Year in review 2007

[liv]

My own version of the end of year meme, since I don't like the standard ones:

Significant Events

Actually, this section is a bit depressing, because I feel like almost nothing has happened this year, I've been marking time a bit.

I went to two really good gigs, Levellers and VNV Nation.

My cousin got married [], and so did ploni_bat_ploni.

MF and doseybat visited me in Sweden.

I went on a whirlwind tour of Northern Europe, visiting Finland and Estonia for the first time, Germany for the first time properly, and Holland for the first time.

I got very deeply involved in the Progressive group, leading services, sitting on the board, teaching the bar mitzvah class and so on.

Other than that I had some excellent trips to England and saw lots of cool people. I spent the first part of the year hanging out with ploni_bat_ploni, and missed her terribly after she finished her course and left the country. Lots of people unexpectedly turned out to be romantically interested in me, but I stayed single. Oh, and I went to Limmud, but I haven't written that up properly yet.

Books

Geoff Ryman: The Child Garden

Pearl Buck: The good earth

Kate Atkinson: Human Croquet

Ian McDonald: Terminal Café

Anthony Price: The labyrinth makers

56 books total this year, 10 of which I haven't got round to reviewing yet. More rereads than usual, cos I ran out of books a bit. But I had good fun rereading Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, AS Byatt's Babel Tower, JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, Salman Rushdie's The ground beneath her feet (I finally heard the U2 song that goes with it on Radio Paradise the other week!), and my perennial favourite GB Edwards' The book of Ebenezer Le Page.

Music

Hem: Radiation Vibe

Emmylou Harris: Sweet sorrow in the wind

Placebo: Pure morning

VNV Nation: The Farthest Star

Jennifer Warnes and Leonard Cohen: Joan of Arc

LJ posts

misia: Paedophilia and censorship

kassrachel: Midrash and fanfic

yuki_onna: Porn

trinityva: The cult of feminism

siderea: Attitude (if I had to pick just one LJ post to represent this year, this would be the one.)

My posts

MMR and autism

Sex stereotypes

Creationism

Faustian Dream

Women online


Creativity

sovay: Hanukkah (writing)

Nanoknitting (craft, not on LJ)

dduane: Invictus (creative writing, and yes, this is the real Diane Duane)

pleonastic: Synaesthesia (poetic meme)

gnimmel: Death and Taxis (cartoon, and clearly the best thing posted on all of the internet, let alone LJ, in 2007)

Wonderful friends

doseybat

pseudomonas

hatam_soferet

ploni_bat_ploni

rysmiel

People I love and wish I'd seen more of

lethargic_man

darcydodo

compilerbitch

blue_mai

ewtikins

People I'm really glad I got to know better

syllopsium

cartesiandaemon

timeplease

deborah_c

rho

New to my friendlist

siderea

skibbley

friend_of_tofu

wotyfree

miss_next

Friends from elsewhere who joined LJ

isolani

hobbitz (yay, I've been hoping and hoping she'd join the party!)

Comments

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

:¬) *waves*

I just rid the Midrash & fanfic post. Thank you for linking to that, it was absolutely excellent. I'm afraid my own journal is never going to produce anything that profound, but hey, it's better with you on my f-list, I'm sure.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Um, I "read" it! *blushes*

[liv]

There are some seriously brilliant writers on my friends list, but they're not the reason why I hang out on LJ. It's more like a giant and ongoing party; there might be people there who come up with some brilliant remark sometimes, but mostly I'm just enjoying the good company. And people who comment on my long survey posts in the middle of the weekend are always encouraging, so thank you!

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

I finished the book "Children of the New Forest" which is Childrens' Historical novel. It was very exciting. It starts explain the conflict between King Charles I and the Parlament and Cromwell. Then it starts the actually story. It about four children whose father was killed during the war. They lived in Arnwood in a mansion. The forester who was obviously a good friend of the family overheard that Cromwell's troops were going to burn down the mansion. He took the four children and all servants (aunt refused to come) with him. The servants went their own way but the children lived with him. They learnt how to support themselves. The forester was very old and knew who would die soon. The oldest took then care of his younger brother and his sisters. They had a quite good life. He made friends with other people and found out that the Roundhead was actually not in favour of Cromwell. He only pretended to be. He went through lots of adventures until he finally had the chance with help of the fake Roundhead to get his position back but he actually did not know until the end that he had help from him. It is really exiting and worth reading.

[liv]

Cool. I read that book when I was quite young and couldn't remember all that much about it until you reminded me. But it's good fun, yes.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

*smile*hug* Thank you for the inclusion on the friends heading, and I am also very chuffed to be responsible for the majority of the year's memorable books.