Crafts:
All the Christmas gifts have been given except three at this point...two of those include craft projects that will have to be on the January blog. Sad. Oh well. All patterns came from different stores on etsy.com. If you don't use etsy yet, you should. It's like a miracle shopping mecca for people who craft!
First up, a wee owl dressed as Santa:
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| Christmas crafting is always a hoot! |
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| I think if snowflakes were all colorful like this one, people might like it better. |
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| Snowflake tree! |
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| That last really sums up how I feel on certain days. |
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| This is the kind of math we can all enjoy! |
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| It's a tree! Made of gears! That are green! |
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| Unikitty is unimpressed with your inability to be nice! |
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| It is! Everything is a trap all the time! |
Movies:
I saw three movies in December. The first was, of course, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. This was a lovely end to the trilogy and set us up nicely for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The battle was really cool. There was a lot of emotion in this. I kept waiting for Luke Evans to control those bats like he did in Dracula Untold, but it never happened. Shame. I think they really missed an opportunity there. Anyway, it's one of those that if you like them, you'll see it and like it as well.
Next up was Big Eyes. This was a nice little movie. I went in knowing nothing about it except it was about the artist who painted the "big eyed" paintings and had Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz playing the main characters. It's based on the story of the artist Keane, and how her husband took credit for her work and after years of what basically appeared to be emotional abuse, she left him and ended up suing him after he tried to blackmail her into creating more art for him. I really liked this movie a lot.
My last theater viewing of the year was Into the Woods. I've heard a lot of differing opinions on this, but I really, really liked it. It was ridiculous and over the top and all fairy tales! It was lots of fun. I think the funniest part to me was the song with the two princes complaining about who has it worse. But I also enjoyed Red Riding Hood's songs. It had a lot more laughter than I expected...perhaps more than it was meant to have? Anyway, I enjoyed it and that's what I wanted from it.
Books:
In December, I read: Prince Lestat by Anne Rice, Revival by Stephen King, Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett, Texts from Jane Eyre and Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters by Mallory Ortberg, and I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star by Judy Greer.
Prince Lestat was an all around surprise. I was browsing the book section in Target when I saw it and added it to my library request list. Apparently, not a lot of people around here knew about it, so I got it quickly. As you probably remember, Anne Rice and I have a troubled relationship...she keeps working through any crisis of faith through her writing and I keep getting really annoyed that she tries to cram her viewpoints down my throat through her words. In any case, the vampire books, that's what set off the initial rift. I loved the first and second books. Book three was horrible until exactly halfway through where it became the best book ever. Then books four and five started the cramming of beliefs. I got frustrated and didn't read anything else by her until the wolf books came out fairly recently. I liked the first one of those and the second one was pretty boring. So, that's why I chose a library request instead of buying the book...I wasn't willing to take the chance of spending money on something I wouldn't like. That said, it was kind of great. I loved catching up with all those characters. The cramming of beliefs was tempered somewhat by having written the wolf books before this. It was just a nice homecoming for all the vampire characters. I enjoyed it and since she left it open ended, I kind of hope there are more that follow. If you liked Interview with a Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, I think you'll enjoy this one as well.
Stephen King is another hit or miss writer for me. Of the more recent books, 11/22/63 was amazing...Doctor Sleep was a great sequel to The Shining...Mr. Mercedes was just not good to me. I was bored and didn't like the characters. Revival, though? Just a really, really great book. I don't think that I've read anything quite like it before. Preacher man turned carny turned faith healer turned obsessive, murdering freak...and the coming of age story of the boy whose path was intricately tied to him. It was engrossing and I didn't like putting it down to do things like work and sleep. I highly recommend this one.
Edge of Eternity was the third book of Follett's Century Trilogy. It was just as good as the other to books. The focus this time was civil rights, the rise and fall of the Soviet Bloc, the Vietnam War, the Kennedys, and there was an epilogue of the Obama inauguration. In other words, it covered the last third of the century. It was good...I got a little confused at the beginning as to which family lines were being followed, but I caught on pretty quickly...probably because the second book had been a recent read. If I'd waited a year or something, no way would I have remembered them all this time. The trilogy as a whole was good, but it's a definite time commitment from readers.
Texts from Jane Eyre was extremely silly, but that was the point. The author created conversations between literary characters in text form. Some of them made me laugh out loud. For the most part though, this was complete fluff.
Judy Greer is an actress I've liked for a while, so I'd been meaning to read her book since it came out. I'm really glad I finally did...she's even more hilarious in book form. If you like laughing and know who Greer is, you'll want to read this. She's a very normal person with a great perspective on being an actress and all the insanity that comes with it.
That's it for 2014. I've already seen two movies in 2015 and I'm on my second book. More to come!
