So much for a post a day...

A Japanese Macaque, fresh from the bath in Yudanaka, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. 11th October 2010.

Sunset

September 9, Byron Bay, NSW, Australia.

9AM in the CBD

Early September, downtown Sydney.

Look, Some Leaves

9th September, Byron Bay.

After dark...

I forget the date but some time in August, next to the African restaurant in Newtown, Sydney.

Blinded

A couple of Thursdays ago, in a classroom at WEA Sydney, where I am taking a two-month photography course. Shooting manual at last!

Eeeeeee.....

August 1st, fruit bats in Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney.

Greener Grass

Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney, 1 August 2010.

Winter

Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney, 1st August 2010. (Unstaged, the flowers just happened to be there.)

It's still winter in Sydney! I've become even MORE of a wuss about cold while living in Australia. If I ever go back to Saskatchewan I'm doomed.

Oops...

I've missed three days in my first week of posting every day! Or rather, of not posting every day.

Anyway, never mind the sounds of construction drifting out from behind the curtain (still drawn across the stage, half an hour after the house lights have dimmed...). I'm working on it. Here's a picture of my feet.


Sydney, 1 August 2010.

The Rose Garden

Sydney Royal Botanical Gardens, 1 August 2010.
(So much for the whole within-a-week thing.)

Changes

I haven't posted anything in this blog since January, so I've decided to change it up. I'm also trying to get back to doing more photography, so changing it up in this case is going to mean a lot more pictures and no change in the amount of words added in the last six months (ie, none). My goal is to post a picture a day... the picture probably won't always have been taken the same day, but the plan is to keep it within a week.

So, shall we begin?


197 Elizabeth Street, Sydney. 12th August 2010 around 9:45.

Books I Read in 2009

1.George R. R. Martin - A Storm of Swords (audiobook)
2.Michael Chriton - Prey
3.Geraldine Brooks - People of the Book
4.Jodi Picoult - The Pact
5.Amy Bloom - Away
6.George R. R. Martin - A Feast for Crows (audiobook)
7.Daniel Mason - The Piano Tuner
8.Larissa Behrendt - Home
9.Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love in the Time of Cholera
10.Kim Edwards - The Memory Keeper's Daughter
11.Iain M. Banks - Consider Phlebas
12.April Sinclair - I Left My Back Door Open
13.Helen Neff - Accident of Birth
14.Susan Kurosawa - Coronation Talkies
15.Rose Tremain - Sacred Country
16.David Mitchell - Number9Dream
17.Nada Awar Jarrar - Dreams of Water
18.Stephen Dando-Collins - Pasteur's Gambit (nonfiction)
19.Audrey Niffenegger - Three Incestuous Sisters (visual novel)
20.Audrey Niffenegger - The Adventuress (visual novel)
21.Annie Proulx - Brokeback Mountain
22.Mudrooroo - Wild Cat Falling (PFitG)
23.Jenny Newman - Life Class
24.Elizabeth Knox - The Vintner's Luck (PFitG)
25.Louise Erdrich - The Master Butchers Singing Club
26.Yoshimoto Banana - Kitchen (PFitG)
27.Eric Gerome Dickey - Chasing Destiny
28.Lev Grossman - Codex
29.Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner
30.Sandra Newman - The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done
31.Jonathan Lethem - Motherless Brooklyn
32.Andrew Nicoll - The Good Mayor
33.Curtis Sittenfeld - American Wife
34.Samrat Upadhyay - The Guru of Love
35.Martha Cooley - The Archivist
36.Haruki Murakami - Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (PFitG)
37.Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveller's Wife (re-read)
38.L.M. Montgomery - The Blue Castle (re-read)
39.Lauren M. Hunter - The Steward's Son
40.Manil Suri - The Death of Vishnu
41.Jonathan Lethem - As She Climbed Across the Table (re-read)
42.Helen Dunmore - ice cream (short stories)
43.Paul Coelho - The Alchemist (half)
44.Rajaa Alsanea - Girls of Riyadh
45.Emma Donoghue - Touchy Subjects (short stories)
46.Margaret Atwood - Dancing Girls (short stories--half)
47.William Gibson - Spook Country
48.A. S. Byatt - The Biographer's Tale
49.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
50.Emma Donoghue - The Sealed Letter
51.Anne Patchett - What Now? (nonfiction)
52.John Krakauer - Into the Wild (nonfiction)
53.Ed. Emma Forrestt - Damage Control (nonfiction)
54.Lauren M. Hunter - Mother of Tigers
55.John Krakauer - Under the Banner of Heaven (nonfiction)
56.Sarah Harvey - The Lit Report (YA)
57.Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris - The Crown of Columbus
58.Beth Goobie - Hello, Groin (YA)
59.Arundhati Roy - God of Small Things (PFitG)
60.Leanne Lieberman - Gravity (YA)
61.Shelley Hrdlitschka - Sister Wife (YA)
62.Marjane Satrapi - Embroideries (graphic novel)
63.Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry
64.Eileen Chang - Lust, Caution
65.Geling Yan - The Uninvited
66.Mary Anne Mohanraj - Bodies in Motion
67.Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart (PFitG)
68.Kate Grenville - The Secret River
69.Sheema Khan - Of Hockey and Hijab (nonfiction)
70.Robin McKinley - Chalice


This year I had a goal to read 50% books by known authors of colour. (Last year it was about 6/60.) I fell short, not even making it to a third, at 21/70. The purpose of the goal WAS more to make myself think about it, and I am still glad that I've made a good improvement from 10%, but I am also very disappointed in myself for not making the goal. So I will aim for 50% again next year, and I will also aim to exceed 50% rather than miss the mark.

I also didn't do very well with my Project Fill In the Gaps list, reading only 7/100!!! I still have four more years to go for that one (and the cut-off is early April, not January) but I'm behind nonetheless. So I am going to aim to catch up by reading 15-20 of the books on that list next year.

Even though I haven't read the books ON THAT LIST though, I have been reading lots more world lit than I used to. And I'm really enjoying it! I look forward to more translations and English books published outside of North America next year.

Also, I counted (although probably with a couple of counting errors!) the number of female authors, and I'm pleased with that--39 of the authors I read this year are women, and I read multiple books by three of them. (Including the two unpublished manuscripts on this list, which I shall not identify!)


And speaking of things to do next year, I'm also resolving to always say "twenty-ten" and never "two-thousand and ten." And I have good intentions of updating this blog more often!