Everything else, another round up

I topped up a few categories over on the list, but I only have a couple that I will write up here.  I am going to try to make regular visits back here as I move forward on my projects, so this won't become too much of a habit.

For a lot of reasons, I haven't been reading much at all in the past two and a half months.  I'm in the middle of two non-fiction books (and really six if you count reference books, but I won't take credit for those unless I work all the way through) now, so I will catch up hopefully on that count.  I did read two fiction novels in my time away:

• Let Me In by John Ajvide Lundquish - a Swedish vampire story that is very engaging, if a bit graphic at points. A young boy meets a curious young girl next door who never seems to change.  A group of drunk friends starts to watch its own go missing, or go extremely bizarre.  It was apparently made into a movie which I am going to sit down and watch on Netflix streaming if I can ever get Austin to watch a scary movie with me.
• Julia's Chocolates by Cathy Lamb- This novel sells itself as a Ya-Ya sisterhood of sorts, and I suppose that is a decent description.  A young woman escapes an abusive relationship and a history of neglect to her aunt's house and finds an unexpectedly diverse group of women and, of course, love.  I don't think it ever got far enough below the surface to really win me over, but the characters were interesting, if predictable.

Even when I'm not reading, cooking or doing much of anything else, I have been getting as much as I can out of Netflix. We've watched some bits and pieces of series, so I didn't really count those.  Here is a summary of what we have been watching: 

• Damages, Season 2
• Dexter, Season 3
• South Park, Greatest Hits (sometimes I let Austin pick)
• Avatar: The Last Airbender, Book 3
• Kick-Ass
• Big Love, Season 3
• Mamma Mia (such a disappointment!)
• The League, Season 1
• Whip It! 

That's the rough update.  The rest will come more closely to real time, I hope!

Stoner Chili Sunday

While I was silent, we hosted a day of chili cooking/eating and football watching to honor a friend who was a serious friend of both.  I cooked our friend David's secret recipe and others brought their own twists on chili (even if David would have been horrified at the beans, the chicken and the vegetarian versions), corn bread, cole slaw, guacamole and other delicious items.  I've never seen so many people in our apartment, but we made it work and had a lot of fun (and surprisingly few leftovers).

The Long Catch-up

Since the end of December, I haven't been doing much of anything around here.  Seriously - hardly any cooking, reading, writing or exploring.  I have a couple of things to add and cross off (a potluck, a couple of books here and there, loads of Netflix movies and shows) and will do that shortly.  I haven't gone away and hope to be more active in days to come!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I wrote this a long time ago, but just got the pictures posted: Ladies and gentlemen, that time of year is here.  Last year, I was not ready for the holidays and, for some unknown reason, fought the coming of Christmas and winter tooth and nail.  This year, I saw the Christmas trees going up in Honolulu before Thanksgiving even arrived and I was nothing but excited.

I kicked this year off with a cookie day with a friend and her son.  We made a (semi-successful) batch of double chocolate peppermint cookies, sugar cookies of all shapes and sizes and gingerbread cookies.  I'm going to post each over at the Brooklyn Forager since they were fun recipes and I'm a bit behind in my weekly posts and new recipe counting.

Here are some of the creations we made:

I'm a Winner!

Ladies and gentlemen, at 50,121 words, may I present to you a NaNoWriMo winner! I went about writing my novel in fits and starts and spent a lot of weekend days focused on driving the number up, while remaining woefully behind.  The best advice I have for anyone who wants to try this is to jump off the deep end and give it a try.  The amount of concentration it takes is insane, but the very act of finishing makes it seems so much more fun.  And even possible to do again.

Sometime.

In the future.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Fingersmith is a typical Sarah Waters' novel in that she has written a Victorian-style novel set in historical England with interesting female characters, a lesbian love story and a complex plot line.  The complexity, however, of the plot of this novel far outstrips the others that I have read so far.  In Fingersmith, a young orphan, Sue Trinder, is raised by a baby farmer Mrs. Sucksby in a squalid flat in London.  A con-artist gentleman with a gambling problem comes into the house with a plan to swindle a country girl, Maud Lilly, out of her inheritance.  Sue follows the gentleman (known to his friends as Gentleman) to execute the plan and from there, everything is as you expect, until it isn't anymore.

I can't explain more without spoiling the twists and turns, but I will say that I haven't read a 500 page novel this quickly in a long time.  Knowing that there will be twists pushes you through the somewhat unsurprising first third of the book.  This section raises some questions and keeps you guessing, but the real drive comes in the latter two-thirds.  I will leave it at that - this is a provocative suspenseful Victorian novel that you never see coming.

Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire

You may have heard of a little Broadway show called Wicked.  It was originally created from a book by Gregory Maguire who has made quite a name for himself re-telling fairytales and classic stories. I have had Mirror, Mirror on my to-read list for several years and finally got to it over the holiday weekend.

The novel re-tells the classic story of Snow White.  Maguire sets the story in the early 1500s with appearances by Cesare Borgia (the inspiration for Machiavelli's The Prince) and his sister Lucrezia.  Though he brings in history (which he admittedly takes liberties with for the sake of the drama), there also is a layer of the fantastic when it comes to the dwarves.  This re-telling was very entertaining and brought perspective to the tale we know so well as told by Disney.  The way that the mirror, for example, works into the story - a creation by the dwarves with magical elements, but maybe not quite the same magic as we thought - makes Snow White fresh, and almost possible.

I've enjoyed each of Gregory Maguire books from the Wicked series to his retelling of Cinderella (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister).  Finally getting to this one was worth it, both for the story itself and to remind me to keep up with Maguire's latest books.