the list of now

Oh hi, middle of January. It was time to do this 3 weeks ago. Alas, I had some priority issues over the past month – this blog being one of the things that had to go hang out on the back burner for a while.

So here’s my list of highlights from 2011:

Books

Music
Some of these are albums and tunes I revisited this year, some are ones I discovered this year.  Most were not new releases from 2011.  Click albums to launch on spotify, the individual songs I listened to are all playable in that handy widget guy.

Albums

Songs

(in totally random order)

Movies
I didn’t see as many movies as I would have liked to this year. And I didn’t keep track of the older ones I watched (there were a lot of dvds from the library, netflix and hulu streaming this year).  Here is a handful of movies from this year that I really enjoyed. I will do better keeping track in 2012.

On opera, writing, cats and the best tv series of all time.

I am very curious by nature. Usually after reading a good book, I spend a lot of time reading reviews, interviews with the author and sometimes the author’s blog. And that usually doesn’t even begin to cover the things that I’ve wondered about. (Very few authors discuss their love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer for some reason).

Author of The Metropolis Case, Matthew Gallaway was kind enough to let me ask him a bunch of random questions. His answers provide insight to his book, his ideas about work and writing and also display his excellent taste and proof that he is someone who has a book and record collection that I would greatly enjoy. Continue reading

I enjoy public challenges, especially centered around reading and writing, I think it’s a great way for people to be inspired and gain exposure to great books, other writers and artists and have a record of their own progress. So I’m hoping that by posting this, a couple of you will join me!  I would love to see the books you pick for your bucket list or the numbers you aspire to read.

1.  Goodreads 2011 Reading Challenge

This one is simple.  Sign up for Goodreads if you aren’t on there. Pick the number of books you are challenging yourself to read in 2011.  Use widget to display your progress or just monitor it within your own account.  I picked 50. We’ll see how that goes.

2.  The Book Bucket List Challenge

I follow yaReads on twitter and noticed they were discussing this challenge weeks ago.  I finally got around to sitting down and making my ultimate “Book Bucket List”.  You know the one, the infinite list of books that you always meant to read and just keeps getting longer and longer.  I work in a library and I love reading new book reviews, therefore there are a number of classics and older books that sit on my list, constantly overlooked by whatever catches my eye that is new.  So I signed up.

There are three levels that you can participate in if you officially want to do this challenge – to read 4, 8 or 12 “Bucket List” books.  I picked 12.  (I’m a go big or go home kind of gal)  Even though my life Book Bucket List probably numbers in the hundreds (I keep thinking of more).

I like this challenge because it’s something I’ve been meaning to do anyway, this just gives me a fun way to organize myself, see what other folks are doing and have a pretty badge in my sidebar.

You can sign up on yaReads if you also want to play along at home.  And no, they don’t have to be YA titles.  None of mine are on this list, even though I have several on my bigger, broader list for the future.

In case you are curious, here is my 12 for 2011:

Franney and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
1984 – George Orwell
A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf
A Spy in the House of Love – Anais Nin
The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
No Exit - Jean-Paul Satre
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

And number 12 is a series bonus comics challenge item:  I need to reread all of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and finish it this time.  (I never got through it because I couldn’t afford to buy them all at once and then I got distracted by others).

favorites books read in 2010: Several were not releases from 2010, but books that I finally got around to reading.

currently reading:

(I’m including this because I started it in 2010 and although I haven’t finished, I can already tell I will love it forever.)

1.  Summer needs to be over now.  I am wearing sweater in my frosty, AC-pumped office right now and I LOVE IT.  Did you catch that – I am actually ENJOYING being cold.  I am relishing it.  Because the humidity outside is trying to kill me.  Wrong.  Summer canceled.

2.  Over at Geeks of Doom, Eve blogs about a Sandman TV series in the works.
This is intriguing, but I have a lot of concerns about how this would be handled.  In her post, she said she would rather it just stay a comic and never be adapted into anything else.  I have to say, I totally agree.  As much as I love a lot of comic-inspired films, I kind of don’t want anyone to fuck with Sandman… at all.     Although if the creators of HBO’s devastingly awesome, too-soon-canceled series Carnivale want to take a crack at adapting Gaiman’s novel American Gods, call me.

3.  I still haven’t picked up Mockingjay.   Once I do, it will eat my life for at least an entire day and I don’t have time for that right now.  So that means I’m trying to avoid the landmines of spoilers.  It’s not easy.

4.  I really, really, really want tickets to see Amanda Palmer in Cabaret at A.R.T. I need more money and time to make this happen.

5.  One of my favorite people on earth is coming to visit and stay for the long weekend.  Can’t wait to play tourist with him, Rhode Island is quite good for that sort of thing.

Now about this hurricane…