Summer reading list??

OK, I've seen this on a couple of people's blogs recently & -- being an avid reader (with a lifetime iRewards membership at Chapters!) -- decided it would be fun to do myself. (That said, my book reading volume has sadly diminished with the advent of the Internet to occupy my time... thank goodness for Mel's Barren Bitches Book Tour...!)

Here's how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2) Italicize those you intend to read.

3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE - mine are in red

4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-) (I copied the rules from Mrs. X -- not sure if this is actually part of the rules or her wonderful sense of humour, lol!). (And by the way, Mrs. X, I'm totally with you on Thomas Hardy...!)

The premise of this little exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below. I've read 23, which is not bad, but not as many as I might have thought (especially being an English major in university...!). There are several on the list that I honestly can't remember -- did I actually read them? Am I just thinking I read them? Did I see the movie & thus think I actually the read book?? lol -- so the total could actually be higher. And a few, such as the Harry Potter series -- I have them all, have read two -- do you have to read all of them to count? I haven't read the complete works of Shakespeare but, being an English major, I have probably read more of them than the average citizen.

Anyway, here's my list:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -- I never could get into Tolkien. But the movies were good...!

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling -- have them all, but have only read the first two so far...

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (have never seen the movie all the way through either -- GASP!!!)

6 The Bible -- not entirely, no!
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
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
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 -- it's in my "to read" pile...!

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -- I studied this twice while in university! I had my doubts... but it really is a good book. It was my prof's favourite & I guess his enthusiasm was catching!

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -- read this when I was 11!
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -- I tried to read this one summer when I was at university -- managed about 35 pages before giving up, lol.

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -- I think I liked the mini-series (with Jeremy Irons) better than the book. There's a movie version coming out shortly!

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -- love the movie!!
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 -- I have this, just haven't read it!
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -- ditto above!
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -- read in high school
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -- I have & love just about everything the woman ever wrote... my favourites are Rilla of Ingleside & The Blue Castle.

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 -- also in the reading pile...!
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 -- another one from high school...!
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -- amazing first novel written by a university student!

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -- did I ever tell you I have this big pile of books "to read"? lol

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -- read at university. Totally depressing!!

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -- I read this one right after Katie was stillborn. It gave me some much-needed laughs!!

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 -- but I did read & love "A Little Princess"
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
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

Reason #5,623 why I love this guy...

As I've probably written before, dh & I love to go to the movies, especially to a Sunday afternoon matinee. One of the big jokes of our marriage is that I'm forever dragging him to movies -- little arthouse gems, foreign films with subtitles, or -- of course -- "chick flicks" -- which he grumbles about going to, but inevitably winds up loving. The only movie to date that I dragged him to see that he absolutely, positively hated was "Sense & Sensibility," based on the Jane Austen novel, with Emma Thompson & Kate Winslet as the sisters, and Hugh Grant & Alan Rickman as the men in their life.

So, with eyes rolling, he accompanied me today to see "Mamma Mia!" -- the movie based on the hit stage play, based on the music of the 70s Swedish supergroup ABBA. I took my mom to see the Toronto stage production at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto a couple of years back, & thought it was a hoot. (The girl who played Sophie in that production, Marisa McIntyre, is up for the role of Maria in The Sound of Music, in the CBC-TV reality show contest "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" But, I digress....) The reviews I'd read have been decidedly mixed... but I figured if anything, the scenery (Pierce Brosnan & Colin Firth... oh yes, & the Greek islands too, lol!) would be worth the price of admission.

OK, the story is totally cheesy, to go along with the hammy acting. And Pierce Brosnan, bless his good looking heart (which I've loved since the days of "Remington Steele"), cannot sing. (Colin Firth actually has a very pleasant voice.)

But there is something totally infectuous about ABBA's music. Once one of the those songs gets into your head... (here I go again... my, my... how can I resist it??). (Watch for cameos by both the ABBA guys, one near the end of "Dancing Queen," & one at the very end of the movie before the very final credits roll.)

Anyway, dh walked out saying, "Was it good? No. Was it fun? I hate to say it, but I had a blast!" Hee hee.

Part of the fun was Julie Walters & Christine Baranski as Meryl Streep's friends. Baranski looks like she's had work (or was very well lit), but Walters & Streep look like the 50-something women they are (& damn fine looking ones too).

I knew it was opening weekend so there might be some people there. The new Batman movie was also on at the same cineplex (with an earlier starting time), so I was not surprised that the parking lot was nearly full when we got there for the 1 p.m. show. I WAS surprised to see the lineups at the popcorn counter. Full of people with grey hair. I told dh I'd go on ahead to get some seats, & I'm glad I did, because the place was PACKED. I haven't been to a Sunday matinee that was that packed, let alone with grey-haired people, since we went to see "Calendar Girls" a few years back -- which was also a story about older women (& also starred Julie Walters). I guess it just goes to show that there is a market out there for movies aimed at an adult audience!

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Of course, no movie experience would be complete without at least a glancing reminder of loss & infertility... "Mamma Mia" is, after all, the story of a mother & her daughter. There is a lovely, wistful song as the mom is helping her daughter get ready for her wedding -- obviously an experience I will never have. It's an ABBA song I'd never heard prior to seeing the play, & I got teary-eyed all over again watching that scene in the movie. I may not know the feeling of watching a daughter growing up, but I am achingly aware of the feeling of time slipping through my fingers...

Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile
I watch her go with a surge of that well-known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while
The feeling that Im losing her forever
And without really entering her world
Im glad whenever I can share her laughter
That funny little girl

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see whats in her mind
Each time I think Im close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sleep in our eyes, her and me at the breakfast table
Barely awake, I let precious time go by
Then when shes gone theres that odd melancholy feeling
And a sense of guilt I cant deny
What happened to the wonderful adventures
The places I had planned for us to go
(slipping through my fingers all the time)
Well, some of that we did but most we didnt
And why I just dont know

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see whats in her mind
Each time I think Im close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
And save it from the funny tricks of time
Slipping through my fingers...
Slipping through my fingers all the time

A few for Friday night...

Emily at Apron Strings for Emily recently posted about her high blood pressure. My mother has high bp & has long warned me of the dangers of the salt shaker. I don't remember when she started taking medication, but certainly since she was in her 40s.

She has often referred to "having a hard time" when I was born, & it wasn't until my own pregnancy that I realized she had had pre-ecclampsia, & that both of us very nearly didn't make it.

On the other side of the family, my dad's mother had very high bp & died suddenly of a stroke at the far-too-young age of 68 when I was 14. So this was something always lurking in the background, but in the classic way of the young, healthy & optimistic, with each checkup & textbook 120/80 reading, I assumed it didn't apply to me.

A couple of years back, I started getting high readings when visiting Dr. Ob-gyn's office. His nurse would frown at me & tell me to follow up with my family dr. I'd go there, get 120/80, & that would be the end of it. I chalked it up to white coat syndrome & stress. After all, I reasoned, while Dr. Ob-gyn himself is a perfectly charming man, his office is not exactly my favourite place in the world...!

Same scenario, spring 2007 -- only this time, when I went to see my family dr, I got a high reading. He had me come back a month later, same thing. He encouraged me to lose some weight & cut back on sodium. I put away the salt shaker, started reading labels & checking restaurant nutrition guides online (holy cow, have you ever looked at sodium counts for a typical restaurant meal??). And I did manage to lose a few pounds -- I'm currently a good 25 lbs above the top of my Weight Watchers goal range (& about 40 lbs above my previous lifetime goal weight, achieved when I was 31, & which I know I will never see again in my lifetime...!!)... but of course, weight loss (especially in your late 40s) is easier said than done.

So he's been monitoring me like this for over a year now... I'd get the odd 120/80, but more often 130/85, 140/90. Sometimes higher. :(

When I went to see him Monday morning, it was 145/95. I knew what was coming. He told me he couldn't let me walk around indefinitely with unchecked high bp. And so I walked out of his office with medication (he gave me samples -- the lowest dose available -- & presumably if they agree with me, he'll write me a prescription). He told me he takes the same stuff himself (!), which made me feel a little better. Also that it's not necessarily a lifetime thing, that it's possible that if I lose the weight & continue to cut back on sodium that I might eventually be able to go off the pills.

There's this Alice in Wonderland feeling of putting a strange new pill in your mouth for the first time & wondering what the heck it's going to do to you. Kind of reminded me of taking Clomid for the first time. This time, I'm hoping for a miracle of a different sort.

So I took the first pill this morning, and so far, so good (i.e., no side effects that I've noticed, other than fatigue, which isn't unusual for me at the end of a long week anyway...!). I guess time & the cuff will tell the tale. I'm going back in 10 days, although his receptionist (who is also on the same meds!) warned me it generally takes 3-4 weeks to kick in.

I also have dh watching every mouthful of food I eat & dragging me out for after-dinner walks before my rear can hit the loveseat (or computer chair) after dinner. Which can be annoying as heck, but also kind of cute at times. ; )

Anyone else dealing with high blood pressure out there?

*** *** ***

Kristen at Certainly Not Cool Enough to Blog had a post this week that excited me. She wrote about a documentary that will be shown on CBC Newsworld later this fall, called "Capturing a Short Life," about families dealing with infant loss, and the work of Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. I can't wait to see this -- not only because it's so wonderful to see this subject getting some airtime, but also because, reading over the babies' stories, I realized that know one of the moms featured, as well as one of the nurses referred to by several of the parents. Will let you know if/when I hear more about it...

*** *** ***

Three of my favourite bloggers -- Mel of Stirrup Queens, Pamela Jeanne of Coming2Terms and Lori of Weebles Wobblog -- will be providing the adoption, loss & infertility perspective among hordes of mommybloggers at the BlogHer conference in San Francisco tomorrow. I have been continually refreshing my blog reader all day, looking for updates. ; )

I told dh about the conference, & he said, "Why didn't you go?" (??!!!) Then we both remembered one good reason why: neither of us have passports, which are now needed to fly from Canada into the States (& we don't have time or stamina to make a road trip all the way to SF). By this time next year, I will likely need one to drive 20 miles across the border into NW Minnesota to visit the cemetery where my grandparents are buried. Such is the world we now live in. :( We've had passport applications sitting out for well over a year now. We even had photos taken last fall (which will expire this fall if we don't hurry up & use them). Getting those applications filled out & submitted to the passport office is at the top of my vacation to-do list!!

Have a good weekend...

Are you a "Savvy Auntie?"

I found this story from The Huffington Post a few days ago, which led me to a new site, Savvy Auntie -- a parenting community for non-parents. I just signed up but will admit I haven't haven't yet explored everything the site has to offer. As a proud auntie to two teenaged nephews, however, I have to admit it sounded interesting.

And, needless to say, when I read the following excerpt from the Huffington Post article, my ears pricked up (well, I was reading, not listening, but you know what I mean...):

It's estimated that today, childless women represent about 50% of the adult female population. There are at least just as many non-moms are there are moms in America! And whether or not these women are childless by choice, they do not live a so-called "barren" lifestyle. Children are often front-and-center in their lives, as they play devoted Auntie to relatives' and friends' children. These relationships are a fundamental part of their lives. But we've been myopic on the traditional role of women as Mom.

Well, hear, hear!!

At the same time, however, I wonder whether she is truly responding to a market need out there, or trying to create one. Probably a little of both. The emphasis on the "Gifts" section in particular had me a little suspicious.

Thoughts?

"Infertility and the state"

On Monday, the Toronto Star ran an editorial about the new expert panel on infertility & adoption that was announced last week (& which I blogged about).

I'm copying the editorial here, but go online & read some of the comments that have been left… why oh why must anything to do with infertility, pregnancy loss or adoption always turn into a debate about the A word??

*** *** ***

Infertility and the state

Jul 14, 2008

For Ontarians who want to have a child, finding out they are infertile is an agonizing experience that can lead to years of futility and expensive treatment bills.

If in the end if they are still unable to conceive, they can run into a new wall of red tape and bureaucracy when they try to adopt.

So it is welcome news that the province has set up a 12-member expert panel to advise the government on how to make infertility treatments and adoption more accessible and affordable. Its members include adoptive parents and those with infertility problems as well as representatives from both the medical and adoption communities.

Infertility affects one in six women over the age of 30, which makes it a growing problem in an era when many people are postponing children until later in life.

The panel will have to deal with some thorny questions around who should pay for new fertility treatments, a great many of which are not currently covered by OHIP.

Between 1985 and 1994, the province paid all the costs of in-vitro fertilization. Before that time, most couples undergoing IVF were upper-middle-class professionals who could afford to pay. In the years when it was publicly funded, there was a sharp increase in the number of lower-income couples using IVF, Ontario data showed.

But troubling questions remain, including: Is infertility treatment "medically necessary," which means it must be covered by OHIP? Or is it unrealistic to expect our increasingly overburdened health-care system to pick up the costs for treatments that have a relatively low success rate?

The panel will have to weigh these questions carefully.

One more fun news item...

I also found this article about baby showers from a childfree-by-choice perspective while Google News-ing "childless" or "childfree," & it made me laugh. Excerpt:

I'M OK with babies. I mean, I don't want to possess one or anything, but they're nice for other people to have. (Except maybe for teens in Gloucester, Mass., but what are ya gonna do.)

Unfortunately, though, when people have babies, a baby shower is inevitably on the horizon.

Now I'm not OK with baby showers, and the feeling is mutual. One even tried to kill me. More on that later.

My main problem with baby showers, aside from the aforementioned murder attempt, is the use of baby-shower games. They should be outlawed. They are annoying and infuriating. They are the entertainment version of waterboarding, and whoever thought of them should be held down and forced to listen to five hours of a Farmer Says See 'n Say, stuck on "cow."

A woman after my own heart! ; ) Read the rest!

In the "it's about time" category...

The government of Ontario (the province where I live) announced today that it is appointing an expert panel to advise the government on how to make infertility treatments and adoption easier and more affordable.

Here's an excerpt from an article in today's Toronto Star (click on the link for the full story):

The 12-member panel, chaired by University of Waterloo president David Johnston, has one year to make its recommendations in a public report.

The panel, which meets for the first time next week, has a broad mandate, but recommendations will likely include how to increase access to infertility treatments, which ones should be covered by OHIP (a great many are not right now) and how to make fertility screening more routine so women get it earlier in their lives and know what their options are.

Here's the government's press release announcing the initiative.

And here's a press release with the response from the Infertility Awareness Association of Canada (IAAC).

Of course, more often than not, reports from government panels, royal commissions, etc., just wind up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. : ( Even so, it's a step in the right direction & will likely bring some much-needed publicity & awareness to the subject. I'll be following this with interest over the next year!