Thursday, December 31, 2009

The cat who spoke French, or happy arbitrary birthday, universe!

So everyone and everything is about to turn another year older, and I'm celebrating with a bottle of champagne and a late dinner with Picasso, Madame and Benjamin. Oh, and of course les petits chats, who will most likely try to add a garnish of cat hair to our sauerkraut as they strut their stuff and try to block our view of the tv.  awww!

It's funny to think that this time last year I was in Paris with Ageless, the trip that inspired me to come live here in the first place!


New Year's in Paris, 2009

And now, 365 days later, here I am again, having eaten some sort of weird meat cuts that I think might have been trying to be hot dogs, along with some sauerkraut, potatoes, baked apples and 3 different kinds of cake for dessert! ahhhh! I think I might burst. Plus I drank most of the bottle of champagne so I'm a little swimmy right now, woohoo!

We watched some amazing tv this evening...it was a French 'spectacle,' which included more magic skits  in one hour than I've seen in all the years I've been alive, and a bunch of acrobatic numbers that were really pretty amazing. The French are SO WEIRD. I can't get enough!! And then, once it hit midnight, we yelled out the window at the top of our lungs, then shut it really quickly so we wouldn't freeze to death, and then faire-d les bises on each other's cheeks and clinked glasses and danced around the room a bit to the snippets of each decade's hit songs that the tv was blaring as a tribute to...well, each decade's best songs.


Me, Madame and Benjamin, New Year's 2010


Madame, Picasso and me (and CHAMPAGNE woohoo!)

All in all it was nicely tame and relaxing...I was warm and sleepy (yar, I nearly fell asleep at the table at like 10.30...I can't even make it until midnight any more!!) and I managed to keep up with all the French conversation 'round the dinner table all night! (I think I even managed to be funny en français, or maybe it was franglais, but woohoo none the less!)

And now we have some gratuitous photos of les petits chats, who really do only understand French! I tried talking to Sushi in English and she totes ignored me, then I said 'viens ici!' and she turned and looked at me! Of course, she didn't actually COME to me (b/c why would a cat actually do what you asked it to), but still, she understood what I was saying! LOL!!


Kikou


Sushi on her bed by my window

OK, it is nearly 4 am somehow, and I didn't even go out dancing tonight!

Happy New Year 2010!

kK

Friday, December 25, 2009

Grey hair and static cling, or, "merry christmukkah..."

Well, back in America for a few days to enjoy a white Christmas in good ole Indiana.


There are two Great Danes snoring on the couch, a kitty draped over the green leather chair in front of the fire, another white kitty nom-ing on a big chunk of dog food in the kitchen as she stares at me in pointed reference to the fact that her own food bowl is empty (as of five minutes ago, sheesh!), and somewhere around here a Siamese kitty is hiding, letting out an indignant mew every so often to guilt me into leaving my eating post in the kitchen and coming to snuggle under the warm down blanket on my bed. Christmas music has been playing nonstop for about 48 hours now, I've eaten my weight in chocolate and pumpkin pie, the whole house smells of fresh pine, and I'm sipping my way through a second glass of pinot. It's Christmas Eve, baby!

I took a rare look in the mirror the other day and found a nice little gift from mother nature: a handful of grey hair. Le Sigh. It would have been ok, probably, if I hadn't found them while combing through a mass of wildly static cling-y hair that stood out from my head like I'd just been electrically prodded in the course of an interrupted alien abduction. My morning coffee hadn't even been brewed yet, and my face looked like it was trying to swallow my eyes and go back to sleep. Merry Christmakkuh to me, woohoo!

Let's just pretend that this is merely a sign of me growing into my vast depths of wisdom I've carried with me all these years. It might mean I need to start an advice column or something, although the women who seem to be in charge of these types of columns usually espouse the virtue of rooting oneself in one's own natural beauty while hiding their own behind a bottle of Garnier Blonde 56. But hey, it might be fun to start of my weekly writing sessions with "Dear Reader..." or oooh my favorite, "Gentle Reader..." hahahahaha! Who talks like that, really. I'll gentle your reader right out the window and over the very tall cliff about a mile down the road.


Tomorrow starts early for my family, I really should be getting to bed. BUT I CAN'T. The Boss needs to finish Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, and these Christmas lights aren't going to enjoy themselves, y'know. My family doesn't really expect me to function properly until AFTER the baked eggs and coffee anyway.


We haven't had a random kK Tangent in a while...here comes No. 86:
Can I just say how much I LOVE CHIPOTLE.
Also, I don't really understand why everyone only wants to be nice on Christmas instead of trying hard to be a good person all year long.
Oh yeah, and MJ, why the HELL didn't you make a Christmas, or whatever holiday, album before chucking off this mortal coil! WHY. (And no, BBB, the Jackson 5 doesn't count.)
**possible end to kK Tangent 86**

Oooh, sing it Mariah! All I want for Christmas is YOU, TOO! WOOHOO.

Christmas Eve is my absolute favorite day of the year. I like the actual Christmas Day of course, but there is just something...'more' about the eve part of it all. When it's my time to become one with nature, I think every day is going to feel like Christmas Eve. The end bit, when the candles are lit, the Christmas lights are shining through the pine branches laying on the mantle, Bob Seger is singing "Little Drummer Boy," the kitties are purring, the fire is crackling and my wine glass is full...

Speaking of...is that the bottom of my glass I see?

kK






Sunday, December 13, 2009

Bien joué: Munchen

In a nod to one of my favorite blogs, gofugyourself.com, I'm going to start issuing the gold standard "well played" card to a few deserving people/places/things to counterbalance my posts wherein I make fun of everything, and everyone, else. First up, Munich.


Munich city center and Christmas market

Just spent two of the most fabulous days EVER in my new favorite city. Why is the German language so hot! I never liked it before, always made fun of it ("it's like cats spitting!"), but someone sprinkled magic dust on me and opened me up to the joys of Germanity. It might have been the innumerable litres of duple bock yumminess flowing straight from the tap into my wine-hardened veins, or maybe the Christmas spirit in the outdoor markets in the city center, or shit, it might just be all those sausages taking their toll in the sausage-shaped holes in my stomach, but whatever it was, ich liebe dich forever, my city of big strong men and funny accents and really F*ING good beer!



woohoo!

Some of Squash's family lives in Munich, and they more-than-kindly picked us up from the airport, provided a private apartment-hotel room for us near the city center, and took us around to the Christmas markets, non-touristy delicious food joints, and, most importantly, beer halls and dance clubs. Yes, I actually did some **gasp** dancing on Friday night, but fo' reals, how can you not at least tap ye olde foote to some fun American pop music! The techno, house and hip-hop I can do without...seriously, I can't dance to that shit. But I (along with the rest of the red-blooded human beings on the planet) spontaneously combust into dancing flames when Madonna comes over the loudspeaker. Well, that, and somebody handed me a red bull-and-vodka that I retardedly drank without thinking (probably b/c I was already swimming in a good litre--or two--of duple bock).


Hofbräuhaus!


Chocolatey marshmallowy yumminess at the Christmas market

What happens Saturday night? Oh yeah, we meet a group of boys coming out of the metro stop and discover that we are all headed to Hofbräuhaus for some burrrr. Who are they? Oh yeah, the American bobsled team.

What?

Yar, five members of the US Bobsled/Skeleton team were taking a break and touring snowy Munich without coats...we never heard what actually happened (they made it sound like quite the story, but they probably just friggin' forgot them on the train or something), but whatever it was, somehow we all ended up bicep-curling heavy litres of Hofbräu Dunkel, laughing till the tears flowed at the group of Italians and Germans singing their respective football team spirit songs (the German group won that round by picking up their extremely heavy picnic-style table, lifting it over their heads and drinking beer at the same time...did I mention they were wearing lederhosen to boot??), and shouting over the ridiculously loud brass band playing Sousa-esque German tunes.




At Hofbräuhaus with the bobsled team, lol!

I really thought they were joking at first when they told us they were the bobsled team...I mean, I literally laughed out loud and tried to cover it up into a cough when I realized they were serious. (What! My, uh, lungs were aching with the cold. Yeah.) But then I realized, why the HELL would anyone make up a story like that, and how would they even keep it going all night with all the questions we would undoubtably be asking. And then I was like, yo, who really cares if they ARE making it up, these dudes are HILARIOUS. Some of them took themselves a little too seriously, but Mr. Daly from Long Island made me laugh so hard I nearly shot beer out of my nose about 800 times.


In the Munich snow with a cuppa joe
(don't ask, you know how weird I am)

I can't believe how much fun it was! How much FOOD I ate...ahhhh. I can't imagine eating that stuff every day, but that's what hot pink juicers are for, heh heh! Speaking of, I'm now fighting off a nasty cold from not enough sleep or veggies. I'm sure it has nothing to do with how much beer I ingested.

Yar, so Well Played, Munchen. Big servings. Big laughter. Big friggin' hangover. Big...sausages?

kK

And PS...I definitely googled the US Bobsled/Skeleton Team and found our five drinking companions on the official website. Woohoo! Guess who's watchin' the Olympics THIS year!

Bread on a bread plate? QUEL HORREUR

C'est too much, is what it is. C'est TOO MUCH.

After yet another dinner party chez Squash thrown by one of her roommates, I have now learned that Parisians put their piece of baguette at a 45 degree angle to the left-hand side of the bread plate, straight onto the friggin table cloth, completely ignoring the perfectly lovely bread plate sitting right in front of them that is apparently only supposed to host after-dinner cheese.

I mean, wtf.

How does that even make sense? It's DIFFICULT to clean off a tablecloth. At least if you put crumbs on a bread plate you can wipe them off pretty easily into the sink or trash or whatever. Have you ever tried wiping off bread crumbs from a cloth on the table? Yeah, they jump all over the place and don't like gathering into a nice little pile, and you end up having to scrape them with a special scraper or pick them up one by one with your fingers, or laboriously take off the table cloth and shake it out, which means you then have to sweep up the fallen crumbs from the floor. Or I guess you could just leave them on the table cloth and hope someone else cleans them up. Like a housecleaner, or maybe some visiting pigeons.

OK, so maybe it's not all French people, but wowsers, the ones who gathered around the table Thursday night were the stuffiest, pompous-iest peeps I have ever met. Squash and I decided not to try too hard to converse with them, so we sat next to each other and LAUGHED OUT LOUD at our own franglais-ed jokes and the shitty attitude of one of the pregnant dinner guest who was very obviously pissed that we were having so much fun while she had to sit there being pregnant and serious and French. humph.

But the food was great, as always (Carole is a friggin MASTER of the kitchen!) and it's always fun to have an opportunity to practice having real conversations in French, even if it's a conversation with people who just pointedly stared and whispered at your American savagery as you ate your bread off a bread plate.

kK

Monday, December 7, 2009

Santé!

Oh Champagne, how I love you...

Reims (pronounced, in typical exception-to-every-rule français: 'raz') provided an entertaining, if slightly too-long, day for me on Saturday. I hopped on the TGV at 8.30 am, and 40 minutes later arrived in Champagne to visit as many champagneries (lol! I love calling them that) as I could fit into one day. Alas, only TWO were open (b/c why would you keep your 'cave' open on a weekend when people don't work and want to taste champagne?) so I booked both for tours in French.

I had some time to kill before my first cave (kahv), so I walked around...and around...and around. (I knew I was in the right town when I came upon Rue Dom Pérignon!) I found the Christmas market, had a coffee, stumbled upon the old cathedral where all the French kings were crowned, and finally headed in to the warmth of G.M. Martel, where a very nice lady led us all around the underground caves and tunnels.

Caves G.M. Martel




Then I went back to the Christmas market, where I sat next to the ice skating rink and watched the little kiddies roll by in time to some really weird french reggae music as I munched on a bison "hamburger:" it started off in patty form, and then the youngster serving it chopped it up into slices and laid them all carefully into a baguette. I love France!


Part of Reims city center



Cathedral: where French kings were crowned

Then it was off to les caves Pommery, a champagnery so vast it looked like a cheesy Walt Disney-type castle spread. Very Stepford-esque, but still interesting, and hey, anytime I get to drink some bubbly is a good time for me.


Caves Pommery: Where brut champagne was invented (by a woman! woohoo!)

At this point it's finally dark out, but not yet quite time for me to head back to catch the bus back to the train station, so I visit the Notre Dame cathedral in the city center, and was pleasantly awed by the interior...it just kept GOING, and it was so GRAND. The hectic-ness of the Christmas market after the zen interior of l'eglise was a bit of a jolt, but I needed to eat (again!!) so I braved the masses and grabbed a sammy from one of the vendors sprinkled throughout the Christmas huts.

At this point I'd been walking and drinking around the city for about 10 hours. It had rained on and off throughout the day--I was pretty wet and supremely chilled, so I decided to get on a warm bus and make my way back to the TGV a bit early. Back in Paris, I limped in to my room, not even stopping to pet kitties as I threw on my jams and ripped off my wet socks. I joined Madame in the living room, where I sipped hot tea and ended my very long day by watching the Miss France pageant. Miss Normandie won. (because I KNOW you care...)


20091206-miss-france.jpg

Miss France 2010!

kK

Ain't Nobody That Can Sing Like Me

Ah! All is not lost...I had a lovely day with students on Friday! The music went over much better with those classes. Greenday's "American Idiot" inspired lots of ooh-la-it-is-too-vite! laughter and The Monkees made Believers out of those who thought they couldn't understand American music. I'm pretty sure every boy of every age will always feel a strong connection to Pete Townsend's blue eyes; what IS it about that song that just screams male angst, lol! (Whatever, you know I heart it too!)

I even got to slip in one of my favorites, the "California Stars" collaboration of Wilco and Billy Bragg (hear it here, but for god's sake ignore the 'space theme'...this was the best sound quality I could find on youtube, so just hide the screen and listen to the music instead of watching those completely incongruous images of outerspace!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8bQX2lg70Y). I was afraid the students would make fun of the slight twang--I mean, wtf kind of music IS that, anyway, right!--but I caught several of the boys tapping their feet in time to the beat, and I was like YESSSSS I gotcha!

Seriously, no matter what kind of day I'm having, shitty, awesome or somewhere in between, that song makes me feel right again. If I was on a desert island I'd pick that song to play on repeat, along with Buffett's Tin Cup Chalice and Bob Seger singing Little Drummer Boy. And then, of course, if I feel like dancing on said desert island, I might have to bring along some ABBA and Beyonce. OK, and maybe some Bare Naked Ladies, b/c they're da shit. And Allison Kraus, but only singing happy songs. Oh wait, and I'll need my favorite band of all time, Devotchka. And I mean just that: I'm bringing Devotchka the musicians with me to the island. And not for cannabalistic purposes, we all have plenty to eat and drink and read and there's even a place to check your email just in case we feel like be social. Just sayin'.

kK


Thursday, December 3, 2009

The 86 year-old-man club

Gah, teaching is crazy. Seriously, I have no idea how anyone does it, ever. EVER. I have a class on Thursdays that makes me want to do terrible things, to them and to myself. I was "this" close to calling in 'sick' this afternoon, but no, I had planned what I thought was a fun lesson around some American songs--fill in the lyrics, listen to music, have a good time. Is that what happened? Well, all but the 'have a good time' part.

There are four students in particular in this class that just make my life miserable...two boys and two girls, but I get the worst crap from the two boys. They dress like uber-riche hipsters, and are just simply and quite literally too cool for school. The ennui in their auras stands out so palpably I practically choke on it. I have the disturbing impression that they would commit murder, just to see if it was amusing, secure in the belief that they are invincible and could never be convicted. (The Law & Order episode has already played out in my head, casting and all. They play themselves, b/c L&O has become a reality show by this time in the future.) They make me want to make them cry. Like big, fat tears with real trauma that shakes them out of their hidey hole of determined un-impressioned-ness. I swear, if I was like that as a youngster (and I'm pretty sure I was, but without the murder part), I don't know how I wasn't sent off to get lost in Tibet.

Anyway, it started with me texting the teacher to tell her I had to switch classrooms so she would know where to send her students to meet me. She texts back that she's not even going to be there today (oh, thanks for telling me in advance) b/c she's getting her 18 month old daughter vaccinated for the swine flu. (eh?) Then she asks if she thinks I can handle the entire class, not just half of them like I normally do. I'm like, wha...? First of all, why are you not just canceling class altogether?? And secondly, HELL NO I won't take on 38 students all at once, I have enough trouble with half of them as it is! So she's like, cool, I'll send you some documents over email I want you to go over with them, and then you'll just teach one group of them like always. OK.

Needless to say, when I get to my new classroom, no one else is there b/c they're all at the old room. le. sigh. And then I discover that ALL OF THEM HAVE SHOWN UP. I'm like, um, dudes, I need Group 1 to stay and Group 2 to get perdus! Then they have an argument about which group is supposed to be there, blah blah. Anyway, I have no idea who actually stays and goes, but somehow we manage to settle down and start discussing documents about the goodness of being yourself and not conforming to what your friends think you should be. Whatevs. Drugs r bad, stay in school. Mmmmkay.

Maybe--yar, probably...I'm cool but I'm not THAT cool--these kids are so anxious to be with me b/c it's a break from the drudgery of their real classwork and the teacher that actually makes them drag out the discussion of two images for an entire hour. I simply can. not. DO that! You ID the doc, tell me what the message is, give me your opinion, and VOILA, case closed. It takes like 15 (maybe) minutes!! So I bust out the lyrics worksheet I'd typed up last night and started playing what I thought they would really like, a couple of non-typical American songs you'd hear at ACL and not on pop radio. We never even listened to one song twice...whenever I asked if they liked a song, those two friggin boys were like, "non, it's not good" or "non, I don't like the '80's," or whatever. (Yes, I played "Don't Stop Believin'"...I friggin LOVE that song and so does anyone with a sense of teh awezome!) Horrid Boy 1 did start singing along with "Behind Blue Eyes"...but even The Who couldn't rattle this boy into filling in lyrics or otherwise pretending to give a shit about anything but his own affectation of smugness.

So finally I give up...there's 15 minutes of class left and I'm like, OK guys, so what is it that you want to do next time? I always ask them this, and I always bring in a game or music or whatever it is they've decided on, and still it continues to suck. They batter around a couple of ideas about films, not even bothering to try very hard to speak in English...they think I can't understand them but oooh are they wrong and it's funny to jump in the middle of their conversations in answer to a question they are asking each other assuming I have no idea what they're saying.

Then Horrid Boy 1 tries asking about my favorite movies, and then books...we almost had a connection on Charlie Brown (I was discussing Christmas movies) but unfortunately he actually thought I'd said JACKIE Brown. (I got really confused when he got all excited and was like "Quentin Tarantino??") We even discovered that we both liked sci-fi (which I totally can't see in him, but whatever). Finally, thank the GODS, the bell rings and they all start packing up to leave. But lots of them take their time, including these Horrid Boys, and they linger and try to talk a bit like they don't really want to leave, and I'm like, WTF what is wrong with you, you HATE me, right! But then Horrid Boy 1 is like, "We must be bored for you, yes?" And I'm like, "Yar, you seem to be really bored," and his friend, Horrid Boy 2, corrects him, "you mean 'boring'", and Horrid Boy 1 looks up at me again and repeats it, like he cares what I think of them: "We must be boring for you." I'm like, "What?? NO you're not boring! [and they're really not...we should be having so much fun together...!] I'm the one who feels awful when I look out at you and see your faces" (and here I make a face that no one can mistake for anything but the worst case of ennui), and one of the other lingering students is like "It's b/c we're French!" To which I burst out laughing, but Horrid Boy 1 shrugs in his "that's not the real reason" and "nothing's good enough to bother me" way, says goodbye and finally leaves.

God. I came straight home and poured myself a generous splash of delicious cognac. Yes, I am Co-President, with Ageless, of the 86-Year-Old-Man club, in which we filles drink whiskey, bourbon and cognac like we're 86 year-old men.

It's a weird situation to be in: I'm not the real teacher, but I'm not one of "them;" I'm the exotic (haha) strange American who can speak better than their English teachers (show some RISPEK'), and there's no incentive but their own inner desire to do well and to learn. I'm doing the best I can and it really works well with lots of them, but the times when it falls so flat...gah, so discouraging. Do the Horrid Twins really care about what I think of them? Then why not try to at least pretend to have some fun, or at least try a dialogue of some sort, even if all they have to say is negative...I guess they can't look too nerdy in front of their friends in the class...maybe they went home and bought the songs on iTunes and listened by themselves over and over again until they filled in all the words on the pages...

I don't really care as much as it probably sounds like I do...I just needed to vent about today as I enjoy another teensy splash of fermented apples. At the end of the day they're just such younguns, and I'm an old, nearly-wise woman who has already realized there is more to life than the dramas of high school.

Plus, you know what...they would TOTES get beat up if they came to America looking like that...I'd like to see them get up in front of an American high school class and try to keep order! Karma's a bitch...oh gawd, what does that say about ME back in the day!!

kK

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Bienvenue chez moi, part deux

HA! So, the saga continues...

I have just moved into a new apartment! Basically I would just like to forget that the month of November happened at all (besides our rockin' Thanksgiving!) so I'll just skim over a few deets to keep you updated:

1. Was invited to a dinner party chez Madame Filer by a friend (Picasso) who currently lives in one of her rented bedrooms.
2. Sort of broke my lease to move in to an empty bedroom Madame just happened to have available.
3.  Now live with Madame, her son Ben, Picasso (a Turkish lawyer on a scholarship here to study something smart) and Meginami (or something like that...I couldn't understand much of what she was saying), a Japanese cosmetics student.
4. Most important members of our international household: Kikou and Sushi, two sweet little cats who make my life worth LIVING, man.

Wow, now THAT was a nutshell.

The apartment always smells amazing...Madame is very into homeopathy and aromatherapy and natural foods, so there's never any lack of pleasant odors floating around. There is, however, only one bathroom for the 5 of us (lol!) but luckily I'm a night-showerer and take about 15 minutes to get ready in the morning, so no big. The shower head is one of those that you have to hold up in your hand to rinse off, which is always fun when you'd really like to just stand under a stream of hot water on a cold day without your arm muscles giving out, haha!

Now here's something weird:
1. me
2. Picasso's dad
3. Ben (madame's son)
4. Meginami
...all have the SAME BIRTHDAY.
What. The. F...! How is this POSSIBLE.
Oh, but apparently it is.

Plus, my new apartment is decently close to Pere Lachaise cemetary, and you all know how well-developed my sense of (and appreciation for) the morbid is! Quel chance!

My room is decorated in blue and soft brown, so that I can 'enter and breath,' as Madame explained. She loves water, and when I told her I love the rain and the ocean she just smiled in an "I thought you might" kind of way and then spent the next hour showing me her cabinets-full of essential oils and all-natural medicines. Heaven!

Breakfast materials and semi-regular home-cooked dinners are provided as well. Picasso and I got up at the same time this morning; he made my coffee, toasted my toast and put out the nutella for me before I even managed to yawn out "bonjour," leaving out a place setting for Madame when she woke up. The dude has some good karma coming to him, especially for the no-comment on my I'm-so-grumpy-before-I've-had-my-coffee morning face.

Anyway, yar, so suffice it to say that I am VERY happy to be in this new place...pictures are coming soon, promise!

kK

In fun: BBC booklist


A friend sent me some information about a BBC booklist, and, as you know, I can never resist a chance to check off books on a list, no matter how  ridiculous a compilation or ranking.

Anyway, according to the BBC (apparently), the average person will have only read 6 of the following 100 books:
(I, obviously, put an 'x' next to each one I've knocked off...join in the fun!)


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 (X)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (X)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (X)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (X)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (X)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare () "COMPLETE"??? 
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (X)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (X)
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 (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 ()
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 (X)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ()
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 ()
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (X)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ()
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (X)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (X)
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 (X)
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-time - Mark Haddon (X)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (X)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (X)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (X)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ()
64 THe Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ()
65 ???
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 Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (X) 
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (X)
76 The Inferno - Dante (X)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ( )
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ( )
80 Possession-A.S. Byatt ( )
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ( )
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (X)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ( )
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (X)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (X)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ()
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (X)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (X)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (X)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ()
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ()
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (X)
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 ()

I got 60, woohoo! (Everything else, pshaw, totes not worth reading lol!) 

Not too sure what number 65 was...well, let's assume it's something I've read and make my conquests 61! 

In fun,
kK