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

[holyschist]

Both translations! My Japanese reading level was never past first grade or so (if that), and these days is nonexistant--and Genji is difficult for lots of native speakers.