What I am into this month.

The leaves are mostly gone, but look at that sunshine!
Can you believe the high today is sixty-five?!

On My Nightstand: I reactivated my library card and bam! off to the races here. Let's see. I already talked about reading Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother. I also gobbled up a new Orson Scott Card fantasy novel, The Lost Gate. Sigh. OSC love. On Anne of Modern Mrs. Darcey's recommendation, I'm reading A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter, which so far is interesting though not particularly life-changing. And also Sink Reflections, because I need some help on the housecleaning end.

I also may or may not have wandered into a used bookstore after Christmas and purchased the first three Firekeeper novels by Jane Lindskold (who's from Albuquerque and whom I've met several times and is a wonderful person as well as a decent fantasy novelist), her out-of-print novel Changer, and a book by a lady who was Royal Cook to Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother, et al. Because that's what used bookstores are for.

Want to Read: So I guess maybe those used bookstore finds are on my want to read list? I also am about the 114th hold out of 134 holds on The Help. Similar statistics apply to my hold request on Death Comes to Pemberley, and have a few other books on hold at the dear library. I am, as always, open to suggestions.

TV Show Worth Watching: Television's holiday hiatus might have something to do with my renewed reading interest, actually. Although I have been watching an anime called Darker Than Black on Hulu with the DDH and am really enjoying it. The animes I find on Hulu are much better fantasy tv than the primetime live action fantasy shows Hollywood puts out. No offense, Once Upon a Time and Grimm, but I'll take Blue Exorcist and Darker Than Black over you any time.

Movies I've Seen (in or out of a theater): The DDH and I saw Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows at the matinee showing Christmas Eve. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law love. Explosions and cleverness love. Love love love of an entirely shallow sort.

My mother-in-law got The Help for Christmas and we watched that at her house after dinner (I know, I know, I'm way behind the times). It was...mind boggling, I guess? Especially after hearing my step-father-in-law's parents' (step-grandparents-in-law?) stories about being reared by black help themselves, which they shared at Christmas Eve dinner. Bob got leave to come home from Korea when his nanny died, because she was basically a second mother to him and I guess the army recognized that relationship officially? I mean, that's weird, says the twenty-something from the Southwest. Completely a foreign concept to me.

Anyway. What I liked about the movie, and am looking forward to in the book, is how...non-political it was. How do I say this. I was hesitant about the book/movie because doesn't it just sound like something throwing racial tensions back in your face? Let's move forward, people, not linger in the past. But this was just so matter-of-fact. For better and for worse, the author and director say, this is the way it was. And the fact that it was so completely alien and insane to me is a good sign, don't you think?

In My Ears: 'Twas the Christmas music season, loves! She & Him, Mannheim Steamroller, Bing Crosby, Amy Grant...Christmas Christmas Christmas. I'm not sure where to go from here, honestly.

What I'm looking forward to next month: Oh, January. You poor creature. One big feel-bad letdown of a month. Everyone will be going on diets and running to the gym and back to the workday grind, plus it's cold and gray and miserable. Umm, though actually right now it is the opposite of gray and miserable and cold outside.

But I mean it's also 2012, isn't it, a new year. I am thinking I need some goals and nonsense like that. I'm not one much for resolutions, but I do rather feel like I've been drifting aimlessly for awhile. So there's that.

Also, "things" start up again. Choir practice, church workout classes. Our church workout group is kicking off the new year serving dinner to the homeless next week. So that will be good.

What are you looking forward to in January and in 2012?