The Last Post of the Year!

Well, the last day of 2011. What a year it has been-- new friends, new adventures, a cross-country move. It's been a year of good things, a year of sad things, and a year of growth and learning. But here I am again, just as last year, in Staunton with Zan, looking forward to champagne, Auld Lang Syne, and a midnight kiss. We exchanged Christmas presents earlier today, and I now own a Hark a Vagrant shirt that reads "History is Very Serious," and Zan and I gave each other panda hats.

Also, here we go! My reading list from the past year. These are only books that I completed from cover to cover. There were many other things read though-- chapters, essays, articles, almost-but-not-quite-all of several books, lots of eighteenth-century court documents and orderbooks-- I mean, come on, I'm in grad school. I basically read for a living. So, while the list is just at 60 titles, I assure you I've read and read and read.

Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger; Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff; The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson; Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Stieg Larsson; Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt; The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje;Arcadia, Tom Stoppard; Catherine, Called Birdy, Karen Cushman, Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, John Ford, ed. Martin Wiggins; The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins; Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronté; In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), Sarah Ruhl; The Real Thing, Tom Stoppard; Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins; Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins; The Winter's Tale, William Shakespeare; The Lady and the Unicorn, Tracy Chevalier; Heaven to Betsy, Maud Hart Lovelace; Mother Bombie, John Lyly; Inkheart, Cornelia Funke; Betsy's Wedding, Maud Hart Lovelace; The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Catherynne M. Valente; The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho;Mucedorus, Anonymous (sometimes att. to Shakespeare); Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen; Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert; Ain't She Sweet?, Susan Elizabeth Phillips; Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin; Lady Margaret's Ghost: A Felicity Mystery, Elizabeth McDavid Jones; The Giver, Lois Lowry; Trifles, Susan Glaspell; A Number, Caryl Churchill; Traitor in Williamsburg: A Felicity Mystery, Elizabeth McDavid Jones; Shadow Spinner, Susan Fletcher; La Celestina, Fernando de Rojos; Peril at King's Creek: A Felicity Mystery, Elizabeth McDavid Jones; La Mirtilla, Isabella Andreini; Oedipus Rex, Sophocles (trans. Robert Fagles); The Knight of Olmedo, Lope de Vega; The School for Husbands, Molière; Secret History, Procopius (trans. Richard Atwood);Hamlet, William Shakespeare; The Lavish Lovers, Molière; A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, Charlotte Charke; Tartuffe, Molière; The Widow Ranter, Aphra Behn; Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett; Isadora: My Life, Isadora Duncan; Fences, August Wilson; Purge, Sofi Oksansen; The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Jane Wagner; Interpreting the Theatrical Past: Essays in the Historiography of Performance, eds. Tom Postlewait and Bruce A. McConachie; Pyretown, John Belluso;The Illusion, Tony Kushner; Felicity's Surprise, Valerie Tripp; Garrick's Folly, J.M Stochholm; The Theatre of Illusion, Pierre Corneille; The Matchmaker of Perigord, Julia Stuart

Happy New Year, everyone!