You know, there were definitely a lot of positive things about 2007, but my instinctive reaction to the end of the year is "good riddance." I think it's because of the start (family and personal health issues, difficulties at work) and the end (personal health issues regressing, winter blehs), on the primacy/recency principles.
Anyway. In 2007 Chad sold his book, to our great excitement and bogglement. We took short trips to Boston, New York City, and Michigan (no-content comment), and long trips to St. John and to Japan. We went to Boskone, Worldcon, and World Fantasy Con. I went to Readercon.
We saw more live performances than I'd remembered: Richard Thompson; Buffalo Tom; Amos Lee, Elvis Costello, and Bob Dylan; Steven Wright; and Bruce Springsteen.
We bought an exercise bike. I discovered del.icio.us and developed grandiose plans for its use. I became an aunt.
I went warm and then cold on Heroes and Fables; fell in love with Princess Tutu; and didn't read as much as I wanted, though that's not cause-and-effect. Of the new-to-me stuff on the booklog, these were the most notable, exciting, or enjoyable:
- The Rabbi's Cat, Joann Sfar (sequel coming in a few months!)
- Antique Bakery, Fumi Yoshinaga
- Sarah Monette's books
- Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights, Kenji Yoshino
- Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
- Agnes and the Hitman, Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer
- Mr. Impossible, Loretta Chase
(Shaun Tan's The Arrival would be on this list but I keep failing to have enough brains to do it justice.)
I went another year without finishing The Tale of Genji, though I read up to the transitional end-of-book chapters while in St. John.
And I wrote a heck of a lot here, as shown by these posts with the most comments (anything over 40, for these purposes; sorted by month not number because they clump):
February:
- Circumstantial Evidence - 49 comments
March:
- Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets (spoilers) - 41 comments
April:
- Silly guess-the-movie - 47 comments
May:
- Buffy 1x01, "Welcome to the Hellmouth"; 1x02, "The Harvest" - 46 comments
- Bittercon: Napoleonic Wars in SF/F - 71 comments
- Bittercon: Risky Narrative Strategies - 69 comments
- Bittercon: Levels and Limits of Metafictionality - 49 comments
- Bittercon panel: Thieves Guilds and Other Criminal Societies - 66 comments
- Bittercon: Wish Fulfillment - 45 comments
August:
- IBARW: Reading Through Defaults - 113 comments
- IBARW: (Almost) all of the conventional race labels are dumb. - 45 comments
- IBARW: Don't ask me my nationality. - 61 comments
November:
- World Fantasy Con: What Are the Taboos in Fantasy Today? - 97 comments
- song with the fewest words - 42 comments
- Unintentionally Racist Small Talk, Holiday Edition - 68 comments
Books, movies, tv, race, and reader-participation entries. Sounds representative enough of the year on LJ.
