"you catch your breath and winter starts again"

 How to sum up a month?  (My goal is to do this every month)

 

I read books.  The five best of this month are

 

Seanan McGuire's In an Absent Dream  (standalone in their Wayward Children series).  This made me cry.  Delight said it was the world we probably would have gone to and I think they're right, the idea of fairness and bargains and what earns you what basically makes my bones ring like a tuning fork.

 

Ashley Poston's Geekerella.  Sure, it's a YA romance.  But it's also a love letter to fandom, and again about who owns what, the people who produce something or the people who love it or both or neither.  Suffered a little from the unrepentantly evil stepmother and stepsister (the other stepturns out to be not-evil and queer and yay)

 

Both of these I would heartly recommend.  The next three I liked, but would have caveats.

 

Gail Carriger's Competence (Custard Protocol, Book 3) I'm a sucker for this author (though I've discovered I like her period-ish pieces a lot better than her contemporary ones so far). This was also adorable and queer and involves an airship that looks like a ladybug and a bunch of people being delightfully themselves. But it also felt a little plot-thin, and there were a lot of things that just weren't explored.  Prim's relationship with Tash involved a lot of orientation questioning on Prim's part, but not why she actually liked Tash.

 

Cynthia Hand's My Plain Jane.  So, Jane Eyre but with ghosts and absurdity and so much tongue in cheek.  I adored the pop culture references which are many and well worked in  (she actually gets to have a character exclaim "“I would’ve gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids" and "nevertheless she persisted") and there's a delightful amount of confusion involved in conversations where some people can perceive the ghosts and some can't.  It's almost a little too slapstick, and Jane's preoccupation with marrying a Rochester gets dull quickly, but other characters save it.

 

Sherry Thomas's The Hollow of Fear (Lady Sherlock, book 3).  I like Thomas's romances, there are fun moments in their fantasy series, but the Lady Sherlock is where they really shine. The plot on this one also feels a little bit like the author just kept throwing things at it to see what stuck, but the ways in which a Sherlock character would be damaged still deeply intrigues me and this book did not disappoint and the examination of how would a sherlock-type woman in Victorian times deal with matters of sex and love was both fun and kind of heartbreaking.  I don't love Charlotte's romantic interest as a character, but he provides an interesting foil.

 

Five top dishes I cooked.  (only one of these is new to me) 

 

Moosewood Lowfat's baked mac and cheese.  I would eat this forever.  We make it a lot.

 

From the Moosewood Restaurant Table's Red Bean and Squash mole was so good that Light declared it not only good, but his favorite preparation of butternut squash to date. I'm still going to try to make it again with sweet potato instead but I suspect it will be in heavy winter rotation.

 

Moosewood restaurant's new classics - biscuit topped potpie, with the mushrooms subbed with seitan and the peas with edamame.  I think I might need to tinker with the biscuit topping.  I don't exactly understand all the science of biscuits (Alton brown come save me) but I think I either need aluminium-free baking powder or some sugar, because they're just on the edge of tasting bitter.

 

Vegetable Heaven's Eggflower soup - Light had a wicked cold at the beginning of the year, so I made him the soup that I also always want when I'm sick, which basically involves two heads of roasted garlic, a head of unroasted garlic, pasta shells and some tofu.  You sweat garlic the next day but it's sooo satisfying.

 

Chocolate chip cookies.  Basic, but delicious and I got to pass them out at the convention and I still love feeding people it turns out.  

 

Notable events.
 

The Porter Square Books New Year's day sale.  Possibly my favorite winter holiday tradition.

The convention

I turned 43 and went to OIeana to celebrate

Delight had their port-removal surgery and it went well.

Heard back from my tattoo artist - now I just get to schedule an appointment

 

There's a second, maudlin post connected to this month about my ongoing struggles with identity and being social and existing in the world, but this post is for the triumphs.