how come i've never read a confederacy of dunces before? don't worry though. i am making up for the oversight by reading it obsessively.

and as a result i'm progressing nicely on the 1001 books to read before you die challenge. i may have even caught up to the one book a month target after i finally finished the motivation sapping eva trout, and read the delightful miss peddigrew lives a day.

this week has been fierce. some weeks are. a election has been called, which of course is a highlight. for the first time in years i'm interested. i think the last time i was five and i wrote a story about how my mother was going to vote for david lange. my school principal gave me a smiley face stamp on my hand for that one. i have also voted in the stv vs fpp city council poll. i'm such a citizen right now.

i also did some dancing at a ball on friday night, which is perhaps the real reason i spent yesterday reading confederacy of dunces and not going to atomic. ie i needed to recover. the ball itself was fine, but low key. i wore sixty dollars of equip jewels and pulled out my disco moves once again. turns out i actually prefer dancing by myself though, so i kept moving away from my partners so i could twirl alone. anyway after the ball i drank whiskey in the holiday inn hotel lobby until two am while some soccer team ate sandwiches. as an aside, they weren't as hot as i had anticipated.

i also got pretty cultured this week. i went to see the rita angus exhibition at te papa. seeing the island bay boats in real life, and not in a faded poster in someone's living room, was like a pilgrimage for my island bay bred self. and like most great art works, it was smaller in real life. but still fierce. that same night i ate coq au vin at hippotamus. food was like a 9 out of ten. views were great. but music was random and i think the glass food by the entrance could do with a dusting. anyway, i'll be back. i also ate at plate at the holiday inn. food was pretty good. maybe a seven and a half. and i ate at the koru club and about a hundred times at my work cafe. i also went to dorkland this week. for all of about two hours.

this week i also have two new favourite songs. one is mase's feel so good. and the other is this one.



i thought i hated this song because it was on a grey's anatomy like that terrible song. how to save a life. by the fray. but then this weekend i listened to it again and decided actually it is the greatest song of all time.

anyway, i can't believe i have spent this long not reading confederacy. better get back in to it...

the problem i have with weekends is that they go by too quickly. one minute you're downing whiskey at te papa, the next you're trying to figure out if you have enough clean clothes to last the week while sobbing about dogs thanks to post secret.

i would insert a new self portrait here, but the lord alone knows where my camera is. i had it when i got back from melbourne but since then it has been awol. anyway, an old portrait will have to suffice....



remember this face because it could be on the front page of the paper on monday. actually, i'll be hurt if it is not. a dompost photographer took my photo at the book fair on saturday. and sure, the only bad publicity is no publicity or whatever, but seriously: i was reading the sensuous woman by "j" at the time. plus i am sure the photographer didn't get my best angle. pretty much i'm the only person alive who can do that.

on the topic of the sensuous woman, i bought it obviously. it is awesome, and has already paid for itself . i spent nearly an hour an a half in hysterics with AL reading it at felix while eating ginger loaf. you really must read it. topics covered include when it is okay not to wear makeup (never, unless you have a conservative surgeon in which case there is one exception: surgery), eleven orgie etiquette tips (did you know, you might need to be naked? this book is a godsend), and the hazards of sex (vd mostly, in which case "cry 'help' to the doctor and 'murder' to the man who gave it to you - but don't let those nosy neighbours hear you. the day hasn't quite arrived when venereal diseases are something to brag about").

i also got lucky man, the keith quinn story for my brother. he was stoked. naturally.

from one lucky man to another: do you know who my new favourite celebrity is? tom cruise.


that man has had some bad press (which i now understand after my brush with the dompost as per above), but has made lemonade with his role in tropic thunder. i give the movie 7.5. the best bits were the bells and whistles (the trailers at the start and the cameos throughout). so the movie and its plot were probably kind of weak. but who noticed? i was too busy watching tom cruise shake his money maker to ludacris. which brings me to my new favourite song: get back. anyway, robert downey junior was wonderful - as per my expectations. and jack black once again wasn't annoying. maybe i was too hasty to judge jack black after nacho libre. although one search on youtube reminds me i was on the money with that one. and lance romance, everyone's third favourite n*sync member made an appearance. but enough said. i do not want to spoil the cinematic experience.

and on the topic of spoiling, i'm about to spoil my sunday with more laundry.... sigh.

you should probably know i love personality tests. which is why going to melbourne last week was my best australian holiday ever. it started with shopping. then moved to cocktails and ended in three days of personality tests, 360 reviews and counselling.

here i am drinking a mint julep. not in savannah, but at the meat and wine company - melbourne, while watching a couple give eachother foot rubs IN PUBLIC like it wasn't a thing. for me, it WAS a thing and i could barely cope with the mad case of the giggles it was giving me.

i am resisting being self disclosing about the course, even though it was so awesome it is basically all i can think about. it confirmed i'm an infp. so i feel confident that i can accomplish great and wonderful things. however there is a questionmark over how this combines with the fact i'm a fire sign. jung and astrology seem fairly similar if you ask me. ie both are right on the money.

and at the course i fine dined, and got to wake up to this view every morning, before walking along the beach (for like five minutes, this was self discovery not a health spa).

since returning home i've been in a bit of a haze. mostly because all i want to do is talk about the course. i keep recommending it to people, and analysing their problems. i'm like an evangelist. which is why i urge you to do it too. but if you don't have a spare five thousand dollars or whatever it costs to do this professionally, take the free internet test here.

i have also dedicated time to finding new places for my ikea presents to myself. it turns out i didn't really need that third duvet cover. oh well - i bought that before i was self actualised. so it doesn't count. oh and i went to see the tempest at toi whakaari. i don't do shakespeare without claire danes so it wasn't my cup of tea. plus it was too avante guarde for my tastes. but it was enjoyable overall plus gave me the sense of being cultured. bonus.

speaking of being cultured i need to stop writing now and go and work on my 1001 books to read before you die. months ago i declared i'd read one a month. that hasn't happened. i've only read one - fear and trembling. but am close to finishing a second - eva trout - which despite all the summaries making it sound like the perfect book for me is actually duller than you could imagine. i do not recommend it.

so, after laughing my socks off (and squirming a little) at one of the wellington heats of the 48 hour film festival, i got home to a parcel. this is kind of standard at the moment, due to my shopping addiction. but then i realised, due to the whole branded box thing, that it was my first installment of books from amazon dot com. cos i'm reading ten books in ten months as part of a blog challenge. and it is obviously easier to order things from the states than go to my library. hmmm. anyway, ignoring how i repulse myself, i had a parcel.

i open it. get out my books (there were three of them) and notice that amazon had put in a little somethin' somethin' for me.

and all i can say is: MISJUDGED!


and yes. it is a mcd's voucher you see in the top right corner. even if i didn't find it disgusting, how am i supposed to use a US coupon. and did the amazon people even check to see what country they were sending the books before they added the cellphones for soldiers bag? i mean we're not hostile here*. but there are more supportive countries.

anyway, needless to say my celly remains where it is and i stop ordering from amazon. which i was going to do anyway, but their goddamned cheap prices always got me. until now that is.

*for eg, see what the socialist world says here.

second only to my love of bookshelves, is my love of books.

which is why it pains me i'm not better at updating my virtual bookshelf on facebook. but whatever.

anyway, tonight i ate hamburgers which meant that when i got home i didn't have to make dinner. which is awesome: more internet time.

which is how i got to reading other people's blogs and deciding that i want to show off my literary knowledge. sort of anyway. you see there is some book about the 1001 books you must read before you die. no doubt there are hundreds of blogs dedicated to how the list is wrong. and you know, it is (no judy blume for example), but frankly i have taken it as a challenge. and so has 3m (not the company) and others. so i'm reading ten books in ten months to take myself from being 5% well read to 6% well read. you too can join the challenge here. where you will also find the full list.

and just so you know, my baseline is

3. On Beauty – Zadie Smith
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
43. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
54. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
63. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
76. The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
93. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
147. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
165. Wild Swans – Jung Chang
272. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
312. The Shining – Stephen King
340. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
358. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
367. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
375. Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
408. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
434. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
450. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
451. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
456. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
467. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
484. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
496. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (sort of)
499. The Quiet American – Graham Greene
529. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
547. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
563. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
574. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
603. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
639. Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse (probably)
649. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
675. Orlando – Virginia Woolf
686. To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
698. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
699. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
714. The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
726. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
761. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
799. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
863. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
888. Hard Times – Charles Dickens
901. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
902. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
903. Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
904. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
932. Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
933. Persuasion – Jane Austen
936. Emma – Jane Austen
937. Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
938. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
940. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

i have failed one of my new years resolutions already. it was a resolution i hadn't told you about. because it was entirely too dull. and as anyone would have predicted, i grew weary. and forgot about it. i think i probably lasted until the last week of january.

so i am setting myself new and achievable goals. like to increase my reading. this year i have read not much at all so far. but i have started HEAPS of books. my goal is to finish all the books i've started before i go to vietnam.

this is what that means:


there was one more: a spot of bother. but i finished that yesterday in a flurry of determination. i think i like the author. but i wasn't so keen on the book. i don't know if, in my super introverted state, i should be reading books about depression. plus i love movies with ensemble casts, but in books i find the similar devise passe.

anyway, of the four books i have already started and need to finish i have already read two: judy blume's just as long as we're together. i remember being a bit indifferent to this book as a tweenager. and i am this time around too. but i can't remember the plot and i'm expecting it to get good any moment. finishing it will take me approximately 45 minutes.

the other book i've already read is midnight. i decided to re-read it after my visit to savannah. because when i was standing in the mercer house in savannah i realised that i could barely remember any of it. except that lady chablis liked peach scnapps. this will take me a solid weekend of reading. if not longer.

the hollow men i've already written about. it is taking so long because i find it a bit full on. i read a chapter and need a week to recover. i just finished the orewa speech chapter. i will take a few weeks to recover this time round i think. this will be the hardest to finish. but probably most rewarding.

the final book is the blind assassin. my first margaret atwood. and probably my last to be honest with you. the book is fine. looooong, but fine. but i find it hard to motivate myself to read it. basically i can't see where it is going yet. and i started about six months ago, so i can't remember too well what has happened. though the thought of starting again leaves me cold. so i shall soldier on. and every so often, like earlier this morning, i get a bit wrapped up in it and enjoy it. maybe i will read it in dorkland later this week. it will take a dozen or so sessions to finish.

and then i can get some books that will be perfect for travel and reading on planes. suggestions welcomed. but anyone who recommends maeve binchy *will be blocked from this site.**

* someone bought me a maeve binchy book once because they thought it would be a great plane read. they were sweet. but ever so wrong.
** somehow

thanks to my eftpos card getting scratched up in a kiwibank money machine i've had no access to cash money all weekend. i had forgotten what that is like.

things i have learnt this weekend:

• that the bread i usually buy is obscenely expensive.
• that the yoghurt i buy is extravagant but it is an extravagance i can't do without (fyi, puhoi)
  
• that if i can't survive for one weekend, i am not prepared for when the bird flu hits, and
  
• that bnz is the worst bank in the history of banks

but despite the whole card getting scratched up, luck was a lady. i bumped in to my father in town, which left me with cash in my pockets and a smile on my face. plus i found three dollars in my laundry hamper. cha-ching.

anyway because i was poor i spent most of the weekend doing free things. or shopping on the internet where magnetisim of my credit card was irrelevant. and on that point, internet groceries aren't delivered in the weekend. who knew?

i have also carried on with reading the millions of books i have bought on special over the past month. this is the to read pile by my bed...

i have zero tolerance for crap books basically too. so some of these books may never get read. which reminds me that the last book i read was j-pod by douglas coupland and i expected to be indifferent to it because i was indifferent to generation x but the exact opposite.... i adored it. ADORED it. if you know anything about me you know i wont be able to tell you why. because i hate to describe things like books or movies. but anyway, books about corporate life and criminal underbellies are right up my hutt valley. plus i laughed OUT LOUD. but then that could have been the poverty. being poor inspires hilarity (like in the movie titanic how the lower decks had a rollicking good time til that whole iceberg thing).