1. Favourite Canadian author? Easy. L.M.Montgomery.
2. Favourite Canadian novel? Oh, there are so many! Rilla of Ingleside (L.M. Montgomery). Fifth Business (Robertson Davies). The Murdoch books (that I’ve read)! Spanish Fly (Will Ferguson)! And more!
3. Favourite Canadian nonfiction? I’ve only read a few, but I really did enjoy Pierre Burton’s Vimy.
4. Favourite Canadian picture book? I love Robert Munsch – anything by him. In fact, I totally woke up in the middle of the night last night singing the song from Mortimer – “Clang clang rattle bing bang! Gonna make my noise all day!” TRUE STORY. It’s like my subconscious knew I was going to do this meme.
5. Favourite Canadian YA or juvenile chapter book? I loved Megiddo’s Shadow by Arthur Slade. His Jolted was pretty awesome too.
6. Favourite Canadian science fiction or fantasy book? O.R. Melling’s The Hunter’s Moon was pretty awesome. Haven’t read too many non YA or children’s fantasy or scifi by Canadian authors, though.
7. Favourite Canadian romantic fiction? Today it’s L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle.
8. Favourite Canadian mystery? Murdoch! Murdoch Murdoch Murdoch! I love Maureen Jennings’ Murdoch books.
9. Favourite Canadian graphic novel? Haven’t really read any that I can think of, so I’m not too sure.
10. Favourite Canadian book blog? Oooh, there are a lot that I read! Kailana’s, Sassymonkey’s, Rachel’s Five Million Blogs, and a lot more.
11. Favourite Canadian fictional character? Rilla Blythe without a doubt!
12. Favourite movie based on a Canadian novel or story? Ummm…. movie? Ummm…. The first two Anne of Green Gables ones were pretty good… a couple of the things that Kevin Sullivan has done that I’ve actually enjoyed.
13. Favourite Canadian short story? The Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier. Wonderful wonderful wonderful!!!
14. Favourite Canadian poet? I don’t really read any poetry.
15. Favourite Canadian poem? See above answer.
16. Favourite Canadian play? NOT Anne of Green Gables the musical. Ooooh! OH OH! The Drowsy Chaperone! (YES, I’m totally counting that!)
17. Favourite novel by an established Canadian author? Does LMM count as an established Canadian author? Because I’d totally have to pick Rilla of Ingleside again.
18. Favourite novel by an up-and-coming Canadian author? Ummm… not sure.
19. Favourite Canadian book award? Scotiabank Giller Prize, I guess. I don’t really pay attention to book awards.
20. Favourite Canadian publisher? Raincoast Books.
21. Favourite Canadian humorous book? Really, any of Will Ferguson’s humour books. I especially loved How To Be A Canadian (Even If You Already Are One), which he cowrote with his brother Ian Ferguson.
22. Favourite Canadian newspaper? I don’t read actual newspapers anymore. I get my news from the CBC website.
23. Favourite Canadian magazine or journal? Don’t read any Canadian magazines.
24. Favourite Canadian dystopian novel? I don’t know what dystopian fiction I’ve read that is by Canadians. Hmm.
25. Favourite Canadian epistolary novel? I don’t usually like epistolary novels.

After a few years on the local scene, and after a couple of more EPs recorded, we hit the big time – somehow, Tooth and Nail Records heard one of our EPs. I have my suspicions that Shannon sent it to them, but she denies the whole thing. We were soon signed, and released our first studio album, Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting. For some reason (which I’ve never figured out), critics loved it. We were hailed as fresh, original and the next big thing.

The track listing for this album was:
1. Mostly Harmless (inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide… this may also have been adapted by Shannon for the use of her blog.)
2. Make it Sad (emo as it should never be attempted)
3. Sara, Take Me Out (a sweet, melodic song with a bit of attitude)
4. Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting (the title track of the album)
5. Misbehave (you may remember this as our first big single)
6. Your Last Words (NOT as emo as the title would make it sound… driving rhythm with this kick ass bass riff going on)
7. August in Bethany (a cover of the song by The Juliana Theory)

Despite the critics (or perhaps because of), our first record never made the charts, but we still considered ourselves quite successful. We got to open for some pretty big bands for the first little while, and I would say that this was best time of my life. We had fun, saw some things that we can’t talk about on here, and did some things that some people may be ashamed of.

But it wasn’t long before it started to have a toll on us. We weren’t used to this kind of rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. I would have to say that this was about the time when things really began to spiral out of control for us. We partied All The Time, our music started to suffer, and I think that spending all that time on a tour bus just really got to us.

Not that that was the only album we released, but I believe that Erin wants to continue on with our story.

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

And so, the questions I received from Shannon:

1. It’s a two parter here. You have just been cast as the new companion on Doctor Who. Also, the actor who was slated to take over from David Tennant was tragically incapacitated and must resign from the show before he films a single second. What is your backstory and who will play the Doctor?

Let me get to the important part of that question first – who would play the Doctor. Jamie Parker! Mind you, I would love to see Miranda Richardson or Stephen Fry play the Doctor… BUT it would simply have to be Jamie Parker. It may just be due to a slight obsession with this lovely Brit. Because he is QUITE lovely. But he is a totally brilliant actor as well. Plus, he was a History Boy.

As far as backstory goes, well… The character I theoretically would be playing would be a flapper from the 1920′s. I cannot tell you more about her backstory as she has amnesia, and so does not know that sort of information herself. (Am I just saying that as I can’t think of something fun? It is QUITE possible.) But what I can tell you is that she does NOT fall in love with the Doctor (because the companions are more fun when they aren’t all head-over-heels about the Doctor).

2. Which of these completely
ridiculous sports would you most like to play and why?

Well. Considering my hand-eye coordination is so horrible that I can’t even catch something tossed to me from 2 feet away, I would have to say that Buzkashi, Chessboxing, Underwater Rugby, Unicycle Hockey, and Sepak Takraw are eliminated. I would also have to eliminate the Hot Dog Eating Contest as hot dogs are completely disgusting, and Wife Carrying as I have no husband to carry me.

That leaves us with Extreme Ironing, Cheese Rolling, Bog Snorkelling, Sport Stacking and Man vs Horse Marathon.

Tough choice that. I think from those, however, I would have to pick Cheese Rolling. There is, after all, very little I wouldn’t do for good cheese. You should see me make a dash for the snacks/appetizers/etc at family holidays when they put out the cheese. It can get quite dangerous, and I will not be held accountable for any injuries suffered by any parties.

3. What mythical/sci-fi creature do you think Stephen Harper
most closely resembles in looks or actions?

Are we talking Greek mythology? Roman? Egyptian? And then you had to add the sci-fi aspect into it to! Golly gee! There is so much to choose from!

I was thinking about the creature from the Black Lagoon, but after much debate, I would have to say that he most resembles Slimer from Ghostbusters. I mean, I look at that man and his actions, and all I can think of us how slimey he acts and looks. It’s just … that man disgusts me.

4. It can only be one… ninjas or pirates?

Pirates. Obviously. Arr!

5. Stolen in concept from Erin. You are stuck on a
desert island with the collected works of one living authour (and the
authour him/herself). Who is that author?

One living author. Huh. I can think of any number of deceased authors I would choose if I could make them alive again (Jane Austen! And ummmm…. that’s actually the only one that springs to mind at this moment). Except if I couldn’t make them alive again – well, I wouldn’t want to have to deal with their decaying bodies if I’m stuck on that island for a very long time with a deceased author.

So, a living author.

Wait! Do comic book writers count? If they do, I’d totally have to say Joss Whedon. Without a doubt. Firstly, I love the stories he tells in his comic books. And comics are such that you can read them over and over and over again and there’s always so much more than just reading words going on – the pictures! Ah! The lovely pictures in comics! (This could all be extremely influenced by the fact that I’m currently reading Joss’s Runaways stuff right now.) Plus, if he were there in real life, I could pick his brain about Firefly and Serenity.

If comic book authors don’t count, I would have to say Catherine Webb. Mainly because I could read and reread the Horatio Lyle books over and over again. As for the wonderful girl herself, she is a Doctor Who fan, so I’m sure we would have PLENTY that we could talk about to keep us busy.

(How’s that for making the interview end on the same note it started on – yay Doctor Who!)

According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list.

The instructions:
Look at the list and:
Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Underline the books you LOVE.

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
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte (hated! urgh!)
8. 1984 – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
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
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald (another one I hated!)
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
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
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown (You couldn’t pay me enough to read this)
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 (I keep starting this and haven’t finished yet. But I am determined to one day!)
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
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’ 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 (tried to read this, but couldn’t get through it.)
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 (One of my favourite of Shakespeare’s plays!)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Closest books to my desk are computer books. On the top of the pile is Learning PHP & MySQL by Michele E. Davis & Jon A. Phillips. A little boring compared to others doing this meme, I’m afraid.

The numeric ID fields, combined with a source of unique numbers, provide a way of guaranteeing the key field is unique. Specifying the auto_increment keyword when creating a column is a great way to generate a unique ID for a column. For example, if there are two authors with the name John Smith, and you use their names as a key, you’d have a problem keeping track of which Smith you’re using.

Not tagging anyone, feel free to do this if you are so inclined.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise that you started but couldn’t finish, and strike through what you couldn’t stand. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and punishment
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The name of the rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice *
Jane Eyre *
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The historian : a novel
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of cholera
Brave new world *
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula *
A clockwork orange
Anansi boys
The once and future king
The grapes of wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & demons
The inferno
The satanic verses
Sense and sensibility *
The picture of Dorian Gray *
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s travels
Les misérables
The corrections
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The prince
The sound and the fury
Angela’s ashes : a memoir
The god of small things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A short history of nearly everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion *
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit *
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The three musketeers

I haven’t even heard of many of these books…

Amazon or brick and mortar?
Again, it depends. I like browsing through book stores. But if I’m looking for something specific, it’s more likely that said store won’t have what I want. Then, it’s Amazon.

Barnes & Noble or Borders?
I’m Canadian. I shop at Chapters.

Bookmark or dogear?
Bookmark, definitely.

Alphabetize by author or alphebetize by title or random?
Organized by genre. In each genre, it’s organized alphabetically by author’s last name. In each author, it’s organized by date of publishing. Unless it’s a series, in which case it’s organized in the reading order. Also, if I have both series and stand-alones by one author, series always go first.

Keep, throw away, or sell?
Throw away?! Why would you throw away a book?? I keep them unless I really didn’t like the book. In which case, they go to the library or used bookstore.

Keep dustjacket or toss it?
Keep it. It makes it pretty on the shelves.

Read with dustjacket or remove it?
Remove it. I don’t like getting fingerprints on it, or wrinkling it.

Short story or novel?
Novels. Unless it’s by an author I love, or about a certain subject, I don’t enjoy short stories. I prefer getting deeper into the stories.

Collection (short stories by same author) or anthology (short stories by different authors)?
I prefer by the same author, though have been known to make exceptions in the case where the books are about vampires, Alice in Wonderland, or have been edited by one Will Ferguson.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket?
Harry. Definitely Harry. Love Harry Potter. Love. Read the first Lemony Snicket, and did not enjoy it.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?
Chapter Breaks. Or breaks in the middle of chapters. It’s easier to remember what’s going on that way.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?
It depends on the type of book. If I want a fairy tale, I want “Once upon a time,” but if I want something with atmosphere, I want “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Buy or Borrow?
I mostly buy. I’ll borrow if my stack of unread books is unreasonable and can’t justify purchasing a new book to myself.

New or used?
Both.

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendation or browse?
Mostly through recommendation or browsing. Book blogs have helped a lot too.

Tidy ending or cliffhanger?
Even in a series I prefer a tidy ending. I hate those books in a series with cliffhangers where you know you have at least a year to wait until the next book comes out.

Morning reading, afternoon reading or nighttime reading?
Usually over my lunch hour at work, and then in the evening.

Standalone or series?
Both. I usually end up enjoying a series as a whole more than a standalone, just for the fact that you get more character development in them.

Favorite series?
Oh gosh. Narnia, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Sara Douglass’ The Troy Game, The Axis Trilogy and The Wayfarer Redemption. C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series. Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Series. There are many others, but I will stop there.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard?
How To Be A Canadian (Even If You Already Are One) by Will and Ian Ferguson…. Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery… Most of my favourites, everyone’s heard of. Or at least everyone who reads.

Favorite books read last year?
North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell, New Moon by Stephenie Meyer, Catherine Webb’s The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle, Shanna Swendson’s Enchanted, Inc. and Once Upon Stilettos.

Favorite books of all time?
Not including the “Favourite book that no one’s heard of” …. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, the Narnia books, Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Kristin Britain’s Green Rider . . . the list goes on and on.