Some people keep reading lists for the previous year, and I didn’t do that, so herrre we go:

- William Shatner – Up Till Now. William Shatner is a hilarious guy I enjoyed finding out about his life.
- Yevgeny Zamyatin – We. The first of its kind, but way poetic. I dunno, I wouldn’t read it again.
- Stephenie Meyer – The Twilight Saga. DON’T REMIND ME. GOD. ~SPARKLES~
- Bill Bryson – A Short History of Nearly Everything. It was interesting at first, but either the continuing talk about geology and other stuff I don’t like, or the narrator’s voice just got annoying. I listened to most of it.
- Walter Miller – A Canticle for Leibowitz. Interesting Except for the middle part. The Middle Ages were never my cup of tea
- Robert Heinlein – Starship Troopers. I enjoyed it. It made me want to join the army Apparently the movie is insultingly different.
- Margaret Atwood – Oryx and Crake. I loved loved loved this book I enjoyed the theme and the characters. So I went on to try…
- Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale. The feminist overtones was a little too much. I have no idea how it ends and I don’t much care!!!
- Bard D. Ehrman – Misquoting Jesus. This book is about looking at the bible critically, and comparing ancient bible manuscripts and speculating why they are so different. It raised a lot of good points.
- Ray Bradbury – Martian Chronicles. It’s very good, and I would say better than Fahrenheit 451. YEAH I WENT THERE.
- Philip K. Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Dude, whatever, Buster and his Friendly Friends is not a tragic cut made by the movie. Everything about this cult classic is fairly average, but electric animals are an interesting idea.
- Ursula LeGuin – The Left Hand of Darkness. I enjoyed the second half. I don’t usually go for books that require an appendix (I don’t think the book does, but certainly the overarching universe LeGuin wrote in this series), but I got into it eventually. It does take a while to get to.
- Jonathan Lethem – Gun, With Occasional Music. Mehhhhhhhhh.
- Neil Gaiman – Stardust. I preferred the movie, but the book had a lot of interesting stuff too
- Michael E. Gerber – The E-Myth. WHY did I read the end of this book! It turned from a cool book with a lot of business ideas to some sort of love story with a client of his. Ummmmmm. Actually, they weren’t in love. He just kept bringing her up and then wrote a letter to her at the end. I pretended they were secret lovers~!
- Jack Welch – Winning. CANDOR! CANDOR CANDOR CANDOR. Or should I say “candah” Mr. Welch?
- Michael Smolensky – Body Clock Guide to Better Health. READ IT! Very important to everyone’s health.

I think I read some other ones, which I obviously neglected to put in this list. But wow, I read a lot, actually. 20 books (Twilight Saga is four) in a year? WOW.

Or um… listening list. Here are some of the books I got recently that I feel I should listen to:

- A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster. My best friend recommended it to me, and then followed it up with “It’s not really a book you should listen to” so LISTEN TO IT I SHALL.
- My Life, by Bill Clinton. I dunno, it was there and I bet he has all sorts of crap to say. Hurrah!
- Two Bill Cosby standup cds. He’s pretty funny, but I think his humor is lost on current generations. Like MASH.
- Some trilogy by Neal Stephenson. It was rated pretty high on Amazon, but then again, so was Twilight. I think ratings are only relevant if you have enough interest to have not only already read it, but bought it. Or however else you want to word that. “Clarity” my foot.
- The Story of Civilization, this huge multi-volume history book, basically, but it’s supposed to be really good. I listened to a bit, but didn’t get past the intro into the actual content. Boo.
- Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I listened to the first hour of this one, actually, and it’s pretty interesting. It’s about exceptional people and statistical anomalies. He talked about how good Canadian hockey players almost all happen to be born in January-March. I don’t want to ruin the answer for you! Haha, go read it.
- The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I don’t know, it’s some kind of business book. I stole it from a business friend.

Quite a lot, but I get bored when I’m outside, soooo we’ll see. I’ll keep you updated

I’m back!  And have been shamelessly playing Persona.  Or at least I was… I blew a fuse I beat a boss and got through a million cutscenes and the power just blew I had to do the fight all over again… luckily it went well and I was able to skip through the cutscenes pretty quickly.  Turns out there were even more cutscenes after them.  They were funny

Ummm so I mentioned I started listening to “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”  Well, I got through about a half hour of the audio version when I had the sinking feeling that this book was not intended for my age group.  The character in the book was 14 and a freshman in high school.  Clue number one.  I hadn’t looked up anything about the book, so then I did and found out they sell it as young adult fiction.  Ahhh.  I got through a third of it, anyway.  I’m considering just finishing it.  But unless someone barges in with a glowing review, I think I will abstain and assume that Catcher in the Rye is a better coming-of-age story.

Even though it was Christmas gifts and all, I took my cousins out shopping for some books the day after Christmas… and refused to buy them any young adult crap.  The youngest is 17 for god’s sake.  I was reading plenty of adult fiction years before then.  Christmas or no, I will not be held responsible for their dumbing down of literature.  Bah humbug.  They got me back by then picking out stuff from the Romance section And then they told me they hadn’t read 1984 And then I found out that they were sold out of it So I got them Love in the Time of Cholera and some romance stuff and called it a day.  And promised to ship 1984.  I swear I have a copy but I think I’ll just buy a new one.

I have new baking pans as a gift They are beautiful and I hope to be baking lovely things in them.  I also got to pick out some knee-high socks from my favorite sock store.  Most are respectable argyle.  ONE pair is a horrid green with black stripes design.  I cringe when I see it So great.

Ummmmmmm so as it turns out, you should probably try to get acquainted with the ice after a year of not being on it (and not being any good to start) before jumping into learning “moves” like weaving your legs and doing “dips” (like squatting and gliding at the same time for no reason whatsoever). I think the first move should be learning how to stop, and they tried to teach me, they really did. It just uhh didn’t take. First of all, you have to slide your foot out and actually scrape the ice. Which involves taking the weight off one foot. See, now, that’s not really gonna work because I’m too afraid I’m going to fall over. And I DID. TWICE. RAAAA. Even when I got up the confidence I couldn’t do it :’( I’m going to try really really hard next time! I WILL conquer this. I can see myself being all cool on the ice, I just have to actually, er, get there.

Also, the ice rink is a really long walk, so I get to listen to my audiobooks on the way there. Hell yeah.