January has been a month of reading. To be honest, I haven’t done a lot else. Knit 1/3 of a scarf. Finished up a sewing project I should’ve finished in November (the advent calendar - which, by the way, is totally super adorable), no baking, no intriging projects, nothing but cozying up and reading.

January’s a good time for that - unpredictable weather, harsh winds, chilly snow, so very little daylight, so very little warmth and energy. The rush of the holidays and the excitement of autumn long gone, I just sort of… curled up and rested all month long. I suppose I might have went into a bit of a hibernation like the bears. Is that so bad? All this month, I’ve been berating myself for it. Lazy! I’d write in my planner for the day’s events. Sometimes I wouldn’t write anything at all. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

But then I think of the animals that curl up and rest in the winter, and I think of all the furious knitting I did throughout autumn, and I think of the sewing and the crafts and the moving and the baking and the rush, and I think that perhaps a month-long resting period wasn’t so bad at all. Maybe it’s just what I needed.

I’m starting to feel the fires of creativity burn again. I want to sew, I want to knit, I want to /do/. I wanted to knit tonight, but it’s been a couple weeks since I worked on the scarf, and I’ve forgotten the pattern, so I’ll have to dig it up. Perhaps tomorrow.

But I read! Tonight I finished a book I would recommend to anyone who loves an enchanting story: The Thirteenth Tale, which is lovely and haunting and mesmerizing and too many other words to put down. If you have a love of books, read it! I also read On the Banks of Plum Creek - one of the Little House series books tonight, and those books always make me feel so warm and cozy and wanting to have a little house and a little family somewhere out in the middle of nowhere like that.

I read 14 books in January, and you can see which ones, and short, semi-coherent thoughts on each, on the 101 Things Booklist, linked to the right. Not bad. Approximately one book every 2 days or so. Not too shabby at all! A good way to kickstart my imagination.

Soon, it will be Imbolc, and then, I will pay homage to Brigid/Brigit, Irish goddess of creative inspiration, among many other things, and perhaps then, I will rise from this hibernation to return to life again with the growing light.

Okay, so one of my 101 Things in 1001 Days goals is to try 1 new recipe a month. I’ve done that, but I haven’t logged any of them. but this year - yay for 2007! - I will.

This month’s recipe came late. I may have tried a new recipe earlier in the month, but I can’t recall it. But this one’s definitely new.

Cheesy Chicken Rice Casserole!

Ingredients:

• 1.5 C rice - I used long grain white
• 1 C cooked chicken (I just used a can of it since I had that on hand)
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• 1/2 large jar of Cheese Whiz

Cook the rice according to package directions. Mix in chicken, soup, and cheese whiz. Pour into casserole dish. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes.

It was good, if a little plain. I even topped it with crushed up potato chips, but next time, I’d use something with more… zing, or crunch, or… something. Maybe some italian seasoned breadcrumbs. Or maybe I’d toss in a little chili powder. Or bacon. Something.

My rating? 5 out of 10 stars. Good comfort food, but it needs some dressing up.

In my 1001 Days project, among my goals are to read BBC’s Top 100 Reads. I’ve read 13 of the 100 since March 21st. However, I’ve read a handful more of those in the past, and so, they’re at the bottom of the list, to be read only if time and desire permits. After all, I read all the Harry Potter novels, and cute as they are, I don’t have a pressing desire to go back and reread them all immediately. Though maybe I will sometime between now and when my 1001 Days is up. I don’t know. But things I’ve already read are not on the “must do” list for me to complete this goal. Reasonable? I think so.

With the ones I’ve already read at some point added in, I’ve read 22 of 100. Not bad. 1/5th of the books done. Frankly, this goal is harder than I expected. My library is really… not quite so good. Even the libraries it’s allied with fail miserably when finding some of these - even though the books in question are not what I’d call incredibly rare reads.

I don’t really want to have to /buy/ all these books. Especially since some of them are books I’m really quite certain I will not enjoy so much that I’d like to own them.

I have found good luck in finding the old classics online, however, in libraries like Literature.org and Online-Literature.com - in fact, several of the reads mentioned were found online. However, I suspect that /these/ might be the reads more aptly found in my libraries. Nevertheless, it makes for a quick way to read a few chapters while at work.

For example, I’m currently working on Treasure Island (7 chapters in) and War and Peace (oh please, shoot me now) (somewhere in the midst of Book 3). Confession - I /hate/ war novels. I really do. Especially war novels like /this/. Flowery and dull as sin. To be honest, I feel that way about a great lot of ‘classics’. Flowery, and dull as sin. I guess I’m too conditioned to thrillers, myseteries, dark fantasy, and romance, eh?

A downside of this reading books online thing is that it’s not an actual /book/. I like books. I like to hold them and feel them and smell them, even. Reading online doesn’t quite do it for me in the same way. So I’m glad to also have a friend, A, who likes those flowery classics, and who has a good handful of them that I can thus borrow, read, and return without resorting to the library’s painfully plastic-ized hardcover, or to an online version of the same thing. So yay, A!

Anyway. That’s it for the book update.

I’ve been reading an incredible book these last few days, and this morning, I’ve finished it at last. It doesn’t usually take me a long time to read a novel - even one as impressively long (973 pages!) as this one, but to be honest, I wasn’t prepared for the emotional ride Ken Follett had crafted in Pillars of the Earth. The book is stunning, in every way - realistic from the start in both characters and setting in 12th century England. There isn’t a bland moment despite the fact that the entire novel revolves around the building of a cathedral, and much of the novel takes place from the eyes of a monk. Follett is a master of suspense, and ruthless in his depiction of the cruelties certain characters demonstrate in their quest for power.

Frankly, I haven’t read many 1000 page suspense novels (if any). By the time the first three hundred pages were through, I was all but shaking - and well aware that the tragedies, hardships, and sorrow mounting atop the main characters’ heads were only beginning. In most novels, as you’re aware, at this point, things should be wrapping up and turning for the best. An epic it is, and an epic worth reading.

I’m still in awe, and am tremendously grateful that I began to read the books on the BBC’s Top 100 list… because without it, I never in a million years would’ve picked it up.