So, I am all moved to the new place. I’d love to take some photos for you – I so like it here, and I have a fancy shelf of books with teacups lined up in front I want to show off – but, um, I’m not sure which box the camera’s in! It’s all looking a little bit more like a home than the pile of boxes it was a couple of days ago. I missed my things so much over the last eleven months, so it was a real treat to get everything out of storage. I am very tired, and my thighs are a wall of sensitivity from walking up and down flights of stairs, but I haven’t crashed, which is great. My neighbours are all lovely, and we’ve got a tea date and a birthday party lined up already. As for the essays, I got them all done a couple of days before moving day, and I’m satisfied that they’re solid and I did the best I can, which is really all one can ask for.
But. But. My Internet connection. April is not a month in which you can expect to get anything done in Australia, because it’s back-to-back public holidays. I’m not going to get my connection up until next week, I’m told. In the mean time, on the computer and connection I’ve borrowed to write this, I can’t tweet, can’t access the Feministe backend (some would say that this is a good thing), can’t even check up on my feedreader! I feel, again, very disconnected. But I’ll live.
Until then, as I take the unpacking a bit more slowly over the next few days, I’ll be doing some reading. (I need a break from uni, and it is the holidays, after all.) I think that it’s time to catch you up on how I’m going with my goal of reading 100 books this year. I’m way, way ahead on that goal at 46 books completed and 2 in the reading stage.
Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer
My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
Lord Sunday by Garth Nix
Magic Steps by Tamora Pierce
Not Ordinarily Borrowable: or, Unwelcome Advice by Thomas Thurman
Street Magic by Tamora Pierce
Cold Fire by Tamora Pierce
Shatterglass by Tamora Pierce
Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex by Eoin Colfer
The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman
Trickster’s Queen by Tamora Pierce
Terrier by Tamora Pierce
Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce
Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
A Touch of Dead by Charlaine Harris
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
The Will of the Empress by Tamora Pierce
The Three Incestuous Sisters by Audrey Niffenegger
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris
The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Girl Saves Boy by Steph Bowe
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman
Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
Page by Tamora Pierce
Squire by Tamora Pierce
Lady Knight by Tamora Pierce
Pretties by Scott Westerfeld
Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris
Specials by Scott Westerfeld
The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld
Touching Midnight by Scott Westerfeld
Blue Noon by Scott Westerfeld
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones
Yes, I’ve had a bit of a Tamora Pierce sort of year. Would you like a review of any of these? I’m also currently reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (only because that blasted university is making me; I assure you that I got an online copy because there is no way I am paying for Dickens) and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (which starts off being about a teenage boy science fiction nerd who can’t get laid and turns out rather intense and good). My next one is Karen Healey’s Guardian of the Dead, because I’ve been saving that one for Moving Week for, well, weeks.
Right. I’m off to go and clear things off my bed so I can collapse dramatically.
Lots of Tamora Pierce! I’ve not read any of her books, but one or two years ago when I was searching frantically for more reading for my eldest daughter, whose reading age is meaningless but whose emotional and social age is still a child’s, a feminist friend recommended her Lady Knight series. We got them out of the library, and my daughter devoured them.
Great to hear about the new place, even with its internetlessness! It sounds like it’s already becoming home, even with exhaustion (moving is so tiring!).
And I’m glad you’ve read the Uglies series. I find these books really interesting, and have been tempted to write something academicy about the way that body modification gets situated in them – so few books, esp. YA books really think that stuff through.
And I too have been on a Pierce trip, which I recently wound up. Have you got a favourite of the ones you read this year??
What did you think of Lord Sunday? I’m still not sure how I feel about the end of that series.
Also \o/ ALY COOPER!
Congratulations on the move, I hope you do post some photos.
That sounds exactly like the sort of thing you would write, WP. I am waiting to read Specials before I make my conclusions, but I’ve got the start of a piece worked out, partly about YA and race, that ties in with Westerfeld a little bit. I like The Will of the Empress because, well, stuff what happens with Daja, and because I like that the relationships between the core four get smashed up a little and have to grow and change. But Lady Knight has its charms. Trickster’s Queen was marvellous but I think that series was marked by – well, too long to go into here, but ask me when we next speak.
Lord Sunday was… well, I love that series a lot, and I’m not sure I would have found any ending satisfying, but but but hmm. It was very grand indeed, and sad, and I think Garth Nix did a good job.
Thanks, blue milk! We’ll see how I go. There are still a few things that need sorting, for instance, the rail in my wardrobe clean broke out. But we’re getting there well enough!
So much Tamora Pierce! I grew up reading her, she’s still my favorite YA author, and the older I get the more I enjoy analyzing her stories. They are not perfect, but they’re part of me and important to the genre.
I really look forward to reading your piece about Westerfeld and race. And everything else! I read Feministe, mostly for your posts, and now I will be reading them here. :)
good job! Im aiming at 60, and I’m on my 20th so that’s super impressive. You should check out goodreads.com its my favorite favorite website to keep a list of books read,etc
Cheers, Diana. :)
I’m on Goodreads, jen; it’s really useful, isn’t it?
Do you have a librarything account? I have just recently fallen in love with that site, as I am starting to want to keep track of things I have read.
I am really interested to hear your take on the Phillip Pullman books because- well- they are off peoples’ radars for the most part and I have been dying (DYING) to discuss issues of race/ableism in the context of those books with SOMEONE but I keep getting blank looks.
I do not!
Yeah, I was kind of appalled at how van Eeden is positioned. That was so unnecessary. And the orientalism. And and and. Oh dear. It was therefore a bit of a surprise that Pullman was comparatively sympathetic to Daniel Goldberg… a bit of a mixed and often wince-worthy bag, that series.
De-lurking from Feministe to say congrats on the reading challenge progress! Also, seconding the Tamora Pierce. I’d love to see you review them – I feel like they have their problems along with their awesome, but they’re something I come back to again and again, perhaps because of that mix.