is "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It's not great literature, yes it is a children's book but it's well written, humourous and not without humanity.

3. One book that you’d want on a desert island.
The "How To Get Off A Desert Island" book

4. One book that made you laugh.
Ooh there are many, for instance, I mentioned "Cold Comfort Farm" just the other day, I've enjoyed Terry Pratchett's Discworld series over the years but today Matthew I'm gonna choose Asterix The Gaul. It's the bad puns you know.

5. One book that made you cry.

Seeing as my emotions can be trifled with by Lassie movie this isn't a great measure of what is truly moving. I can't remember the last thing I cried at but I do remember that I cried when Gabriel Oak put down the sheep dog that had, in juvenile enthusiasm, driven all his sheep over a cliff. I effing hate Far From The Madding Crowd I had to do it as my "book" for my English Literature O level.

6. One book that you wish you had written.
For the money any of the Harry Potter ones would do, for quality Persuasion.

7. One book you wish had never been written.
Oooh there are so many but Bridget Jones' Diary comes to mind for two reasons, firstly I loathed it, I didn't manage to finish the book it was that bad and two for becoming a lazy and inaccurate shorthand for all single women above the age of 21 it seems. And because I'm feeling generous Lord Of The Rings - for being shite.

8. One book that you are reading at the moment.
I've got several on the go at the mo including the Private Eye Annual for 2003 and an Autobiography of Peter Ustinov which I picked up for 50p in the registry's ongoing second hand book sale.

9. One book that you’ve been meaning to read.
I've got several in my bookcases that I've been meaning to read and haven't got round to doing so yet. I take "the classics" with me when going on holiday because I normally get a chance to actually get properly stuck into the book. Currently I've got "The Mill On The Floss" and "The Leopard" that need to be read.

10. Five others that you'd like to do this.
Not five others because they probably won't complete it, just one and she'll probably ignore it too - Becky.

Less is More

I understand this idea but it does not apply to books right!