Just Add Books: Yearender

The year that was. Sort of.

It's not really a best-of-2008 list, because I'm crap at those things. That and I'm completely useless at things like counting and maths. So no stats here.

I started this blog in December of 2007, intending to use it to track my progress on my own personal Classics reading challenge _ having no idea, at the time, that there were such things as reading challenges. I know differently now, of course.

So. How'd I do?

This is the list:

January: Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier: Loved loved loved it

Februray: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: Quite liked it

March: The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens: Didn't finish it

April: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov: Loved it but felt bad for loving it

May: 1984 by George Orwell: Quite liked it

June: The Once and Future King by T H White: Didn't finish it

July: Hawaii by James Michener: Switched with Space, which I really enjoyed

August: The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: Didn't read it

September: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway: Loved loved loved it

October: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte: Didn't finish it

November: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Loved it but it took me aaaaages

December: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein: Liked it

Okay. According to my calculations I read 69 books in 2008. I thought it was 70 but as I said before, I'm not really good with numbers. I'm not going to go into all of them because I'm inherently lazy.

Here, though, are my top 10, bug other people until they read them:

1): The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Hands down, my favourite read of the whole year. I wanted to stroke it and pet it and carry with me everywhere. It's just lovely.

2): The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby. An extraordinary memoir of the mind.

3): The Vintner's Luck by Elizabeth Knox. Sigh ... *pause* sigh ...

4): American Gods by Neil Gaiman. You were expecting something else?

5): Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. Have you read it? Why not? You should read it!

6): A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. See above comments

7): Duma Key by Stephen King. Much as I was a bit eh about Just After Sunset, I did really enjoy Duma Key. Creepy and atmospheric

8): Up Till Now by William Shatner. Extremely funny and moving autobiography

9): The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. Again ... sigh ... *pause* ... sigh

10:) Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Atmospheric and claustrophobic and fantastic.

In order, sort of.

Otherwise 2008 was a year of ... what. Well, Patrick turned 1. He's 19 months old and still not-quite walking on his own but that's fine, because he sure does get around! I lost co-workers in the great Fairfax redundancy thingy (what's the word I want? like apocalypse, but not apocalypse) and morale-wise, I don't think we've recovered yet.

I tried to go to as many movies as I could but sometimes, you know, that didn't pan out. I review movies sometimes for work. I even have my own media pass. I love my media pass. The last movie I saw at the movies in 2008 was Twilight. I thought it was all right. Solid rather than brilliant.

Other than that, I read a lot. Stitched some but only finished one very small thing. I started walking on and off and I'm hoping to make that more on than off this year.

Family wise things ticked over fairly well. Nothing outstanding happened, which is not a bad thing really.

Onwards!