TSS: This, That, and the Other (and Christmas pictures of Daniel!)

Jan 032010

Oh, my friends, I feel as if I’ve been away from you for so long! I’ve been partially, but not completely unplugged. I actually have talked to some of you on Twitter, have commented on some of your blogs, and have even posted some reviews here, and yet I still feel like I haven’t ‘talked’ to you for a long time.

I don’t have nearly as many pictures to share with you as I would like, I need to get the pictures that my mom and mother-in-law took, because I, sadly, hardly took any pictures at all. Daniel had a great Christmas, though he got a little worn out and overwhelmed by all the running around from place to place we were doing from the Wednesday before Christmas to the Sunday after. We’ve tried to keep this week quieter to get him back on track. Here are a few lower quality pictures of his holiday:

And yay, I surpassed my goal for 200 books in 2009, I actually read 214! So far I’ve read two FANTASTIC books in 2010:

alice i have been picture

My review of “The Dolphin People” will be up on Wednesday, I my review of “Alice I have Been” will likely be going up Wednesday the 13th.

And have you heard yet about the Classic Reads Book Club? The idea is that bloggers come together and read one classic per quarter. We’re starting with East of Eden, which is my favorite book of all time. Discussion of the first section, chapters 1-11, will begin on January 25th.

My Top Books of 2009

Jan 012010

So I was planning on doing my top 10 books I read in 2009. ”Sure,” I thought, ” I can pick 10 out of the almost 215 I read.” Then I made my initial list, and there were 26 books on it, and I wondered how I was supposed to choose between things like The “Hunger Games” and “Her Fearful Symmetry,” between “Hate List” and “Time of My Life.” I read such a variety of different books, that I just didn’t think it was going to work to compare such different books. Instead, I’m going to list my top few (up to 5) from a few different categories. In no particular order:

liar picture

Young Adult Literature
This is a category of books I probably hadn’t read since Middle School, boy have young adult books changed, they’ve gotten AWESOME.
The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld
Nothing But Ghosts by Beth Kephart
Liar by Justine Larbalestier
Hate List by Jennifer Brown (can you believe it? on my ‘best of’ list and I haven’t reviewed it yet)

Women’s Fiction
I was totally scared of these books before this year, I thought they would be “fluffy,” but it turns out that there is a lot of depth in a lot of women’s fiction
Time of My Life by Allison Winn Scotch
Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos
The Widow’s Season by Laura Brodie
When She Flew by Jennie Shortridge
Real Life and Liars by Kristina Riggle

Historical Fiction
Interestingly, although this is my favorite genre and I read a lot of good books in this genre, I didn’t have a lot that really stood out, and most of them that did weren’t in my comfort area of the Plantagents and Tudors.
The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles
The Sunne in Splendor by Sharon Kay Penman
Twilight of Avalon by Anna Elliot (even though this has a bit of historical fantasy in it, it was a great book)

Memoir/Nonfiction
Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman
First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage by Eve Brown-Waite
In The Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White

Audiobooks
The books with the best story and narration
America, America by Ethan Canin
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfeld

General Fiction (and one dytopian)
The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova (pubs January 2010)
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
The Unit by Ninni Holmqvsit
The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal by Sean Dixon
City of Refuge by Tom Piazza