frankie

By grands do you mean grandchildren? That's so sweet I also have a book or two that I'm holding out for my Grandson and his little sister when they grow up I love this thread, it's so exciting to read how others have arranged their bookshelves and how they plan to expand their 'libraries' I bought my first bookshelf maybe 10 years ago, and at that time the top shelf included my various dictionaries and The Study of Language by George Yule and Ways of Reading: Advanced Reading Skills for Students of English Literature by Montgomery, Durant, Fabb etc. Anything that was related to my uni studies. The other four shelves housed my other (rather few by comparison to nowadays) novels, mainly classics that I'd bought or the novels I'd bought for my various literature courses. There was also room for my CDs and VHS video tapes. To think that I didn't have enough books to fill a bookcase back then Nowadays that bookshelf is crammed up with novels. I've taken the dictionaries and the sort and have put them in a closet. Now the bookshelf is completely filled with recreational reading. On the topshelf there are biographies and other interesting non-fiction + the novels that seem the most interesting, can't-wait-to-get-to-these -kind of books. The second shelf is for classics, the third is about childrens' + YA lit and misc lit, the fourth is chick lit + books containing animal characters + Twilight series and a few misc reads, and the fifth, the largest shelf, is about fantasy, King novels, thrillers, and some war stories. Last year when I went on a crazy shopping spree for books (all year round), I had to empty my underwear drawer and fill it with books, Rory Gilmore -style. One shelf is dedicated to thrillers, second to epic kind of family histories, Stephen Fry books and Cornelia Funke's Inkheart -trilogy (still unfortunately lacking the third novel). The third is for Gilmore Girls -novels, Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta series, misc novels and my Swedish paperbacks, and the last one is for Ken Follett, The Magicians' Guild, Terry Pratchett and Adrian Mole series. This year I've had to branch out to containing some novels in cardboard boxes, three of them Fortunately I got my dowstairs neighbor's drawer to put the TV and digibox on, and there was still room for 4 rows of books. I managed to put all the books from the cardboard boxes in it! There are misc novels and at least 15 Rory Gilmore reading challenge novels that I've managed to collect in the past 6 months or so. (I'd like to add that my bookcase is quite deep and on each shelf I have two rows of books. Otherwise there'd be no room!) PS. I could never arrange my books by author and title (in alphabetical order) because the books come in various shapes and sizes and I need to utilise the space in the bookshelves in the best possible way. I arrange books within a genre according to size so I can stack up some books on top of them and so on. I'd love to do the color-coordinated bookshelves theme some day, but I need to have at least one or two more bookshelves for that!

Portishead's Portishead is truly excellent! This new, 2008 CD is called Third and I've only listened to it once so far, so cannot really tell

Thanks for the kind words, I think It can't be worse than cross country skiing, so I'll take it

I'm going to the gym tomorrow, for the first time in well over 10 years! A pal of mine has been looking for someone to go to the gym with, just like I have, and last weekend we realised we both needed a gym partner. So we're signing up for a membership, it's only 45e per month and it includes making up a personal gym schedule with a trainer. No additional sign up fees, the only thing is that you've gotta stay another 6 weeks when you've cancelled your membership, but that's only good because it'll keep me at it So it looks like I'm going to be a gym member for at least 2,5 months. I'm really nervous. Really, utterly, absolutely nervous.

I didn't have one either but when I tried, I could make out the words. I'm not the most easily disturbed person but that was gross!

Sarah Vowell seemed really funny when she was on Conan, I can't go without reading at least one of her books George and Sam did seem a really interesting read, me not having much experience on what autism is really like, and the family having two autistic children. And Hornby having one! I think it'll be a delightful read Mark Salzman's book True Notebooks seemed really interesting as well, if I remember correctly he worked with the people who were on death row in a prison. I think M�tley Cr�e was chosen because Lorelai was reading the book this one time and she was really grossed out by it, but not in an entirely negative way I'm personally looking forward to reading the book (did you read the small quote by the way? It was disgusting ), and I wouldn't mind doing it as a group reading

Here you can find some of Scandinavia's crime writers. Too bad I don't know any Finnish ones that have been published in English, for sure.

Lucybird, an absolutely superb review on The Complete Polysyllabic Spree! I share a lot of your thoughts on the book but I couldn't have put it any better! Here as the things I especially agree with you on: And don't you agree that Sarah Vowell is someone you want to look into, considering how much Hornby spent time on writing about her and not using her real name She was on Conan O'Brien a few years ago and she sounded really interesting and I had to add one of her books (A Partly Cloudy Patriot) to my wishlist. The books you added to your wishlist/TBR and which I also added: - George and Sam- Charlotte Moore - Old School- Tobias Wolff - True Notebooks- Mark Salzman - Early Bird- Rodney Rothman - Then We Came to the End- Joshua Ferris BTW, have you noticed that at least How to Breathe Underwater (Julia Orringer), Old School (Tobias Wolff), The Dirt (M�tley Cr�e) and Candide (Voltaire) are on the Rory list as well? Oooh and BTW, did you know that Kurkov has written a sequel to the penguin story? I've not read it yet but can't wait to get to it

A really difficult question and decision, but after all it was an easy choice for me: it's definitely Jeffery Deaver's The Coffin Dancer! I'm still blown away by the twist(s) in that novel and can't begin to imagine how Deaver came to think of it. That man is pure genious. (If anyone wants to read it, I suggest you read Deaver's The Bone Collector first, because TCD is the second novel to the Lincoln Rhyme -series which starts off by TBC. TBC is another gem as well )

A really difficult question and decision, but after all it was an easy choice for me: it's definitely Jeffery Deaver's The Coffin Dancer! I'm still blown away by the twist(s) in that novel and can't begin to imagine how Deaver came to think of it. That man is pure genious.

I'd completely forgotten about this thread and Colm Toibin but I do remember wanting to read some of his books. Now that I was rereading this thread, I read Nollaig's thoughts on The Blackwater Lightship and thought to myself I must mention that to CornflowerBlue because she raised the whole issue of GLTG literature, and then I scrolled down to read more and noticed that of course it was CornflowerBlue who bumped up the thread

I just found out that Portishead has released an album in 2008 and I just had to get it of course, now I'm listening to it for the first time. I'm jazzed!!

Hiya Von and welcome back! Glad to hear you're enjoying Birdsong, I have that one on my TBR. Is it a part of a trilogy, or am I completely mistaken? Being the hugest dog enthusiast there is, I'm suggesting that when you have the time, you could post pics of your greyhounds on the Pets -thread I'm sure people would appreciate cat and fish pics as well

That was a very proud moment in this country I have to say. It was nice to see that after that year others were more willing to explore that music genre as well, and it's not all weirdo pop anymore. Still, the acts Finland has been sending out after that have been quite horrid. It was like our winning never happened in the first place and we learnt nothing

Hello Ladybug (what a wonderful username!) and welcome to the forum! I am glad to hear your reading repertoire is without any inhibitions, I'm sure you'll find lots of great recommendations on here

I finished How to Be Good by Nick Hornby today (what a boring book in the end) and started reading Miss Smilla.

I'm so glad you're enjoying it so much! And I know how you feel about missing your calling I've had the same thoughts and I sometimes actually think about going and studying to be a Zumba instructor! Not that I would ever actually do it, but it's so envigorating to think about oneself in a whole new light

Hello Hazel and welcome to the forum!

Welcome back Erin!

Hello and welcome to the forum Fiona!

Hello Atlas and welcome to the forum!

Aw, thanks for the offer, that's really sweet of you! But it would cost you to send it to here so I'm respectfully declining the offer

Another amazing review Paula, I can't help but add this one to my wishlist as well! Your reading blog is going to cost me a pretty penny I hope I can catch some of these books when I'm in the UK so as to reduce the costs.