I had been wanting to see Silent Night, the most recent film featuring Keira Lovely Knightley.(Though she also has a several-second cameo in Greed if anyone needs a quick fix.) I'd hoped to see it in the cinema but it didn't come to Edinburgh, so when I found out it was online rental, I chose it for Triv Group Film Night. Initially we'd planned to do it a bit closer to Christmas so the thematics also made sense. I had been a bit confused, to be honest, why it wasn't wider release, and more of a push for a Christmas film released around Christmas.
In nicer Christmas media news I just watched the Only Connect "Cold" special and loved Victoria Coren Mitchell's snowflake outfit. I have enjoyed all of her outfits this year and learning that they were a tribute to Moira Rose off of Schitt's Creek only increases that. Like many people I had assumed that they were a Taskmaster thing but I am delighted to find that it's just her own desires. She was exactly what I'd hoped on Taskmaster. I think less of Greg Davies (whom I love) for not giving her more marks for her excellent joke prize items.
On the end of year meme which I regret seeming to have stopped, there was a question about how one's style has changed/what clothing trends you embraced or something like that, which was traditionally answered by most people I knew with a handwave about no longer having to be in thrall to fashion, or having found one's style years ago. Well for absolute years I have resisted anything akin to tucking things in, for a variety of reasons including still resenting having to tuck a shirt in at school, disliking the feel of it and often not liking the way it looks with larger breasts and a generous stomach - but yesterday for the first time I think ever I put on a new top that I felt was slightly too long, thought "why not try it" and essayed a sort of French tuck and enjoyed what I saw. So even if I never do it again that's a new trick for this old dog.
I read 201 books. I was sitting at around 180 in mid December when I counted up, and thereafter made a concerted effort to get to the entirely meaningless round number milestone of 200. And then didn't realise I had and overshot.
180 of these books were by women, of whom 16 were writers of colour; 21 books by men, of whom two were writers of colour. This is not as diverse as last year, 8.9% compared to 12% - and only slightly higher proportion of women than men.
Until you get to fiction this is very similar to last year, plus a few more - then I doubled the number of fiction books I read. It is much, much more than I read last year (107). For 2020 I noted that this was unusually low (in fact the second lowest year on record), not least because of overwork and burnout. So this is I think a good suggestion that my mental health is back on track.
Did you reread anything? What?
I reread the Murderbot series by Martha Wells, after reading them earlier this year for the first time on felinitykat's recommendation, and then finding in November/December that I desperately needed to be reading them again. This is entirely appropriate for Murderbot, who uses media to bury themself in to escape life and returns very frequently to the same series for comfort. They are my Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. I think the only other time I've reread a book within the calendar year was The Hawkwood War by Ankaret Wells. Maybe it's something in the surname.
What were your top five books of the year?
I didn't stop at five last year so I see no reason to curtail my list this time.
Character Breakdown - Zawe Ashton Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 - Cho Nam-Joo The Siege of Krishnapur - JG Farrell Big Girl, Small Town - Michelle Gallen Miss Benson's Beetle - Rachel Joyce Tory Heaven - Marghanita Laski No-one is Talking About This - Patricia Lockwood Detransition, Baby - Torrey Peters Jean series - Janet Sandison (Jane Duncan) The Education of Harriet Hatfield - May Sarton Murderbot series - Martha Wells
Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?
Martha Wells! Though I haven't read any of her non-Murderbot books becasue I guess I'm afraid I won't love them as much. The fact that they are not a book they're not setting out to be should, I suppose, not be held against them but there we are.
I really enjoyed Big Girl Small Town and I hope that Michelle Gallen writes more, soon.
When I was theantichris recommended Susan Beth Pfeffer's YA novels to me and I like them very much so will keep working my way through. I started with Beauty Queen was was eyeopening in how much young women's dieting was normalised, not in the 90s way of it being An Issue, but just that it was accepted that of course it would be a good idea if the younger sister started dieting.
I found a Nicky Edwards book in a secondhand shop that was from the era when women's press books were all about lesbian separatists (and much the better for it) - I have since gone on to read all three available titles and the one about a woman building herself a cottage in the middle of the countryside, unknowingly accompanied by a (lesbian?) ghost from pre-history is excellent.
Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?
Last year I wrote:
Because I spent much more time at home in 2020 than I had originally planned, I literally started every day in my flat opening my eyes to see the shelves of unread books in front of me. I think I read 12 of them last year, which leaves around 90 still to go. Not counting all the ebooks I keep buying.
Still the case. Though now I have curtains over the shelves to protect spines from the light, so I don't always see the books now. I feel their reproachful eyeless glare through the fabric though. I also meant to read some quite heavy books about sexual assault, becasue I felt I ought to, but Jess said that since I come across that a lot through my job I needn't force myself if I didn't want to, so I won't.
Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?
The goals I set last time I did this meme were:
Should I attempt to recommit to a French book? I would still like to do it, but at this point I don't really see it happening. I would like to read at least ten books from my unread shelves. I would like at least one of the ten to be one of the academicy books I want to read but have been finding too daunting
I was entirely correct that I was not going to read a French book, so I accomplished the goal of it not happening. I think I read 14 books from my towering pile, which is "at least ten", so tick on that. None of the fourteen was an academicy book, which is a shame.
What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?
The oldest book I read this year was Death in Venice, a last minute addition when I asked twitter for short books and irrtum suggested Thomas Mann novellas. It was very good, I can see why people make a fuss about it.
In terms of things I'd been meaning to read, I finally found Once More, With Feeling, Victoria Coren (as was)'s account of making a porn film. I'd wanted to read it since finishing her book about poker which was really excellent, but it is not available on kindle so when it popped up in my local charity shop I was very pleased. It was still funny, but you can really see her development from then to now in style.
How many books did you buy?
Lots in charity shops, since they haven't closed since the Jan 2020 lockdown AND there is now a dedicated charity shop bookshop nearish me. Though having said that, I don't think I pick up nearly as many there as from random other forays, the stock doesn't seem to change so much and they have too many uncurated piles.
I've been trying to buy from Kobo (who make my e-reader) or Hive (though that entails extra steps to get onto my ereader that the warm glow of smugness doesn't always counteract) instead of Amazon, as I lost the ability to make the conversion work in Calibre and I don't like reading on my phone so much. Since Kobo's store isn't as good, what mostly happens is that I still find the deals on Kindle monthly or daily deals and then just search to see if they're price matched. I bought 30 books from Kindle, and 69 from Kobo. I am much better at promptly reading the ones on Kobo than on Kindle.
Did you use your library?
Yes! Both as a testing centre and as a source for ebooks, though not for borrowing any physical media. I still forget to read the books that download in time, or end up with a half read book I can no longer access, but it's so good to have it connected to the Kobo.
What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book?
Less than an hour when I was powering through young adult books to hit the arbitrary 200.
What reading goals do you have for next year?
To keep reading and keep enjoying it. That sounds unbearably smug like those self help bollocks things that are all about "the journey not the destination". But really, to keep remembering that I like to read and making time for it. This will be hampered by my recent download of a dastardly clicking phone game, which is currently taking up all my reading time.
I think I will do my half-hearted idea from last year and read all the past Booker prize winners. I like having lists and goals. Plus I have already read 14 of them (I thought 15, but I've only watched Remains of the Day, not read it). If I start at the beginning and move forwards this means I will start with Something to Answer for by PH Newby, of which and of whom I have not previously heard.
I shall continue not to commit to reading a book in French.
This year Jess and I are going on our lengthy Antarctic and Atlantic cruise (you may notice a lack of "all going well" - I refuse to believe it will not happen), which will involve two and a half months off work and six weeks of that on a boat, with several sea days where there will be very little to do except read. SO MUCH READING TO DO. I have started to stockpile books on my Kobo for this, including Joan Collins' diaries which Jess has requested I read in her vicinity so that I can regale her with the choicer anecdotes, as I did with the autobiography of Grace Jones in Ukraine in 2021. Numbers continue meaningless, but I might use that dedicated reading time to set a goal to clear 250 books for the year for the first time in recorded memory.
This year is also supposedly when I will finally move to Kuala Lumpur with a relocation allowance, so I plan to take over all my unread books and hope that that will force me to move through them. I want to read them! I bought each and every one with the express intention of doing just that! But somehow there is always something else. I need to find a spur of some sort.
What’s the longest book you read?
I was wondering how people tell this now that ebooks are arguably the norm, and it turns out that if you log things on Goodreads it tells you the pages. This is something that Goodreads could do that I can't (be bothered to) myself. I have just been to look and it seems that you can import books into Goodreads from an excel file, which is where I keep my lists. I shall investigate what sort of file it can cope with (suspect my own columns do not match theirs). Maybe if I manually input a book or two then export that I could use the resulting file to make my own spreadsheet match and then import it. Hmm. If anyone has done this themselves, advice would be welcome.
I'm guessing that a Penny Vincenzi might be the longest, or the Barbara Taylor Bradford A Woman of Substance, which is 928 pages. Which I suppose balances out some of my end of year urgent reading, a few of which might really be novelettes rather than novellas even.
What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?
I don't think I had been exactly waiting with bated breath for anything in particular. Had I read Murderbot before this year it would have been the new novella, and it would DEFINITELY have lived up to expectations. I was looking forward to the third Time Police novel from Jodi Taylor, having started that series this year, and enjoyed it very much.
For next year I am looking forward to the new Jessica Gregson book, After Silence, of course. Amazon even has a publication date of my actual birthday, but that is probably just a random date chosen to get it on the system.
Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama?
Repeat from last year: I do not think so. If anyone wants to tell me about something they saw in great detail, please do. I like secondhand drama that doesn't concern me.
Any books that disappointed you? What were your least favorite books of the year?
Home Work by Julie Andrews was one of the first books I read in 2021 and it was just really dull and flatly wrtten. I thought Because of You by Dawn French had a terrible (and arguably unethical) ending and didn't deserve the hype at all. I barely remember at all what Flannelled Fool by TC Worsley was like, but I do recall feeling it was dismissive of child sexual abuse. Oh and Madam by Phoebe Wynne was not very well written and just not super well developed for a quite obvious plot.
What genre did you read the most of?
As ever, women's middlebrow fiction from the mid 20th century.
Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)?
The Murderbot novel Network Effect won the Nebula AND the Hugo this year! Several of the novellas were nominated or won in previous years.
I read This is How You Lose the Time War which won the Nebula and Hugo novella last year.
No-one is Talking about This was nominated for the Booker, and the Women's Prize. I have been trying to read This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga all year, which was also Booker-nominated, but it is in the second person and I just can't. Dolly Alderton's Ghosts was nominated for the Wodehouse humour prize and was the runner-up for Comedy Women in Print.
Oh, I read Skincare by Caroline Hirons, and that was apparently the Lifestyle Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. I am glad to know that the only book I have read on skincare, or am likely to, was a good one.
I also read The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell, which won the 1973 Booker.
Big Girl, Small Town was shortlisted for a bunch of things including Costa first novel, Irish Book Awards Debut and Comedy Women in Print.
What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?
Maybe Madam? Not sure if it was hyped, but if it was it shouldn't be.
I ended up taking this week off at very short notice after a helpful conversation with my manager. I was going to call the GP today to get a phone triage to ask advice about burnout (kind of hoping to be told to take more time off) but you have to be up at 8.30 to ring, and I woke at 11am after staying up til 1am finishing off my work to be able to take time off and then accidentally reading for 2 more hours after that. So maybe tomorrow, and I should see if my work insurance connects me to something.
I have done lots of nothing, including going through all my charity shop recipe book purchases to see if I actually intend to make anything from them. I have discarded three already (after taking photos of the one recipe in each I fancy making as opposed to eating), Nordic eating, Scottish Kitchen and the National Gallery cookbook. They have lots of things that sound delicious, but I only really like cooking things that are putting everything in the same pot and leaving it. Even with that caveat I already found 40 recipes to make with five more books to go through.
The most successful book I have bought is Stewed! by Alan Rosenthal. It is all one pot, and unlike other one-pot books I've gone through, actually MEANS one pot instead of cook ten different ingredients separately and then at the very end put them into the same pot. I have already made 7 things - the standout being Persian sour cherry and walnut stew - several of them more than once. And almost all freeze well, so I can cook and then spread out my eating over more time instead of dying of boredom. I might be about to select a new recipe to do that tonight and go and buy ingredients, or I might be about to order McDonald's. Time will tell. Even if I don't need to go for food shopping I must leave the house anyway, I haven't since Friday when I continued my SWIMMING streak.
Onto the next recipe books to look through - including both Ottolenghi's Jerusalem, and the Marmite Cookbook.
This entry was originally posted at https://slemslempike.dreamwidth.or…. Please comment there using OpenID.
antisoppist mentioned the game Alchemy where you discover elements. Well. She's basically ruined my life. I have been researching things like "how do you make aluminium" to try and get further (still couldn't work it out, watched a video to get given aluminium and broaden my horizons). I just had to google Ghost Rider to work out what on earth one combined with a motorbike to get it if corpse and grave didn't work (I haven't yet discovered ghost itself, so knew it wasn't a ghost). Fire, it turns out. The game is also pretty sexist in that you make man and woman separately, and then if you combine man with other things you get eg scientist, assassin, but not if you also but swords with women. I generally do some educated guesses and then systematically match things up, but the systematicness is now taking a long time as I have discovered 362 things (out of 500). I fear I may never discover cheese.
This entry was originally posted at https://slemslempike.dreamwidth.or…. Please comment there using OpenID.
Thank you VERY much for your tenuous celebrity connections. I enjoyed them all immensely. ankaret has inspired another nosiness in me - what is your best online celebrity (or "celebrity" encounter) online, either yours or ones you have watched friends and family have? I have some not great ones myself:
Tim Fitzhigham (comedian) retweeted me when I said Daniel Radcliffe in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead looked eerily like a young him.
Kate Bornstein followed me briefly on twitter after someone told her I researched fun, but then when I excitedly messaged her and said I was so pleased and would be happy to tell her more about my work if I could email her she clearly didn't know what I was talking about and shut me down.
This entry was originally posted at https://slemslempike.dreamwidth.or…. Please comment there using OpenID.
I am not sure if these sorts of posts work nowadays, but I would like people to tell me about their tenuous connections to fame. Not actual connections, it's important that there is no direct contact between you and a celebrity.
Examples I invite people to retell:
* your piano tuner is the nephew of someone literary * your mum's friend went out with a musician before they were famous * your next door neighbour once almost bought a house that later an actor moved in to
I am getting up earlier than my parents at the moment. This morning I realised that I could be kind and spin the washing and then hang it out. My mum came downstairs during the spin and before the hanging-out, and it turns out that she likes hanging washing out as part of her morning routine, so I got all of the credit for helping while expending none of the effort. Result.
I had planned to take Tues-Weds-Thurs off work this week, but I forgot to add the weekly monitoring reports to my to do list so I will need to do those this afternoon along side some other things for other people who are not taking them off. It is irritating because the reports will likely not be read or sent out because the people concerned are on leave, but I still need to have done my end of it to show it is taken seriously.
I do not consciously feel much affected by lockdown because it has only been a week and it is not so much different from how I spent my time at my parents' in any case, but I am noticing a more general unhappiness under everything so trying to be more diligent about going for a daily walk.
I bought a tin of duck meat. It looks a bit like a small tin of tuna, or maybe cat food (it's definitely not cat food)? Like the smallest tin of baked beans you get. It says steamed duck for ingredients with some garlic and onion. I'm assuming that the food labelling regulations here aren't as strict so the long list of preservatives are just not mentioned rather than not present.
I have never cooked with tinned meat before (I'm not sure if I've eaten it before) and find myself a little nervous. Do I just pop it in a pan and fry it? Could it be microwaves? Or is it better to add into something else as an ingredient rather than have on its own? If so, what?
I have been doing a bit more actual cooking too. Very simple things like pasta with microwave-roasted tomatoes and garlic, with myanmar fried beans on top. And I bought some non-fried beans in Mrauk U and cooked them into a puree (that was an accident, i only meant to cook them normally) in the rice cooker with some quince wine (cheap in this wonderful corner shop Jess found with loads of unexpected items) and they were delicious spread on bread. But last night and tonight my dinner has mostly been BBQ flavour Pringles or Pringles knockoffs.
I read 171 books, of which 64 were by Agatha Christie. Only 11 books were by authors of colour, that I know of. 25 books were by men.
Did you reread anything? What?
I reread 7 books: Sense and Sensibility (though now I question whether I actually did read this before, or I just think I did because of liking the film so much) Cat Among the Pigeons, Hallowe'en Party and Third Girl by Agatha Christie Venetia, Bath Tangle and Black Sheep by Georgette Heyer.
This is fewer rereads than last year (20 out of 109), which I think is because 2019 was not nearly as stressful a year as 2018, so I didn't need to have something soothingly familiar.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}