Luda

Merci a Pete for this one. Thought I'd stick it here instead of facebook though. Why do I love answering questions so much....? Anyway - on we go.
[I've had to keep coming back and editing as I think of more and more I love/hate/must read]

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You have received this note because someone thinks you are a literary geek. Copy the questions into your own note, answer the questions, and tag any friends who would appreciate the quiz, including the person who sent you this. Don't bother trying to italicize your book titles. We know you want to. (I am doing it and you can't stop me)

1) What author do you own the most books by?
I think I own everything Truman Capote wrote, and most of Jack Kerouac.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
I have a few copies of The Great Gatsby

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Yes. I'm disgusted. You'll be splitting infinitives next.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Edmond Dantes - tres sexy.

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?
I've read all the Tales of the City books by Armistead Maupin hundreds of times. They're my comfort books and have looked after me in some miserable times.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
I was mad for all the Adventure books by Willard Price - Whale Adventure, Amazon Adventure etc

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?'
I borrowed a chick lit book in a moment of desperation - I just cannot stand those type of books. Not me being snobbish, just can't stand them.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
Just one book? That's really tough. A recent one that springs to mind is Bernard Schlink's The Reader.

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
The Count of Monte Cristo of course!

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
Hmm. Let me mull that one over.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Restless by William Boyd

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
With the right people doing it, I wouldn't mind seeing any of my favorites filmed.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
Haven't had one that I can recall

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
I have a bad habit - gory crime thrillers.

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
I started London Fields by Martin Amis - I'm afraid I gave up on it and I can't remember the last time I let a book get the better on me. It felt like wading through treacle.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
Hmm

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
I adore the French

18) Roth or Updike?
I'm ashamed to say I haven't read anything by either of them

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Neither of these two yet either

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare.

21) Austen or Eliot?
Jane Austen. Love her.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
There are tons - I haven't read anything yet by Dostoevsky, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, DH Lawrence, Edith Wharton...the list goes on and on .

23) What is your favorite novel?
Can't pick one - but On the Road, Great Gatsby, Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms, Count of MC, lots of Nancy Mitford and The Invisible World by Stuart Cohen are all among my favourites

24) Play?
It's been sooooo long since I went to the theatre. I need to have a think on this

25) Poem?
I used to love The Listeners by Walter de la Mare - one of the first poems I had to learn by heart. Some of F Scott Fitzgerald's writing is like poetry.

26) Essay?
I couldn't name one!

27) Short story?
I really loved reading Guy de Maupassant ones at school

28) Work of nonfiction?
I hardly read any non-fiction at all, apart from the odd biography.

29) Who is your favourite writer?
Truman Capote

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
The chick lit crew - but that's only my personal taste.

Who was the greatest artist in history?
Submitted by Chicago Shadow.

I don't know about the greatest, but one of my all time favourites, and the first artist who really "spoke" to me is Paul Klee. I could look at his work all day.  In fact, I really love a lot of Bauhaus works. 

This is the first picture of his that I saw that started the love affair. Senecio, painted in 1922 I just love it.

Paul Klee - Senecio

If you had to teach something, what would you teach?

I spent a year as an Art teaching assistant, and I loved it.  So either that, or a general all round teacher for primary age kids.

Google Game (courtesy of FloatyK): Go to Google and type in quotation marks your name and then "likes to" (e.g. "Steve likes to"). Type in the first ten things that come up and re-post in your own note. You must tag the person that sent this to you.
It seems there are some boy Luda characters out there, so I've changed the gender on these.

1. Luda likes to include her fans
2. Luda likes to scribble articles about this topic
3. Luda likes to just snail about slowly but rears up a lot if she's touched (!!!)
4. Luda likes to create articles about this area
5. Luda likes to flirt
6. Luda likes to rap about her computer in her glovebox
7. Luda likes to eat beans
8.Luda likes to cook, travel, she enjoys camping
9. Luda likes to dance, and she can be in the dance show nite
10.Luda likes us to do workout tapes

I shall aim to live up to my psuedonym best I can.

If you could choose any time period in which to have been born, which one would you pick?
Submitted by L33tchica.

This is an easy one: I'd like to be have been born at the turn of the century, so I could have been in my early twenties in the Roaring 20s - I'd have learnt to charleston, listened to jazz, and hung out at lots of Gatsby-esque parties in a beautiful flapper dress

So I've made myself useful today. We went to the Japan Centre on the weekend and picked up some gyoza wrappers to make a batch of vegetarian gyoza/potstickers.

Input: firm tofu, teriyaki sauce, minced ginger, grated carrot and finely chopped cabbage:

what goes in...

20 minutes later...

the end result

Much like any repetitive simple task they're wonderfully soothing to make once you get in the swing of it, and my folding got progressively better the more I did.  Stick them in the freezer like this and once they're frozen you can bag them up and then you have a nice quick homemade snack ready when you need it.

There are plenty of downsides to having no job, but there are also some upsides - one of which is having the time to do the things you wouldn't normally get round to. For me, this is making things. There is almost more pleasure in the creating than in the finished product - "the journey is the destination" and all that.

So this weekend I taught myself to crochet and made a hat - yes, that big oatmeal blob is in fact a hat, and it looks surprisingly ok on.  The crochet flower for adornment still a work in progress.  And then I made a box-y little pouch for  "stuff". Everything takes so much longer when it's hand-sewn though and I can't wait until I get my machine back.

Weekend well spent. I am disregarding the fruitless trip to a south London haberdashery emporium on Sunday, only to find it closed. Hmph

First indication that the agency you're signing up to might not be quite 'right' for you:  being told by the agent to dumb down your CV - "my clients might not understand all this stuff - did you answer phones at all in your last job? Perhaps you could put that at the top?"

Need to join another.

Don't ever order flower from Interflora for your mum's birthday. They will let you chose a beautiful bunch for her, they will let you pick her birthday as the delivery date and then they won't deliver them.

When you phone up to complain about this, they'll keep you on hold for 20 minutes and then willl tell you the flowers were sent by royal mail and so they can't guarantee a delivery date.  When you ask to cancel the order so you can spend the money on something else in that case, they tell you they can't. Flower should "hopefully" arrive soon.

Bastards! And poor my Ma not getting her birthday flowers....