the word in language is half someone else's

So for the last two years, I've kept a log of the books I read and what I thought about them - I'm gradually transitioning to using Goodreads, but I kept the log up for posterity's sake / out of sheer cussedness. And since at this point I am unlikely to finish another book in 2013, I might as well post the log!

( books 2013 + thoughts )

A good year in books, on the whole! Tomorrow you should all bring your hangovers over here so that we can talk (quietly!) about books.

Internet, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture (aka I took a practice licensure test, because I like suffering), I am the proud possessor of a $100 gift card to Penguin Books. Rejoicing! Celebration! But I have to use it all at once, which is...I mean, not that I couldn't spend $100 on books at one go? But being restricted by publisher is kind of a tricky thing.

SO: What books should I own? Don't worry about checking if Penguin has them (although if you know that they do, that's cool!) - if nothing else, it will serve me well to have a list of recommended books to come back to at a later date.

Hi internet! I...kind of fell off the edge of lj for a while, there - school stuff, mostly, and also a generalized desire to flop on the couch and do nothing. Winter, why must you be the worst? But I have been reading books - some of them with actual pages and things! - and watching movies and TV! And now I will make a post about things that I have enjoyed recently.

1) Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. DELIGHTFULNESS INCARNATE. I saw this with a huge crowd of fangirls last night, and we were loud and ridiculous and had all of the fun in the world. Every time I thought the movie had reached a new height of ridiculousness, it proved me wrong and became even more absurd. And gay! But mostly I want a million words about Mary Morstan Watson, kicking ass and taking names and smiling serenely.

2) Friends With Kids. Not even gonna lie, I decided we should watch this movie based entirely on a gif of Adam Scott with a small child, and it was an A++++ life decision. I expected it to be a lot more mottsy and terrible than it was, but it was genuinely incredibly charming and adorable. Adam Scott! And a kid! And Jennifer Westfeldt, who I don't think I'd ever seen in anything before, but who I liked tremendously! A+ film, would creep on Adam Scott being a dad again! (Not Adam Smith, as I initially typed. BRAIN WHAT ARE YOU.)

3) Friday Night Lights. SHOWWWWWWWWW. We are halfway through the first season, and pretty much every second of every episode is me flapping my hands and yelling out characters' names. The writing and the acting of this show are just - and the relationships - jfc, so good I can't even handle it. It is a show about football - and I grew up at a Big Ten school, so I can say with some certainty that I am not a football fan, if ever I was gonna be it would have happened a long time hence - and I love this show so much I can't even handle it sometimes. Also I want to form a Tyra Collete Appreciation Society, meetings twice weekly. IN MY PANTS.

4) The Vorkosigan Saga. IDK why I have resisted this series so long, but oh my god, it is DELIGHTFUL and also ridiculous. The amount of cackling in handflappy glee I have done in the past week is absolutely rigoshdarndiculous.

oh, man, what am I even up to these days?

1) reading books with pages! I am in the middle of, like, five different books right now, which is simultaneously stressful and delightful. The frontrunner for stuff I am likely to finish soon is definitely Embassytown by China Miéville, which is weird and wonderful and absolutely insane in the face, like everything Miéville writes. Is anybody else reading it?

Next up after that will be...probably the new Jim Butcher, once I walk down the block to get it from where it was misdelivered, and then possibly Kavalier & Clay, on J's recommendation, but maybe Blackout and then All Clear instead - I read the first one when it came out, but I want to reread it before I read the second one. BASICALLY I AM SPOILED FOR CHOICE, and also if you want to talk about books / recommend me books / hear my thoughts about books, I am ALL OVER THAT NONSENSE.

2) cleaninnnnnnng. It is honestly kind of disgusting how much of a housewife I am, but god damn do I love flitting around the house in my nightie and tidying all of the things. Not that it does a damn bit of good, since Lilu McFuzzerton continues to shed like a motherfucker no matter what I do, but it makes me feel productive.

3) Mario. I am SO BAD at it, but god I love it.

4) writing! I KNOW RIGHT, god, I haven't written anything at all in waaaaaaay longer than I care to admit, with the exception of yuletides, but yesterday I wrote a thing! and posted it! and then lj went down like a poorly-constructed POS. w/e w/e, it's on the Archive too (as is all of my fic, now! \o/?), and so if you are into Pride and Prejudice and also crossdressing you should check it out: to pass for a lady,—only think what fun!, Mr&Mrs Darcy, (fairly tame) crossdressing.

(Somewhere in the space-time continuum, my childhood self is APPALLED and has no idea why. SORRY, TEENIE!M. LIFE IS ROUGH.)

5) It's not a list without five things, but fuck if I know what I want to say. Today I will cook with peanut butter (rainbow peanut noodles and also peanut butter cookies), beat the last boss on level two FUCK YEAH, and add a few hundred words to the make-charles-xavier-less-of-a-douchebag story. LOFTY GOALS ALL.

heyyyyyy internet! As you may know, I'm moving sometime toward the end of this summer (lsdkdfadfa;slfkasj;fEEEEEEE YAY, basically). As a result, I'm gradually going through my possessions and clearing out the things I don't want or need , and one of the things I have realized is that Jesus H Christ, I have a lot of books.

(This is a common problem in my family. The other day, I set a bunch of books on the counter to remind myself to take them to the secondhand store and try to sell them; I came back upstairs later to find that my mom had repatriated about half of the stack to the bookshelves in the living room, including such gems as the copy of Hamlet I read in my second quarter of college.

"I've never read it!" she said, when I confronted her. Which - okay, yes...but it's SHAKESPEARE. IT IS NOT GOING TO GO OUT OF PRINT, MOM. IT IS ON THE INTERNET.

My whole family is like this.)

So my solution to this is that I will - wait for it - READ THESE BOOKS. The ones that I like, or think my family might like, will stay on the shelves; the ones that I really like will come with me to Boston; the rest of them will be sold, if I can sneak them out of the house.

Note that I am not trying to do this to ALL of the books in the house. That would be madness. We have - a lot of books. I am just trying to do this to the books that I bought, or was given, or squirreled away in my room in the hope of someday reading.

This has left me with ( this )

I know, I know. But since I'm unemployed and carless, I have pretty high hopes as to the possibility of making a dent in this nonsense. To which end: book reviews!

( the sweetness at the bottom of the pie, the weed that strings the hangman's bag, the hundred thousand kingdoms, a madness of angels, heart's blood, rider and mystic, the stargazer, the girl with the dragon tattoo, the girl who played with fire )

I also read as many of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books as I could find at the library, but I didn't bother reviewing them, because they are basically uniformly awful/amazing. COMFORT LIT IS THE BEST, OKAY.

What have you been reading, lj?