Day 11:

Goals completed: 2

I have been using ING for probably about 7 years now, and apart from taking too long to do my building valuation I haven't had any complaints. I like that the money can't be accessed too easily because it prevents me from spending it. Sure there are drawbacks but when you're trying to save, you have to love that in a back. I also like that you can easily set up lots of different accounts and you can name them. I just set mine up to "home deposit", "my valentine", "HECS" and "big holiday". And you can set up separate automatic transfers to each so now I'm not going to have to think about whether or not I remembered to set aside $100 this month o $1 yesterday because ING has taken care of it. Of course you have to ensure that there is money in your chosen bank account or else you get some nasty overdraw fees.

I tried this recipe for fluffy blueberry pancakes and their idea was that the blueberries should be added as the pancakes were cooking, which turned out to be a bad idea because one side of the pancake turned out a bit demented. I should have followed Nigella Lawson's recipe and turned the blueberries into a blueberry syrup instead. I think this counts as a vegetarian meal (technically fruitarian).

It has taken me a while but after consulting numerous lists I have come up with the following lists:

Books I want to read:

• Little women(as I said before)
  
• Art of War by Sun-Tzu (it was referenced in Numb3rs so I'm pretty interested in reading it)
• Book thief by Markus Zusak (another book on my bookshelf, on the top 100 A&R list)
• Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk (I liked the movie so it will be interesting to see if the book lives up to my expectation)
• Catch-22 (I have read the first chapter so many times, but I've never been able to continue with it)
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (been on my list for years and I finally bought a copy so I have to read it)
• One of the many Jodi Picoult books (I've only read My Sister's Keeper which I really liked)
• A tree grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (been on my list for ages and I really want to find a copy)
• An equal music by Vikram Seth (sounds tragic though)
• The Princess Bride by William Goldman (one of my all time favourite movies)
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (it's been a while since I read it)
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (never quite made it through the whole thing, although I've read the first half several times)
• Alice's adventures in Wonderland and Through the looking glass by Lewis Carroll
• Grimm's fairy tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
• The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
• Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (I just love the title, I just have to get past the first page)
• The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
  

Books I will never read:

• Wuthering Heights (such drama!)
• Vanity Fair (the characters were all so unlikable and after reading Anna Karenina I don't want to read another book where I just can't stand the characters)
  
• War and Peace (it doesn't even sound interesting)
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (no war stories!)
  
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville (the story is so long and all about a whale?)
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (not sure if I want to read a story about a pervert)
• The Odyssey by Homer (I don't need another epic story)
• Lord of the Rings by J.R.Tolkien (I skim read it the first time and have no desire to ever read it now that I've seen the movies)
• Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Tess of D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
• Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoevsky (about time I gave up on this one)
• The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx (my dad might kill me if he caught me reading it, besides I already know the highlights)
• Anything by Virginia Woolfe (I read Mrs Dalloway and it was depressing)
• Anything by Bryce Courtenay (I know he is one of Australia's bestselling authors but all his books were just so boring)
  

Books I have loved and may well read again:

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (Actually any of his books)
  
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S.Lewis
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding

There were other books that were on my list that I just removed for no particular reason other than that I had no idea why they were on my list to begin with since I had expressed no interest in reading them and not even attempted to read them. So I don't have 33 books to read, but there are new books that I'm sure I will want to read that I haven't come across yet. It was quite cathartic to come up with a list of books I don't want to read. It felt like I was committing blasphemy, but I can finally stop trying to read them just because they're "great works of literature" rather than because I'd enjoy it.