the big read 100 books list

there is this list of literature circling through the different blogs, and even though i usually do not copy and past and type in my own answers to these kinds of lists, this one i think is nice and interesting. it is a list of 100 books, chosen by "the big read" (whoever that is) by no apparant reason other than them being something of classics and widely read, and you are supposed to mark the books which you have read, which who want to read, which you like and which you didn't like. the scary thing is - i don't remember where i found the list. anyway, here is the result:

Here's how it works:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Big Read says that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love, and strikeout the books you read but didn't like.
4) Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who've read only 6 or less and make them read.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And now..... THE BIG READ TOP 100

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. The Harry Potter Series JK Rowling (ok, last one missing)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (ok, the first part)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (let's say: half of it)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (halfway through)
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh .
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen .
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan .
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
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
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 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
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
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 Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
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 .
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
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (this must be the only stuff by her that i never ever read)
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
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
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

well. at least now everybody knows i'm a huge jane austen fan. but that's probably no big news.

buttons buttons

style is eternal recently featured this cute necklace made of buttons, by Whitestuff.

















And with it, the idea of making one like this yourself, which i really want to adopt. It's simple, pure, fun - and, if you make it youself, one of a kind. The perfect thing to do on a nice summers evening...

handcrafted loveliness, part III

a third etsy-seller whom i really really like and want to feature here, is marcella's "timeless trinkets". she uses pieces of old jewellery, beads and charms to create charming new bracelets, nacklaces, rings and earrings.
there are a few themes appearing in her design again and again, amongst them being time, thus creating beautiful steampunk accessories such as this reversible necklace:

















































and tea, with lovely teapots and cups as charms. as some of you might know, i am a huge fan of drinking tea. it could be said to be my favourite drink, so it's no wonder i love those timeless trinkets..



















here are some other favourites which can be found in the shop right now:


































































of course, i bought some pieces, but as my camera doesn't work right now (waiting for the batteries to be loaded again), i will show pictures of those in one of the next posts..

the lost metropolis

isn't it amazing? there is this movie, a masterpiece of german cinema, and over all the years it was to be seen only as a fragment. a quarter of the original version was supposed to be lost. forever. still, the film was taken care of and reconstrukted, always in hope to find the lost parts somehow somewhere. and the miracle actually happened!


a copy of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" turned up at the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires. or rather, it didn't turn up, but somebody got suspicious about their copy being so extremely long. it was flewn in to germany and viewed by some people who really have to know, amongst them Rainer Rother, director of the german kinemathek, and they confirmed that it really is an original copy. so now, only about 5 min of the movie are actually missing!


















it will be such a treat to see it, and i so hope to get the chance soon. and i can so imagine the uproar which probably is taking place amongst all the people at the german film archive where i did some work-experience two years ago. and, at cinegraph, a research center on german film history in hamburg. just imagine! i do so much hope that they will show it at their cinefest-filmfestival in autumn.

for more information, read this article in "Die Zeit", here even in english.

(the copyright of both pictures belong to the Friedrich- Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung)

a necklace for vroni

here is the picture of the latest piece of jewellery i made. a necklace for vroni. and she was so happy about it - which made me even more happy. and apparantly i totally hit her style =) well, ok. i know what she likes, so it wasn't too hard.


a pair of earrings will follow as soon as i got more materials here. after my holidays. which will start next thursday!! whohoooo!!

the weddingdress

well. rather the dress i will be wearing at my brother's wedding. i had been searching for quite some time, and didn't really know what i actually wanted. a polka-dot-dress? a little black dress (i actually bought one at h&m's sale for just that purpose, but then - it's a wedding, not a funeral..)? something huge? today was my last attempt to find anything, and i really did. here is the result:


























dress: mango
shoes: dinsko

the purple is a bit more towards the red than on the picture.
i do like that it is simple, and classy, and a bit 50s. and i just love the detail on the belt:


still, the way to the dress was rough. i had time and there weren't too many people out there shopping, as it was just after 10 in the morning, so mango wasn't chaotic yet. but then. the dress was only hanging there in sizes s and xs (which for normal people would probably be xs and xxs), so i did try it on in s.
which would have worked out fine, had not the zipper been broken. i don't have a clue how i managed to work myself into the dress, but it wasn't such a big problem. just, when i wanted to get out of it (and it sat really tight - so it would have been no food during the wedding..), i realized that the zipper went only halfway. i did try very hard. until i had to realize that i needed help and asked someone who was working there. they were really helpful, but it also was a bit embarassing. anyway, in the end, after about ten minutes, the zipper gave in and i could hop into my own clothes again.

and, all's well that end's well, they even had a size m hidden in the back somewhere, which fitted quite well (ok, i guess i will need a very good bra), so i bought it and am very pleased and contented with it.