New Year! January Reading, yay! :)

Last year is past, and I think it's time to focus on what's new. And I have to say, I started off this year with some very very good books. :)

M. John Harrison - Light
After listening to my friend's conference presentation in November, which I only half understood, I pretty much immediately went out and acquired this intricacy of a novel. It is quite indescribable, but well worth reading. I have to admit I read it wrong - thinking it Book 1 of a trilogy, intended to be read as a trilogy, I read it as such, always thinking "There will be explanations later, because this is just the first, right?". This is definitely the wrong way to approach the beauty of this. Take it as it is, for what it is.

China Miéville - London's Overthrow
Such a small book, but what content! I read some of this before, when it was published online. However, noe living in this city, and looking back at the Olympics, this offers a lot more. 

Ben Aaronovitch - Rivers of London
Urban fantasy in my favourite city? Alright! Even though it shares some similarities with the Dresden Files, it is entirely its own thing. I was not happy with all of it, but I give it the benefit of being a first-time novel, and will certainly give the second one in the series a try as well. Lots of good, interesting ideas, but maybe a little disconnected yet, a little hard to follow. I always loathe it when an in-book-character says something like "Suddenly I understood everything" - and I don't. At all. Well. Maybe next time. :)

The reason I'm reading a little slower than I should be is, sadly, that I'm more or less reading around five books at the same time (right now: Is that a fish in your ear?, Coriolanus, Experiences in Translation, Cold Days, The City and the City) plus articles for university etc., so actually getting to the end something is, these days, a little rare. It just takes time.

However, I'd still like my goal remain the same. 52 books. I can so do this. :)

2013 books

London is so much around me, writing about it will still have to wait. Rather, I'll finish my 2013 book list, and see where this year of reading has taken me.

The last post was in October...so let's start from there.

October (continued)
Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons - Watchmen
Hajime Isayama - Attack on Titan #1
Hajime Isayama - Attack on Titan #2

November
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: Overture, Issue 1

December
China Miéville - Kraken
Tony Parsons - The Family Way
Peter S. Beagle -The Last Unicorn
Eiichiro Oda - One Piece #68

This adds four novels to my count, plus three manga books, and an actual bona fide comic issue (which really doesn't count as a whole book, but...so lovely).

Which means, in total, I've read 50 books/novels, and 26 manga volumes - plus a lot of articles and book chapters for university, and a lot of rereading One Piece for a conference I attended in May, which I didn't list here.Not quite the "1 book a week" I was aiming for, but considering all that happened this year, I think I'm happy with that result. :)

I might do a complete list of books read like last year, because that just makes for awesome reading. I might also do some reviews/comments on what I've read. We'll see. :)

Books now, London later

I'm a little shocked that I haven't posted anything since MARCH. So much happened in the meantime - I mean, I'm currently living in a different city, in a different country, in a completely different way than I did for the past few years (being a full-time student again...feels really weird)...and while I thought about writing, I didn't. But right now, all I want to do, need to do, is collect together a list of all the books I read between March and now, because...well, I'm curious. Am I close to my goal, or do I need to catch up in the next couple of months? Let's see...

April 
Diana Wynne Jones - Howl's Moving Castle
Rumiko Takahashi - Inuyasha Band 1-21
Jim Butcher - Ghost Story
Diana Wynne Jones - Castle in the Sky
Diana Wynne Jones - House of Many Ways
Erich Origen & Gan Golan - The Adventures of Unemployed Man

May 
Haruki Murakami - South of the Border, West of the Sun
Paris-Bildband aus 198
Eiichiro Oda - One Piece 66
Here comes Snoopy
You've got it made, Snoopy
Garfield - Let's Party
Garfield - Why do you hate Mondays?
Gehört und notiert
Ewig junge Liebe
Luciano De Crescenzo - Sokrates

June 
Robert Misik - Marx für Eilige
Karen Joy Fowler - The Jane Austen Book Club

July
Arthur Golden - Die Geisha
Gerd Ruebenstrunk - Das Wörterbuch des Viktor Vau

August
Eiichiro Oda - One Piece 67
Cornelia Funke - Tintenblut
Gideon Defoe - The Pirates! in an adventure with the Romantics

September
Alan Campbell - Sea of Ghosts

October (so far)
Craig Thompson - Blankets 
Alison Bechdel - Fun Home

...well. I'd all forgotten about the Inuyasha phase. Counting all the manga, I'm at 69 books. Leaving all of them out, I'm still at 46, so nearly there. Wow. Pretty good. :)
And soon, at least a teensy little bit about where I'm now and what I'm doing and WHY.

March Reading

So...where's March gone so quickly? Seems all I did was work and learn about taxes and marketing, start to grumble about the constant snow, and spend the rest of the time waiting for better times. Quick hint: That hardly ever works.

Anyway, I did manage to get some reading done. Not as much as I wanted. But some.

Jim Butcher - Small Favour
Jim Butcher - Turncoat
Jim Butcher - Changes
Jim Butcher - Sidejobs

Will Eisner - Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative
Scott McCloud - Understanding Comics

No reviews today. I might do them later. Or never. These are all books worthy of reading, that's all I can say. Loved every single one of them.

Now that I look at it, my reading fell in just two groups - reading Dresden Files and reading about comics. You may ask, why, that's 6 books, that's not bad for a month. What more did you mean to accomplish? And my answer is this: March is not simply March anymore, it has become DWJ March. DWJ as in Diana Wynne Jones, beloved British fantasy author, who I knew nothing about until I discovered that one of my favourite movies, Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle, was based on one of her books. Which I then read, and fell in love with as completely as I could.
So the idea was to read a lot of DWJ in March (even though I only found out about it on the 14th or so), participate in the #howlalong (ie watch the movie and post on Twitter, all people at the same time), and generally have a good time. None of which worked. What I did was sort of participate in the #howlalong, only just in the gap between the two scheduled viewings (hah), then I discovered that I'd lent my book to my aunt (in Germany) and had to borrow another copy from a friend (and only managed to get it 2/3 read so far, haha), and I bought the two follow-up books to Howl which I thankfully found out exist, which my boyfriend is reading now (hahaha). Well, at least one of us is getting some DWJ books into him. :P
And that, my friends, is the main reason I'm a little unhappy with that reading list. As well as the fact that I started the next Dresden book around two weeks ago (or more?), and have not progressed beyond maybe the halfway point. Maybe. I'm not even blaming it on the book. The second half of March had me going a little off the comfortable daily structure I had tried to establish for myself, and the end of March has now successfully thrown my carefully laid plans for self-employed bliss a little off track...and reading is sort of taking backseat to thinking and researching and cleaning the flat to order my thoughts. And writing a long-overdue conference paper. On comics, yep, see above. (Secondary reason I'm not happy with that list, I thought there'd be much more stuff on comics.)

Anyway...I did read a lot, and that unhappiness about the list not being long enough is definitely due to unrealistic expectations and me being a little unhappy generally right at this moment. Nothing to worry about, this too shall pass, and soon enough. :)

February Reading

I guess I'm not really getting the 'blog once a week' thing done yet, but hey, here's some books I read. For a change.

Jim Butcher, Dead Beat
This was a little odd, because I didn't recognise some of the bad guys as bad guys until quite late in the book. I didn't get the reasoning employed. Oh well. Other than that, it was a lot of fun. :)

Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty
Also a little odd. Hm, maybe because the books have turned away from the formula they had going in the beginning. I really enjoy that they're getting more and more interconnected. :)

Quellen heiterer Tierweisheit
One of those small books you buy to give a little gift to someone. However, this one is really really nice - nice paper, nice illustrations, different styles of script used for each saying...very nice. I think in the 90s we had a lot of these going around. Wonder if they're still being produced...

Jim Butcher, White Night
Yay, vampires! Pretty crazy. Maybe even really crazy.

Neil Gaiman, Odd and the Frost Giants
Quick little read. Very funny, and touching. First 'short' story I read by him. I know, I know. :P Guess I really should go and finally read the Calendar of Tales stories...so much magic in so few words.

Nitya Lacroix, 101 Essential Tips Relaxation
I bought this one ages ago. Probably in 1999, when on holiday in the USA. Back then, I was stuffed to the brim with teenage angst and relationship problems, and quite rightly thought I needed to relax. Didn't work that well, but hey.
Now, many many years later, I'm stuffed to the brim with work that needs to be done and rightly think I need to relax. The tips given now also make more sense to me than they did way back when. Slowly getting to implementing at least some of them.

Andreas Platthaus, Die 101 wichtigsten Fragen. Comics und Manga.
Research! YES! Research for a paper I should have sent in yesterday (...), actually. Well, they'll get it on Tuesday or something. Anyway...RESEARCH. Ahahahaha.
(In relating news, I found out yesterday that something called 'Game Studies' actually exists...not that I doubted that it did, somewhere, or would soon, but...there's an Austrian university that is actually doing some work in that area. Honestly, I'm slowly starting to think that my university here is one of the most backwards places in literary studies you could find. :P)

And right now I'm in the middle of:
Jim Butcher - Small Favour
Jim Butcher - Side Jobs (reading the stories when appropriate)
Frederik L. Schodt - Dreamland Japan. Writings on Modern Manga.

More wizards, more research. And then only four more Dresden books to go and I'm finally caught up. Phew!

Lent

After a thoroughly uneventful Shrove Tuesday (except for a change in hair colour, but technically that happened on Monday) which I spent at the office (yes I'm back at the office again, temporarily), and then cleaning up our apartment, scrubbing the bath (green everywhere, heh) etc, I feel like I should still make some sort of commitment for Lent. I thought about it for a while. Alcohol is always a great idea, but as I'll be spending next week with a group who will definitely place a glass of wine in front of me every evening, no matter what, and there's several birthdays coming up as well, this one seems a little hard to do. Going off Facebook also seems neat, but as there's several people who only ever contact me via FB, and I sometimes need to check on things my computer game-developing clients (hehe, 'clients'...) post, this is also not as feasible as I would like it to be.
Instead, I chose, maybe somewhat cowardly, coffee and chocolate. Cowardly because I'm already trying to avoid them anyway. And because I don't desperately need my morning coffee like some do. Still, it might help. I'll try the Quit Sugar thing again come spring, so this should prepare me somewhat as well.

What I'm also trying to get rid of (I can't avoid it per se, but I really don't want it) is all that anxiousness about people's reactions towards me. My hair is now an anime-worthy shade of emeral green and basically looks like I'm test-driving a wig for Comic-Con. People WILL react to that. I generally have this instinct to try to hide, and to fret endlessly about what people will say. And you know what? So far my colleagues have said nothing but "Ooooh, great! Awesome! Keep it like that! Great colour!", and even if they didn't, what would it matter? Instead of worrying I should rather go out there with a big smile. So that's what I'll try to do. After all, it's not like this is going to wash out tomorrow. ;)

And maybe I'll manage to get back to getting rid of some unnecessary stuff every day. You know, throw away some redundant paper stuff (old magazines, study materials I will never again need or even look at, random papers), get rid of old cosmetics, register some books for Bookcrossing (and set them free), stuff like that. A little every day, and suddenly there's a whole lot of space on all the shelves - at least that's what I'm hoping for. :)

January Reading

Sooo, January seems to be over. The sun was out and the weather was really nice today, and yesterday too (I just spent yesterday mostly asleep or reading, while lazily admiring the bright blue sky I could see through my windows while today I actually ventured outside). I'm all for clouds and loads of snow and cold, because, let's face it, it's winter, and that's where these things should occur. But I'm also all for stormy nights which clear the skies and the sun putting a hint of spring in the air. Because, hey, it's February. :)

Anyway, on the 6th I put down a tentative reading list for January:
All Manga Power
As much Dresden Files as I manage
Humble Bundle - Signal to Noise, xkcd, SMBC, maybe more
Michelle Goodman - Don't just read, WORK!
...which I then swiftly forgot about, and only really kept to in one point. You'll soon notice which.

So, here's what I read last month...

Cornelia Funke, Tintenherz 
 I've been meaning to read this one for ages. And I borrowed the book from a friend I think in February 2012. So, high time I finally got to it. I read it the first days of the new year, which was great...two days of just lying back and read. After the stressful time I had before, during and right after Christmas, it was bliss.
I admit that I watched the film maybe 2 years ago, maybe a little less. It's nice, but it's also nothing like the book, no matter how much I may like Helen Mirren. Although maybe I'll watch it again now and see whether I like it any better.
The second in the trilogy is already on my shelf...soon...soon. :)

Anthony Horowitz, Groosham Grange
This was...odd. The cover claimed it to be something akin to Roald Dahl. And to be funny. But as it happens, it turned out to be neither. If it's anything at all, then it's one the books J.K. Rowling must have used for inspiration. Kids mysteriously receiving mysterious letters from a mysterious school. Three of them travelling there together by train. Teachers being mysterious (werewolves, ghosts etc). Mysterious mirrors. Etc. Just that...it was neither fun nor really exciting, there was a lot of sort of senseless violence, and...I really didn't care for it. Maybe I was too old, I suppose younger readers might enjoy it more. Who knows.

Jim Butcher, Fool Moon
Ah, the Dresden Files. After telling my boyfriend for a long, long time that I would most probably not read them, I turned around that decision over the past couple of years, listened to some of the audiobooks a year or so ago...and now decided to take the plunge and make my way through the books. Since the first one (Stormfront) is currently with my aunt, and I pretty much know it by heart anyway (audiobook plus reading the graphic novel version several times...seems to be enough), I started with #2. I already knew the audiobook, so no big surprises there. But I think I've got a better grasp on things now than when merely listening to the story. Reading really is a very different thing. 

Ales Kot, Wild Children
 Very short, rather odd comic. Not sure I get it yet. Maybe there is nothing to get as such (or so the comic itself claims). A lot of ideas. A lot of playing around with things. Food for thought.

Jim Butcher, Grave Peril


The journey continues. I knew this one as well, but reading really made a difference.

Jim Butcher, Summer Knight


And on, and on. I got a little annoyed with this one (and the ones before), because while reading I noticed some plotholes, some inconsistencies, that I hadn't when listening. In the last one it was mostly switching the names of minor characters, but here a whole subplot is resolved with an explanation that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I still enjoyed the book, and it didn't take too much away, but still.

Jim Butcher, Death Masks
So, this one was as far as I'd got with the audiobooks. I stopped somewhere around the last third, I think. Idiotic, really. Anyway, reading it was a lot of fun. Finally getting to places I hadn't experienced before was GREAT. :)

Eiichiro Oda, One Piece # 65
And here it is: The culprit which messed up my sleeping pattern (if you can call it that) for the week. The book arrived Monday. I only started reading shortly before midnight. And when I finished it, I did something I had tried to avoid so far: I grabbed my boyfriend's tablet, turned on his manga reading app and read the next several chapters as well (I guess #66 will hold no surprises for me when it comes out  in May :P). I NEEDED to know how the current story arc ended. For SCIENCE. (I kid you not.) Anyway, that kept me up far too long, and I only tore myself away (story arc already being long over, ladeeda) with a lot of self-discipline. And a sort of annoyed look at the clock.
What can I say about #65? Pretty much as expected, it mostly shows off the things the Mugiwaras have learned during their break from pirating. No challenge for them anywhere. But then, there is sudden use of words like "holy war" and their enemies being "hollow" because they only fight because they have been told it is the only way to exist...it is tradition...it must be done...and you get a glimpse of the past where they commit terrorist acts not because *they* have been hurt but because they think it *must* be done...
It made me think about when One Piece had started being social commentary. I always thought that only really started with Enie's Lobby. But then again...what about Alabasta? What about Kokos? It's way more explicit now, of course, which makes it such great material for my presentation, but the basic idea has always been there: "I will protect my friends against bullies/tyrants." And it does not matter who it is, against whom or what...gender, race, species...no matter at all.
I KNOW I will go crazy over writing that paper, because I always go crazy. But boy, will it be fun!

Jim Butcher, Blood Rites
My sleep did not get much better with this one. Great to find out what addiction feels like. Reading while eating. Reading while drinking. Almost reading while cooking. Not sleeping when I should. Grabbing the next book as soon as the last one is finished. Small wonder none of the people I owe some finished work to haven't already strangled me.
I won't say much about the book. But vampires are scary things. Even the pretty ones. :P

Jim Butcher, Dead Beat
Finished this one last night. WOW. Some parts had me a little confused, because certain things just weren't as obvious to me as they were to Mr. Dresden, but hey. Bob the Dinozombie. What else can I say? WOW.
I also really enjoy the fact that after the first three or four books, they are now flowing more into each other. There are more cross-references, you get more of a feel of things from one book having a major influence on another. Nice. :)

And there they are. Ten books in one month. Don't ask me about work, but woooo. 10 books. :D
And the thing is...I really need to finish the Dresden Files (14 books published so far = 7 more to go) before I can read anything else, at least anything longer than...well, one One Piece volume, it seems. So...just don't expect my February list to look very different. And then I'll finally be able to stop clapping my hands over my ears and singing silly songs to myself whenever my boyfriend meets the other avid Harry fan in my circle of friends. Whew!

2012 Book List

So, here is my reading list for 2012, as complete as it gets. It doesn't include some things I read for uni (all those short stories and papers), and probably not all the audiobooks I listened to, but I think otherwise it should be complete. I don't have the author for every book, especially for the beginning months, maybe I'll add those later.
I also started several books and didn't finish them. They won't be mentioned here.

1. The Wee Free Men
2. A hat full of sky
3. Wintersmith
4. I shall wear midnight (all four by Terry Pratchett)
5. The English Patient
6. Return to Harken House
7. 12 balls of yarn for Granny Owl (my own translation)
8. The God of Small Things
9. Midnight's Children
10. Things fall apart
11. Disgrace
X. One Piece #1-61
12. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman.
13. Roald Dahl's Incredible Chocolate Box
14. Neil Gamian, Anansi Boys
15. Neonomicon - Alan Moore
16. The Gift (1st Book of Pellinor) - Alison Croggon
26. Y: The Last Man 1-10 - Brian K. Vaughan (+ various artists)
27. Quite ugly one morning - Christopher Brookmyre
28. The Songs of Distant Earth von Arthur C. Clarke
29. Gamekeeper - Guy Ritchie (Andy Diggle, Mukesh Singh)
30. Elaine St. James - Living the simple life
31. Know Alls Facts of Life
32. Dr. Seuss - Oh, the places you'll go
33. Alina Pete - Weregeek Volume 1 - The Geek Within
34. One Piece #63
35. Roald Dahl - Kuschelmuschel (engl. title: Switch Bitch, 4 short stories)
36. Truman Capote - Frühstück bei Tiffay
37. Michelle Goodman - My so-called freelance life
X. Jim Dodge - Fup (read by Harry Rowohlt) (audiobook)
X.  Banana Yoshimoto - Kitchen (read by Jessica Schwarz) (audiobook)
X.  Giovanni Boccaccio - Decamerone (novella 5, 16, 18, 20 and 28) (audiobook)
X. That scary Neil Gaiman short story (audiobook)
38. Grüne Smoothies (GU)
39. The Anti 9-5 Guide, Michelle Goodman
40. Wishcraft, Barbara Sher
41. Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan
42. Nero Corleone, Elke Heidenreich
43. Focus on Facts #5 Unsolved Mysteries, Neville Randall + Gary Keane
44. Hubert spannt aus und andere Geschichten aus der Business Class, Martin Suter
45. Your shopping list from outer space and other articles, Rewritten by L.A.Hill
46. Die Schrift II, Grazer Autorenkollektiv (GRAUKO)
47. The Witches, Roald Dahl
49. J.W. v. Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (Fassung A+B)
50. Goethe, Die Wahlverwandschaften
51. Still Goethe, Faust I 
52. Mary Poppins, Pamela L. Travers
53. One Piece 64, Eiichiro Oda
54. The Big Five for Life, John P. Strelecky56. Blaue Flecken auf der Seele, Francoise Sagan
57. Ophelia lernt schwimmen, Susanna Kubelka
58. Geschmacklosigkeiten von A bis Z, Karl Shaw
59. Wanted, Eiichiro Oda
60. The Last Hero, Terry Pratchett/Paul Kidby
61. Paul Watzlawick, Anleitung zum Unglücklichsein
62. Literatur für AussteigerInnen, Oder wie sich die Welt ohne Auto bewegt
63. Paul Wilson, Das kleine Buch der Freude
64. Gregory Maguire, Mirror Mirror
65. Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen, incl. Moonlight Shadow
66. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Nachtflug
67. Das kleine Kamasutra

67 books, plus 4 audiobooks that I know of, plus 61 additional books of manga (because I reread all of One Piece). If I subtract the mangas completely, it would still be 64 books, so I guess that's fine.
Now, of course, some of those books were really just tiny booklets, but even if I subtract those, I'm still above 52. So, success!
What I especially like about this list is that I managed to read some of those books I've been meaning to read forever. Tifanny Aching. The Last Hero. Sagan. Ophelia. American Gods. Things like that. And it' been GREAT. I wonder what this year will bring. I think I'm already off to a good start.:)

Working towards resolutions

I'm a little late with thinking about resolutions (or making plans, setting themes, as I prefer to think of it), but I'm not really into saying things like "Oh, I'll exercise more" and then get frustrated because it doesn't happen. Instead, I prefer to think about priorities, about what would really have a positive influence. About a year ago I dyed my hair blonde (or bleached it to death, whichever way you want to look at it) as a sort of sign to myself to be braver, bolder, to reduce fear, and it worked. I think this year should continue in a similar vein.

Then, there's a difference between things that will happen anyway and resolutions. For the past few years, I *could* have written "Go freelance", whereas this year I KNOW it will happen, because I'm on a schedule. Huh.

Anyway, here are some things I'm currently thinking about. I still need to work out more details and make decent plans, but this should be a good start:

• Regular Writing: In the past few weeks, I've been pretty good with this (except for the Christmas holidays...). Ever since I started my new notebook at the beginning of November, I tried (and mostly managed) to write something every day, even if it was just a few lines. It's also helped me think some things through, track the progress I made during those weeks, helped me think, motivated me, kept me on track etc. And while I want to keep writing in my notebook, I'd also like to extend this a little bit. Write a little more each day, for example using 100words or 750words. Write more blog posts than just my monthly book list (e.g. 1 blog post per week, maybe). Finally end the strange writer's block I currently have with letter writing (sorry Carolyne!). And take some of these resolutions to heart.
• Health: Yeah, of course this needs to be on the list. Now, there are several things I'd like to do. Do the Quit Sugar thing again. Eat a largely vegetarian diet. Quit cheap chocolate for good (very dark chocolate and very, very good chocolate for special occasions might be allowed). Work out (running, yoga, gym). Finally return to my ideal weight. Stop doing stupid things like mixing different alcoholic beverages one evening and then regretting it two hours later. Stop drinking almost regular coffee (something I never did until some time in 2012).
• Freelance Success: As mentioned, I'm on schedule to go freelance this spring, and I'm both excited and terrified. I think I need some goals in this area to keep me sane. So, for example, from the time I start to the end of the year, I want to have an average income of at least 600€ per month, which right now seems big and almost unmanageable, but is really very little considering what I should be making to be able to survive. I also want to keep to some regular working hours, e.g. start with 10-16 for a start (which seems manageable), then extend those hours once I'm used to them. And I want to do some sort of further training - depending on what happens with my London plans, either that or some sort of course on Technical English.
• Travel: This year, I want to visit at least one city I've never been to (plans are being made for visiting Amsterdam; I'll also be at a conference in Dortmund) and take one holiday that is at least two weeks long (something which hasn't happened for the past 3 years, ugh).
• Reading: As I think I managed quite nicely with my reading last year - detailled analysis of my 2012 reading not yet done -  I think I should continue with this idea. So, one book per week at least, ie 52 books. Manga only count if I haven't read them before (so rereading One Piece again won't be worth any points, however much it might be worth otherwise).
• Language Training: Relearn English grammar rules (not because I doubt my language skills, but because I would sometimes like to be able to explain why I'm doing what I'm doing), improve my Italian or finally really start learning Japanese? I'm still undecided. All at once might be a bit much. I suppose I'll make a plan once I know where this year will actually take me (Leoben? London?).
• Simplifying: For some weeks this late autumn, I managed to keep to two things: Write something every day and throw something away every day. All that paper clutter that accumulates, you know? However, I'm not sure how to quantify simplifying. Should it be some goal like "Organise uni stuff" or "Throw out all magazines which stay unread longer than 1 month" or "Clear out 50 books from my MTBR" or...something like that? Or should I just generally live in the spirit of simplification?
• Adventure: Watch something like the Leonid shower at least once. Go to a funpark. Attend Gamescom. Go canyoning. Do the adventure tour at Lurgrotte (ie cave exploration). Try paragliding. Try some really bright hair colours (blue, green and violet are all planned for).

This is already a lot. I'm not sure whether I'll come up with yet more (cook from at least 50 recipes I haven't used yet! Read all of Shakespeare's plays! Knit 12 sweaters in 12 months (...)!) or whether that isn't absolutely enough for one year. Guess we'll see.

Finally, here is a neat little article on how to keep your resolutions.