Old School Sexism Via "Humorous" Postcards

These were meant to be "humorous" postcards once upon a time.

Because you know, women aren't rational:


And they are just after men with money (although this might explain why Ben -on Lost - tried to woo Juliet with ham):


Sexual harassment in the workplace is funny:



And who can't laugh at sexual assault by soldiers:


Yes, that was sarcasm. I am appropriately disgusted. The fact that these are old postcards does not temper my disgust.

Another Book Meme

I know I've done a similar meme in the past, but I think there are some different titles on this one. I first saw it over at A Collage Of Citations.

BBC Book List

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X+(but more so when I was younger than now)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X+
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible - ~(pretty hefty chunks, but not all)
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 *
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ~ (quite a bit but not all)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
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
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh X
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 (re-reading this as an adult, I realized that Toad is an addict)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X(love some, but not all of the books)
34 Emma - Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen *
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X+(this one I do love)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
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 X+
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
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X+ (and I read it in German, too)
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 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 X
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 X+
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 X
80 Possession - AS Byatt
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 X
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 Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X+ (I've read most of them)
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
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X+
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total read: 40 - I'm slightly annoyed, though, because there are several books by several authors on this list that I have read (Hardy, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Joyce) - I just haven't read the books listed.

Total I plan to read: 7

So I guess that's that.

Gratuitous Cat Photos

Because I'm too brain dead to post anything else.

Recently Read - The Lost Island

I just finished The Lost Island by Eilís Dillon.

It's a fun book, though I think that I would have enjoyed it even more if I had brushed up on Irish folklore before reading it. It does contain references specific to the folklore of this region, but the story is still enjoyable for those who don't share this background.

The story follows Michael Farrell's search for his father, who had been missing for four years after setting out for The Lost Island and the treasure it holds. Along the way he and Joe fend off greedy villains, meet a new friend and travel companion (Mike), and brave rough seas on their quest.

As much as I enjoyed this book, I do think of it as a boy's adventure story. The female characters are few and far between. At first I was concerned by the portrayal of Michael's mother, an overly trusting who sometimes seemed younger than Michael. I was relieved later on by a portrayal of a strong woman from Fort Island, owner of a public house, as it provided some balance.

Overall, this is a nice suspenseful sailing adventure. While there are some violent scenes, they are not graphic and they go by quickly.