a vintage year for scoundrels

Larklight - Philip Reeve
Wonder Woman: The Circle
Wonder Woman: Destiny Calling
The Pearl Thief - Elizabeth Wein
Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet vol 1
In the Teeth of the Evidence - Dorothy L. Sayers
Black and British: A Forgotten History - David Olusoga
A Tyranny of Queens - Foz Meadows
A Cold Blooded Business - Dana Stabenow
It's A Don's Life - Mary Beard

( Larklight (three stars), The Pearl Thief (five stars), In the Teeth of the Evidence (three stars), A Tyranny of Queens (five stars) )

Happy New Year, everyone! I will repeat what I said on twitter: may all your endeavours prosper and your beards never grow grey. ♥ This year I resolve to be a little braver, kinder and happier than I was last year, and also to clean the marzipan off my laptop's touch pad.

Here are the books I read in December! I sort of ran out of steam with writing about them, so some comments are more desultory than others.

( The Graveyard Book, The Janus Conjunction, Have His Carcase, The Far Side of the World, Delusions of Gender, Parallel Lives, The Siege of Krishnapur, I Shall Wear Midnight, Fahrenheit 451, Murder Must Advertise, The Raw Shark Texts, Ash )

Total number of books read in 2010: 103, or possibly 106, or 114, depending on how you count A Dance to the Music of Time. (ETA: wait, I read the fourth About Time book this year too! That absolutely counts. So make that 104, 106 or 115 books this year. :D)

Total number of books read so far in 2011: 1. It was Geraldine MacCaughrean's The White Darkness, and I recommended it: a tough, strange, involving, moving, wonderful book.

(Cut for length rather than spoilers!)

( Sunshine, Short Trips: Companions, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Strong Poison, The Day Watch, House of Many Ways, Option Lock, Kindred and Stormbreaker )

Newcastle is lovely at this time of year. I recommend it. Here are some photos, though chiefly they are of Alnwick, which is in Northumberland, and not Newcastle at all. We went to Alnwick Garden on Sunday, it was very lovely as the sun was shining. From there we proceeded in an orderly fashion down the road to Barter Books, where I bought three books and a poster. And then we went out for tapas in the evening, OM NOM NOM. On Sunday we took the metro to Whitley Bay and had a lovely walk down the coast (or maybe up the coast. Oh why is my geography so fail?) to Tynemouth: it was sunny and not raining and not even that cold! And there was ice cream.

Books: I finished Waverley over the weekend. It did get better, but it's not one of my favourites. After that I read a Four 'n' Leela PDA, Eye of Heaven, which wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. The plot was intriguing, but the narrative jumped around in time and skipped POVs so much that I spent a lot of time floundering around going "wait, when is this? Who is this?" Maybe I was just being particularly dense, but I found it a bit off-putting. Also, the characterisation of Four felt a bit off - some sections were first person narration from his point of view, which is a risky thing to do, and I didn't think it quite worked. I don't want it to sound like I'm trashing it, though: I did enjoy it, when I wasn't being confused, and it contained an homage to Whale Adventure by Willard Price, a book I loved wildly when I was about 11, which earned it a lot of points.

Then I moved on to Gaudy Night, which was utterly marvellous. I have a feeling I will be reading many books by Dorothy L. Sayers in the next few months. I pretty much loved everything about it: the characters (oh, Harriet!), the setting, the writing style... In the introduction Elizabeth George made the point that it's the characters who drive the plot, rather than the other way round, and I loved that about it. (Sadly my edition had quite a lot of typos: poor form, New English Library. And there was brocoli on one of the pages. I would rant about the proper treatment of library books here, but a) I've seen a lot worse and b) I was reading it in the bath at the time, and the more judgemental I was the more likely I was to drop it in.)

Things that I love about Law and Order: UK:
1. Alesha's outfits! So pretty; I want to raid her wardrobe and nick everything. Especially her boots.
2. Matt and Ronnie and their double act. Their comedy stylings are the best, but it is all great.
3. The guest characters make me happy. They have all been really good and some of them make me laugh and laugh.
3a. PAUL DARROW IN A JUDGE'S WIG. YES.
4. All the character interactions make me happy, really. To be honest the plot is usually the bit I am least interested in, which probably means I am watching it wrong.

Now, off to catch up on the friendslist!