List of Books/Movies/Shows of 2011!
So! I have had an awful track record of these. Pico really is no good at keeping them shits straight. Still! I shall try my best, and thus, here, following, is my
List of Books Read, Movies Watched, and Shows Viewed of 2011!
Books
Jan
Immortals Quartet , Tamora Pierce
---- Wild Magic
---- Wolf-Speaker
---- Emperor Mage
---- In the Realms of the Gods
---- Still a fun set of books. Teenagehood Fictional Crush reemerges. Every time I reread these, I'm reminded both of what Tamora Pierce does that I don't agree with, and also of what I just straight-up love about fun YA adventure lit.
Good Omens, Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett
---- Unsurprisingly good! Surprise, though, for the Pico, because this is the fifth time I have picked it up. (The previous four times I was ehn about it or got bored.) Finally read it, and rather liked it.
Sloth's Birthday Party, Diane Redfield Massie
---- MY CHILDHOOD
Room, Emma Donoghue
---- Good god, this was an emotional punch. Excellent book. Really good on realism and physchological responses. Narrated by a five-year-old who has spent his entire life in an 11-by-11-foot room, and all the ramifications of that. Hugely recommended.
*The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
---- unfinished
The Sorceror of the North, John Flanigan
---- Book Five of his Ranger's Apprentice series. Nothing to write home about, either prose-wise or plot-wise. Just good plain fun YA.
Feb
The Siege of Macindaw, John Flanigan
---- Book Six of Ranger's Apprentice series.
Serial, Jack Kilborn and Black Crouch
---- Meh. Mediocre. Fuller review here.
Romancing Mr Bridgington, Julia Quinn
---- Meh. Mediocre. Fuller review here.
Mar
The Child Thief, Gerald Brom
---- FAIL
---- Full rant here. not yet posted.
Apr
Peter Pan, JM Barrie
---- one-third through. So good!
---- finished!
May
Trickster's Choice
Trickster's Queen, Tamora Pierce
---- Half a review here.
Jun
* My Lady Nicotine
What Every Woman Knows, JM Barrie
---- MLN - too obviously satire, was meh, didn't finish. But WEWK was a play, also by Barrie, and quite good! figured it would end happily, it being Barrie, but I had to keep reading to the end to make sure.
* Tales of Three Hemispheres, Lord Dunsany
---- Not fantasy. More here.
Jul
János Vitéz, Petöfi Sándor
---- Classic Hungarian epic. Very short, very fun, very Hungarian. Copy-and-paste that title onto Youtube and you will get the one-hour animated adaptation, a beautiful Hungarian cartoon which fully shows how weird fairytales can be.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
---- (started Jun, ended Jul.)
---- More on this.
Pretties, Scott Westerfeld
---- see below.
Aug
Specials, Scott Westerfeld
---- Wow! much dang better than Uglies led me to believe. And I liked Uglies.
---- More info here!
* A Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
---- really excellent, faintly surreal, but I think I put it down because it feels like reading a really extended short story. It's good, really it is, it's just pace feels that things happen and happen and happen. Historical pacing. I'm about 1/3 way through, and I'll continue one day, rest assured.
* The Magicians' Guild, Trudi Canavan
---- Reread. Picked up in Beijing because I was reminiscing about how good this series was. It does not disappoint. It is excellent. I read 40 pages in a bar in Beijing, and 140 pages in a bar in Harbin. Have I unwittingly turned it into a Bar Book? Oh well. I'd rather be seen reading SF/Fantasy in a bar than .... really anything else. Gives the right impression. :D
Sep
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
---- (started Jul, ended Sept)
---- Big long talkied review here
Oct
Guards, Guards!
Men at Arms
Feet of Clay
Jingo
Fifth Elephant
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Nov
* House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
---- started
* Romance of Three Kingdoms, vol I, Luo Guanzhong
---- started
Dec
* Romance of Three Kingdoms, vol I, Luo Guanzhong
---- cont'd
House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
(finished)
Goodnight, Mr Tom, Michelle Mandragorian
The Brothers Lionheart, Tove Jansson
A Girl Named Disaster, Nancy Farmer
Movies
Jan
Inception
---- BWOMMMM
Some Like It Hot
---- watched because I was hoping for Massey. This film is when I realized that Massey has long outdone her inspired-by figure.
Let the Right One In
---- Good lord this was a good film.
A Sitch in Time
---- yes, the Kim Possible movie. Yes. (I kind of mostly just wanted to see her. No, she didn't show up in the film. Oh well. MISSED OPPORTUNITY OF AWESOMMMMMMME)
(may have forgotten something in there. oh well.)
Feb
Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged: Poltergheist Report
---- lololololol
Yu Yu Hakusho: Poltergheist Report
---- ...lololololol
Easy A
---- plane movie. Moar here.
Megamind
---- plane movie. :D
Mar
Disney's Peter Pan
Disney's Pinocchio
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
The Breakfast Club
Apr
Tangled
---- threw me into a stewing pile of nostalgic homesickness. Thanks, Tangled.
May
Thor
---- this image sums it up nicely
Jun
Clockwork Orange
Alice in Wonderland
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The King and I
---- I watched all these while I was sick. Clockwork Orange had some interesting things, but was overall just completely ehn. I was totally rooting against the main character the whole time. Alice in Wonderland :D. And Hunchback! Everything but those damn gargoyles! THE MUSIC OH GOD THE MUSIC. And I only watched half of King and I, because it was that ehn. lol orientalism lol
Waiting for Superman
---- Interesting. On the one hand, it has points, on the other, it has an agenda.
2001: A Space Odyssey
---- THE MUSIC IS HORRIFYING.
Red Cliff
---- fourth time watched, I think? :DDDD
Jul
Willow
---- my childhood!
Pride and Prejudice (2005)
---- the one with Kiera Knightly and what's-his-face. It was good! It was quite as enjoyable as the book, and did the dialogue very nicely for a modern audience (rather than making it stagey and exactly-as-in-text; the text worked for the text, yes, but modern spoken dialogue differs and they hit a good medium).
Aug
For August, you can see how I started getting in-a-funk-y. It is evidenced by the number of moveis I watched. I never watch this many movies.
Bride and Prejudice
---- sounded like, and ended up being, fun. But then I got into a Bollywood mood and watched
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
---- ah, Bollywood! Bollywood. This was like three hours long, and that was three hours of UST and BST and Comic Misunderstandings and also some very sweet moments and overall, despite the silliness, I think I would recommend this moive again. (Although hot damn, I still don't understand why she fell for the male lead. The male lead was just way too Juvenile Delinquent With No Life for my tastes.)
Dead Leaves
---- As the title screen notes: best watched when drunk. One of the rare occasions where I vastly prefer the English dub.
The Incredibles
---- :D. But also quite sweet with the family moments. And just everything about it was well done: the MCs, the villain, the way things progressed. Fun film.
How to Train your Dragon
---- more here.
Titan A.E
---- complaints here. Recommendation: do not watch.
Treasure Planet
---- which I had to watch to get the taste of Titan AE out of my mouth.
Sep
Lilo and Stitch
---- Oh yeah. This was cute and funny and overall adorable. And, now that I've seen one of the artists for it on DA, I can understand the visual style of it better.
The Road to El Dorado
---- EL DORA~AA~AAA~AADO.
Coraline
---- THIS WAS FANTASTIC. THIS WAS AMAZING. THIS WAS CREEPIFYING. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL. THIS WAS AWESOME.
The Nightmare Before Christmas
---- wears well! I was kind of ehn about it, it being over-sold when I was young and a staple of Hot Topics everywhere, but when I rewatched it, I was humming along and laughing at the jokes. The songs were frech and new and familiar, the dialogue funny, the claymation fantastic (jeebus I am super-impressed by a full-length stop motion movie), and overall, really quite :D!
Oct
Amelie
Logan's Run
The Sound of Music
An American Tail
Deliverance
Shawshank Redemption
Nov
The Sixth Sense
Ten Things I Hate About You
Robin Hood Men in Tights
Bend it like Beckham
Monsters Inc
Dec
Enchanted
If these Walls Could Talk 2
---- (really, only watched the parts with her in them :D)
---- (and no, she's not as Kellerin as I imagined. Kij in my head is not this person. But she does a decent job acting.)
Star Wars: A New Hope
The Empire Strikes Back
---- these last two were movie nights with colleagues
To Catch a Thief
Shows
Jan
Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged 1-19
Tegami Bachi ~18-36 (so much fun! SO MUCH FUN.)
Trigun 1-2
Feb
Trigun 3-7
Yu Yu Hakusho 25-29
Mar
Trigun 1-26
---- a rewatch of a show I watched 7 years ago. Seven years ago. And I remember watching it seven years ago.
Apr
Durarara!! 1-10
---- thisshowissoawesome
Kiba 1-8
---- BOKU TACHI WA MINA KITTO TE O NO BASHITERUN DA
---- TOOKU TOOI BASHO E TO
---- moar here.
May
Kiba 11-17
Jun
Jul
Ouran High School Host Club 1-13
---- fun :D
Aug
BBC's Sherlock 1-2
---- ep 1: excellent. ep 2: mostly okay, but all the China stuff was a load of underresearched and overdramatized Fail.
Sep
Sherlock 3
---- awright!
Evangelion 1-26
End of Evangelion 25-26
---- not as much of a mindfuck as I have been led to believe! or maybe I'm just adaptable to weird? I mean, really the only bits that squicked me were in EoE, and I'll grant, that is one of the few times animated violence has really, seriously, been squicky. (Oh god the mass-manufactured Angels. Oh god Asuka. ASUKAAAA.)
Oct
Nov
Dexter
---- ep 1, s1.
---- rewatch
Dec
Monster
---- ep. 1 - ep. 40
---- ♥
---- TENMAAAAAAAAAAAA
---- (will return to watching once have returned to China. No spoilers, please!)
~:~
Let me disclaim that this list is under consistant, if not constant, surveillance and update, and shall be added to at my discretion. PS: Sometimes I forget things. Will add them when I remember them.
List of Books Read, Movies Watched, and Shows Viewed of 2011!
Books
Jan
Immortals Quartet , Tamora Pierce
---- Wild Magic
---- Wolf-Speaker
---- Emperor Mage
---- In the Realms of the Gods
---- Still a fun set of books. Teenagehood Fictional Crush reemerges. Every time I reread these, I'm reminded both of what Tamora Pierce does that I don't agree with, and also of what I just straight-up love about fun YA adventure lit.
Good Omens, Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett
---- Unsurprisingly good! Surprise, though, for the Pico, because this is the fifth time I have picked it up. (The previous four times I was ehn about it or got bored.) Finally read it, and rather liked it.
Sloth's Birthday Party, Diane Redfield Massie
---- MY CHILDHOOD
Room, Emma Donoghue
---- Good god, this was an emotional punch. Excellent book. Really good on realism and physchological responses. Narrated by a five-year-old who has spent his entire life in an 11-by-11-foot room, and all the ramifications of that. Hugely recommended.
*The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
---- unfinished
The Sorceror of the North, John Flanigan
---- Book Five of his Ranger's Apprentice series. Nothing to write home about, either prose-wise or plot-wise. Just good plain fun YA.
Feb
The Siege of Macindaw, John Flanigan
---- Book Six of Ranger's Apprentice series.
Serial, Jack Kilborn and Black Crouch
---- Meh. Mediocre. Fuller review here.
Romancing Mr Bridgington, Julia Quinn
---- Meh. Mediocre. Fuller review here.
Mar
The Child Thief, Gerald Brom
---- FAIL
---- Full rant here. not yet posted.
Apr
Peter Pan, JM Barrie
---- one-third through. So good!
---- finished!
May
Trickster's Choice
Trickster's Queen, Tamora Pierce
---- Half a review here.
Jun
* My Lady Nicotine
What Every Woman Knows, JM Barrie
---- MLN - too obviously satire, was meh, didn't finish. But WEWK was a play, also by Barrie, and quite good! figured it would end happily, it being Barrie, but I had to keep reading to the end to make sure.
* Tales of Three Hemispheres, Lord Dunsany
---- Not fantasy. More here.
Jul
János Vitéz, Petöfi Sándor
---- Classic Hungarian epic. Very short, very fun, very Hungarian. Copy-and-paste that title onto Youtube and you will get the one-hour animated adaptation, a beautiful Hungarian cartoon which fully shows how weird fairytales can be.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
---- (started Jun, ended Jul.)
Pretties, Scott Westerfeld
---- see below.
Aug
Specials, Scott Westerfeld
---- Wow! much dang better than Uglies led me to believe. And I liked Uglies.
---- More info here!
* A Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
---- really excellent, faintly surreal, but I think I put it down because it feels like reading a really extended short story. It's good, really it is, it's just pace feels that things happen and happen and happen. Historical pacing. I'm about 1/3 way through, and I'll continue one day, rest assured.
* The Magicians' Guild, Trudi Canavan
---- Reread. Picked up in Beijing because I was reminiscing about how good this series was. It does not disappoint. It is excellent. I read 40 pages in a bar in Beijing, and 140 pages in a bar in Harbin. Have I unwittingly turned it into a Bar Book? Oh well. I'd rather be seen reading SF/Fantasy in a bar than .... really anything else. Gives the right impression. :D
Sep
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
---- (started Jul, ended Sept)
---- Big long talkied review here
Oct
Guards, Guards!
Men at Arms
Feet of Clay
Jingo
Fifth Elephant
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Nov
* House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
---- started
* Romance of Three Kingdoms, vol I, Luo Guanzhong
---- started
Dec
* Romance of Three Kingdoms, vol I, Luo Guanzhong
---- cont'd
House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
(finished)
Goodnight, Mr Tom, Michelle Mandragorian
The Brothers Lionheart, Tove Jansson
A Girl Named Disaster, Nancy Farmer
Movies
Jan
Inception
---- BWOMMMM
Some Like It Hot
---- watched because I was hoping for Massey. This film is when I realized that Massey has long outdone her inspired-by figure.
Let the Right One In
---- Good lord this was a good film.
A Sitch in Time
---- yes, the Kim Possible movie. Yes. (I kind of mostly just wanted to see her. No, she didn't show up in the film. Oh well. MISSED OPPORTUNITY OF AWESOMMMMMMME)
(may have forgotten something in there. oh well.)
Feb
Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged: Poltergheist Report
---- lololololol
Yu Yu Hakusho: Poltergheist Report
---- ...lololololol
Easy A
---- plane movie. Moar here.
Megamind
---- plane movie. :D
Mar
Disney's Peter Pan
Disney's Pinocchio
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
The Breakfast Club
Apr
Tangled
---- threw me into a stewing pile of nostalgic homesickness. Thanks, Tangled.
May
Thor
---- this image sums it up nicely
Jun
Clockwork Orange
Alice in Wonderland
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The King and I
---- I watched all these while I was sick. Clockwork Orange had some interesting things, but was overall just completely ehn. I was totally rooting against the main character the whole time. Alice in Wonderland :D. And Hunchback! Everything but those damn gargoyles! THE MUSIC OH GOD THE MUSIC. And I only watched half of King and I, because it was that ehn. lol orientalism lol
Waiting for Superman
---- Interesting. On the one hand, it has points, on the other, it has an agenda.
2001: A Space Odyssey
---- THE MUSIC IS HORRIFYING.
Red Cliff
---- fourth time watched, I think? :DDDD
Jul
Willow
---- my childhood!
Pride and Prejudice (2005)
---- the one with Kiera Knightly and what's-his-face. It was good! It was quite as enjoyable as the book, and did the dialogue very nicely for a modern audience (rather than making it stagey and exactly-as-in-text; the text worked for the text, yes, but modern spoken dialogue differs and they hit a good medium).
Aug
For August, you can see how I started getting in-a-funk-y. It is evidenced by the number of moveis I watched. I never watch this many movies.
Bride and Prejudice
---- sounded like, and ended up being, fun. But then I got into a Bollywood mood and watched
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
---- ah, Bollywood! Bollywood. This was like three hours long, and that was three hours of UST and BST and Comic Misunderstandings and also some very sweet moments and overall, despite the silliness, I think I would recommend this moive again. (Although hot damn, I still don't understand why she fell for the male lead. The male lead was just way too Juvenile Delinquent With No Life for my tastes.)
Dead Leaves
---- As the title screen notes: best watched when drunk. One of the rare occasions where I vastly prefer the English dub.
The Incredibles
---- :D. But also quite sweet with the family moments. And just everything about it was well done: the MCs, the villain, the way things progressed. Fun film.
How to Train your Dragon
---- more here.
Titan A.E
---- complaints here. Recommendation: do not watch.
Treasure Planet
---- which I had to watch to get the taste of Titan AE out of my mouth.
Sep
Lilo and Stitch
---- Oh yeah. This was cute and funny and overall adorable. And, now that I've seen one of the artists for it on DA, I can understand the visual style of it better.
The Road to El Dorado
---- EL DORA~AA~AAA~AADO.
Coraline
---- THIS WAS FANTASTIC. THIS WAS AMAZING. THIS WAS CREEPIFYING. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL. THIS WAS AWESOME.
The Nightmare Before Christmas
---- wears well! I was kind of ehn about it, it being over-sold when I was young and a staple of Hot Topics everywhere, but when I rewatched it, I was humming along and laughing at the jokes. The songs were frech and new and familiar, the dialogue funny, the claymation fantastic (jeebus I am super-impressed by a full-length stop motion movie), and overall, really quite :D!
Oct
Amelie
Logan's Run
The Sound of Music
An American Tail
Deliverance
Shawshank Redemption
Nov
The Sixth Sense
Ten Things I Hate About You
Robin Hood Men in Tights
Bend it like Beckham
Monsters Inc
Dec
Enchanted
If these Walls Could Talk 2
---- (really, only watched the parts with her in them :D)
---- (and no, she's not as Kellerin as I imagined. Kij in my head is not this person. But she does a decent job acting.)
Star Wars: A New Hope
The Empire Strikes Back
---- these last two were movie nights with colleagues
To Catch a Thief
Shows
Jan
Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged 1-19
Tegami Bachi ~18-36 (so much fun! SO MUCH FUN.)
Trigun 1-2
Feb
Trigun 3-7
Yu Yu Hakusho 25-29
Mar
Trigun 1-26
---- a rewatch of a show I watched 7 years ago. Seven years ago. And I remember watching it seven years ago.
Apr
Durarara!! 1-10
---- thisshowissoawesome
Kiba 1-8
---- BOKU TACHI WA MINA KITTO TE O NO BASHITERUN DA
---- TOOKU TOOI BASHO E TO
---- moar here.
May
Kiba 11-17
Jun
Jul
Ouran High School Host Club 1-13
---- fun :D
Aug
BBC's Sherlock 1-2
---- ep 1: excellent. ep 2: mostly okay, but all the China stuff was a load of underresearched and overdramatized Fail.
Sep
Sherlock 3
---- awright!
Evangelion 1-26
End of Evangelion 25-26
---- not as much of a mindfuck as I have been led to believe! or maybe I'm just adaptable to weird? I mean, really the only bits that squicked me were in EoE, and I'll grant, that is one of the few times animated violence has really, seriously, been squicky. (Oh god the mass-manufactured Angels. Oh god Asuka. ASUKAAAA.)
Oct
Nov
Dexter
---- ep 1, s1.
---- rewatch
Dec
Monster
---- ep. 1 - ep. 40
---- ♥
---- TENMAAAAAAAAAAAA
---- (will return to watching once have returned to China. No spoilers, please!)
~:~
Let me disclaim that this list is under consistant, if not constant, surveillance and update, and shall be added to at my discretion. PS: Sometimes I forget things. Will add them when I remember them.