King Arthur Movie Tristan

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this:

To rise above the little things.
~John Burroughs

Happy New Year everyone, I wish you all good things for 2011.




It's hard to believe another year has flown by. But isn't that what we say at the end of every year?

I learned a few lifes lessons in 2010, lessons I'll take to heart and move forward with. I laughed, I cried, I watched my children take milestones, my son started high school. I read some great books, watched some good films and blogged all about it. Thank you all for reading my blog posts and sharing yours as well. Cyber (((hug))) to you all.








Here's my 2010 Reading/Blogging Wrap-Up.




I read 53 books in 2010 and 7 short stories. I interviewed 7 wonderful authors.
The first book I read in 2010 was
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon, which was really good. The last book I read in 2010 was Alice Hoffman's Here on Earth which I enjoyed despite not liking the two central characters.





Challenges finished in 2010:

Romance Reading Challenge

2010 Pub Reading Challenge

R.I.P. V


Christmas Movie Week (non-reading related)









Most popular blog posts for 2010 (the ones with 20+ comments):

Weekly Geeks 11.22.10 Antique Books


Mailbox Mondays and a meme 8.23.10


Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

Musing Mondays 1.11-tidy bookshelves


I'm baaaaack :)

The Boleyn Inheritance




Genres:

5 memoirs

13 romances

1 erotica

2 fantasy

7 young adult

5 historical fiction/historical romance

3 Austen spinoffs

2 christian fiction

2 favorites re-read

8 horror

1 paranormal romance

3 thrillers/crime fiction

5 non-fiction

7 short stories

6 chic-lit

2 poetry books





challenges joined: 7

challenges finished: 4

movies reviewed: 13

poetry posted and discussed: 24 posts




favorite movies of 2010:


-Shutter Island

-Bounty Hunter

-Date Night

-Eclipse

-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

-Despicable Me

-The Other Guys



-LOST final season (not a movie, but I cried as I watched a favorite tv program come to an end with it's final episode)










My favorite reads for 2010:


* The Life O'Reilly by Brian Cohen




*The Essential Neruda Selected Poems (Bilingual Edition) by Pablo Neruda edited by Mark Eisner

Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.

My thirst, my infinite anguish, my indecisive path!

Dark riverbeds where eternal thirst follows,

and fatigue follows, and infinite sorrow.

-excerpt from Body of woman, Pablo Neruda

*The Roadby Cormac McCarthy







*The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory





*The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendshipby Andrea Israel & Nancy Garfinkel






Categories:



Most Romantic Read of 2010:





Nights in Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks .







Scariest Read of 2010




Pet Sematary by Stephen King






Most shocking Read





Motley Crue: The Dirt - Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Bandby Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars, Nikki Sixx and Neil Strauss







Funniest Read





Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler











I've come across passages that really stood out while I was reading in 2010. Here are my favorite book quotes for the year:

On Saturday and Sunday, he felt the sweet lightness of being rise up to him out of the depths of the future. On Monday, he was hit by a weight the likes of which he had never known. The tons of steel of the Russian tanks were nothing compared with it. For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

-The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

No list of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.


-The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Forgiveness if first for you, the forgiver....to release you from something that will eat you alive, that will destroy your joy and your ability to love fully and openly. Do you think this man cares about the pain and torment you have gone through? If anything, he feeds on that knowledge. Don't you want to cut that off? And in doing so, you'll release him from a burden that he carries whether he knows it or not-acknowledges it or not. When you choose to forgive another, you love him well.

-The Shack by William P. Young

Tuesday could never understand how anyone on earth could return a book that they had purchased. Books were prized possessions to Tuesday. Each one brought out a different side of her; each one meant something more and each one took her away from her life for a while.

-Tuesday Tells it Slant by Holly Christine

Yes this was a happy day. Not one for letting in the glooms. I picked up my bill, totted up the figures.

And, after all, it was hardly as though I'd ever won a beauty contest, was it? Therefore no real reason to suppose that-if I hadn't been stuck at home-I'd had been whisked off by some gentleman like Mr.Darcy or Rhett Butler or Jervis Pendleton.
No real reason at all.

-Wish Her Safe At Home by Stephen Benatar

Revenge was not the tonic I had hoped it would be.


-The Queen's Pawn by Christy English

Her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high.
"I loved once," Buttercup said after a moment. "It worked out badly."

-The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure
by William Goldman

And there is nothing left to do

But to kiss once again, and part,

Nay, there is nothing we should rue,

I have my beauty,--you your Art,

Nay, do not start,

One world was not enough for two

Like me and you.

-Oscar Wilde

All in all I think I had a nice reading year. I didn't read as many books as I did last year, but I'm okay with that. For 2011 I'm not going to go overboard joining a whole bunch of reading challenges, I'll stick to just a few, maybe three at most. I'd also like to read more YA novels, since it's a genre I really enjoy but don't make the time for.



What about you? How did you do reading wise for 2010? Any reading plans for the new year?