Just for fun for St. Patrick’s Day, forty shades of green pulled from my bookcases.
I love how eclectic the books ended up being, when I selected them by something as random as color–everything from Walden to Peanuts, Beverly Cleary to Terry Pratchett to William Shakespeare. I guess you can’t judge a book by its spine!
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This week, I thought I’d carry on with the spring flower theme and show more daffodils.
This is a cluster of daffodils in my neighborhood, which I walk past often–I was watching them for a while until they finally bloomed!
Don’t mind the garden hose in the upper left corner, but do notice the little raccoon statue. I wish I could have got a picture of him closer to the daffodils–and it actually would have been possible. I walk past frequently, and I always look for the raccoon, because every day or two he’s in a new place. Either someone who lives here is having a great deal of fun, or Gnomeo and Juliet is all true!
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My favorite local park has a duck pond where I sometimes go to write. It’s looking particularly pretty right now, because the trees are in bloom!
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by At Home with Books.
The Science Fiction Experience at Stainless Steel Droppings runs from January to February, so that makes it time to assess how it went. (I’ll have an update on other challenges at the end of next month.)
I’ve had such a good time with this challenge (experience). I haven’t done much on other challenges, but that’s all right, I have the rest of the year for those… This was exactly the impetus I needed to finally read a lot of books I’ve been meaning to read for ages–especially some sci fi classics, new Star Trek books, and revisits to old Star Wars books. Last year I read twelve sci fi books in the entire year–I matched that in these two months.
I’ve also really enjoyed the community around this experience, reading other people’s posts–and thank you to the people who came by here too! I’m already thinking about what I’ll read during Stainless Steel Dropping’s Once Upon a Time Challenge in the spring. 🙂
Here’s the sci fi I read in the last two months. If you’re curious about something that doesn’t have a review, just ask!
1) Five-Odd, edited by Groff Conklin
2) I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
3) Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
4) Star Wars: The Crystal Star by Vonda N. McIntyre
5) Star Trek: How Much for Just the Planet? by John M. Ford
6) Mister Creecher by Chris Priestly
7) Star Trek: Memory Prime by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
8) Star Wars: The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton
9) Predator’s Gold by Philip Reeve
10) Journey Between Worlds by Sylvia Louise Engdahl
11) Doctor Who: The Doctor Trap by Simon Messingham
12) Infernal Devices by Philip Reeve
Not sure why the reviews ended up totally weighted for the first half of the list…it wasn’t planned.
And some sci fi I watched:
Seasons Five and Six of Doctor Who
Selections from Star Trek: The Animated Series
Season One of Eureka
Star Wars: Episodes IV-VI (The Original Trilogy)
Superman: The Movie
Back to the Future
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Men in Black
I feel like this makes me look like I watch more TV than I really do–those aren’t long seasons, and it’s been pretty exclusively sci fi for the last couple months! I’ve always tended to watch more sci fi than I read.
I had such a delightful time watching the Oscars this year. I had actually seen many of the nominees, and even better, many of my favorites won important awards!
We have something of a tradition in my family, to cook a meal in honor of the movie we’re rooting for. So this year I cooked a French meal for Midnight in Paris. 
I made Chicken Marengo, with French bread and salad. Legend has it that the recipe was created in honor of some Napoleonic victory–what could be more French than that?
For dessert, I wanted Black and White cookies but there were none at the store so I had to settle for Boston Cream Pie – which was the closest I could get to something black and white in honor of The Artist.
For a rarity, the movies I was rooting for actually had success–Midnight in Paris won Best Original Screenplay, and The Artist took home Best Actor, Best Director and Best Picture. The Muppet Movie won Best Song, and a Johnny Depp movie finally took home an award–Best Animated Feature for Rango.
If you’d like to make your own French dinner, here’s the Chicken Marengo recipe. It’s actually fairly simple, and comes out looking very pretty! It needs some stirring but spends plenty of time simmering, so if you make it for the Oscars, it’s easy to leave it alone for a minute to watch George Clooney on the red carpet. 🙂
Tales of the Marvelous 