Happy New Year. Be well. Be safe. Be awesome.
1. Top 5 NZ reggae bands by Tosca, May 2010 - 5132 hits
"My music will go on forever. Maybe it's a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever."
- Bob Marley
[New Zealand has some great reggae bands and this list serves as nothing more than my pick of groups who have gone some way toward reaffirming or recapturing my love of reggae on a wider scale, and my love of Bob Marley in particular...]
2. Your top 5 most downloaded Freegal Music tracks by Tosca, May 2012 - 1174 hits
"Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole."
- Dean as played by Jensen Ackles in Supernatural
[I don't know about anybody else but Dean's saying above (which I like to use with my sisters but gets me absolutely nowhere) is totally the case in our household. Whichever person is driving is the one who gets to decide what music the rest of us listen to. My sisters and I took a road trip a couple of years ago to visit my grandfather's home town in the far north; I was banned from driving the car during our vacation. My love of country music, classic rock and the 80s will get me relegated to the backseat every time. It probably doesn't help that I have this unfortunate habit of driving like whatever music happens to be playing at the time. And it's made worse, I would think, by the fact that I adore angry girl music. The louder the better, as far as I'm concerned...]
3. 5 geeky Star Trek-related Etsy links by Tosca, April 2013 - 985 hits
“Five card stud, nothing wild. And the sky’s the limit."
- Captain Jean Luc Picard, uttering the last line of the series, Star Trek: The Next Generation “All Good Things…”
[...I'm waiting - rather impatiently, I might add - for the Star Trek film to come out. Every few days or so I pop into Etsy and look up Star Trek related THINGS and STUFF. Weirdly(?), not to buy anything. I like to look at the items. Some of them are totally LOL-worthy. Others are a major case of WTF-ery. And just as many are ones I want to make myself (only I never do), or buy (yet another thing I never do). That means, folks, that today's list has absolutely nothing to do with our collections or libraries, and everything to do with indulging my forever fangirlness/geekiness. I'm wholly unrepentant about that. If this isn't your thing, feel free to skip this post. If it is, YAY. And if you need more Star Trek-related Etsy goodness, check out this link for ALL OF THE THINGS. Live long and prosper, people! (Sorry, couldn't resist - I'll be honest, I really didn't try to).]
4. Top 5 highest-grossing Bollywood films by Tosca, July 2011 - 981 hits
[I adore Bollywood movies. They're so full of life, colour, drama, music, romance, action, emotion and, let's face it, sometimes cheesey humour. The women are always beautiful and graceful and the men extremely goodlooking. My first tentative foray into Bollywood films wasn't a success at all, though. I had no clue about anything. I didn't know what actors or actresses I liked, I wasn't too sure if I would prefer the comedies over the dramas and I was totally unaware that some of the films are about three hours long. Three hours! I have the attention span of a goldfish so I felt my heart sink right then and there. It was about that time that a colleague at Manurewa Library, Sunita, decided to step in and help. Brilliant for me, probably not so much for her :) Thanks to Sunita I was hooked from her very first recommendation - Baghban starring Amitabh Bachchan - and have never looked back...]
5. My top 5 recipes from Alison & Simon Holst's "The New Zealand Bread Book" by Annie, December 2011 - 634 hits
"A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou."
- Omar Khayyam
[I grew up in a house where my mum made bread. And, because I was a kid and most kids’ mums didn’t make bread, sometimes this was embarrassing. But I do have fond memories of a group of my classmates around our house, all making bread with my mum.
Because I’m a fan of Alison Holst’s recipes, the bread book caught my eye. I’m getting into baking in a big way – so seeing it for sale really cheaply persuaded me to give it a go.
Now, a year on, I can offer my fav go-to recipes out of this book. In another year, I’ll probably have some more! Where available, I’ve added my notes from my copy of the book. I’m so addicted, my family bought me a food mixer for my 40th, one with a sturdy dough hook.
If you’re looking for something a little bit different to contribute to those ‘bring-a-plate’ functions this season, try these out.
~ Annie, Central]
