The BBC believes

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? ** the books you've read.

I got 33.

** 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
** 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
** 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
** 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
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
** 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 Traveler’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 Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
** 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
** 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein
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 Meany - 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 - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
** 62 Lolita - Vladimir 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’s 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 Inferno – Dante
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
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

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Christmas Letter 2008

The blog has really taken a dive this year, you can partially blame Facebook for that, and partially me being so slack. Anyway - here's this year in brief.

Robert & Wendy’s Christmas letter – 2008


Looking back on yet another year, we’d have to agree that ’08 has certainly become a memorable one, and unfortunately not for all good reasons – but more on that later. Here’s your yearly catch up on what’s been happening here in Perth at the Griffiths’ residence.

January we started the year with a short driving holiday to Kalgoorlie – this is a small mining town about a six hours drive inland (East) from Perth, not a typical ‘holiday’ destination, but with sufficient tourist stops to keep us interested. We had already planned our big ‘surprise’ holiday for the year – England in June.

February Wendy got the astronomy bug, joining a club, and getting a small telescope to play with. Our house is sufficiently away from the City to avoid the really harsh lights, and giving us some great night views if the weathers right.

March After a couple of months ‘rest’ we started again working on our Christmas lights display for the coming year. From this point on, most weekends had at least a small component of lights-work. We’d decided to double the display this year – twice the number of controlled light channels – all synchronised to music.

April We’re both still very active with the Perth Subaru 4wd club (both on committee, Robert being the secretary), however this month had our only real ‘camping’ trip with the club this year, one of our annual visits to Lochada – an ex-cattle station which the club is helping to re-habilitate (stripping back fences, marking wells etc.). Mam & Michael really love their caravan trips away and are making lots of new friends at the caravan club.

June The big trip for the year, a whole month in the UK, surprising Roberts parents, and as usual taking a week out of the trip to visit somewhere with Roberts sisters – this time Norfolk. We also took the opportunity to have a stay over in London to see a show with some good friends.

July back to work and reality – although Wendy is now only working part time. This month we celebrated ‘Christmas in July’ (an Aussie tradition to help bring some holiday spirit into our winter months) – this was done with the Subaru Club having a camp cookout a few hours South of Perth.

Aug/Sept/Oct Working on the Christmas lights got into full swing now, with lots of soldering, and starting on the lighting sequencing. We continue having small trips out with the club, and Robert finds time to go on a photoshop for photographers course – assisted with his new camera bought for the UK trip.

November Returning from a drive out one evening, our car is hit by a speeding, drunk P-plate driver, pushing us 30 meters up the road, and totally wrecking our car and Christmas. We’re both rushed to hospital, Wendy with concussion and bad bruising. Robert doesn’t fair so well, and is kept in the critical trauma unit for two weeks with collapsed lung, torn liver, four cracked ribs and three cracked vertebrae. If we hadn’t been driving our 5 star safety rated Subaru we may not have been writing this letter.

So here we are in December, Doctors have given every indication that Robert will make a full recovery given a bit of time. Robert’s home now but spending much of his time stuck on his back. However he’s starting to walk again, thanks to physio and pain killers. Wendy is about to start back at work, but still in some pain. All our Christmas light plans had to be cancelled – but at least we’re here to plan for next year.

So that’s our 2008, it’s certainly been memorable, and has given us the change to really appreciate what we’ve got here and how lucky we are (and have been).

Here’s wishing you all a great Christmas, and have a wonderful new-year. Just don’t drink and drive !

Car in for repair

Not written for a while - but I suddenly feel the need to rant!

10 days ago, on the way to work, a road train 'rolled' into me whilst we were waiting at some red lights. A big bump, and a small hole in my bumper. 'Oops, sorry I didn't realise I was still moving'

Today it's gone in to be fixed - obviously under the big rigs insurance. Unfortunately the garage found they didn't have one of the clips needed to fit on the replacement bumper - which has been ordered from over east. So now I find I'm without a car for around 7 days due to the blundering driver.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised - it's under insurance, so the garage will have hugely inflated the repair cost - now they are just having to drag it out to justify their charges to the insurance company. Whilst I, the victim sit by and wait.

Arghhh!

More photos

IMG_0448
Originally uploaded by robandwend.

I've just found a bunch more photos from our holiday in the UK. I knew some were missing - they are from early in the holidays, around Liverpool.

As always, click the photo to go to the flickr stream.

Slack

Whilst I've been slack on blogging, I've been playing around on Facebook - so if you've not seen go to http://www.facebook.com/ and have a look. It's not a blog, but it's quick to post to, and if you can ignore all the effective spam cr*p some keep sending, it's quite need.

Just got drowned walking the dog. This winter has been one of the coldest and wettest I can remember, I'll be really glad when summer gets here.

We're in house renovation mode - and have just about finished the TV room, walls painted, furniture replaced, and a new 50" (127cm) HD plasma TV mounted on the wall. It's made a huge difference to the whole feel of the room, making is seam a lot bigger.

We've now got the 42" LCD in the living area, which is in desperate need of a settee (it's a bit silly having to stand to watch the TV).

We have ordered new curtains through out the house, and will probably move onto re-decorating the hallway next.

And... I am Sooo behind on the christmas lights, it's not a joke.

W is busy doing some needlework she bought back from the UK.

Holiday shots

IMG_0852
Originally uploaded by robandwend.

Holiday shots are up ...

here

Totally unedited, so they are a bit rough.

On holidays - suprise to UK

I've not been able to post anything about this before, as we have come to the UK to suprise my parent. My sisters know about the trip, but very few others.

Thurdays 29th - Flew Emirates Business Class to Manchester UK - very good service, very long flight. Picked up in Perth by Limo, and in Manchester by W.s brother D.

Friday - At D's in Liverpool. Fairly jet lagged, but great to be here. Off to pick up rented car (some french thing) and to see an Dr Who exibit!

Sat/Sun - Out and about with D, J, B & L - visited Chester - lovely place.

Mon - Drive to Sheffield, suprise Mum with sister J. All went really well. Took her for a nice lunch.

Tue - Suprise Dad for his b'day, this time with sister M - again all went well. Lunch at M's then a meal with Dad, J, and sisters in town (chinese - v.nice).

Wed - (as writing this) - going for a walk!