I shouldn't have to be using this icon so much, dammit

[robling_t]

Aaand now the holiday card to my grandmother has come back 'undeliverable'. I think I'll just save some time and assume she's also died-and-no-one-told-me, given we've been expecting that to happen for years now. [ETA: Ah, yes, Mum's found a scribbled 'deceased' under the 'undeliverable' sticker. As I say, no more than I'd have expected really.] Did anyone think to keep the receipt for this year so we can return it? It's obviously defective...

To bury my resentments in administrative trivia, the Media Log shows that a total of 71 books and 68 films were Consumed in 2011, which is about average on the reading and a lot of time spent in front of the telly. I'm kind of thinking it must have rained a lot in October in particular. To 2012:



January: 4 books, 2 films

BOOKS:

• The Faery Reel : tales from the Twilight Realm
  
• Bumped, Megan McCafferty
  
• Teeth : vampire tales
  
• Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
  

FILMS:

• 9
  
• Crisis
  

February: 9 books, 5 films

BOOKS:

• Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
  
• Open : love, sex, and life in an open marriage, Jenny Block
  
• The Great Depression, R. G. Grant
  
• The second book of general ignorance : everything you think you know is (still) wrong
  
• the Stories of English, David Crystal
  
• Sweater quest : my year of knitting dangerously, Adrienne Martini
  
• Ann Veronica, H G Wells
  
• the Tempering of Men, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear
  
• Robbing the bees : a biography of honey, the sweet liquid gold that seduced the world, Holley Bishop
  

FILMS:

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
  
• the Wasp Woman
  
• the Tempest [2010]
  
• Twilight: Breaking Dawn #1
  
• X-Men: First Class
  

March: 6 books, 7 films

BOOKS:

• Snuff, Terry Pratchett
  
• All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
  
• Situations matter : understanding how context transforms your world, Sam Sommers
  
• Discount Armageddon, Seanan McGuire
  
• Unclaimed, Courtney Milan
  
• Nightlight : a parody
  

FILMS:

• the Matchmaker
  
• Jurassic Park
  
• the Social Network
  
• Wordplay
  
• the Pianist
  
• the Hunger Games
  
• the Tale of Desperaux
  

April: 6 books, 5 films

BOOKS:

• Popular crime : reflections on the celebration of violence, Bill James
  
• the Ecstasy of Influence: nonfictions etc, Jonathan Lethem
  
• Divergent, Veronica Roth
  
• Drift : the unmooring of American military power, Rachel Maddow
  
• Cool, Calm, and Contentious, Merrill Markoe
  
• the Scottish Prisoner, Diana Gabaldon
  

FILMS:

• Black Swan
  
• the Man Who Fell To Earth
  
• Zombieland
  
• True Grit [2010]
  
• the Muppets
  

May: 9 books, 7 films

BOOKS:

• The taste of tomorrow : dispatches from the future of food, Josh Schonwald
  
• Simple stunning wedding etiquette, Karen Bussen
  
• Matched, Ally Condie
  
• Wediquette : the answers to all your wedding etiquette questions, Yetta Fisher Gruen
  
• City of scoundrels : the 12 days of disaster that gave birth to modern Chicago, Gary Krist
  
• If walls could talk : an intimate history of the home, Lucy Worsley
  
• How to suppress women's writing, Joanna Russ
  
• Winter of Magic's Return, Pamela F Service
  
• the Night Sessions, Ken MacLeod
  

FILMS:

• A Lady of Chance
  
• In Time
  
• the Wicker Man [2006]
  
• the Bed Sitting Room
  
• Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
  
• J Edgar
  
• Captain America: the first Avenger
  

June: 16 books, 3 films

BOOKS:

• Under the Vale: and other tales of Valdemar
  
• Blackout, Mira Grant
  
• Intruder, CJ Cherryh
  
• The wedding book : the big book for your big day, Mindy Weiss with Lisbeth Levine
  
• Changing the world : all-new tales of Valdemar
  
• Running Out Of Time, Margaret Peterson Haddix
  
• The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ, Phillip Pullman
  
• Six modern plagues and how we are causing them, Mark Jerome Walters
  
• Becoming China's bitch : and nine more catastrophes we must avoid right now : a manifesto for the radical center, Peter D. Kiernan
  
• Intrigues, Mercedes Lackey
  
• Straight: the surprisingly short history of heterosexuality, Hanne Blank
  
• So Yesterday, Scott Westerfeld
  
• the City and the Stars, Arthur C Clarke
  
• Changes, Mercedes Lackey
  
• DNA USA : a genetic portrait of America, Bryan Sykes
  
• Expendable, James Alan Gardner
  

FILMS:

• A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
  
• Avatar
  
• the King's Speech
  

July: 13 books, 2 films

BOOKS:

• Complicity, Iain Banks
  
• Foundation, Mercedes Lackey
  
• Beauty and the Werewolf, Mercedes Lackey
  
• Zoe's Tale, John Scalzi
  
• Thumped, Megan McCafferty
  
• All new square foot gardening : grow more in less space!, Mel Bartholomew
  
• the Long Earth, Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
  
• Adapt : why success always starts with failure, Tim Harford
  
• Just my type : a book about fonts, Simon Garfield
  
• Shadowborn, Alison Sinclair
  
• Tomatoland : how modern industrial agriculture destroyed our most alluring fruit, Barry Estabrook
  
• Scardown, Elizabeth Bear
  
• The violinist's thumb : and other lost tales of love, war, and genius, as written by our genetic code, Sam Kean
  
  

FILMS:

• Brave
  
• the Artist
  

August: 6 books, 2 films

BOOKS:

• Redshirts, John Scalzi
  
• No plot? No problem! : a low-stress, high-velocity guide to writing a novel in 30 days, Chris Baty
  
• Master and God, Lindsey David
  
• Hitchhiker: a biography of Douglas Adams, M J Simpson
  
• Chicago's classic restaurants : past, present & future, Neal Samors & Eric Bronsky with Bob Dauber
  
• Napoleon's hemorrhoids : and other small events that changed history, Phil Mason
  

FILMS:

• Daybreakers
  
• the Big Lebowski
  

September: 12 books, 3 films

BOOKS:

• Currency wars : the making of the next global crisis, James Rickards
  
• Pie it forward : pies, tarts, tortes, galettes, and other pastries reinvented, Gesine Bullock-Prado
  
• The rare find : spotting exceptional talent before everyone else, George Anders
  
• Jeneration X : one reluctant adult's attempt to unarrest her arrested development, or, Why it's never too late for her dumb ass to learn why Froot Loops are not for dinner, Jen Lancaster
  
• Team Human, Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan
  
• Advent, James Treadwell
  
• The world of Downton Abbey, Jessica Fellowes
  
• Kiss the Dead, Laurell K Hamilton
  
• World War I trench warfare. 1916-1918
  
• The Changeover, Margaret Mahy
  
• Skinny chicks eat real food : kick your fake food habit, kickstart your weight loss, Christine Avanti with Bonnie Bauman
  
• the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
  

FILMS:

• Behind the Lines
  
• the Wicker Tree
  
• the Avengers [2012]
  

October: 11 books, 2 films

BOOKS:

• The lost history of 1914 : reconsidering World War I, Jack Beatty
  
• Code name Verity, Elizabeth Wein
  
• Rin Tin Tin : the life and the legend, Susan Orlean
  
• The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
  
• the Tightrope Walker, Dorothy Gilman
  
• Crossed, Ally Condie
  
• Playing in the dark : whiteness and the literary imagination, Toni Morrison
  
• Debt : the first 5,000 years, David Graeber
  
• the Inquisitor's Apprentice, Chris Moriarty
  
• the Welsh Extremist: a culture in crisis, Ned Thomas
  
• War or Revolution: Russian Jews and Conscription in Britain, Harold Shukman
  

FILMS:

• Hot Tub Time Machine
  
• the Last Man On Earth
  

November: 7 books, no films

BOOKS:

• On Doing Good, Gerald Jonas
  
• Some remarks : essays and other writing, Neal Stephenson
  
• Courtship rite, Donald Kingsbury
  
• The first 20 minutes : surprising science reveals how we can exercise better, train smarter, live longer, Gretchen Reynolds
  
• A Discovery of Witches, Deborah Harkness
  
• Singled Out: How Two Million British Women Survived Without Men After the First World War, Virginia Nicholson
  
• Congregations in Conflict: The Battle over Homosexuality, Keith Hartman
  

FILMS:

December: 9 books, 7 films

BOOKS:

• Jewels : a secret history, Victoria Finlay
  
• Redoubt, Mercedes Lackey
  
• Cold Magic, Kate Elliott
  
• Thanks, but this isn't for us : a (sort of) compassionate guide to why your writing is being rejected, Jessica Page Morrell
  
• Shadow of the Titanic : the extraordinary stories of those who survived, Andrew Wilson
  
• Garbology : our dirty love affair with trash, Edward Humes
  
• Why have kids? : a new mom explores the truth about parenting and happiness, Jessica Valenti
  
• An apple for the creature
  
• Magic Under Glass, Jaclyn Dolamore
  

FILMS:

• Iron Sky
  
• the Butterfly Effect
  
• Band of Angels
  
• the Sound of Music
  
• Kung Fu Panda
  
• Beverly Hills Cop
  
• the Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey