A Day of Jodi Picoult

It's now been at least one full weekend since my indulgent day of reading Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult in bed for most of a morning and finishing off the evening watching My Sister's Keeper (the movie based on Jodi Picoult's book of the same name).  I didn't mean to be quite so focused on one author, but as I've mentioned before, Jodi Picoult's books are like Lifetime movies and I can always get into one.  They read very quickly and I think I've gotten more or less out of my reading slump.

The movie, on the other hand, was sort of a waste of time.  I am glad that I watched it because it's another DVD sent back to Netflix, but, as with most novel-turned-movies, the movie was just not that good.  Lesson learned.

I was even more indulgent since I watched 2 more DVDs worth of TV shows (Damages and Brothers and Sisters) since it was a long weekend.  I may not be getting much else done, but at least I'm moving along on my couch potato activities!

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.