I WILL :)

At Marathon Bloggers, we are one mad bunch. No doubts about it.

This week at the beginning, as decided we all thought we would list out our 'Bucket lists'. Call it paranoia? The Doomsday conspiracy? Or Just plain coincidence. Well Bucket List it is.

 

 

I said, I'd already done this a while ago..so maybe I should go check out what i've done and never gotten to even looking...well!!...I've spent half my morning trying to search my posts, but the post itself seems to have taken a walk into the sunset..

So I shall set out to make a new one..As we grow older we are entitled to change them, according to the needs, the demands, the technology and of course the MEMORY :P

I have never thought of it as a list to be ticked off before I die..NAH!! I don't ever think such negative stuff..its ecah day at a time please!!!
But these are a few I would love to have achieved sooner..

1.Climb the Mt Everest.

Its such a task that i've set myself out to do, that I still wonder..but i'm not giving up. The Himalayas, are my muchly loved mountains..that i've asked my ashes to be sprinkled from the top..that they happily dance down to the steep slopes. On one trip to Gangtok, my cellphone managed to wriggle away from me, and slid down to the steeps. I was happy strangely that it had got its final resting place..ya ya..I know, its weird, but I was envious too.

2. Kalaripayattu. This is one form of dance that i've always and will always want to learn. Yes, I know its an easy task. But being such a skillful procrastinator, i've never gotten around to doing it. So jump up in the air, and with flying kicks and graceful movements, Kalaripayattu it shall be..

3. Travel alone with just my girlfriends for company. This was the beginning to travelling alone. For those who do it regularly, they might never understand. But marraige tied me down, emotionally, physically and mentally. NO one restricted me, but I always made excuses. So a few months back, when a couple of my friends decided to travel without our families, I just went ahead. We were 4 of us, travelling to Bangkok, much to the amusement of the husbands, who just not fathom why 'Bangkok' But it was more about easy planning, shorter duration and most of our husbands had already visited theplace before, so we could go on without feeling guilty.. ( If such a word ever exists..sigh!!)

We had  a fun a 4 days. Of course we had those hundreds of calls, asking us for misplaced clothes, missing belts, maggie noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But I have to tell you..I actually shut my mind off while I was there.

4 I want to travel, travel and travel more. I want to see places, like the south pole, I want to go Machu Pichu, I want to stand in front of the dead sea and just look. I want to go to Brazil for their Carnival. I want to trek the Amazon Rainforest and I
want to see all the continents.


5. I want to be able to say 'NO', convincingly and without leaving me in a mess of guilt and agony. I've started the process, but I havent yet mastered it. My sister can't believe I find it such a task.




6. I want to hold a party at home, where I don't cook a single dish, just order in, have a mad time, and go to sleep without, cleaning up the mess. (Yes, i'm obsessed. Even if I were nearly drunk, I clean up the place, rinse out all the glasses, stack up the crockery neatly, and keep the bottles in one place, and make the place presentable for the MAID when she comes in, in the morning. )

7. BIKINI. Its one thing to go and buy it and another to wear it. I want to step out wearing my bikini, on a beach, and have a good time, without feeling conscious about what people think about my body. So on my trip to Bangkok, I picked up not one but 3 pairs ..and now to tick off this wish soon..

8. The other day I was talking to a friend, who was telling me about a music concert, that he was attending. I love music and dance, art in any form. I would love to attend a concert, but i've most times missed going to my favourite artits performances, just because I didn't have company. This is one thing i'd like to do, Go to a concert, alone if I didnt find anyone to come along ...

9. I want to bungee jump in Australia, where you go down and dunk your head into the water. I've heard and seen such lovely visuals about that place, that i've always wanted to try. I'm scared. Let me add. I'm a very adventurous kind. I've gone mountaineering in the Himalayas, done deep see diving, swam in the Indian Ocean with no land in sight for miles around, but I feel I haven't done enough. So there..more adventure and more excitement for me.

10. I want to meet (i've met him before as a 12 year old, but Now when i'm older and know what I want) Amitabh Bachchan and give him a nice big hug. Just sit in front of him while he talks..I can die just listening to him talk.

Ok so there goes my 'Bucket List' and i'm positive i'll be scoring them off sooner.

Dog-eared and book-marked!!!

Tags been doing its rounds...and exam time onmy head, so brain works in just one direction....hindi , Biology...etc....so thoughts i'd handle these tags and bore all of you...
get ready for one long post...whoooosh!!!
Tagged by Lone wolf- Anoop....and Suma...
Since both dealt with books, mixed both up
Here go the ones...

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you really love (and strikethrough the ones you hate
4) Reprint this list in your own blog.


How is it that the books I have read don't feel like being featured here?? :(
so here's the list someone else has so patiently compiled
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 -parts of it
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 (most of them)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller'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
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
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 - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
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 Meaney - 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-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( I remember reading this book while in high school...and was totally flummoxed, 'cos I of course, but naturally didn't understand what the whole fuss was about. But later on, I did re-read it, and liked it and still have it...wonder what i'll feel if I read it now?? )
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 Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
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 ( read it half way through :( )


If I were to be asked which books i'd like to read....i'm sure its gonna be all those who haven't been read..I gotto read them...and since I have the list now...yay!!!

I have a lot of favourites...thats because you can't just have one.....
I don't have any hatred for any kind of books...at the most the book fails to maintain my interest and I stop reading...though I keep going back and thinking whether i'd like it better if I read it now...????
So no strikethroughs...but since I just learnt how to use this tag...i'm going to strike that out...
but my all time favourite would be

Pride and Prejudice
Gone with the wind
Kite Runner



Now since the latest tag by Anoop, was again to do with books, I thought i'd add that here...who knows it might make my job easier, cos some might have already been answered :P



Do you remember how you developed a love for reading?

As kids we used to have a lot of time on our hands ( less stressed school work, and no TV) so I just started reading..of course, how could I ignore the rows of shelves loaded with books at my house...Dad has a love for reading and so but naturally daughters will inherit it..

But who could forget my school, who used to give away books as prizes for any winner...

And then tryst with books started...he would buy me books each time he travelled ( I still treasure all of them..cos they have his handwriting so neatly penned in) and then it was the quaint old neighbourhood library.



What are some books you read as a child?

Many I have forgotten, but crystal clear in my mind is one big book, that said " Wash 'em clean"...it was by a Russian author, Korney Chukovsky so agree with Anoop here...and it had such cute pictures and simple words that made up amazing stories. Years later they were also the books I read out to my kids first thing.

Pinocchio a book that I had got as a prize in school, was a great one to begin with. No hard covers...pictures few, that could be colored too...( I hadn't I remember, cos I was worried i'd spoil my first book :)



What is your favourite genre?

I have a Issac Asimovs 'Spells', unread...so that makes me a bit partial for anything non-science fiction.

I love mush, romance, medical thrillers, murder mysteries, autobiographies, semi-autos...anything and everything.



Do you have a favourite novel?

Just told you in the above tag, many...so can't actually name everyone of them...it depends on the mood, and my need to read at that time. It could range from the heavy duty Vishnu Sahasranam or a light read like Calvin and Hobbes....



Where do you usually read?

Stumped...!!! How can you designate a place specifically for reading??? I can read anyplace, as long as I can hold that book straight to see the words. I read between making dosas( on the kitchen counter), when I give my son a break when he's studying, right under his pile of books, near the pool, in the car, in the principal's office.....I think you'll got my point.

Before I got married, I remember reading in loos, at my study table with the book hidden under a school book, while classes were going on in school, Wonder what thrill there is but it is to be done once in a lifetime.

When do you usually read?
Anytime, anyplace. I just need to read the book and finish it. I have read books, while boiling milk as early as 5 in the morning. and woken up from sleep an dread a book , cos I couldn't sleep. So time doesn't ever matter.

Do you usually have more than one book you are reading at a time?

Oh yes!!! Even now there are 3 that are being read simultaneously...

Do you read nonfiction in a different way or place than you read fiction?
Eh!! How does one do that??? Let me see, if its a romance, that i'm reading , then there will be scented candles, soft music, ...huh!!! where was I? ...no way...
All books have pride of place in terms of place and style of reading....all the same.
*On second thoughts, maybe I should try reading science fiction hanging upside down from the bookshelf... ***

Do you buy most of the books you read, or borrow them, or check them out of the library?

ALL OF THEM.....isn't that what love of reading does to you.."beg , borrow or steal" Though I havent had to use the third tactic so far.

Do you keep most of the books you buy? If not, what do you do with them?
And why is my new house still having 3 unopened boxes, all filled to the brim with books..( I've tried negotiating with my son for space in his book shelves to no avail :( ).
Yes, in a very generous state of mind, I did go and give away nearly 100's of my mills and boon collection to the neighbourhood library...but the insanity stopped right there....Now its back to drooling over all the books on the pavements, bookstores, houses, schools, sales...everywhere...can't kick the habit.

If you have children, what are some of the favorite books you have shared with them? Were they some of the same ones you read as a child?
Too late to be asking me the big "IF" i have 2 sons already....and yes, I have shared most of my books ( I have to..) and most of the ones I read as a child hold important place on the shelves.

What are you reading now?
War and Rememberance by Herman Wouk
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Veronica decides to die by Paulo Coelho ( getting bored...so its been hung up for now)
Hindi sulekh..for 7th standard students, ( oops....sorry....exams up now...so had to squeeze that in too )

Do you keep a TBR (to be read) list?
Oh yes!!!! Like I do each time read tags like this...or read a review in the media...but when I finally go out to buy a book, I call up my friends and eat their head for a list....

Right now the one that tops the list of to be read is
Preethi from Just a mother of two's

Bubblegums and candies...

I'd love it if all of you would do the same....its gonna be fun

What books would you like to reread?

Not too fond of reading bestsellers again...'cos I like that first euphoria or whatever the feeling to stay as it is...and not to be blended with others opinions and reviews.
But books like
The power of now by Eckhart Tolle
Book on Women by Osho
Calvin and Hobbes
I love to read and re-read..

Who are your favourite authors?
Am not at all fussy...its the story that'll pull me towards it. A must read review by a friend can also do the trick. I'm not biased. There was a time, when JOhn Grisham, Frederick Forsyth, Ayn Rand, Robin Cook used to be favourites, I still have to read all their books that come out...maybe its force of habit.

Now is the time to tag another....
I'd love see what
Sahana, Preethi from Incessant musings, Shruthi from High Spot, Ceedy, Rambler and Joy to do the honours.