Tiger

Legs!

Heard from an old friend I haven't seen in four years or spoken to since just after Christmas. Was lovely to hear from him!

I had leftovers of the tomato, roasted onion and spinach lasagne that I made a couple of days ago (and have been eating for the last four nights!). Just want to eat tomorrow's dinner though- making a coconut, spinach, chickpea and sweet potato curry which should last three nights!

Hello Dan, welcome to the forum!

Harry Potter! :D Jurassic Park- Michael Crichton (and also The Lost World) The Secret of Crickley Hall- James Herbert (much better than the TV adaptation!) Eragon- Christopher Paolini (again, much better than the film) What Has Nature Ever Done For Us? Tony Juniper Any book by Roald Dahl Last Chance to See- Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series- Michelle Paver Innocent Traitor- Alison Weir Murder Most Royal- Jean Plaidy Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII- David Starkey

Oh Gosh, that long already?! I joined in April 2006. I was a lickle ten year old still at primary school then, and my mother (user Angel) used to use the site, and that's how I came to know of the forum. Yet, finally, I felt at that tender age I could talk about books to people who didn't think I was a nerd or whatever just for wanting to read. Here were like-minded, kind people who wanted to talk about books! Perfect! It's nice to be part of a forum that doesn't strive to be controversial or have heaps of aggressive forums like others that I've used. This really is the friendliest forum you could ever find Admittedly, I started to use the forum a lot less when I turned fourteen or fifteen, as I became busy with GCSEs, A levels, volunteering, and just generally being a teenager. I still read a fair amount, but only found myself logging in very occasionally. Now I'm at uni (that same little Tiger from all those years ago, now just weeks away from her twentieth birthday), and rarely find time to read for pleasure. However, I have returned to the forum due to the friendly vibe of the forum, and to pick up inspiration for summer reading, when I can at last sit down and read something that's not about the genetics of bumblebees (as genuinely interesting as it is, I just want to escape from it for four months!)

Have fun in Prague, Brian! And also good luck to your son, charliepud! I finished year one of uni yesterday! The exams were...mixed... One absolutely disgusting, one tough (yet I know I've passed it as it was on a computer-based system and told you whether you'd passed as soon as you clicked Enter) and one that I liked. Once yesterday's exam was done, a few of my friends and I went to Pizza Express as we had money off vouchers. Then we went back to a friend's flat for drinking games- Uno is a lot more fun when you're tipsy! Today, those of us who are living together next year (seven of us- five girls and two boys, all from the course) went to look again at the house that we've got for next year, and then went out bowling with some more friends from our course. Tomorrow, we're off to Mount Edgecumbe to do some exploring! Going home in fifteen days, too, so there's a lot to look forward to right now. Hope everyone is well.

Cookery and textbooks are in size order Series are in chronological order, as are history books. The rest of it is colour co-ordinated

Hello, everyone, hope you're well! I'm avoiding doing my law revision (Although to be fair, I have done quite a lot of revision this week, and I'm spending a whole afternoon on oceanography with my friends tomorrow- fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon!) It's also been a nice week, too. Had an unexpected surprise this afternoon. One of my flatmates had to leave early in March due to severe glandular fever that he had for months, and he came back to visit everyone today and is here until Tuesday! He gave all of us ladies in the flat flowers, too, which was lovely, and he's a lot healthier now. The weather's also been beautiful up until today, so for the last few days, my friends and I have been having fun in the evening sun (although some of us sat on the rocks with our feet in the water the other day... let's just say we couldn't feel our feet for ages as it was so cold!).

Hello, welcome aboard!

It was gorgeous here for days, but now it's gone back to being typical Plymouth weather (i.e. windy, grey, raining and miserable!).

Really, really couldn't be bothered to cook (it's revision season!) so I just had some of the frozen leftovers of the chickpea curry that I made the other day with rice. If I can be bothered to move to the kitchen, there's also a mango sorbet in my freezer that's been there for weeks...

Wow, Nollaig, that looks absolutely beautiful! Hope you enjoy yourself! Hope everyone who's feeling under the weather feels better soon, as well! Had quite a quiet day, although it's been nice. The deposit has been paid to go to the Malaysian rainforest for two weeks with my uni next year. Absolutely cannot wait- been looking forward to the trip for a year already, and the second years have just returned, and it looks like they had an incredible time! Also got the results of that oral presentation that we did last week, and I'm really happy with what my group and I got. Apart from that, it's been nice to just relax (even if I have just spent two hours revising phytoplankton blooms!). Went out to dinner with my grandparents and brother on Tuesday night, and tomorrow I'm taking my best friend to one of our local wildlife parks. I volunteer for the charity that looks after the park and their sister park (the one where I'm stationed. although I did do a month at the park we're going to tomorrow) so I can get us both in for free. She wants to see the baby Malayan tapir that was born in November, and I haven't seen the African painted dogs that were born in the new year, so it should be a great day! We're also off to York on Saturday for a week, which we're all needing right now!

You're welcome, and thanks for your suggestions, too! Another one I'd thoroughly recommend is Lawrence Anthony's The Elephant Whisperer. The author was an explorer and conservationist, and this one is about his work in a game park in South Africa. He saved the lives of a whole herd of eles that were to be shot for dangerous behaviour. It's a beautiful book about how he rescued the herd and turned their behaviour around. I also would like to pick up a couple more books. Has anyone read H for Hawk? And if so, what's it like?

Hugs to you, Nollaig! I'm hoooome! I actually got to do some reading for pleasure today, too, rather than a uni textbook. The group presentation went very well on Thursday, and we've now finished three out of the six modules. For the other three, we've got our exams after Easter (and each exam is worth 50% of the marks for their modules!). I've now got three weeks off! On Monday I'll be dyeing my hair with henna (which takes a day in itself... I have so much hair I have to leave it on for upwards of six hours and it takes ages to apply!), some point this week I'll be going out to dinner with my grandparents, and on Friday I'm taking my best friend (who I've been friends with for sixteen years now, I realised the other day!) to one of our local wildlife parks! They have a baby Malayan tapir and some African painted dogs there that she's desperate to see, and because I volunteer for the charity that looks after the park and their sister park (the one I'm normally based at) I can get us in for free! Then on Saturday we're going to York for a week,, and at some point we're visiting Yorkshire Wildlife Park to see the polar bears.

Two more really good books in this genre: The Sea Inside by Philip Hoare sets to explore the marine life of the world and the way in which the human race relies on and treats it. Gerald Durrell's The Aye-Aye and I discusses his expedition to Madagascar to rescue the peculiar (but I think they're beautiful!) aye-aye lemur to take them back to Jersey zoo in an attempt to breed them. This account is great for so many reasons as it's eye-opening, as well as being told with Durrell's amazing humour. Would recommend!

Beautiful blue skies, a little bit windy though

I love nature writing! In fact it's one of my favourite genres. I am a huge lover of anything to do with nature, and my bookshelves are packed with nature books (and I'm an environmental science student who hopes to go into wildlife conservation/conservation education, so I've done a lot of reading about nature). It's hard to think of favourites as I like so many, but I'll narrow it down! I like Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey, about how she came to study the mountain gorillas in the wild and came across several difficulties. In The Shadow of Man and Hope For Animals and Their World are both by Jane Goodall, and are two of my favourite books of all time. The former is about how she came to study chimpanzees in the wild and the realization that traits that we think of as "human" are not confined just to our species. The latter is about conservation success stories, such as with the American burying beetle and the Californian Condor. What Has Nature Ever Done for Us? by Tony Juniper is another favourite, and is actually one of the books put forward for recommended reading on my university course. Last Chance To See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine is my favourite book in this genre though. It's about their travels to see some of the rarest animals on Earth, such as the kakapo, northern white rhino, Yangtze river dolphin, aye-aye and several other species. It's funny, sad, and eye opening at the same time. It's even sadder when you consider that the Yangtze river dolphin, or baiji as it is sometimes known, is now considered extinct (or near extinction), and there are only three northern white rhinos left and they cannot breed, so it's only a matter of time before they're gone, too. I liked the follow-up of the same name, but because Douglas is no longer with us, Carwardine took Stephen Fry with him, and there was a TV series, too (both the book, which I have a signed copy of, and the DVD series are favourites, too). When I am actually free, there are other books that I have lined up and ready to read. Shark by Juliet Eilperin, which is actually exploring what sharks are "really" like (i.e. not vicious, blood-thirsty killing machines) and their relationships with humans. I'm a huge fan of sharks, so cannot wait to read this one. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary by Caspar Henderson, a book that explores twenty-seven strange and peculiar animals of the 21st century, such as axolotls, honey badgers, goblin sharks and flatworms. The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, about the author's travels to the Himalayas and Tibet to study bharals, but wanting to see a snow leopard.

Just about to get a Cadbury's hot chocolate and then go to bed!

Hope you feel better Athena and Poppyshake! It's the last week of the second term at uni! Cannot believe how quickly the first year has gone- it's been amazingly good fun, and I can't believe how lucky I am to have made lots of really good friends! Today I did my final statistics exam, handed in the stats poster that I worked on with some friends, and finished prepping for the final piece of coursework of the year (an oral presentation on Thursday). Now we've completed two out of six modules, waiting for the results of one, and have exams for the other three next term and we've done all the coursework for them. I've also got a bit of a lie-in tomorrow as it's a 11am start rather than the usual 9am, something I'm so grateful for. For the last few weeks, I've been feeling absolutely exhausted and a lot of the time I'll have to take a midday/afternoon nap (and then more often than not I'll still feel so tired that I find it hard to move from the bed for another couple of hours), so I'm hoping to have more energy than that tomorrow. Guess it's just that I need a good break as I have been eating and sleeping well, taking multivitamins, exercising, etc... Going home on Friday night- cannot wait to see my old friends, family and my cats and to take a bath with all my Lush bath bombs as soon as I get home (one of the things I have missed the most since moving away)! I haven't been home since Christmas as it's 300 miles away for me (and last term I only went home once for a hospital appointment). Also just can't wait for exams to be over just to get back into reading for pleasure! Hope everyone is well!

This is a great thread! I wish you all luck. I'm not looking to lose weight, but trying to eat healthier. I won't go into too much detail, but last year I had a few health problems and I had to have quite a few tests done because doctors thought I had Crohn's or Ulcerative Colitis. Thankfully I don't have either, and was discharged not long after Christmas. Since then I've had to keep a very close eye on what I eat to see what triggers my symptoms, keeping a concise food and symptom diary including all the ingredients. It's a pain, but I've eliminated white bread, alcohol and carbonated drinks (not that I ever had much of either anyway) and cut down on caffeinated drinks. I also try to do my own cooking from scratch when I have the energy so I know exactly what I'm eating (although on days like today, when I crashed on my bed at about eleven and was too exhausted to move until a few hours later, it's harder), and I am feeling better. However, trying to eat healthily as a vegetarian student can be a right pain in the neck, and sometimes it's all too easy to pick up the special offer choccies or to eat a Wispa bar with a hot chocolate before bed after a long day. I would also like to improve my fitness. For my second year field trip, there's a few of us going to the Malaysian jungle for two weeks, and obviously you have to be quite fit to deal with the conditions. While I go for a lot of long walks, I'm nowhere near fit enough to deal with the jungle, so it's my mission from now to slowly but surely build that fitness and stamina up ready for the jungle! It'd also be nice to beat my friend in his morning runs

After watching the eclipse on Plymouth Hoe with my friends, some of us went for breakfast at a café on the waterfront. It was a beautiful day, and as we were eating, we saw a submarine coming in Then when I got back to my flat, I found I had an email telling me that I've got a job when my second year starts in September mentoring the first years on my course to help them with their coursework and help them settle in to uni life throughout the year A few of my friends and I are going on a daytrip to Looe tomorrow, too, which should be great I love this thread, so full of happy posts!

I saw the eclipse this morning, it was amazing! The visibility here (Plymouth) was incredible as we've had beautiful weather here these last few days. A few of my friends and I were sat on the Hoe watching it. Those are great pics, Kell!

Ooh, also just remembered The Casual Vacancy by J.K.Rowling. Hugely disappointed. I did genuinely block out the fact that she was the author of Harry Potter (my all-time favourite), but this book was probably the most boring thing I've ever read. I gave up half way through, giving up hope that something was ever going to happen.

Probably sounds stereotypical, but I would say Twilight. I gave up after sixty pages and stopped reading it trying to figure out what all the hype was about!