I’m home again! Stockholm was exhausting, but so worth it. I’ll probably be stuck inside for a week or a month or God knows how long, but it was nice. Exhausting, but nice.

It’s so hard to describe to people how much energy it takes to act “normal”. Not flinch when people come too close or – even worse – touch me. Not back myself up against a wall to have at least SOME sense of stability. Smile. Chat. Be at least somewhat interesting, which, I’m telling you, isn’t easy when you get out as little as I do. Not stare at people who manage all of the above without any effort whatsoever.

It takes so much energy, and after three days around other people non-stop – even if one of those days basically was laying in a heap with my siblings, hung over and eating junk food – I was just about to break down. This happened on the train back home. There were too many people, on all sides of me. Behind me, to my right and to my left, and when the person in the chair in front of me leaned his back rest down towards me about two inches I flew out of my chair and found myself another seat. This of course meant that I could get kicked out of it at any time, seeing as it might’ve belonged to somebody else, but I’m glad to report that they did not.

It wasn’t a fun ride home, but after a couple of hours the crowd eased up and I could pull out my computer and get some editing done.

I suppose I should talk about the trip for a bit, because it was pretty awesome. I’ll start with saying that all pics in this post save the last one is from the inside of my sister’s new shiny apartment. It has an awesome vintage theme to it. So sad I’m too lazy for that sort of thing.

Anyway, on Friday she and her roommate had a party to celebrate their new flat, which is ALLTHEIRS. It’s a rental, but their names are on the lease, which is not anything to take for granted in Stockholm. Most apartments there are to-buy, and when they’re not you have to save up queue time for decades to get a decent one, so of course people hold on to them forever, subletting them and a lot of the time you have to move several times a year because of this AWESOME situation. So they’re excited about this place, and it’s very cute, although out in the suburbs. Then again, suburbs are seriously underrated.

I was nervous that it would be a big party, but it wasn’t huge or anything. Twenty or so people, most boys, for some reason, and all very nice. I talked about knitting with this gay boy for some time, and I can say that it was when he started talking about what shades of pink that was acceptable on a bloke that I decided that he was in fact not straight. Stereotypical, yes, but I was totally right.

This was, I think, the first party since I was 19 that I wasn’t tempted to bum a smoke from someone, which is all kinds of awesome, actually.

The two youngest attendants, my brother and the brother of A’s roommate, babies at the young age of 23 and 24, passed out in a corner, and I kept having to go poke one of them to see that he was still alive. Because, yes, my dear brother didn’t move or make a noise for like four hours, and I got all mum-like worried about him. The other one was snoring, so I didn’t worry so much about him.

The night ended at about 4 am, when A. and I fell into her bed and promptly fell asleep, but not until she, who has extreme phobia of vomit bent over the edge of the bed and threw up. She wasn’t even upset about it, which I guess proves just how drunk she was.

I’m so too old for this stuff.

Saturday we went and bought chips, crisps, bacon, hot dogs, chocolate and litre upon litre of Pepsi and consumed it all laying down. I was the least hung over, I believe, and actually got some writing done while the rest of them moaned and complained and watched bad movies.

There’s an awesome film clip from the party, which starts with one of the guys talking into the camera, all serious, before skipping off to the next room over, the camera pans out and shows the whole party dancing madly. It looks like it’s arranged and from a music video or something, but it so wasn’t. Am sad that the guy refused to let us upload it, after having watched it the next day.

On Sunday we had lunch with A. at a small thai place. The staff looked kind of panicked when I asked for something with “no flour, no soy sauce, no coconut milk”, because they didn’t even know what gluten WAS despite their advertising saying that they had gluten free options, but actually scrounged something up. It was glass noodles with vegetables and chicken (because glass noodles with just vegetables and salt sounded too damn depressing), and I put some sweet chili sauce on it and it was delicious, despite sounding boring as hell.

I was worried about cross contamination, but I didn’t get sick, so I think they managed it, which made me very, very happy. I didn’t have such luck on Friday, when I ate all of three chips that had been fried in oil that “may or may not” have been used to fry chicken nuggets in as well. THREE.

Which I guess goes to show that I am really sensitive, and maybe that will shut my Mum up when she thinks I’m overreacting…

After A. went to work I dragged E. with me to various yarn and book shops. The haul was this. I have no idea what the blue yarn is, but it feels exclusive and was kind of expensive. Kind of in the same vein as Manos or Malabrigo. It was in a bargain bin without tags and I forgot to ask, because I was a little stressed out.

Then we went to the sci-fi-book shop in Gamla Stan, which is very cute and old, all cobble stone streets and old houses, some dating back to the 14th century. It’s a massive tourist attraction, but fortunately it’s not summer yet, so it wasn’t too bad. The bookshop was really big and awesome. It had huge amounts of books in English, so many that I didn’t even bother going to The English Bookshop, as I had planned. I wandered back and forth for probably an hour, looking for names I recognised. I ended up buying the Modern Faerie Tale books by Holly Black, Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (because people won’t shut up about it) and on a whim, an anthology called Love Is Hell, which sounds cheesy but is actually pretty awesome. So far I’ve only read two of the stories, but I really love the one by Scott Westerfeld. He builds up this whole world where humans have done away with all inconvenient things, like sleep, illnesses, hormones, and so on, and then, the kids in it get as a school project to try to live with these things again, and find that it is pretty awesome.

The best part about this was probably that I asked this girl who worked there (who by the way was awesome, chatting to me about how great it is with anthologies and finding new authors that way, and understanding the importance of matching sets of books) if they’d gotten in White Cat by Holly Black yet. I knew it was a recent release, but not exactly how recent. As in, the release date is May 4th and I was asking for it on May 3rd.

The awesome part, however, was that they’d gotten a few copies in, and already sold it out. The day before it was supposed to his the stores! And when I tweeted this Holly Black replied to it, which made me squee because I’m such a fan girl for YA authors.

PS. Tansy, if you look really close you can see Siren Beat in A’s bookcase! I let her borrow it, convinced that it will be the perfect introduction to urban fantasy. She hasn’t read it yet, though, the wench.

After two days of baking me and my sister has produced two kinds of cookies, a gigantic pavlova (meringue cake!) and ridiculously rich chocolate mousse. It took most of two days, yet I’m worried people won’t think it’s enough. I must be insane. And I would include some pics, but I left my camera at my parents house, so you’ll have to wait until after the party.

I meant to go to Stockholm next week, to attend A’s move-in-party and visit the sci-fi bookshop (yes, I’m equally excited about both, shut up), but I didn’t buy tickets in time and now they cost like… 500 SEK each way. I might put my hopes to a last-minute-ticket, even though I’m technically too old for them. But only just, and two weeks ago I was asked if I was over eighteen (or possibly twenty) when I was buying a bus pass… So maybe it would work, although it would probably mean staying away from Thursday to Monday, two days more than I meant to, because there’s no such thing on a Friday or Sunday.

Speaking of which, A. told one of her friends that I read fantasy, and got the answer “so, she reads TWILIGHT?”. A. defended me beautifully I’m told, and people may have different opinions about those books, and I may not be a fan, but in the end it doesn’t matter what I think, because there is so much more to fantasy than that, and I think that’s the important point.

(And yes, in the past I’ve been a bit harsh towards certain books in this blog. The more I work on my current project the worse I feel about it, because I’m realising just how much work that goes into a book. So, I’ll try to be nicer, even if I don’t like a certain author. I really will.)

I also had a conversation with my mum, with a slight disagreement. I learned that this syrup we have in sweets and icecream, may or may not have gluten in it. The Swedish word for it is “glukos-fruktossirap”, and apparently “glukossirap” and “fruktossirap” are separately okay, but when put together they may contain gluten and the manufacturer doesn’t have to specify whether it does or not (and sometimes have no idea). I suppose it’s the equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, except, you know, wheat based. Sometimes.

(Also? I hate the book Ingredienslexikon, because it tells me stuff is okay when it’s not, like, for example soy sauce. It’s not okay. Not even close.)

But yes, this means that almost all sweets are out, and so I read on a bag of sweets while home and the following conversation happened…

Me: “That damn glukos-fruktossirap, it’s in everything!”
Mum: “Oh, but it can’t be that bad, can it?”
Me: “YES IT CAN. I know somebody whose son got sick all the time until they figured out that it was the sweets he was eating, so I’m not going to risk it.
Mum: “Well, anyone who stops eating sweets will feel better.”

Head, desk, desk, head, have you two met? Oh, you have? Well, here’s a reintroduction!

So yes. I need to translate this article for her, because she’s driving me crazy. It’s not like it’s fun to avoid most sweets, almost all chocolate (though I found a kind I can have, expensive dark chocolate with a hint of lemon, OMG SO GOOD), icecream and so on. It’s not. It sucks. But when I get sick I get sick for days, and it’s not just that specific things that causes me to set up camp in the bathroom. It’s that everything I eat for several days afterwards also makes me sick, as if it takes that long for the gluten to clear out of my system. And really, one scoop of icecream isn’t worth three days of bathroom trips, stomach aches, lethargy and other fun stuff. It really isn’t.

And this specific conversation came only two days after she offered me a tub of butter that had visible bread crumbs from a gluten-ed bread in it and thought that I was ridiculous when I refused to use it.

She’s a nurse. Isn’t she supposed to know these things?

Argh.

So, yes. Translating that article, only not today because I desperately need to get back to my project. I haven’t written on it in what feels like forever, although in reality it’s more like two days. I’m almost at the “run downhill really fast” portion of the book, and it’s very exciting. Sadly my male main character turned out to be a total creep, but I’m told that makes for a more interesting book.

I also asked my sister if she wanted to visit a graveyard with me, because I usually take inspiration from a location and build from there and my NEXT project is about a graveyard. Well, not really, it’s not like it’s The Graveyard Book all over again, but that’s where it starts…

She gave me an odd look and said “um… sure?”

Ha. Yes. So. Writing.

One of the blogs I read recently did a post asking what exactly makes you Swedish. I believe the person in question was writing a piece on what exactly that makes a person a certain nationality. I chimed in with a few things I’ve found since I returned back here, and rather quickly got questioned (not by the poster, by another commenter), who thought my observations weren’t correct. (And I’m not linking, cos I couldn’t be less interested in an argument.)

I don’t believe that the things I gave as examples are the only truth and nothing but the truth, but to me they are. Of course your mileage may vary, depending on your feelings regarding your nationality, your experiences and what part of the world you’ve been visiting and thus have to compare your country of origin too. But I think there is one thing that is true for most of us, and that is that we don’t realise just how ______ we are until we travel abroad, for any length of time.

I’ve never felt particularly Swedish. Really. But once I lived outside my own little country I found myself say “In Sweden we…” rather a lot, and I was almost always introduced to people as “this is Kaia, she’s Swedish” (except, you know, that it wasn’t Kaia, because I didn’t start using that name until later). And it wasn’t until I returned to Sweden that I realised just how much I love my country, and I still couldn’t pin point why.

I love that this is so subjective, though. It all depends on what you’ve seen, where you’ve been, what you’re used to. I was reminded of this last week, when we (me, my sister, my Mum and one of my aunts) for some reason, unknown to all of us, started talking about fruit.

I said something about being amazed by how cheap fruit is here, and gave the example of being able to buy two twelve packs of Pepsi for five bucks, while in the U.S., and then have to pay half that for a single, usually not that nice bell pepper. My sister pulled a face and said “Not compared to Spain”, which is the country of her reference. And then she told us a story about her Iraqi friend who thinks the prices of dates and figs in Sweden are nothing short of ridiculous, because he’s used to the Middle East and all that.

Kind of interesting, don’t you think?

But when I say that things are so very clean here I think about walking down the street and seeing entire house’s worth of furniture tossed on the sidewalk until somebody could be bothered picking them up. Often less fortunate people snatched them up before the garbage truck came by; I was that person a few times. I think about overflowing trash cans and the smell when the sun baked them for hours and hours, and you could never be SURE when the next pick-up was, because it seemed to change from week to week.

When I say that alcohol is expensive I think about the hole-in-the-wall-bar that was nothing more than counter, a pool table and toilets one could not lock. We paid five dollars for a pitcher of beer (less than ONE beer costs here) and sat out back, drinking it. Mostly we opted to sit outside even when it was ridiculously cold because the white supremacists up front made us nervous; our group was made up by two Mexicans, one Middle Eastern guy, two gay men, one transgendered man and a few white kids.

When I say fika and elvakaffe I think about drinking coffee from dainty little cups and eating cookies by the pound, because God forbid that you say no to something, and compare it to grabbing a tall latte at Starbucks on my way to Memorial Park by St John’s River.

When I say that the standard of Swedish housing is superb I think about the kitchens here with their pull out cutting boards and the stainless steel counter and a stove where the burners aren’t spirals that are hopeless to clean underneath. And more than that? Windows with three sheets of glass in them, no drafty corners and radiators in every single room. I’ve never been colder than I was my first winter in Florida; it was as cold inside as it was outside, and I pulled a electric heater from room to room, and pretty much couldn’t get out of bed without freezing to death.

And I don’t think I’ll ever get used to (even though I grew up with it!) being able to walk straight out into the forest and pick blueberries as I please. It’s heaven.

Everyone in the world are apparently doing “best of 00-talet” lists (er, do not know how to translate that, “the 00s”?), which is just too big for me. So I’m just doing the last year in a number of tens in alphabetic order. No ranking within each list, because that would be mean. And yes, I did this not too long ago, in the Lists of 30 sequence I did, but this is, um, different. Really.

Note: All pics are shamelessly stolen from my dear friend Google, except for a few that I took myself and the This is Arsenal one which comes from the LJ comunity GoonerGraphics and is actually my desktop picture…

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10 HIGHS
Because you should remember the good and pretend the bad never happened! Okay, maybe not, but I have no desire to list the lowest of the low of this year, so I’m just doing the awesome. (One year I re-capped what had happened each month and somebody said “whoa, you’ve got really shitty luck”, and she was right. So no re-capping. Just the best.)

	1 – All things Arsenal. It’s silly to put football down here, isn’t it? I don’t care. Since I was pulled into the Arsenal madness and started following every single game (as those of you following me on Twitter probably are painfully aware of) I’ve learned that sports are… um, brain washing. They make you insane and single-minded and you start saying stuff like “we have too many groin injuries” and “our boys are FRAGILE” and see nothing strange about it. (Other people, however, do.) So there. I’m sticking to this one, even though it’s kind of crazy and certainly nothing I would’ve thought a year or two ago…
	2 – Becoming with kitten. Once a cat owner always a cat owner. Or something. I love having her around, even if she demands constant attention, climbs the Christmas tree and follows me into the bath room, prompting me to say “oh my God, shut your mouth and act like a normal human being!”. And I guess she’s not a kitten anymore,and nearly a teenager, but let’s not talk about that. I can’t afford to have her fixed for another few months, so let’s hope she stays this age for a good long time.
	3 – Blogging and Twitter as a substitute for TV. I wrote the first entry of this blog on October 29th, 2008. Since then it’s become something I write in, if not every day so at least every week. It helps me a lot, even though I sometimes wonder if I share too much. As for Twitter, it has been a great help in finding new blogs and news and current events and such. I follow something like 80 people, which is a lot less than most, but just what I can keep up with. This is also where I get nearly all my news. I don’t watch TV, save a few select shows, and rarely bother with the news. Because my blogroll and my Twitter-people are plenty smart and keep me updated. They’re awesome like that.
	4 – Finding fat acceptance. Everyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows my stance on health and weight, so I’m not going to say it all over again, but a year ago exactly I felt repulsed by myself and my body, put myself in a strict regimen of 1500 calories per da (which yes, included weighing my carrots and quit eating corn because they are more “fatty” than say cucumber), took long walks in sleet and rain and everything inbetween, telling myself IT’S SUPPOSED TO HURT YOU DISGUSTING FATTY KEEP WALKING, and forced myself to wear too small, unflattering clothing to punish myself. It was pretty awful, and when I, a few months later, came across Kate Harding’s blog Shapely Prose it was all turned on its head. It was quite revolutionary, and while I can’t say that I never wish that my body would be smaller, I most of the time is fine with it. And that’s an amazing feeling. I do want to start exercising again, but not to lose weight, just to get fit(ter), and that is something I never thought I’d say… I don’t know what yet, my mind goes back and forth between yoga, horse back riding, a traditional and super scary gym membership and running/walking. Suggestions for alternatives are welcome.
	5 – Getting a diagnosis, and starting to take the oh so elusive B12. My quality of life has doubled since my medications were changed and I started taking B12. Being able to be awake for more than four hours at a time is AWESOME. Here’s to hoping the last addition of pills will make my lows less frequent! Under this one goes also “getting out of my depression enough to care about other human beings”, and “actually remembering people’s birthdays and favourite what-have-you, because my brain isn’t stuck in survival mode”. Big stuff! (Note: These are not my pills. They are all boring and white and not all that exciting.)
	6 – Moving. I was hesitant, because my old city was, well, a city, while this is pretty much just a, um, little town with nothing exciting going for it, but I think we can all agree that it was the best thing I could possibly do. I’m still not well, but feel at least a bit grounded, for what is possibly the first time in my life, and it’s amazing to be able to ask my family for help with shopping and stuff when I have bad days.
	7 – Re-learning how to cook. I stopped eating eggs when I was eight because I found them “gross”. I could only keep eating meat for as long as I did (until I was twenty) by sternly telling myself that it wasn’t really meat and meat didn’t come from animals and there was certainly no blood involved… Then I moved away from home and had to start cooking my own food (yes, our Mum spoils us), and within a year I was a vegetarian. I find fish and seafood equally gross and once started crying because we had to cut into a fish in biology and it had small fishies in its stomach. So, um, that is a prime playground for all kinds of food related quirks. For the longest time I didn’t let myself eat or I ate too much and felt crap about it. It’s only in the last year that I’ve started cooking because it’s FUN. I used to like cooking, when I was a vegan, but the step from being all obsessive-compulsive about foods and eating to actually enjoying it again… was a big one. This year I also did a brief stint as an omnivore, which lasted about two weeks. Then I returned to vegetarianism because, um, meat is still “gross”. Sorry. That hang up I can’t lose, even if I could put the animal welfare thing aside (which I can’t). In all it taught me why I’m a vegetarian all over again. All good things.
	8 – Starting to read again. When I was younger I was the sort of kid that snuck extra books from the library when we were only allowed to check out a certain number, which was supposed to be “just what we had time to read in a week”. I was found in hedges reading, I could be seen walking and reading at the same time and so on. When we did a reading challenge in fifth grade where we were supposed to read for twenty minutes every day I had to ask for an extra form cos I ran out of space after a week. And then another one. And another one. Somewhere down the line something (depression, I think) happened and I just STOPPED. In late June of this year I started reading again, mostly YA, and I’m happy to say that I’ve read 52 books since then. Yes, I counted. I keep track of them with my Book List, because I’m neardy like that. Reading gives me a million ideas, I learn neat turns of phrases, I learn what NOT to do and so on. During my non-reading phase I thought that reading was a waste of time, cutting into my writing time, but actually it works the other way around – it’s reading that gives me my best ideas!
	9 – Visiting Edinburgh. Going to visit Scotland and get to meet a dear, dear friend. I was gone four days, popped anti-anxiety meds like they were crack (they kind of were) and it took me two months to recover, but it was so worth it. I want to go back already, because I loved the city and Scots are, although difficult to understand at times, the loveliest people ever. I love their accents, I love the mountains sneaking up on me, I love the tiny, tiny gardens in the middle of the city and I looooved the roof terrace of the museum of something-or-other, all the book shops, the vegetarian baked potato shop, the insane hills and curvy roads and of course, the tiny taxis that drove like mad. Aside from seeing Jenn for the first time I think that going to see Amanda Palmer in concert was the highlight of the trip; she’s just amazing and I will mention her again in a bit…
	10 – Writing. As for writing this was a big year. I finished my first big novel manuscript (Eld) in April or so, I wrote a number of short stories, one non-fiction piece, in November I wrote a lovely YA novel that needs about fourteen more rounds of edits (Mundane Secrets), and I also started another project (The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere) that I’m dying to get back to. In all, I did a lot of original writing and almost completely stopped doing narrative RP-ing, and it feels great to move on from that. I try to write a little every day, but obviously some days are better than others. I’m hoping that next year, when I do this (if I remember), I will have something more substantial to add to this one… (Note: This is what I’ve told myself every year since I was 15, and also, I don’t write on a typewriter, but I love this pic so much so I’m using it anyway.)

Runner-ups:
New Years with siblings and cousins in Gothenburg last year.
New Years with cousins and siblings in Stockholm this year. (Sadly kicked off the list as I am NOT GOING).
EVerything involving my siblings and cousins. Seriously. They’re that awesome.
Buying Christmas presents and doing random holiday things because I want to! (A year ago I wouldn’t have wanted to.)
Weaving. (This one was kicked off the list because of the little old ladies fat talk.)
All my crafting and of course my business doing fairly well.
All the new music. (It got its own list instead.)

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10 AUTHORS
I read 52 books this year, and hope to get another two in before the 31st. The ones below are the ones that stuck most with me this year. Eight of these are YA, one is non-fiction and one is adult fiction. Four are part of a series, so I think we can agree that series and YA are my personal crack.

	1 – Cabot, Meg: The Airhead series (Young Adult) These books look suspiciously fluffy from the outside (the paperback even more so, it’s pink and silver), but they are not. Trust me on that one. They tell the story of sixteen-year-old Em Watts who wakes up after an accident and finds her life tangled up with that of super teen model Nikki Howard – against her will. It’s really engaging, rather creepy, and full of drama. Airhead, the first book, is my favourite, mostly because Em acts kind of stupid in the second book, but I have yet to read #3, so I may change my mind.
	2 – Crowley, Cath: The Gracie Faltrain series (Young Adult) The story about Gracie Faltrain, who plays soccer with the boys, and has boy and friend and everything trouble. These books have a million different POVs, and I love them for it. Gracie is sometimes annoyingly dense, but the other POVs makes these books awesome nonetheless. My favourite character is Flemming, a totally minor character that I think you’re supposed to hate… Book #3, Gracie Faltrain Gets It Right (Finally!), is my favourite of these three.
	3 – Harding, Kate & Kirby, Marianne: Lessons From the Fat-O-Sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body (Non-Fiction) I’m not big on non-fiction, but this one is amazing. It talks about Health At Every Size, debunks myths about fat people and gently lets you know that being HEALTHY is a good idea, whether you’re skinny or not. I so wish this book was available in Swedish, because I want my parents (and really, everyone I know, regardless of size) to read it.
	4 – Lanagan, Margo: Tender Morsels (Young Adult) This one was probably the hardest read, but also one of the most amazing books I read this year. It’s about Liga, who bears two children after being raped (two occasions, about a year apart), and who ends up in a different world when she is so wounded from these two events that she wants to, you know, throw her baby and herself off a cliff. Margo has horrified people on several continents with the contents of this book, and continues winning prizes with it. She deserves every single one of them too.
	5 – Larbalestier, Justine: Liar (Young Adult) This book is about Micah, who lies about everything. It’s absolutely fascinating to read her story, because you have no idea what’s true and what’s not and then you think you know and just as you figure it out she tells you that you were wrong all along. It’s a great book, and the narration is amazing, but I really can’t say much more about it without going into spoiler territory, so let’s just leave it at that.
	6 – McCarthy, Maureen: Queen Kat, Carmel and St. Jude Get a Life (Young Adult) A book with three POVs, telling three very different stories. The first part is about Carmel who is overweight and lets it consume her life in the worst kind of way, and we also get to see her come out of her shell and come to terms with herself and her body, and that without losing weight. Part two is narrated by Jude, who is going to be a doctor just like her Argentinian father that she’s never met. She becomes horribly depressed and it’s fascinating (and painful) to see how it changes everything before she manages to turn things around. Katerina meanwhile is rich and beautiful but not nearly as happy as everyone thinks… I love Maureen McCarthy; her book Rose By Any Other Name is brilliant too.
	7 – McKinley, Robin: Deerskin (Young Adult) A painful story of a princess who is the daughter of the most beautiful queen in seven kingdoms. When her mother dies her father goes mad and forces her to run from his violence and delusions, and that’s when things get interesting… This book goes into the same category as Tender Morsels, painful yet beautiful and IMPORTANT to read. Especially if you are a teen, which I’m not, but I love this book anyway!
	8 – Murdock, Catherine Gilbert: The Dairy Queen series (Young Adult) These books are about D.J. Schwenk, whose parents own a dairy farm. She’s quite sporty, and in the first book she decides to try out for the boys football team. In the second book she concentrates more on basketball, and her family is a big part through it all. I love the narration more than anything, and can’t wait to read book #3. So far, though, I think the first one, Dairy Queen, is my favourite.
	9 – Rees Brennan, Sarah: The Demon’s Lexicon series (Young Adult) A book from the POV of the dark, broody bloke that is the love interest in most books out there. It’s fascinating to see the thought process of a guy whose main complaint is “why are you talking so much?”, and I can’t wait for book #2, due to come out in May. Even though Nick is no longer the POV. (Or maybe because of it.)
	10 – Waters, Sarah: Tipping the Velvet (Adult Fiction) I know. The rest of the world read this book ten years ago. I didn’t. It’s amazing, though, and I love how authentic it feels all through it, with the theatre terms and old fashioned language and everything that comes with it. Now I want to see the movie, and also, I am so not admitting how long it took me to figure out what “gay girl” meant, which is amusing considering that the direct translation for an old fashioned term for “whore” in Swedish is exactly that.

Runner-ups:
Cross, Shauna: Derby Girl (aka Whip It)
Gaiman, Neil: The Graveyard Book
Johnson, Maureen: The Bermudez Triangle
McCafferty, Megan: The Jessica Darling series
Pierce, Tamora: Protector of the Small series
Roberts, Tansy Rayner/Shearman, Robert: Siren Beat/Roadkill

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10 MUSICIANS
Note that Ani DiFranco isn’t making the list. That is kind of a first, I think. Nice to be moving on to new stuff, though! And no, I am not picking songs. I can’t choose just one. I am choosing an album that meant a lot for me instead, because I’m special like that.

	1 – Amanda Palmer: Who Killed Amanda Palmer? It feels strange that I’ve only listened to her music for less than a year. It feels like forever. Before she went solo she was part of the group The Dresden Dolls and my favourite album of hers is actually the first Dresden Dolls album, but I would never have figured out how brilliant it is had a friend not zipped up and emailed me WKAP. So that’s the one that goes on my list. One of my favourites on this album is Strength Through Music which has the most chilling video ever.
	2 – The Bird and the Bee: The Bird and the Bee. Usually I like my music to be noisy in a very particular way. This album is everything but. It’s very smooth, and Wiki describes it as “a jazz-influenced electro pop project”. I guess that about sums it up. The first song I heard was Again and Again (video here), and I promptly fell in love with the simple and to the point lyrics: “You’re so stupid and perfect / And stupid and perfect / I hate you, I want you / I hate you, I hate you, oh / Again, again, again, again…”
	3 – An Horse: Rearrange Beds . This band I learned about from my Australian Music Fairy (yes, I just promoted her to that). We listened to it like crazy when it was just an EP, and then the whole album came out and there were YouTube videos and I started obsessing about Kate Cooper who is the singer and cute as a button. The song that first hit me like a ton of bricks was Company (video here), but I also really enjoy Camp Out (“This is a song for the one that I love / No, I haven’t met them yet / But I’m quietly confident”) and lately I’ve been all about Shoes Watch (“But I got so scared / That you might be a better me than me”).
	4 – The Indelicates: American Demo . This band was the opening act to Amanda Palmer when I saw her, and I fell madly in love in about two seconds flat. I love that the two front figures, Julia Indelicate and Simon Indelicate take turns singing, and that makes for very different listening experiences depending on the song. Two favourites, sadly not on YouTube, are Stars (“I’m in love with the boy next door / He treats me like a filthy whore”) and We Hate the Kids (“Absolutely anyone can play the fucking guitar”), but here is a link to America, which shows said vocal contrast between the two singers…
	5 – Jenny Owen Youngs: Batten the Hatches. Found this album by way of the excellent (and suitably depressing as all the songs I love) song Fuck Was I, which you can see here. I bought both her albums before going to Edinburgh, because I suddenly decided that I Had To Have Them for the flight. I hear Jenny is currently the opening act of Regina Spektor who is also the voice in the beginning of the song Voice on Tape (and don’t ask me how many months I listened to that song before figuring that out).
	6 – Kate Nash: Made of Bricks. I found out about Kate’s music through Female Appreciation Month, and it kind of hit me over the head like a well-placed brick (ha, ha, ha). She was this year’s Lily Allen, in a way, and the song Foundations inspired me to write a certain blog post, but I think my favourite song of hers is Mariella, which you should check out here, and not just because Kate has the most delicious British accent…
	7 – Lily Allen: It’s Not Me, It’s You. Lily’s first album was my post-break-up-fuck-you-I’m-doing-fine-really-I-am-music. I don’t think I listened to anything else for months. I didn’t get nearly as obsessed with this album, but it’s still a good one. I love The Fear (video here), Not Fair always makes me giggle and I Could Say is beautiful. Yes, really.
	8 – The Lucksmiths. I refuse to pick one for them, since they QUIT this year and anyway I love this graphic Google found me, which doesn’t belong to an album, I don’t think. This is a band I never thought that I would like. See above when I ask for noisy stuff. My Australian Music Fairy, however, disagreed and shared some music with me and got me hooked. She’s evil like that. I’ve got parts of four of their albums in my ipod and I so can’t choose one above the others. When I went to YouTube to see what there was of theirs on there I found this cover of The Smiths’ There’s a Light That Never Goes Out, which made me smile (disregard the video, okay?).
	9 – Pony Up!: Make Love to the Judges With Your Eyes. I extremely randomly tripped and fell over Pony Up! when a friend sent me their song Shut Up and Kiss Me (“If I left you wouldn’t miss me / I don’t care, shut up and kiss me”, and later bought some more of their stuff to see if I liked it as much. I kind of did. I don’t like everything they do, like most of this list, but they’re still pretty damn brilliant. From this album I especially like The Best Offence (”My self respect means more to me / Than you do / Or at least it used to“).
	10 – Regina Spektor: Far. I pretty much like everything Regina does, so I don’t think anyone was surprised when I started obsessing over this album. My favourite song from it is, by far, Folding Chair (video here), but Eet is brilliant too. My favourite Regina song right now, however? It’s a tie between Chelsea Hotel #2 (a Leonard Cohen cover, available here) and Mockingbird, apparently a play on a nursery rhyme or something, which you can see here. Neither are on this album. Sorry about that.

Runner-ups:
Anything and everything by Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday
Rilo Kiley: More Adventurous
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: iTunes Originals

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STUFF, STUFF AND MORE STUFF
Wow. Nearly 4000 words now. That is crazycakes. I am pretty much done, but will toss in a short list of “extras” that I can’t fit in anywhere but still want to mention…

How I Met Your Mother, especially the unreliable narration.
Glee, and pretty much everything involving Mercedes and/or Kurt.
Post Secret, which is an oldie but I still love it.
Questionable Content, my favourite web-cartoon of them all, especially when there is Marigold and/or Hannelore.
The Guild, the best five minute episodes of web-TV you will ever see. With Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton, people!
Ill Doctrine and his defense of the Being Grouchy About the HAPPY HOLIDAYS Thing.
Shapely Prose and all its four (I think?) writers.
Bokhora, the most brilliant book review site in Swedish I know (the fact that their name translates to “Book Whore” helps).
Baby Power Dyke, blog that preaches the goodness of Rachel Maddow and recently got suspended (and un-suspended, thank fuck).
Any and all blogs by authors, publishers and literary agents that I read, which I can share if somebody cares, but the list is kind of long.

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I believe that’s all. Oh thank fuck for that, it would be sad to still be working on this by midnight…