Post 400 - No Idea What's Coming Next

Generally, I'm trying to keep all my pregnancy stories and info on the TexasRed and the Twins page. Right now, though, that's becoming difficult.

I've just been diagnosed with preeclampsia by my OB and a specialist. Now they're trying to decide if it's mild enough to stay on bedrest at home (for the moment) or if they need to put me in the hospital for the foreseeable future (which would include the holidays).

I'm freaking out a little over this news, because I'm really not ready for the babies to arrive, or for a long hospital stay starting at the drop of a hat.

I'll keep you guys posted about how I'm doing. No idea yet whether I'll be posting here more frequently during bedrest (because I'll have so much more time to read) or less (because my wifi will be limited).

Fingers crossed that all of this will work out for the best in the long run.

BBC Book List

I just saw this over at The Avid Reader's Musings. It's a list from the BBC of important literature and they believe most people will only have read 6 off the list.

I'm surprised by the number of new books here. There's also some double counting (like the Chronicles of Narnia being listed separately from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe). I got dinged for some authors that show up repeatedly, too (like Thomas Hardy, who I always heard was horribly depressing). Mostly, I'm impressed with how many of there I read in high school and feeling the need to read some more!

Here's the list with an [X] to show the ones I've read -- 51, plus most of Shakespeare:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen [X]
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien [X]
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte [X]
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling [X]
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee [X]
6 The Bible [X]
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte [__] (tried, but never finished)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell [X]
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman [__] (tried, but never finished)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens [__]
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott [X]
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy [__]
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller [X]
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare [mostly]
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier [___]
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien [X]
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk [___]
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger [X]
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger [X]
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot [___]
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell [X]
22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald [X]
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens [___]
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [___]
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams [X]
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [__]
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky [___]
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck [X]
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll [X]
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame [X]
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy [___]
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens [___]
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis [X]
34 Emma-Jane Austen [X]
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen [X]
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis [X]
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini [X]
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres [___]
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden [X]
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne [X]
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell [X]
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown [X]
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez [___]
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving [X]
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins [___]
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery [X]
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy [___]
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood [X]
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding [X]
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan [X]
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel [___]
52 Dune - Frank Herbert [___]
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons [___]
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen [X]
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 [X]
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 [X]
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov [___]
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt [___]
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold [___]
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas [X]
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac [___]
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy [___]
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding [X]
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie [___]
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville [X]
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens [X]
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker [X]
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnet [X]
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 Byat [___] (tried, but never finished)
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens [X]
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell [___]
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker [___]
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro [___]
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert [X] (extra points for reading in French? not if it was in high school?)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry [___]
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White [X]
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom [X]
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [X]
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton [___]
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad [___]
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery [X] (extra points for reading in French? not if it was in high school?)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks [___]
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams [X]
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole [___] (not after my friend told me it was the worst book she'd ever read)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute [___]
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas [X]
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare [X]
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl [X]
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo [___]

How about you? How'd you do?

Prairie Dog Damage

Don't worry -- no damage to the prairie dog. Doesn't he look like an angel here with his yellow "halo." All he wants to do is eat his cracker in peace...

Mostly because he's already eaten the wall!

You can see more Wordless Wednesday at the headquarters.