Had a weekend that include lots of reading and lots of food. Made blueberry pomegranate sangria. Got chocolate cayenne ice cream when we went out for dinner. Took a handful of photos on the way home, including the twilight church bell above with the fantastical purple sky.

Finished reading Ash & The Book Thief, so apparently the reading section of my brain is no longer broken. And today I have a new box of books, after shenanigans on Saturday with lying USPS tracking.

Am particularly excited because this box had this in it:

No, not Tessa. I’ve wanted to read Lisa Brackmann’s Rock Paper Tiger ever since Nathan Bransford posted the gorgeous cover on his blog ages ago, and that was before I realized I actually knew Lisa from Absolute Write, so needless to say I am extra special excited to finally have it, even if it’s already covered in kitty fuzz.

Tessa, of course, prefers the box.

Obviously.

• Finished knitting the huge, boa-esque scarf that I have been working on for ages. Photos forthcoming. Of course, now that it is finished it is too warm outside to wear it. I have lousy knitting karma.
• Read Shaun Tan’s Tales From Outer Suburbia on recommendation from Carey. I was a Tan fan already but this book is lovely bits of whimsical wonderment and I loved it to pieces. A perfect blend of words & pictures. This is going to be one of those books I read over & over, I can tell.
• Managed to get a whole lot of revising done, including reworking a large part of the ending. I came up with the changes while completely hopped up on Sudafed and unable to breathe properly, but so far they still seem to work. Draft is still a mess, but it’s starting to look novel-shaped again. Sort of. If you squint.
• Did not manage to properly get rid of this stupid cold. Am mostly better, but still congested. It is the cold that will not die no matter how much tea and vitamin C I give it. It makes me sad. *cough*

In other news, it’s disturbingly spring-like here. We had the windows open yesterday. It kind of freaked me out.

Tessa is enjoying the sunshine.

(Though truthfully I hope I win, because I’ve been wanting to read these and hey, free books!)

This is not all of it, of course. This is mostly the recently acquired stuff. I should really re-organize all the shelves so I can actually see how huge the to-read pile is, but that might get scary.

What I did like, however, were a great deal of the books I read this year. “Best” is probably not exactly what I mean, “Favorite” would likely be more apt. But regardless, here is a year-end list-esque thing:

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I know, I’m the last person in the world to read it but I loved it and I think I appreciated it more now than I might have had I found it years ago.

The Hunger Games & Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. It takes a lot for a book series to turn me into a flailing fangirl. I flail for this series. I have already reserved August 24th 2010 for reading book 3.

The Likeness by Tana French. I read In the Woods last year and loved it, but I think I loved this one more. It reminded me a bit of The Secret History, so I guess it was that kind of year.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl. I am an atmosphere junkie but I very rarely find a modern-set fictional world that I want to live in. This one is an exception.

The to-read pile for 2010 is already building up, and I’m going to attempt to read more next year than I managed this year.

I spent most of the weekend (waiting for the snow and getting snowed on) reading Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl on recommendation from my friend Liz. Remind me in the future to always take book recs from Liz, because she predicted quite accurately that I would dig this book, and I really did. It’s a book to fall into and not come up for air for awhile and it’s gorgeous. Moody and magical. Just in time to end up on my best of the year list, which I should probably write up sometime in the next few days before the year slips away.

Yesterday for Yule I made eggnog ice cream with an ice cream maker that has been in storage since 2001. It worked surprisingly well, considering, and eggnog ice cream is officially the easiest ice cream ever to make. Quart eggnog. 1/2 cup sugar. Splash of vanilla. Mix & dump in ice cream maker. Ignore for awhile. Come back and scoop out ice cream. Serve with gingersnaps. It’s kind of awesome.

So for the rest of the week I have paintings to paint and revisions to work on and presents to wrap. But I have eggnog ice cream and snow and new incense to burn and beautiful new copper jewelry to wear. Feeling all wintery and hibernating.

• Read Tanith Lee’s The Silver Metal Lover in its entirety. Have been meaning to read this book for years. Lovely and heartbreaking. Totally made me cry.
• Saw Sleep No More again. Definitely more magical the first time around but still amazing and wonderful and I found so many things that I missed the first time around. Also, witches gave me presents.
• Started the epic rewatching of all 5 seasons of LOST. Season 1 seems like such a long time ago.
• Brought out my notes for circus revisions and started poking at them, no actual writing yet. In my defense, my horoscope claimed today’s full moon was going to render me inarticulate or some such. I did, however, figure out how to possibly resurrect a very old section that I’d loved but had no use for in a different context, so that should be fun.

I am still somewhat in denial that it is December already.

But yay, books! I decided to stack up most of my to-read pile, consisting of this order, my last Amazon order, and another birthday book.

Mmm… books. This is probably pretty indicative of my taste in books, too. And it pleases me that this pile is oddly color-coordinated. Not sure what order to tackle them in, though. I’ve started Tam Lin but haven’t gotten very far, and I’ve wanted to read Graceling & The Hunger Games for ages. I might make tea later and read the first few pages of things and see if anything refuses to be put down.

(Also in this photo: several Nick Bantock postcards, Little Miss Sunshine, a Treasury of Victorian Designs & Emblems, the Tarot of the Magical Forest & a stack of happy-face Post-its. Cause this is the kind of stuff that collects on top of my printer. Except the postcards, the wall is their natural habitat.)

And of course, since I have a now-bookless Amazon box, it is currently full of cat:

Though since I took that photo Tessa has curled up to the point where her head is no longer visable and it looks like a box full of fur.

I fell into this book hard and did not want to come out of it. Spent the better part of the last two days curled up reading, letting cups of tea go cold nearby.

I’m not sure why I hadn’t read it before. I’ve been aware of it for years, I think I even flipped through it in a bookstore more than five years ago. I bought a copy a couple of months back and added it to the to-read shelf. Maybe it was waiting around for me to be able to give it my full and rapt attention.

I loved it, really. For two main reasons.

One: I’m a sucker for a good, interesting mystery that isn’t self-conscious about being mysterious. That likely makes no sense but just the idea of a murder mystery where you know the victim and the murderer from page one makes me happy, where the mystery is in the details and not the broad strokes of the crime.

And two: I went to a small, New England college. Certain sequences and details reminded me very much of Smith. Even the weather was beautifully familiar. Memories of classes studying Greek theatre I’d all but forgotten brimmed to the surface of my oft-senile brain. In a way, it’s evocative of my own collegiate experience, but pushed to extremes and placed in a blender with a Greek tragedy. Whipped up on high volume to a frothy Bacchanalian frenzy.

I can see how this can be a mixed-reaction book. I’m still not entirely sure I found the epilogue satisfying, but then I’m not entirely sure it was meant to be satisfying at all, really.

It earned a spot on my tier of most favoritest books quicker than anything I’ve read in quite awhile, that’s for sure.