New year, fresh start

After fiddling around over there for some time, I've decided it's time for some new blog digs. Blogger has been frustrating me for a while, and I don't feel inspired here. So, in celebration of the new year, I can now be found at Listening to Frogs. I'd love to see you over there.

My Reading Year

While 2007 hasn't quite finished (and I think I will get another book finished before midnight), I've tallied up my books, and concluded that thus far, I have read 173 books this year. The most productive month, reading-wise, was October, with 20 books to its name (with November a close second at 19) - the least was January, with only 9.

Inspired by Make Tea Not War's reading round-up (I counted up her books read, and she read 200 books this year! I've decided on this as my goal for next year - that's about 17 a month, and between 4 and 5 a week), I decided to do a little summary of my favourite reading experiences of 2007.

Most Exciting New Author Discoveries

Like every other teenage girl in the world (um, except that I am not a teenage girl. So I'm not sure why I said that), I read Stephenie Meyer's series about vampire love (Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse). While I loved the over-the-top Twilight, I became rapidly disenchanted with the series as it went on. Despite my irritation with its heroine, I will continue reading when the next book is published. Sadly, I'm a bit hooked.

I enjoyed reading Kylie Chan's series of fantasy romances based on Chinese mythology (White Tiger, Red Phoenix and Blue Dragon), and really loved discovering sci-fi author Karen Traviss after read the first two books of her Wess'har Wars series (City of Pearl, and Crossing the Line). I can't wait to get my hands on more books from this series.

Diane Setterfield's debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale, was marvelous - can't wait for her to write something else.

Also read for the first time - Elizabeth Moon (love her space-opera sagas), Lois McMaster Bujold (some great fantasy, some not so great fantasy), and Richard K Morgan's intense sci-fi novels. Oh, and how could I forget - Elizabeth Peters' brilliant Amelia Peabody books. What a lot of wonderful new authors - let's hope 2008 will be as exciting.

Author Most Re-Read

I did a great deal of re-reading of Guy Gavriel Kay's books this year, discovering that I wasn't as enchanted by his style the second time around. I plan to do a whole lot of Terry Pratchett re-reading in 2008, and also re-discover Diana Wynne Jones.

Most Irritating Book

Probably Belle De Jour's Diary of an Unlikely Call Girl, which was self-conscious and boring in its attempt to titillate, and overly emphatic in its attempt to prove the sophistication and education of the author. I'm afraid I do not believe that there is the slightest bit of realism in this supposedly true story. A vastly better book concerning prostitution is Jeannette Angell's Callgirl.

Best Audio Books

Stephen Briggs' reading Terry Pratchett, and Rita Barrington reading Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear.

Best Non-Fiction Book

I really loved reading The Other End of the Leash by Patricia McConnell - a fascinating book about dogs and dog training, which made me want to move to a sheep farm with a couple of border collies.

2008?

I'm reading Nancy Pearl's More Book Lust (a book of themed book recommendations), and have been adding books to my "to read" list like crazy. I also get book recommendations from various wonderful book blogs I read (like A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy, A Garden Carried in the Pocket, The Swivet, A Life in Books, A Striped Armchair, Moonlight Ambulette, and The Books of My Numberless Dreams). I'd like to read 200 books in 2008, more for the sake of doing it than anything else. I'd also like to read a bit more non-fiction - I did increase my non-fiction consumption in 2007, but it was still far outweighed by the fiction.

Year in Review

The last day of the year, and I thought I'd do a little review of 2007, and what I achieved.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before? Get married. Adopt kittens. (I know saying adopt is really wanky, but we didn't buy them, and nothing else seems to fit.) Buy a house. Change a broken tail-light on my car. Change my surname. Buy pink windscreen wipers. (How funny that apart from the major, life-changing never-done-before's, the only things I can think of are things I did in the last few weeks.)

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? No, I didn't make resolutions last year, and I won't this year. I tend to have an ever evolving list, or lists, of things I want to do, or things I want to change. I have bought a fresh new diary for 2008, a lovely purple one with a day a page, and a ribbon bookmark. The Prince said, "Oh, you use a paper diary?" in surprise when I pulled it out to nerdily fill in all my details on the front page. I confessed that I had never succeeded in keeping one beyond a few months into a new year, but this was going to be the year when all that changed. This was going to be the organised year, the year with the diary entries for everything. The Prince looked sceptical.

3. Did anyone close to you have a child? My cousin had his second child at the beginning of the year. One of the Prince's friends had his first child - the first of our contemporaries to have children, it was a bit alarming.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Well, no, but I did attend a funeral - the baby who died shortly after birth.

4. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007? I can't think of any material things that I lacked, spoiled as I am. Perhaps bigger bookshelves. The ability to persevere with the grand plans I am often concocting.

5. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? June 30, our wedding day.

6. What was your biggest achievement of the year? I think the two big feats of organisation - our wedding, and buying and moving house. I enjoyed the wedding far more than moving house - moving house is horrible. So much tedious work. Oh, and asking for and getting a raise.

7. What was your biggest failure? Failure? There have been no failures! No, actually, I can't think of any. Er, not doing any Christmas baking? Not taking enough photographs?

8. What was the best thing you bought? Our honeymoon trip, and my new zoom lens.

9. What did you do differently this year? I wore and bought more pink possessions, inspired by Pink Lawyer's collection of pink accessories. I always despised the colour as being too girly, but I think I like being a bit girly, now and then. I had the most expensive haircut of my life, and loved the result.

10. What do you hope to achieve in the new year? I would like to focus again (but this time, a bit more successfully) on writing fiction. I would like to take more photographs - the only way to get better is to practice. I would like to feel that I've improved my skills at work, and to become more independent in my work without freaking out about not being supervised (I am attached to supervision purely because of the lack of accountability it allows me. I need to be more responsible for my own work). I would like to be more organised about setting and achieving goals. Hey, look, faux-resolutions!

Next up, my reading achievements for the year.

Why? Well, why not?

"Yeah, our friend always has this massive New Year's party every day. He invites heaps of people, puts on all this food and drink, music, it's great. This year, he's building a replica of the Endeavour and setting it on fire at 12 o'clock."

I suppressed my laughter, and was going to swing around and ask why, but then I thought better of it. It would spoil the sheer lunacy of the concept. I would rather enjoy my visions of people dancing and cackling around a blazing replica of a ship in order to celebrate the new year, without explanation.

Christmas = mango-covered fingers

Ahh, Christmas. Mangoes. Cards in the post. Presents. Family. A new straw hat. Surprisingly cool weather. And then back to work.

I was reduced to re-reading books off the shelves at Christmas, a terrible state of affairs, so I was happily surprised to find that the public library was open - I had thought they were closed between Christmas and New Years Eve. I walked up there in my lunch hour to stock up, while Dad, who is staying with us over Christmas before heading to China for a year, sat at one of the study desks listening to his Mandarin discs.

I was browsing for James Patterson, after reading about his Women's Murder Club series, which I thought sounded rather good. I eventually found a few of his books, but every single one of them was co-written with someone else. Very odd. I've seen extremely prolific fantasy authors co-write with other extremely prolific fantasy authors, but never a mystery/thriller author. I picked one up anyway - Honeymoon, by James Patterson (with Howard Roughan!).

Also, Jaclyn Moriarty has a new book out - I thought it was a sort of vague sequel to her book for adults, I Have a Bed of Buttermilk Pancakes, but according to her blog, "It’s a revised version... In many ways, it’s the same book, but there’s a lot of new material about a girl named Listen Taylor." Wah. I wonder if I will enjoy it? I must admit, my memories of Buttermilk Pancakes are a little vague, so I probably will. I love seeing new books by Moriarty - she writes wonderfully funny books, and used to be a lawyer, which makes me wonder if perhaps I could write wonderfully funny books one day. [Ed: Not if you don't spend any time writing books, m'dear.]

I always used to have a great big pile of new books at Christmas, but now that I'm an adult and read ridiculous amounts, people don't tend to buy them for me anymore, as they never know what I've read. Which is quite reasonable really, but I loved having fresh books at Christmas time, and smelling their brand new pages, and forcing myself to read slowly so that they'd last. Now that I keep track of what I'm reading at Goodreads, perhaps I could start keeping "to buy" list - for my own reference, really, as I often forget what books I've been wanting to acquire. And then I could take the money I got given for Christmas and head off to the bookstore by myself - no unwrapping, but less chance of disappointment as well.

Rigours of office life

"Would you like a Leatherman for Christmas, dear?"

"What's a Leatherman?"

"You know, one of those fold-up things you carry on your belt, with a knife and things. My uncle has one that he carries around all the time - I think it's really cool."

"Yes, pretty cool. But unfortunately I haven't found that the rigours of office life require having a knife and a pair of pliers to hand at all times. Thanks for the thought."

In case of office enemies

I really hate office Secret Santa exchanges, particularly when you don't really know the name you pulled out of the hat. My random pick was male, and not a chocolate eater, which precluded my usual fallback gifts of chocolates or scented bath things. "Er, he likes cars," I was told when I asked around. "Things to do with cars."

I left my gift buying rather late, and dashed into the newsagents this morning, buying a bulky car magazine. However, we were given a particular amount to spend, and as the magazine's price was printed on the front cover and didn't come up to the mark, I knew I had to get something else. I barreled off to Crazy Clerks, and wandered frantically about, thinking to myself, "Cars, cars, cars." I ended up in the toy aisle, and picked up a Hot Rods toy car. Then I had a brief moment of insanity, and bought a green plastic Ninja sword. No, I don't know why. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I then had to dash back to work and wrap the collection, which was difficult - the Ninja sword kept poking out of either end of the bulky parcel. It was the oddest shaped present under the tree, so at least it looked intriguing. I wasn't game to look across at his expression while he opened it, so I don't know how it was received. Let's hope the identity of the gift-giver remains a mystery. I received Lindt chocolates, having casually dropped some hints as to my chocolate tastes on the office grapevine. Although I wouldn't have minded a Ninja sword. Anyone with plastic dinosaurs in their office could do with a Ninja sword, if only for self defense.

Case of the Bahs

My grandmother is sick. Bah.

Terry Pratchett, one of my favourite authors, has early onset Alzheimers. Bah.

In better news, it is my birthday tomorrow. And there will be birthday pizza. So if people could stop getting ill, and perhaps become immortal while they're at it, that would be much appreciated.

Attempts at decoration

I never thought that I would love being interrupted from my reading by a small kitten practising her tight-rope walking along the back of a couch that is far too high for her. And then have to put my book down to haul her off only to discover she has dug her claws into the couch because she's enjoying herself and she's not going to let me interfere with her suicidal schemes. The naughtier our kittens are, the more adorable they are, but I doubt the same state of affairs is going to apply when they're bigger and still being just as wicked. Cords exist for chewing, couches exist to be jumped on and clawed to death, and DVD players make an interesting hurdle in the living room obstacle course they've been running every evening.

I decided in the end that as an alternative to a tree, I would decorate the interior of the house with lights and baubles. I had an Inspiration, and decided to buy some transparent little sticky hooks, and make a Christmas tree shape on the wall out of lights. I discovered that it is a little hard to judge the end result when you're sticking transparent hooks on a pale wall, and my Christmas tree ended up looking more like a festive hat. A little bulgy and rounded, and not really the magnificent pine tree silhouette I had in mind.

I hadn't read the box of lights very carefully when I bought it, and realised during the process that there were lots of lights in the box. 20 metres of lights, in fact. So one end of the Festive Hat trails off, around the corner, up onto the ceiling (where there was a handy hook) and off around into the kitchen, where it finally stops above the kitchen sink. It looks a little bit crazy, and is the sort of thing you see in someone's house and say, "Wow! Isn't that... interesting!" in a bright and cheerful tone of voice, while wondering if you are in danger of being attacked with a string of Christmas lights. The Prince did lie on the couch occasionally bursting into fits of laughter while he watched me work on my creation (there were a few tangling incidents), but afterwards he declared me to be "very creative" and said it looked lovely, proving himself to be an excellent husband, as well as an excellent liar.

Christmas cards

I'm making my own Christmas cards this year, as I generally do, but I'm approaching it a bit differently to usual. I used to buy a whole pile of paper and ribbon and glittery things and get all creative with collages. This year, I'm being technological. Go on, say "oooh".

Step 1: Select 4 digital photos you feel represent bits of your year, or that are Christmassy, or funny, or whatever you like to express with your cards. My cards mostly go to family members, so I used photos of a Christmas tree, the kitties, our wedding, and a casual shot of us on our honeymoon. (The first casual shot I used was vetoed by the Prince, because he was making a silly face. I said, "But it's very us. These Christmas cards are about us." I have been reading too many articles about Christmas crafts and the love of family. I then realised I would be fairly pissed off if the Prince merrily sent off photos of me making a silly face to all his living relatives, and chose another photo.)

Step 2: Go to the mosaic maker at bighugelabs.com. If you have a flickr account, upload the photos you want to use into that (you can make them private, and this will still work). Otherwise, you can sign up as a member of bighugelabs, and upload photos directly from your computer.

Step 3: Choose the "thin vertical frames" layout in the mosaic maker, and then upload your four photos at the bottom of the page. Press "Create", and gaze on your lovely mosaic. If it looks weird, try again with different photos - the "thin vertical" chops some of the photo off, but it's the only mosaic that fits neatly into a normal sized photo print (6 x 4 inch, I think). If your subjects are roughly in the middle of the frame, the cropping in the mosaic should work well.

Step 4: Save the mosaic to your computer. Open it up in your photo editing program (I use Photoshop, but Paint.Net is an excellent free editing program). Gaze lovingly at your mosaic. Select your text tool, and create a text box along the bottom of the mosaic - I went along the length of the middle two photos. Type a little phrase - I went with the very original "Merry Christmas". Select a font colour that stands out well against your photos (a nice deep red worked for me), and a nice font (I used King and Queen, which is free to download, and is decorative and funky - I like it). Keep fiddling with the colour and size of your font til you're happy with the overall look of the mosaic. Oh, and don't forget to save it as a jpg file.

Here's an example:

Step 5: Pop your creation onto a CD or flash card, and take it along to a photo shop (or if you're in Australia, to Big W which I think does the cheapest digital prints I've found - 19c each) and order as many prints as you need for all your cards.

Step 6: While your mosaics are being printed, go and buy some blank cards, or some flat card that you're going to cut and fold into card shapes.

Step 7: Collect your prints, and admire your artistic skills. Stick the prints onto your blank cards, using some decent craft store glue, and then get to work with the hard part - writing in them. Which I can't help you with, because I'll be busy trying to come up with something witty and original to write in mine.