Books I've Read: 2007

Books in bold are ones I've especially enjoyed.

1. The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, Daniel Mendelsohn
2. The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
3. Digging to America, Anne Tyler
4. Fighting Ruben Wolfe, Markus Zusak
5. Looking For Alaska, John Green
6. The Rules of Survival, Nancy Werlin
7. The Case of the Missing Books: A Mobile Library Mystery, Ian Sansom
8. Suite Française, Irene Nemirovsky
9. Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, Patricia C. Wrede
10. Valiant, Holly Black
11. An Abundance of Katherines, John Green
12. The Peterkin Papers, Lucretia P. Hale
13. The Tale of Despereaux, Kate Dicamillo
14. The Dark Hills Divide, Patrick Carman
15. Mr. Popper's Penguins, Richard Atwater
16. Tithe, Holly Black
17. Victory, Susan Cooper
18. Bad Kitty, Michele Jaffe
19. A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life, Dana Reinhardt
20. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
21. The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan
22. This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn, Aidan Chambers
23. The Book of Story Beginnings, Kristin Kladstrup
24. The Blood Stone, Jamila Gavin
25. Behind the Curtain, Peter Abrahams
26. Y: The Last Man Vol. 4: Safeword, Brian K. Vaughan
27. Y: The Last Man Vol. 5: Ring of Truth, Brian K. Vaughan
28. Beyond The Valley Of Thorns, Patrick Carman
29. Sir Thursday, Garth Nix
30. A Certain Slant of Light, Laura Whitcomb
31. Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, Julie Powell
32. Tenth City, Patrick Carman
33. Dairy Queen, Catherine Murdock
34. King Dork, Frank Portman
35. How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff
36. The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
37. Golden , Jennifer Lynn Barnes
38. If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince?, Melissa Kantor
39. The Boyfriend List, E. Lockhart
40. Fairest, Gail Carson Levine
41. The Book as Art: Artists' Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Krystyna Wasserman
42. Bras & Broomsticks, Sarah Mlynowski
43. The Big Over Easy: A Nursery Crime, Jasper Fforde
44. Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything, E. Lockhart
45. I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You, Ally Carter
46. Criss Cross, Lynne Rae Perkins
47. Incantation, Alice Hoffman
48. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, Carolyn Mackler
49. Magic or Madness, Justine Larbalestier
50. Magic Lessons, Justine Larbalestier
51. Flyte, Angie Sage
52. The White Darkness, Geraldine McCaughrean
53. Peter and the Starcatchers, Dave Barry
54. Peter and the Shadow Thieves, Dave Barry
55. Magic's Child, Justine Larbalestier
56. The Ruins, Scott Smith
57. 13 Little Blue Envelopes, Maureen Johnson
58. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
59. The New Policeman, Kate Thompson
60. Fat Kid Rules the World, K. L. Going
61. Snow, Orhan Pamuk
62. The Mislaid Magician or Ten Years After, Patricia C. Wrede
63. The Naming, Alison Croggon
64. The Riddle, Alison Croggon
65. The Grand Tour, Patricia C. Wrede
66. They Call Me Naughty Lola
67. Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine
68. Feed, M.T. Anderson
69. The Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier
70. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
71. Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
72. Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, Gary D. Schmidt
73. Night Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
74. Lost in a Good Book, Jasper Fforde
75. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
76. Weaveworld, Clive Barker
77. The Well of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
78. Austenland, Shannon Hale
79. Dancing in Red Shoes Will Kill You, Dorian Cirrone
80. Snow Apples, Mary Razzell
81. Blue Bloods, Melissa De La Cruz
82. Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, Jordan Sonnenblick
83. The World to Come, Dara Horn
84. Shadow and Claw, Gene Wolfe
85. Charlotte Sometimes, Penelope Farmer
86. Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson
87. Stardust, Neil Gaiman
88. A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
89. Emma, Vol. 1-4, Kaoru Mori
90. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst
91. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J. K. Rowling
92. Skellig, David Almond
93. The Thief, Megan Whalen Turner
94. The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner
95. The King of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner
96. Wicked Lovely, Melissa Marr
97. Clay, David Almond
98. Masquerade, Melissa De La Cruz
99. Devilish, Maureen Johnson
100. Children of the Lamp: The Akhenaten Adventure, P. B. Kerr
101. American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang
102. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
103. The Uses of Enchantment, Heidi Julavits
104. Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer
105. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson & the Olympians Book 1), Rick Riordan
106. Death Note, Volume 1, Tsugumi Ohba
107. The Fetch, Chris Humphreys
108. The Alchemyst, Michael Scott
109. Gifts, Ursula K. Le Guin
110. Voices, Ursula K. Le Guin
111. Russian Fairy Tales, Gillian Avery
112. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
113. The Foretelling, Alice Hoffman
114. The Norse Myths, Kevin Crossley-Holland
115. What Happened to Cass McBride?, Gail Giles
116. Peony in Love, Lisa See
117. Gertrude and Claudius, John Updike
118. The Headmaster, Taylor Antrim
119. The World According to Mimi Smartypants, Mimi Smartypants
120. Book of A Thousand Days, Shannon Hale
121. Three Bags Full, Leonie Swann
122. The Crimson Petal and the White, Michel Faber
123. The Last Summer (of You & Me), Ann Brashares
124. Platinum, Jennifer Lynn Barnes
125. The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson & the Olympians Book 2), Rick Riordan
126. The Titan's Curse (Percy Jackson & the Olympians Book 3), Rick Riordan
127. Kabul Beauty School, Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson
128. The Crow, Alison Croggon
129. Service Included, Phoebe Damrosch
130. Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City, Kirsten Miller
131. Peter and the Secret of Randoon, Dave Barry
132. Darkness at Pemberley, T. H. White
133. Dialogue with Trypho, St. Justin the Martyr
134. On Pascha, Melito of Sardis
135. The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman (REREAD)
136. Here on Earth, Alice Hoffman
137. Extras, Scott Westerfeld
138. Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy, Ally Carter
139. I Am America (And So Can You), Stephen Colbert
140. Jesus in the Talmud, Peter Schafer
141. The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story, Lemoney Snicket
142. The Book of Air and Shadows, Michael Gruber
143. Artemis Fowl: The Graphic Novel, Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin
144. The Off Season, Catherine Murdock
145. Skin Hunger, Kathleen Duey
146. Story of a Girl, Sara Zarr
147. Emma, Vol. 5, Kaoru Mori
148. Emma, Vol. 6, Kaoru Mori
149. H.I.V.E, Mark Walden
150. Bloom, Elizabeth Scott
151. The Bermudez Triangle, Maureen Johnson
152. The Pull of the Ocean, Jean-Claude Mourlevat
153. Black Dossier, Alan Moore
154. The Sweet Far Thing, Libba Bray
155. Dramarama, E. Lockhart
156. Infinite Variety: Exploring the Folger Shakespeare Library, Ester Ferington
     

Thanksgivnukkah Extravaganz[nukk]a[h] 2007

I'm sitting here in my warm apartment listening to the wintry mix pelting my windows, and I'm thinking that sometime in the next couple of hours I'm going to have to go outside and shovel just to get the snow up before the freezing rain really starts up in earnest. This is the only thing keeping me from curling up on my couch under a blanket with a nice, big mug of tea steaming next to me; I don't want to get too comfortable too soon or I won't be able to drag myself outside in a little while. It is beautiful outside, though, white and stormy and there's no one out there and wouldn't today be perfect if I didn't have to shovel?

A car just drove by my house with an engine that sounded like horses hooves clopping on a cobblestone street. Weird.

But I didn't begin this post to write about the glorious winter weather we've been missing for the past few years here in New England. No, I wanted to post about the birth of what I hope to be a new Holiday Season tradition: Thanksgivnukkah. You see, for the past several years my family has had Thanksgiving with this one particular other family, very close friends of ours, but since my family went elsewhere this year and part of their family went elsewhere this year, we decided that we needed to hold an after-the-fact Thanksgiving feast, and while we were at it why not celebrate Hanukkah after the fact as well? The Thanksginukkah Extravaganza of 2007 was born.

Just to give you a sense of what you're dealing with, Thanksgivings with this family have always been a day-long event. Everyone gathers at about noon to begin preparing the meal and the fixings, and this is when the snacking and the drinking also begin. Five hours of eating and drinking later, we're ready to begin the actually Thanksgiving meal. Etc. Etc.

Seeing as we were celebrating Thanksgivnukkah and not Thanksgiving, the menu may appear to be missing a few things, but I assure you it was quite sufficient:

• Fresh smoked turkey (a particular specialty of this family, so glorious, so tasty; the stuff dreams are made of)
• Latkes
• Applesauce (made by yours truly)
  
• Stollen
• Salad (how did something health get in there?)
• Cranberry sauce
• Donuts
• Pumpkin pie
• Pecan pie

Everyone was especially excited about my brother's donuts, but something went tragically wrong with this little guy:

All he wanted was to be a delicious donut

For whatever reason, the dough didn't rise and as a result didn't cook through during frying. Let's take a moment to mourn.

RIP. You looked delicious, but weren't cooked through.

The food was followed by a rousing game of Dictionary (my favorite new word: krukolibidinous. I will use it every chance I get) and a showing of The Sting. Could the day have been any more perfect?

Did somebody say snow?

Yeah yeah, "I can do everything you can do better" and all that jazz. It's days like today I really miss having a man around. Why? Because snow's been falling at about the rate of THREE INCHES PER HOUR since about 1 PM this afternoon, and my arms are so, so tired.

I've put in about three hours of solid shoveling so far this afternoon and evening, and I'm predicting another 2 or so necessary tonight so that I can actually get my car out of the driveway tomorrow morning and get to work.

Idea of the month: leaving work at 12:30 today to avoid traffic

I'm just saying. From what I hear, it's taking some people about 4 hours to get home from work. Me? I spent that same time shoveling. And working on the report that's due tomorrow...

And listen, I know the snow plows are just trying to be helpful, but do you think they could stop SNOWING IN MY DRIVEWAY? That takes a lot of work to get rid of, you know.

I also wouldn't complain if my upstairs neighbors helped with the snow removal.

I think I'm going to increase my hours-of-shoveling-remaining estimate to 3.

OK, 'nough complaining for now, I need to get back to my carbo-loading.

God has a gold tooth

And apparently this is just the first episode...I can't wait to see what they do with the other holidays!

Part trois

My next two gift ideas for your beloved bibliophile are ones that I can neither condemn nor condone. They need to be labeled:

WARNING: Some books were harmed during the making of this gift

If that's something you can stomach, look no farther than here and here. If you cannot, please, for the love of god, avert your eyes.