The Girdle of Melian

ear's end... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you! Denise Covey has some yummy dessert and drinks that I've just partaken of, and it's feeling quite festive around the blogosphere. Not exactly the right time for a year-end review of tasks and goals, is it? That can wait 'til January. Instead, I'll do a quick recap of some of the other events: Back in January, I held a contest to celebrate my 900th post ! I'm now at 970 and for 1,000, I'd really like to compile a list of all my posts sorted into groups, especially all the book reviews. I need an intern to copy all those reviews over to Amazon! This needing an intern thing is an ongoing issue for me. I noted in a book review post: "The trouble is, because I've been reading since long before the Internet, I find my Amazon, Goodreads, and LibraryThing profiles are not an accurate representation of all the books I own, have read, and have enjoyed. LibraryThing comes the closest, ...

ow, another round of A Round of Words in 80 Days has come to an end. My ROW80 goals for this round kept changing -- which is the best part of ROW80; it's the "writing challenge that knows you have a life". First I was knitting, then NaNoing. I've got some notes and five pages of Larksong still to type, Druid's Moon notes to check and editing to do, last year's NaNo story to type up, and this year's NaNo to finish (plus I should try to finish my CampNaNo story from July as well). Also some blog tidying and some more knitting... Meanwhile, I've recently read two lovely stories, a short story and a novella, by the founder of ROW80 herself, Kait Nolan : Be Careful, It's My Heart : The first book in Kait's Wishful series (though not the first book in the chronological timeline of the town of Wishful). This series is Kait's "love song to the South, showing everything I love about my home state of Mississippi. I hope you'll jo...

t's here: the Annual Books Read Statistics! Here are the statistics for 2014 , 2013 , 2012 , 2011 (and the list ), 2010 , 2009 (and the list ). First off, here's the full list , sorted slightly into author groups (I can't keep up with alphabetising or italicising all this though): 1. Be Careful, It's My Heart by Kait Nolan 2. HELP! Food Allergies Coming To Dinner by Kait Nolan 3. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (annual reread) 4. Beowulf and Sellic Spell by J. R. R. Tolkien 5. The Story of Kullervo by J. R. R. Tolkien 6. The War of the Ring - Book 8 in the History of Middle Earth series by Christopher Tolkien and J. R. R. Tolkien (reread) 7. Farmer Giles of Ham by J. R. R. Tolkien (reread but new edition) 8. Smith of Wootton Major by J. R. R. Tolkien (reread but new edition) 9. Sauron Defeated - Book 9 in the History of Middle Earth series by Christopher Tolkien and J. R. R. Tolkien (reread) 10. The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne (rerea...

ongratulations to everyone that's completed NaNoWriMo! Today being Insecure Writer's Support Group Day, I wouldn't want anyone to feel badly; congratulations to those that started NaNo, to those that worked on other projects, to those that survived the month! We're heading into the time of end-of-year wrap ups and looks back to previously set goals and so on. I hope to put together my annual Books Read post soon. Sometimes it's nice to feel slow. We're always measuring our tasks and words and days; every once in a while it's nice to look back without weighing up the value of projects, or to work on something specific without thought of a deadline. Or so I try to remind myself on days when I feel as though there aren't enough hours. I started NaNoWriMo with a bang , but it became difficult as the days went on, mostly because I only had two 20-minute snatches to write in during the day; just when I got some momentum, the train pulled in to the sta...