Sunday 16 September 2012

Sunday Social (15)

Linking up with Ashley and Neely for the Sunday Social
  • What are 3 items you can't live without on a daily basis (water, food, shelter, and clothes don't count!)
    I'm a tech-girl all the way. I have to have my iPhone and my iPad; they follow me to which-ever bag is 'bag of the day'. The other, not so exciting but just as crucial; crutches, the wheelie-walker or my wheelchair... without one of these guys I'm not going 20 feet!
  •  What is your all time favorite book? Why?
    I hate having to make choices like this! Your talking to the Goodreads girl who has nearly 900 books read (and that is just the ones that I remember the titles of to list!). Reading is like breathing to me. The rise of technology and 100s of TV channels mean I read less than I used to - as a youngster (and into my early 20s) you'd find me stretched out on a Sunday devouring the printed word.

    My off-the-cuff answer is Gone with the Wind. I first read it preciously at the age of nine, a battered old copy of my mother's held together by parcel tape. I read it a good few times after that, most memorably queueing for landmarks in my 1999 NYC holiday!

    A few honourable mentions must go to some other great books though; I'll read pretty much everything by Stephen Baxter (thanks to an ages old magazine article for introducing us); Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke (yes, I'm a sci-fi geek). I also loved 'The Five People You Meet in Heaven' by Mitch Ablom (read on a trip to Kyiv) and Audrey Niffenegger's 'The Time Traveller's Wife' (read the book before you watch the movie!).

    Sometimes where and when you read a book is as much about why you love the book as the book itself; and for me, it is quite often having old friends I can pick up and dive into because I know them so well. When, as Abby Bartlett said to Jed in Aaron Sorkin's wonderful 'The West Wing': "
    Do you get that your immune system is shredding your brain?" that is a real compliment for a book. Here we find J.K. Rowling and the 'Harry Potter' books and my dwindling chick-lit collection.
  • What is something you'd like to accomplish before the end of 2012?
    I'm going to use that swimsuit I bought three months ago and start getting those muscles which are in danger of atrophy moving again!
  • If you could go back and relive any year of your life which year would it be?
    Tricky question. 2000 maybe because that is when I met my fiancé and Better-half.
    Without him my life wouldn't be what it is today and I wouldn't be who I am today. When he reads this he'll call me a suck-up for the rest of the day, but is is true!

    After that - the year that I spent living in University Halls (1994-1995) taught me a lot about myself. I'd never lived away from home before (or indeed stayed away for more than two weeks) so moving into my own little prison cell (it did look like that!) and meeting and living with a bunch of strangers was quite a leap. Such a leap I actually put it off for a year before I flew the nest!

  • What do you wish people knew about you without you having to tell them?
    That the reason for a lot of the weird things in my life is MS; and that people understood more about the disease that is MS.