favourite books 2011

The first eight were unambiguously my favourites (in no particular order), but I had a hard time picking the last two.

My brother keeps trying to come up with new career ideas for me that involve things I'm "passionate" about, like somehow getting paid to review books, but trying to write even a couple of sentences about these books I loved reminded me yet again why that is not a good idea. Sorry for the lame descriptions. I included the GoodReads links so you can read more eloquent people's opinions.

1. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. The hype was deserved for a change. This short ebook about the publication of the book is also interesting.

2. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I got bored with Echo Bazaar pretty quickly, so if I'd known this was associated with a similar game, I might've been put off. Luckily, I didn't find out until I'd read and loved it.

3. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente. I was a big fan of YA fantasy this year, apparently. This was wonderful.

4. The Magician King by Lev Grossman. Not quite as good as the first book, but I still loved it. However, if this series ends badly, I'll have to retroactively remove the first two from these lists.

5. The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson. This book would go well with the sad teen girl books from last year's list.

6. How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu. Another depressing and beautifully written book by the author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.

7. The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris. This kind of reminded me of The Time Traveler's Wife. I wasn't expecting to like it this much based on the description and the first few chapters, but somehow it worked.

8. The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai. This was wonderful. I can't wait for her to write another book.

9. The Zero by Jess Walter. Another one with a kind of experimental structure that I wasn't expecting to like.

10. Mr Peanut by Adam Ross. This seemed to have more than one book within it, but they were all good.

Honourable mentions go to The Emperor of Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee for non-fiction, the Enola Holmes and Green Knowe books for children's series and Anja's Ghost by Vera Brosgol for graphic novels.

favourite books 2010

So, I never actually meant to stop blogging entirely... I've thought about restarting quite often, but I feel awkward, and it's easy to put off. I kind of wanted to post my favourite books of 2011, though. It looks like I had the same thought last year because this was post was sitting here when I logged in.

1. An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender. I really liked The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, her most recent book, but this was much better.

2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. I don't usually include non-fiction in my list, but this definitely deserves a place.

3. Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann. I read this in one evening, despite its length.

4. How to Buy a Love of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson. I wasn't sure about the premise of this book and some of the characters were a bit over the top, but I still loved it.

5. The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I loved all of this up until the last few pages, but then I found out it has a sequel, so I'll let the ending slide for now.

6. Natural Flights of the Human Mind by Clare Morrall.

7. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. This was my reward for handing in my dissertation.

8. The World to Come by Dara Horn.

9. A Love Story Starring my Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner. I seem to have been a teen girl in my reading taste this year.

10. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

amazon meme

Apparently I'm out of the loop, because I've only seen it at New Kid's and Profgrrrl's, both of whom had already seen it everywhere.

On Amazon, my account records only go back to 2003, but I know I got something there years earlier. I was probably still using my high school hotmail account then.

I signed up for an Amazon account long before I had any expectation of actually buying anything. I think I was just interested in the email alerts when my favourite authors published something new. At some point (1998-ish?), I got emailed a $10 gift certificate to encourage me to try the new-ish service.

At first I thought it would be useless, given how far from the US I lived at the time, but I was delighted to discover that $10 would just cover a childrens/YA mass-market paperback plus shipping. I instantly signed up for another amazon account with a second email address, just in case I could get the same offer again, and a couple of months later I did!

I bought two of Madeleine L'Engle's books that I hadn't been able to find at home: A House Like a Lotus and (I think) And Both Were Young (neither of which are now available from amazon in the $3 form I got).

I'm still amazed that the gift certificates had no strings attached. I don't think I actually gave Amazon any of my own money until I moved to the US in 2003 and did all my xmas shopping online.

baby bunny!

I've become acclimatised enough to squirrels that I don't always feel the urge to take a million photos when I see them (only sometimes). Wild bunnies, on the other hand, are a different story.
I just started using The Daily Shoot as prompts for my project 365 photos, so I didn't post the bunny pics on that blog. They're too cute not to share, though.

Project 365 has been good for getting me out of the house at least once a day so far. Maybe it'll help my self-esteem, too.

I'm such a mess

I said in my last post that I was happy, but that's really only true because I've been avoiding thinking about lab and my research. I can't do that forever, though. Today I thought I'd try facing up to everything I've been putting off and at least figure out what I need to do. Just seeing emails from my advisor and the program coordinator in my inbox is making me want to cry, though.

I know continuing to avoid things is only going to make it worse, but I really don't want to talk to my advisor or anyone. I'm tempted to wait until I've got something done to tell him about, but that's already the reason I put it off last week. Ugh. Maybe I can email him at least.

I need to make some actual progress today so I'm making a list here.

1. email advisor and ask if I can call tomorrow when I've got something to talk about
2. email committee to try to set up meeting
3. email program coordinator to let her know I've emailed committee
4. empty inbox (down to 6!)
5. make figures to add to summary
6. write results section to go with figures
7. grocery shopping
8. exercise

5 years (and 1 day)

I thought I'd remembered my blogiversary being the same as my birthday, but I was a day off. Still, it's a good time to think back on the last five years. I just read my first couple of posts and I feel enormously grateful for how much better my life is now than it was then.

I'd actually recently been thinking that I'd slipped back to my 2005 life, with one very significant difference. I have been pretty miserable this year and I've spent a lot of time at lab either crying or trying not to. I found myself hiding in my room from housemates again. I haven't been to the gym in months. I hadn't cooked in almost as long and had been living on junk food.

But! I have been doing a lot more work and enough of my experiments have been working that I can start writing up (although I still need to officially get my committee to agree to that). Even more significantly, I have my Favourite Person, and right now I'm in the same place as him and far away from lab, so I'm happy. I have also started the Couch to 5K plan and cooked some vegetable-filled meals in the last week, so I'm getting my life back on track. This blog had a lot to do with improving my life circa 2007 so I'm hoping to be more active here again this time.

I turned 30 today, so it's a good time for starting new plans. I haven't completely formulated The New Plan yet, but I started a "101 things in 1001 days" list. I don't want it to be a restrictive list that becomes a chore and I'd like to actually complete it* so I haven't filled in the whole list yet. My goal is really just to do 101 new things, so I will be okay with adding and removing items. You can see my list here. Please let me know if you have any ideas for cool things to do.

One thing on my list is to complete a Project 365. I took my first picture today, with my awesome new camera. It leaves plenty of room for improvement, which is okay with me.

Thank you for all your support and friendship over the last five years. It has meant so much to me and I'm looking forward to being part of the blogging community again.



*Has anyone ever seen someone complete one of these? Maybe that's not realistic, but it's worth striving for.

IALAC

In primary school we did worksheets on why "I am lovable and capable". I found it hard to believe then too.