December/End of 2010

[sweet_sparrow]

Hi, all! I hope everyone's been having a good month and that those who celebrate anything this month have had a wonderful time with their respective feasts too! I also hope I'm not offending one with the phrasing here. Please let me know how to do it better?

I know it's not quite the end of December yet, but I won't be getting any more books finished before the end of the year. (At least I'm pretty sure of this. Any reading in these coming few days that I aim to do is The Tale of Genji and seeing how I'm not even half-way through that and getting this far took me almost the entire year... No way I'll finish before the end of 2010.)

What've you been reading in December? Have you had time to read? What have your favourites of the month or year been? (I was actually considering making another post for the best-of-2010 sometime in early January. Thoughts?) Do you think you'll finish another novel before 2011 and do you have any plans for next year's reading?

I'm still at least knee-deep in finishing my essays for university, but I got a surprising amount of reading done. Nineteen books or thereabouts! I've only managed to review six of them, though. I've also abandoned more books this single month than I've managed to do in the entire year, I think.

My favourite of December was After by Amy Efaw. It hit just the right note for me and I thought it was incredibly powerful. My biggest disappointment was A Concise Chinese-English Dictonary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo. I just didn't get along with the characters at all, so the story fell apart.

- Highway Robbery by Kate Thompson
– War Horse by Michael Morpurgo
– Beastly by Alex Flinn
– Bang, Bang, You’re Dead! by Narinder Dhami
- The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson (dnf)
- Another Faust by Daniel Nayeri & Dina Nayeri (dnf)
- Aurelia by Anne Osterlund (dnf)
- Death by Darjeeling by Laura Childs (dnf)
- The Description of Wales by Geraldus Camenbrensis
- Fairest by Gail Carson Levine (dnf)
- Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick (dnf)
- Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki
- The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
- They Called it Passchendaele by Lyn MacDonald
- Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip (reread)
- The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (reread)
- An Earthly Knight by Janet McNaughton (reread)
- Dark Lord Seeks Friendship, Maybe More by Elisa Viperas (dnf)
- Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

For 2011, I've made a stack (well, two) of books that I'd like to try and get read. We'll see how it goes. I'll probably get distracted, but the stack is there at any rate.

Lastly, is anyone interested in end-of-year book polls? I used to post them yearly on LJ when I could make polls there and had a blast with them. For those unfamiliar with the idea: you make a ticky box poll of all the books you've read in the year and see how many people you've never met have read the same books (at some point in their life or that year, but the former seems more popular). It's like a big, interactive meme basically. (Mine for this year is here if you'd like to see how the poll can work. Apologies for the mini-plug, but I've no idea how to give an example without it.^-^; ) If people are interested, we could perhaps either all share links to our polls or make a post that collects them all in the comments or some such?

Hope everyone is well and having a great time! Soon another year'll be over. O_O Where did it go?!

Comments

[sweet_sparrow]

I can see how that would be less than useful, yes. :( Which fandoms are they if I can ask? ^-^

Not particularly. Other countries have far more interesting histories attached to them and we covered pretty much anything that struck me as interesting at some point. (Patriotism, I have it not, no.)

^-^

Heh. I always overuse them. (I just edit some out whenever I notice.) No apologies necessary. ^-^

[scifisentai]

Japanese live action shows. The Super sentai series, Kamen Rider and Ultraman. The one I just finished watching being this one, which I loved madly because the characters between them hit pretty much every character kink I have. *grins* I have a weakness for pretty people saving the world, this probably partially explains why I love the scifi genre so much on tv, even though I don't watch it as much as I used to.

Heh, I think a lot of European history is a complete mess in terms of how alliances and so on were always shifting, but I'm more familiar with the English/Scottish/French/Spanish aspect than anywhere else, admittedly.

*grins* Okay, fair enough. :) I do try not to abuse them so much but I don't always succeed.

[sweet_sparrow]

Heh. I don't watch enough Japanese live action shows myself. (But then I don't really watch a lot of tv anymore, period.)

It is, but we never really got much of that in our classes. (You'd despair, though, over how many of my tutoring students confuse the alliances in the modern era. It is... disheartening.)

It's so easy to abuse the poor things...

[scifisentai]

I don't watch tv much myself anymore, either. I have no patience for waiting week to week for episodes anymore, let alone seasons that end on cliffhangers so I tend to wait for the seasons to be over so I can marathon them at my leisure. :)

I can believe that. :( One of my friends is a teacher and some of the things she says about what the students don't know is depressing. :(

It really, really is. And now I'm going to have to call it a night, unfortunately. I'll reply to the rest in the morning. :)

[sweet_sparrow]

It's so much more sensible an approach. ^-^

It really, really is depressing. (I've had kids tell me that the allied forces consisted of America, Britain and Germany. I just... Depressing is the right word for it.)

G'night! Sweet dreams! (I should be going to bed too, but I'm a compulsive replier...)

[scifisentai]

Oh definitely. :) I think there are things to be said in favour of watching as episodes air but for me they don't outweigh the negatives so marathoning it afterwards works much better for me. :)

*facepalms* And Germany? The mind, it boggles. o_O

(Heh, me too. :D)

[sweet_sparrow]

True, true. I much prefer watching the episodes at my convenience, too.

To be fair, that's the exception rather than the rule. Usually, if they mix it up, they mix up the names of the alliances, not the countries in them.

[scifisentai]

*nods* It's better for me, but it probably doesn't help ratings much. :) Ah well, at least it helps on dvd sales instead? >.>

That's a little less depressing at least. :)

[sweet_sparrow]

Sadly, so. Unfortunately, they seem to need ratings to make dvd boxes and continue series I like...

All the little bits help. ^-^ Some of my tutoring students have a lot of problems with theoretical learning too, which doesn't help.

[scifisentai]

*nods* I'd feel guiltier about it if I actually cared about anything on tv at the moment but there's very little lately that even grabs my interest. :(

Heh, take the small mercies where you can find them? :)

[sweet_sparrow]

I know the feeling! There's a handful of exceptions, but usually Dutch stations are so slow to pick something up that by the time they do I've already bought the DVD-box or lost interest anyway.

Indeed. And at the least my spur-of-the-moment attempts to explain things in ways that they remember better seem to amuse them. ^-^

[scifisentai]

DVDs make everything easier. :)

Always a good thing. I guess they're more likely to remember things if the explanation sticks in their mind. :)