Hey, do you like books? Of course you do. Do you like free books? Me too! So you should swing by the wonderful & talented Cindy Pon‘s blog and maybe win fabulous UK editions of R.J. Anderson‘s books.
(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.
Can you hear that sound? The death knell of 2009? Strange year, this year of 2k plus 9. I know a lot of people had worse years than I did but it was still an odd sort of year and I’m not entirely sure I liked it.
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.
We don’t really have that much snow, but it’s pretty. That nice fluffy white snow that we didn’t get much of last year. I much prefer this to the ice & slush. Though it has made me realize that I need proper boots for snow, not sure what happened to my old ones.
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.
Things accomplished since the end of NaNo, an unnumbered list:
I am still somewhat in denial that it is December already.