To Jen! The big day was actually yesterday, and while I did not neglect the birthday wishes entirely, I never got around to posting on my blog. Happy birthday, Jen!
What’s been going on in my world? Shopping, movies, lounging about, cuddling, general recharging of batteries, etc. More updates soon… đ
Below, you’ll find the complete (mostly) list of what I’ve been reading this year. (sorry, titles and authors only…but you can check out my profile on goodreads, where I’ve at least given most of the things I’ve finished a rating.)
As has been the trend since a certain comic book nerd entered my life, you’ll see a bunch of comics and graphic novels on the list. This is the year that I’ve discovered Brian K. Vaughn. Some other things that I’ve found notable this year:
There were also a couple of disappointments, most notably Hey, Nostradamus, which I didn’t think lived up to Douglas Coupland’s earlier work, and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, which just didn’t live up to my expectations.
Of course, my reading slowed quite a bit from September until the end of the year because of my employment situation, but I can’t complain. đ
Click below for the full list!
I do have photos to post, but some of them are still on my camera. Here are a couple of videos I took last weekend at Madame Mocha’s.
Go to Bed:
Hockey Monkey:
(Hockey Monkey does not start at the beginning of the song. Sorry!)
One of these days, I’ll post some actual content. But not today. đ Seen at All Things Jennifer first, then at Samantha Says.
These are the top 106 books most often marked as âunreadâ by LibraryThingâs users.
Bold what you have read, italicize books youâve started but couldnât* finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those youâve read more than once. Underline those on your TBR list.
Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Travellerâs Wife
The Iliad
The Blind Assassin
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucaultâs Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
Emma
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckooâs nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the DâUrbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliverâs Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angelaâs Ashes
The God of Small Things
A peopleâs history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravityâs Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
*I’d like to add that some of the italicized books aren’t necessarily ones I couldn’t finish, just ones I didn’t finish and never bothered to go back to.
And since I can’t underline, here are books I think I might like to read at some point:
Wuthering Heights
Emma
The Kite Runner
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Middlesex
Wicked
Anansi Boys
Eats, Shoots and Leaves (have it, read parts of it…)
In Cold Blood
Angela’s Ashes
I’m not sure if I want to read Love in the Time of Cholera, since I’m not sure if I like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. There, I admitted it. đ
Wishing you all a happy, peaceful, love-filled day.
It’s been a very busy few days, and will continue to be busy. I expect posting will be sparse this week. In the meantime, here’s the reading, watching, listening post I actually started on Friday.
Reading: Starman (ongoing). Just Listen, by Sara Dessen. I love, love, loved this book. I may write an extended review for my book blog, where I have not posted in months.
Watching: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (original TV special, NOT the movie), Elf (with my kids at school, so I essentially watched it four times. I had never seen it before. Really, really funny…), more Season 5 Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Rand and I have begun watching the DVDs. I’ve seen most of them. He has not…), Mystery Men.
Listening: Greg Klyma and Ookla the Mok (the show at Madame Mocha’s was tons of fun, really.); Christmas music; Hawksley Workman; Larry Miller: Spoiled Rotten America.
And that’s all I have time for right now…enjoy your day!
For the past couple of years, Rand has been buying this calendar from Keith Knight’s website. Keith Knight is an awesome cartoonist–he does two weekly strips, The K Chronicles and (Th)ink. We got to meet Keith in Cleveland a couple of years ago, and he’s incredibly cool. Anyway, this year, when Rand ordered the calendar, he wrote to Keith and asked him to include a couple of special surprises for me:
How cool is that? Yeah, I’m a pretty lucky girl. đ
Thanks Rand, and thanks Keith!
First off, a big happy birthday shout-out to Eden!
Right now, the big thought on my mind is “one more day until break!” I so need this…time to regroup and recharge. This week hasn’t actually been bad. I had an observation earlier in the week, and I think it went really well.
I had a bunch of other things I was going to talk about, but my brain is moving into shutdown mode. I skipped “Wedding Wednesday” this week, because seriously? Who can think about weddings this close to Christmas? (er, I’m sure the answer is “lots of people.” Just not me!)
Don’t forget…this Saturday, you can see Greg Klyma with special guests Ookla the Mok at Madame Mocha’s on Lovejoy! (contact me for more info)
Grades are done! Whew!
Apart from the grading, this past weekend was fairly mellow. Friday night, Rand and I went out for dinner at Danny’s on Genesee Street. We like Danny’s. It’s comfortable and homey and they make really good food. I had an excellent fish fry.
Saturday, we met up with Dave Huth and another friend from Houghton–they had come to Buffalo to do some errands and we met them for a long lunch at taste of India. They all had the buffet, but I went with the Chicken Muglai. Unfortunately, I don’t think I got what I ordered. It wasn’t bad, but it just didn’t taste right.
When I wasn’t grading, I was working on various crafty projects (some of them are Christmas presents–shhh!) and even doing a tiny bit of baking:
I went in search of a recipe using Heath bits, which I bought last time I went shopping. I found this. I thought, that sounds good, but I think it needs some chocolate. So I melted chocolate chips and spread them over the top while they were still hot. (drizzling proved to be unproductive.) I have to say, they’re quite tasty, and really easy!
HEATH BIT BARS
Recipe By : RADIS BGMB90B
Serving Size : 48 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories : Bar cookies
1 cup Butter
1 cup Brown sugar
1 Egg yolk
1 teaspoon Vanilla
2 cups Flour
1 package Heath bits — (6 oz) divided
1/2 cup Pecans — finely chopped
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. With mixer, cream butter well; blend in sugar, egg yolk and vanilla. By hand mix in flour, 2/3 cup Heath bits and nuts. Press into ungreased 15 1/2 x 10 1/2 ” jelly roll pan. Bake 18 to 20 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and immediately sprinkle remaining Heath Bits over top. Cool slightly but cut while still warm.
I got my grades done and entered yesterday, so yay. I also got all but one last batch of Christmas cards out…the rest will go out tomorrow. I ran out of stamps. đ
Happy 6-days-till-Christmas everyone!
The weekend wrap-up has been postponed due to snow.
No? Okay, how about this…the weekend-wrap-up has been postponed until Erin finishes her grading. It’ll be here soon, I promise. đ
Hope you all had a lovely weekend, and that those of you in the path of the storm (which was like half the country, wasn’t it?) didn’t suffer too horribly. Later!