Ah, the holiday has been positively wonderful, and vacation is always fun. I’ve been busy busy busy for the last week, as to be expected with Christmas and visiting family and friends while I’m actually in town. Christmas was good. Quiet. Didn’t quite feel like Christmas part of the time, but it was good to see everyone, and there was so much good food. Too much good food. I’m not going to want to eat any more rich or sweet foods for another month, which is all good by me.

Saw Mamma Mia! last weekend, and Sweeney Todd this week. This was my first chance to see Mamma Mia! and I positively loved it. Loved the music. (Of course – it’s ABBA after all.) It was the touring cast, and they were all fabulous. Am very much looking forward to seeing the movie in theatres when it comes out. (Did you know – the guy playing Sky in the movie is the guy who was Dakin in The History Boys? Exciting exciting!)

As for Sweeney Todd… I loved it while I was watching it. The gory bits didn’t bother me; I knew the basic story going in, I knew there was going to be plenty of blood, and I knew that it was darker than Tim Burton’s other stuff. But it left a bit of a foul taste in my mouth in the days following. I’ll probably buy the soundtrack at some point in time, but I very much doubt I’ll be able to watch the movie again.

And now, because all the cool kids are doing it, and what am I if not a jumper-on-the-bandwagon-person-thing… a slight breakdown (mostly book-related) of the past year.

Total Books Read: 70
Books by Female Authors: 45
Books by Male Authors: 29
Books by Canadian Authors: 10

Non-fiction: 7
Fantasy/Mythology/Etc: 34
YA/Childrens: 33
Books Somehow Relating to Jane Austen: 6
Books Where A Good Portion Takes Place On A Boat: 7

Top Five Favourite Books of 2007: Austenland, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, The Chess Machine, The Obsidian Dagger: Being the Further Extraordinary Adventures of Horatio Lyle

Plays Seen: Mamma Mia!, To Kill a Mockingbird, Twelfth Night, King Lear, Oklahoma! and The Drowsy Chaperone

Concerts Attended: Loreena McKennitt (sadly lacking in the number of concerts this year!)

Looking over that, I have to say that I want to read more non-fiction type books in the new year, as well as more books by Canadian authors. I’d also like to see more concerts this coming year as the number for this year is very small compared to previous years. Other upcoming events for 2008 include Michael Bublé concert (January), RENT (March), Caesar & Cleopatra (September), a possible (and probably unlikely) trip to PEI (September).

And that’s it. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you have a fabulous New Year!

Right before the end of summer, Julie’s best friend Ashleigh discovers the wonder that are Jane Austen’s books. As Ashleigh always completely dives into her obsessions and drags Julie with her, it looks like the start of high school is going to include a lot of Regency styled dresses, talking like Austen’s characters and seeking their True Loves. And where else would one look for their True Loves than by crashing an event held at the private boys school in town?

This was one of my favourite YA books that I’ve read this year. I was sent it by the publisher, and I couldn’t put it down from the moment it climbed to the top of my TBR pile. It was fabulously adorable and cute and everything one would expect from a YA book about girls obsessed with Austen. It was certainly predictable, but it was a good read for a couple of days (ahem, nights) on holidays.

The book had me from the first paragraph. Heck, it had me from the first sentence, which pays a bit of homage to Austen:

There is little more likely to exasperate a person of sense than finding herself tied to affection and habit to an Enthusiast. I speak from bitter experience. My best friend and next-door neighbour, Ashleigh Marie Rossi, is an Enthusiast.

This is Shulman’s first novel, and I eagerly anticipate that which she does in the future. (Also, back cover design is positively lovely!)

The second book in the Gentlemen Bastard Sequence, Red Seas Under Red Skies starts up a few years after the end of The Lies of Locke Lamora. Locke and Jean are now located in Tal Verrar, working on another one of their schemes to rob the rich of all their money, but two years into their scheme things start going wrong.

A group of the people they pissed off in the last book have discovered where Locke and Jean are located, and have alerted the Archon, head of the city’s navy, who they are and what they are capable of. The Archon decides to put this knowledge to use, and with the use of a poison that only his alchemist knows the cure for, enlists them to create a war between the pirates and all other ships on the seas. Unfortunately, neither Jean nor Locke actually have any experience working on a ship.

“I’m getting a bit annoyed,” said Locke, “with those who praise our previous escapades as an excuse for forcing us into even riskier ones. Look, if you want us to run a job, give us one within out field of experience. Isn’t it broad enough for you? All we’re saying is that we don’t know the first bloody thing about wind, weather, ships, pirates, the Sea of Brass, the Ghostswind Isles, sails, ropes, er. . . weather, ships. . .”

“Our sole experience with ships,” said Jean, “consists of getting on, getting seasick, and getting off.”

It seems like there is no way things can get better until Locke and Jean end up as part of the crew of a pirate ship. (And that’s exactly where the book gets good.)

Okay, here’s the thing with this book. I enjoyed the first book in the series so much better than the first half of this book. The second half of this book, however, I thought was so much more exciting than the first book in the series. So on a whole, it’s hard to say what I thought about it overall.

The first half of the book felt like there was way too much going on. By the end of the book everything does get all tied up, but by then I didn’t remember everything that had been going on at the start, and had to go back and reread the first couple of chapters. It was something I should’ve paid a lot more attention to, but half way through, the book started getting good so I didn’t really bother remembering what was going on in the first half – at which point I didn’t really care about all that “I’m going to pretend to be working for you trying to screw over your enemy, while telling your enemy that I’m really working for him trying screw you over, when in reality I’m working for myself trying to screw everyone over!” was done and over with for the most part.

That said, there were parts that had me outright laughing. And aside from a couple of passages, this book was a lot less graphic than the first one was. Still not sure whether I will read the rest of the books in this series when they get written and released.

This is my second book for the Seafaring Challenge (and probably my last one for the challenge).