Y'all know how much I love Sarah Rees Brennan's Unspoken, so I doubt that anyone's surprised that I'm trying to win an ARC of Untold. The lovely kiyala and I went into Sydney two weekends ago, me with my beautiful Unspoken hardcover, she with her ridiculously complicated looking camera, and these photos are the result.


In front of the pretty, Gothic-y gates in Hyde Park. I'm nowhere near as pretty as Angela Montgomery, and I don't have her dark hair, but I decided that I'd dress like her nonetheless.


A better view of the pretty gates. Kii's an insane perfectionist (AND I LOVE HER FOR IT), so there are actually about 10 more perfectly nice photos of me reading Unspoken in front of these gates. I'll spare you the repetition.


In front of one of the cathedrals in the city. I'm not sure which one, I'm not religious. As far as weird locations to be reading creepy gothic novels in Sydney go, I think I would have to actually climb the Opera House to get weirder looks than I got at the cathedral. (Sydneysiders are hard to shock, religious tourists aren't. And I'm not climbing the Opera House, I would get arrested.)


Technically, Sarah's instructions for the photo part of the competition said for us to be reading Unspoken. But how can I claim to be dressed as Angela if there isn't at least one photograph of me napping?


And finally, a closeup of my nails, which match the book cover. Unfortunately, the focus didn't catch the flower details on my thumb, but you can see the (extremely dodgy) autumn leaves on the rest of my nails.

One of these days, I will get photos taken of myself where I am not reading Sarah Rees Brennan books. Today is not that day.

See, I can follow through when I say I'm going to post things. Sometimes.

The following is a list of all of the books I read in 2012. It is not necessarily an endorsement of those titles. I love some of these books. Others I did not enjoy. Feel free to ask me directly if you want to know whether I think that a specific title is any good. Titles in italics are proof copies that I received free from the publisher through either my old job or my current one. Titles in bold are books which I re-read. Underlined titles are graphic novels or trade editions of comics.Titles in blue I borrowed from the library, and titles in red I borrowed from someone else, and their name is listed in brackets after the author. Yes, I put too much thought into these lists.

( Book List 2012Collapse ) This entry was originally posted at http://supergirl-sass.dreamwidth.org/664.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

So, I still haven't posted the books-I-read list for last year (have typed, will go up tomorrow along with a cool-shit-I-did wrap-up post). And I pretty much failed at Cottoncandy Bingo (I wrote 1 fic, which is up on AO3 but not yet posted to the comm). But yesterday Kii talked me into signing up to Trope Bingo (okay, she said 'this is a thing that exists!' and I said 'sign me up... I hate you.', as is traditional in our friendship), and I just got my card.

road trip	au: neighbors	wingfic	secret child	snowed in
soul bonding / soulmates	secret relationship	virginfic / secretly a virgin	truth or dare	accidental baby acquisition
accidental marriage	au: coffee shop	FREE ★ SPACE	au: steampunk	au: space
kidfic	au: other	presumed dead	handcuffed / bound together	genderswap
au: band	fake relationship	fuck or die	game night	celebratory kiss

I also signed up for a new Dreamwidth account under supergirl_sass (same as my twitter and tumblr, AO3 is just under Sass because I'm confusing like that), but I haven't actually committed to making the jump yet.

I finally replaced my old laptop after its sad death a few weeks ago. The new laptop's name is Starr, because reasons (Power Girl and Emily of New Moon, if you really want to know).

I'm writing this in the dark (because the lights were Keeping My Parents Awake, in a separate room which has a door) while waiting for Microsoft Office to download (it claims 20 minutes, but it has been telling me Shocking Lies all night, so who knows). Once I finally have Word again, I can type up all of the half-written fics in my notebook, and hopefully clear the writing queue a bit before November.

Of course, none of this is the most exciting thing to happen around these parts lately, because I GOT A JOB!!!! Actually, I got a totally awesome job, working as publicity co-ordinator for a publisher in the city. Which means I'm leaving the bookstore, finally. And that I will have an ages-long commute, which is Far Less Exciting than the rest of it.

I start the new job on the 29th of October, so either long commute+NaNo=win, or exhaustion+new things+NaNo=epic fail. We Shall See.

Wish me luck!

Finally posting this. And I owe you about four thousand updates, but anyway. I'll get to that.

So, it took me one week to break my new resolution. Show of hands, who here is not surprised?

It wasn't totally my fault, though. I got banned from the internet for a week for forgetting to put the mobile wi-fi thingy (technical term) back in its draw. Yes, my parents are lame and I need to move out.

Because I had no internet, I missed the release of the new Taylor Swift single 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together'. I have it now, though, and it is seriously awesome, pop and catchy and not at all country, so she's probably copping a lot of criticism over it. I don't care, I love it.

The night of my last update, I wound up clicking an ill-advised link on Han's twitter, and ended up signing up for Cottoncandy_bingo over on Dreamwidth (I would link, but LJ wouldn't load on the laptop, and embedding links on an iPad entry is a special kind of Hell). This was probably a bad idea.

Finally, there are two awesome comics projects I'm supporting over on Kickstarter. One is called Leaving Megalopolis, and is written by the amazing Gail Simone (Secret Six, Birds of Prey, the current Batgirl run... too much other awesomeness to name). It looks gritty and amazing. It's also fully funded, so I know it's going ahead, whether or not anyone else supports it.

The other one, which I only heard about today, is called Molly Danger, and is by Jamal Igle. Jamal, for those who haven't heard of him, is the artist who made me love Supergirl. During his run (with writer Sterling Gates, half at fault for my Supergirl thing but irrelevant to this particular conversation), Jamal redeemed my beloved Supergirl from the mess of confusion and panty shots that it had been, and made it fun, modern, young and completely underappreciated. He was the artist who first put a pair of shorts under Kara's tiny skirt. He dressed her out-of-uniform like an actual teenager, not like a stripper or a librarian. And then DC took him off the book, and then rebooted the universe and made it suck. But never mind my issues with the DCnU, Molly Danger has nothing to do with them (thank god).

Molly Danger is an all-ages comic, it's a superhero story which isn't dark and bitter, and it just looks like a lot of fun. I may cry if it doesn't go ahead. I can't describe it half so eloquently as Jamal himself has already done, so I'm bothering to look up the link. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mollydanger/molly-danger Please, if Molly Danger sounds at all your sort of a thing, please click. Please support. Please share. Again, if this doesn't happen, then I may cry.

Anyway, it's now half past when I meant to go to bed (only 9:30, but I have to be up at five), so I'm going to bed now.

So, I haven't posted here in.... approximately forever. I am really terrible about this 'updating' thing, and also my internet is permanently craptastic. I didn't even post my annual 'behold my proof that I read too much' Book List at the end of last year, because somewhere around Europe I lost track of what I finished and when, and then when I came home I couldn't find the original list for the rest of the year.

I don't write anything any more, and this needs to change. My new publishing internship(!!!) has proven to me that most book bloggers can't write for crap, and both my job and my internship whould be easier if somehow this changed.

Which brings me to the resolution part of this post.

From here on in, until I next get bored and wander off, I resolve to update this LiveJournal at least once a week. Hopefully this will establish positive habits, causing me to write more in general, and become more productive, or something.

Once I manage to make the whole updating thing into a habit, and prove to myself that I'm not actually completely useless, I'll look into starting a book blog. Goodness knows I read enough, and spend enough time recommending things to people.

So, yeah. New leaf, and all that. If I haven't updated this thing by next Saturday (I have a vague notion of Fridays becoming a regular update day, maybe, so I'm giving myself an extra day here), poke me with something sharp.

Or tie me to a chair until I update.

Stolen from everybody. You know how it goes.

Songs with no lyrics, songs that give away the title in the lyrics and certain ill-gotten bootlegs which no-one would know anyway skipped. Punctuation erratic. Shuffle taken from my iPod, Mae.

1. Rows and flows of angel hair, and ice cream castles everywhere
2. It's a very different sort of once-upon-a-time - Jack's Place, Seanan McGuire, guessed by Kii
3. County road 233 under my feet
4. Turn it inside out so I can see
5. Wandering the streets in a world underneath it all
6. Looking out on the pouring rain, I used to feel so uninspired.
7. If all our life is but a dream, fantastic posing greed
8. Well I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the lord - Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley, guessed by Azz
9. You'd never give up, I can't believe anything you say
10. Every day, I clock out, and head straight to her house
11. Every day, the wicked. Every day, the terror grows.
12. What you got, what you got, what you got, what you got
13. On the way home, this car is my confessions.
14. I'm packed and I'm holding, I'm smiling - Semi Charmed Life, Third Eye Blind, guessed by Azz
15. Love is a many-splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong - Elephant Love Medley, Moulin Rouge, guessed by Bec
16. I know you don't mean to be mean to me
17. I don't know whose side I'm taking, but I'm not taking things too well
18. Well, I've been saved by the grace of Southern charm
19. When I got to the party, they gave me a forty - Oasis, Amanda Palmer, gussed by Bec
20. Walk out, girl don't you walk out

Bonus round
21. When I first laid eyes on you, well the night just felt so odd
22. The sky, it keeps on changing colours in the rain
23. You say yes, I say no - Hello Goodbye, The Beatles, guessed by Azz
24. Everybody knows where you go when the sun goes down
25. I still remember the look on your face

I totally forgot to update. There have been a lot of miles between this post and the last, and now I'm nearly at the end of the trip, instead of the beginning. I'll update y'all on all of that at some point, probably once I get home.

I'm in Berlin until tomorrow, and then I fly out to Iceland. Then London again, then home.

Which brings me to the important bit of this post -

I will be in London from 27th of October until the 7th of November. And I would really, really like to meet up with the UKFish during that time, if possible.

I'll have to make a proper MarmFish post, since I don't follow all of the UKFish (I don't know some of them, and I'm shy. I'm sure everyone is lovely), but I wanted to get some idea of if and when everyone would be interested in doing this first.

So, if you're interested in a possible meetup, can you please let me know what dates would work best for you.

So tired and travel-weary I'm not even sure this post is in English.

I'm in Venice!

We were here for a couple days before our week-long island cruise (which I will talk about sometime when I don't have extremely time-limited Internet access), and have returned for a few days before we head to Hay-On-Wye (assuming we ever find accommodation).

Venice is hot, and very touristy. Which is, I admit, great fun.

As I said, Internet time limited, so details will have to wait.

Love you all, miss everyone madly.

Ciao!
Sass