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Browsing category: Uncategorized

  • December 23, 2012

    Link love (Powered by jandals and excessive cake intake)

    In case you missed it, this week I guest posted at Making Sense of Cents (on weird and random ways I’ve made extra money) and Budget and the Beach (the pros and cons of working in the creative industries). You should totally head over to both and read them!

    What else? Other things of note: I’ve finished up work for the year, and am looking forward to focusing on some blog admin, wedding/honeymoon admin, and plenty of R&R. T got his second tattoo (a steal at $550 thanks to a guy he knows, or something along those lines – a massive family crest on his arm. Luckily, he’s a big dude, so it works). We celebrated our seventh anniversary with a nice dinner out, in which I ate rabbit for the first time. Oh, and we went to a media screening of the Hobbit, and I’m firmly in the fan camp.

    This’ll probably be my last link love for the year, so I wanted to send a little love to my top referrers for the year. Thanks Daisy / Jessie / Saving4Later / Chronicles of Debt / Sense to Dollars / Fabulously Broke.

    2012’s best of

    And my greatest hits this year were…

    Personal finance topics I’m so over

    So you want to be a writer…

    On authenticity in blogging

    Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em

     Motivation: Saving vs paying down debt

    Things I’ve learned from travelling alone

    What to do if you’ve been burgled

    If staying childless is selfish, so is procreating

    Entitlement – is it really just a Gen Y thing?

    This week’s links

    Endlessly amusing: Forbes on how to fake being a good worker. I too strategically make use of the ‘Sent from my iPhone’ line.

    Some Ramit-flavoured job hunting advice over at Get Rich Slowly, along with email scripts for reaching out to people for informational coffees (“pick your brain” is the golden phrase, apparently)

    Three common interview questions and how to answer them, at I Want Her Job

    Cents of a Country Girl voices her biggest financial fears

    Funny About Money talks managing irregular paycheques

    If you had the choice, would you take a guaranteed but restricted income for the rest of your life? Punch Debt in the Face poses an intriguing question

    Money After Graduation explains how her Christmas wish list has evolved over the years (along similar lines to mine, actually)

    Hannah Katy is quitting Christmas in typical eloquent fashion

    It’s been a pretty depressing week, all current affairs considered, so you might like the Yes and Yes take on staying optimistic in a troubled world

    Anyone can stop dreaming and start doing, says American Debt Project

    Traveling 9 to 5 rounds up 12 stunning beaches they visited this year. Slightly jealous

    Finally, a wee shout-out to Weddilicious, a swish new tool for engaged couples to make their own wedding websites (finding one to make mine was a bit of a headache, so I wish I’d found this a few months ago!). I’m helping them out a little on the writing side, and am super glad they found me and reached out to me.

    Wishing you well for the holidays (we showed it to those Mayans, eh?) – may full bellies and warm fuzzies be yours.

  • December 20, 2012

    Reflections on a year of no shopping

    a year of no shopping

    <image via jostel on flickr>

    It’s official: I don’t give two shits about fashion.

    Of course I wish I was more hip, thanks to the infinitely more stylish ladies in my office. (Still has nothing on the time I worked in the office of a fashion magazine.) But the thing about maturity (ha) is you come to realise what your real priorities are – and clothing and accessories are not among mine.

    I set myself a no shopping challenge this year, and I can’t say I’ve missed it. I don’t miss malls. I had no idea what ‘peplum’ meant when one of my best friends dropped it into a conversation, and I didn’t care (I’m googling it now).

    Basically, I was only allowed to replace things I actually needed. And my trip to Sydney in July proved the perfect time to do so, where I picked up two pairs of flats, a bag, and a wallet (the latter not strictly being essential at the time, but everything else was definitely a need).

    The canvas shoes (Ked-style ripoffs) that I put through their paces walking all over the city got waterlogged on the first (or was it second?) day, and while I could handle the squelching, I could not deal when the sole actually cracked – it literally split across the middle. So off I headed to a cheapie shoe place – I forget the name; we don’t have it here in NZ – and bought two pairs of ballet flats for $30. Expensive flats have never worked out for me, so I stick to the low end. Boots, on the other hand, are a different story. (That reminds me – I got my one pair of black leather boots resoled this winter, but they’re not going to last another season. Sigh.)

    Elsewhere, I’ve been lucky in that I scored free moisturisers and makeup through work, and the goodie bag at Semi-Permanent included a full-size tub of my holy grail: Trilogy Everything Balm. It almost made up for the fact that lunch wasn’t provided on either day, forcing me to go out and buy food.

    The one thing that’s still on my wishlist? A killer leather jacket. Unfortunately, I have neither the budget nor inclination to find the perfect one, unless it falls out of the sky. Cloudy with a chance of leather jackets? Yes please.

    What’s your shopping philosophy? Any standout purchases this year? What’s on your wishlist?

  • December 19, 2012

    Review: Grammarly

    My boss is a bona fide grammar Nazi. I’ve learned all sorts of things from her, like not to hyphenate descriptors when the first adjective ends in ‘ly’. In comparison, I’m a dilettante – I know more than the average Joe Bloggs and I’m quite fanatical about it, but that’s not really saying much, I suppose. I’ve never even seen a Strunk and White, let alone read a copy. It wasn’t until this year that I definitively learned the difference between ‘that’ and ‘which’ and ‘i.e’ vs ‘e.g’. My writing is based on gut; I can write well, though I can’t really explain how or why I do anything in terms of word choice, grammar or sentence structure aside from IT FEELS/LOOKS right. I’d be a terrible teacher in that regard.review grammarly

    Anyway, I recently got the chance to try Grammarly out for free – an editing tool that’s kind of an all-round writing helper (automated proofreader/personal grammar coach, to pinch their slogan) that will pick apart your text and check for plagiarism at the same time. There’s an online version, plus integration with Microsoft Word and Outlook, although if you’re a Mac user you’re out of luck.

    You can run Grammarly in several different modes: academic, business, casual, etc. That determines the kind of style you’ll be assessed on (for both work and play, I’m more or less always operating on ‘casual’. If you had to write serious policy reports all day, you’d probably go for a different one). It processes your writing, and spits out a scorecard that rates your piece overall out of 100. It also lists all the issues found in your writing, and takes you through them individually.

    Grammarly touts itself as ‘the world’s best grammar checker’, boasting that it corrects up to 10 times more errors than “popular word processors”. It tests for 150-odd types of mistakes as well as offering vocabulary suggestions (and as I said before, running your text to compare it to other material online for potential copy-and-paste jiggery pokery). Your basic spellcheck is included, and other errors it detects include boo-boos of passive voice, punctuation, capitalisation.

    Drilling down further, it also picks up often-overlooked things such as repeated words (as as or and and, anyone?) and incorrect usage of correctly spelled words (than vs then). This contextual technology is its real strength and the key differentiator. It’s not unlike Word in that it reiterates general rules with generic examples for each.

    It costs $139.95 for a year, $59.95 per quarter or $29.95 a month. And like all good software, it has a free trial period (seven days). Depending on your needs, that might be a worthwhile investment. My take? After having used it, I can’t say I’m a full convert. Its capabilities are definitely more impressive than, say, your built-in Office checker, but I don’t personally need them for what I do, and I can’t see myself ever paying that much for them.

    (And no, I didn’t run this post through Grammarly.)

  • December 19, 2012

    The many must lose in order that the few may win

    I’ve never been much of a gambler. After turning 20, I went to the casino to see what it was like (and got torn apart by a commenter for spending $20 on the slots, which I thought was quite ridiculous, seeing as I would have spent that much on a couple of drinks if I was a drinker, and nobody would judge me for THAT).

    What I really found fascinating there was the people-watching potential. I can happily sit quietly and listen to group conversation for hours without contributing much, if anything, and watch people go about their business for just as long. At the casino, there’s the people who plant themselves at the tables and blow thousands in minutes; the people hanging out for one more hand, hedging their bets on roulette; the people who methodically, robotically scroll through the slots without ever seeming to see anything else around them (okay, they’re not so interesting to observe).

    The lure, of course, is the promise of hitting the jackpot. “$160,000!” (or whatever) the screens proclaim in lurid digits. That promise of a pot of gold is all the more accessible online through sites like Pokerstars.net (T has taken up casually playing there).

    After all, there are people who genuinely make money through gambling. Ever seen 21? Fascinating true tale about a bunch of mega-smart MIT students who basically used maths to hack blackjack and hit Vegas on weekends for millions. On a smaller scale, plenty of more average (but equally as dedicated) pros play cards for a living. A blog post I came across recently, The Hustler’s MBA, actually suggests learning poker as the first of nine steps in an alternate route to your typical university education (I can’t say I agree, but to his credit, later steps include travelling, learning to code, and starting a business).

    Here’s a sample of his argument:

    Poker will cost you money at first. Let’s say $5000 in the first year. After that you’ll be able to make between $45-60 per hour for the rest of your life. That’s about $85,000 per year, which adjusts for inflation because as money is inflated, the stakes to keep the game interesting will go up. You will also receive “raises” because you’ll always improve as a player and be able to play better stakes. If you’re dedicated to poker, getting this good is virtually guaranteed. I’ve been through the process and it’s not particularly hard. Can school guarantee you a job that pays this well?

    I’m inclined to agree with Tynan that it helps hone your logic and maths chops. As T always tells me, it’s all about reading your opponents and anticipating what they’ve got. (The one time I played with the guys, I played emotionally, and while I knew it, that never stopped me from forging on nonetheless rather than cutting my losses.) Some of his friends take it pretty seriously, getting together multiple times a week, and yes, making casino trips, which they often make a profit on.

    I’ve read my fair share of polemics making the case against university, although this one is definitely the first to advocate poker as a key income source.  And I’m sure he’d agree the advice is not for everyone. Making a legit $85k a year through poker = the exception, rather than the norm. I’ll stick to the role of observer, for one.

  • December 18, 2012

    Bullshit-free bride: Boiling it down to the essentials

    Small is beautiful.

    That’s my wedding philosophy, which follows on nicely from the BS-free motto.

    bullshit free bride nzmuse

    The wedding journey has been interesting so far. Reaction to our engagement ranged from “oh yeah, about time” to “uh, so you’re engaged? But you haven’t set a date? YOU’RE NOT PLANNING A WEDDING YET?”. My guy friends got it (unsurprisingly). Bless their hearts.
    I’m pretty sure we come off to others like the kind of people who would elope or just do the registry thing. I wouldn’t have minded eloping, but T would insist his mother attend. We would have to pay for that. Then it wouldn’t be fair to leave my parents out. And I personally did NOT want a wedding only attended by the parentals. So that led into the next logical step – a full blown wedding.

    A registry wedding would certainly be cheap, but I’m not ashamed to say that I would actually want the photos and the gathering of friends all in one place. To do it “properly”, as such. And unfortunately we have no family property as so many brides on forums and in magazines seem to have, sadly – so we marched onwards with the knowledge that we’d be starting from scratch.

    To keep myself from going insane, I think of it this way. At the heart of it, there are only a few key expenses. The core things are:

    Venue. Done.

    People. Done.

    Photography.  Budget weddings often skip this but getting a pro or semi pro is important to me. T and I have very few (good) photos of ourselves together so I’d like our wedding to be documented. The lovely Amanda will be shooting us. Blogging FTW!

    Dress. I know what I want – now I just need to GET ON IT.

    Food. (We’ll get to that).

    My plan is for a $5k wedding. $1800 is already accounted for by venue, celebrant, photographer (our amazing venue is also ridiculously affordable, costing just under $500), plus of course official paperwork costs (which I think will be about another $150).

    Here’s what we’re NOT spending on:

    Flowers. I see budgets recommending to set aside 10 percent of the budget on flowers. Are you effing kidding me? Personally, I plan to have zero blooms at our wedding. I have no patience for things that make me sneeze and serve no practical purpose. There’s zero romance in that. People are probably going to find our lack of decor a bit plain, but that’s how I roll (and that’s why I chose a sweet venue with character). They don’t have to like it.

    Music. I don’t want a live band, and I’m not sure there’s one in the world that could do justice to my, erm, eclectic playlist. I’ve got all the songs in a YouTube list – now to work out the hardware logistics. Also, I have no idea where we would FIT the band in our venue.

    Then there’s the smaller things.

    Rings. I know roughly what I want;  it’s just a matter of finding it – a vintage ruby ring along the same lines as my antique engagement ring. It doesn’t have to be a three-stoner, but it does need to be subtle and rounded off (no remotely sharp edges, thanks). I don’t wear any other jewellery, so it needs to earn a place in my life. I don’t want a plain band, but nor do I want anything I’ve seen new in stores … I’m more or less the opposite of a magpie. I hate bling and secretly find your super shiny ring repulsive, while you probably think mine is pathetic. I’ve already been to a couple of antique shops and not found anything – I’m not sure what I’ll do if I don’t find a ring I like before the wedding.

    Guest book. As life would have it, I recently ran a sweet Moleskine/Milk Book giveaway through work, and was offered a free one for myself. So I made up a swish photo album with all the semi-decent photos of us as a couple that I could find.

    Decor. As I said, I’m nixing flowers. Any centrepieces will probably be something edible, like chocolates. Not sure if I’ll bother with table linens. (I will need to double check that they’ll have enough furniture at the venue for us.) I quite like the idea of getting colourful disposable plates/cutlery (the less cleanup the better, even if I do overstep my daily landfill contribution in the process).

    Celebrant. We found a lovely, salt-of-the-earth type West Auckland woman who’s also very affordable and has sent us through a bunch of short and sweet ceremony examples. Win.

    One thing I am struggling with is the culture thing. Old-timers probably remember it’s always been a fraught issue of identity for me. My auntie surprised me by offering to hold a traditional tea ceremony the day before the wedding – I’m such a banana that I only heard about these in the past year thanks to other Asian bloggers getting married themselves; I knew my parents definitely wouldn’t be suggesting any random cultural traditions. Anyway, we’ll probably do it, and laugh a lot at ourselves along the way (I have NO idea what to expect, and I’m guessing jeans are probably not appropriate dress).

    But the one thing I do hold on to is the food. Oh, the food. It took me about 20 years to realise, but nothing will ever top Malaysian food in my book. This is the only ethnic thing I care to integrate into the wedding. At first I agonised over this – just because all the mixed race weddings in blogs and in magazines incorporate something cultural doesn’t mean I have to. But you know what: I want to, and I also kinda FEEL like I should. I spent so much of my life denying my ethnic/cultural heritage as a first generation immigrant and insecure teenager and while I want to have an otherwise very white wedding, having it be totally Euro would be a bit of a disappointment if for no other reason than I’d really like to eat my favourite cuisine on the day. My mum has suggested one place not far away, so I’ll need to check them out (hopefully over the holidays – they’re presumably non-Christian immigrants, so I’m sure they’ll be open throughout).

    Still haven’t decided anything re: my bridal party, but seeing as it’s really not a huge deal – really, whoever ends up being in it, all they’ll have to do is turn up, which they were going to do anyway … and maybe stand up the front instead – I’m okay with leaving it a bit longer to get sorted.

    Am I missing anything vital?

    The form you have selected does not exist.

  • December 15, 2012

    Link love (Powered by BBQs and bug bites)

    A little bit of looking on the bright side this week:

    • I’m grateful that I decided to go with a reasonably hefty fringe at my last haircut, because my face is looking pretty gruesome as my sunburn from last weekend peels off (I know, I know. Slap on the wrist). I tan, then peel, resulting in patches of dirty looking brown skin all over my face. NOT attractive. The hair hides a lot of it, though.
    • I’m grateful my readership hasn’t slumped since going self-hosted, but I am hugely annoyed that WordPress doesn’t seem to be honouring my scheduled post dates. I line up posts well in advance and this month I’ve been moving a few of them around for various reasons, but it seems the RSS and Twitter links haven’t been getting the memo for the new publish times. A massive SORRY to everyone who’s clicked through to a non-existent post. I grovel, I apologise, and promise that it won’t happen after next week (I have a feeling I may have meddled with one or two of next week’s posts, unfortunately).
    • I’m grateful T’s debilitating eye condition has been diagnosed. Yeah, it’s just been all fun and games on the health front there the past few months. He got sent home twice because his eyes were so effed up he physically couldn’t carry on – red, swollen, itchy, weeping and all around disgusting. I actually couldn’t bring myself to look closely at him. It was nasty. Anyway, apparently he has wicked hayfever, which I think is absolutely hilarious – him, the superman, who always mocks me and my chronic woes. He’s reasonably accommodating when I’m dripping snot or struggling to breathe for long periods, but until you actually experience the misery for yourself, you can never really understand IMO. On the downside, though, work is definitely wearing him down both physically and mentally – not because it’s more taxing than when he worked in trades, but because it’s quite literally sucking the life out of him. He knows I’m completely supportive of him finding something else; the question is what, exactly, that might be.

    Just a handful of links for your reading pleasure:

    Here are a bunch of things you should probably do more of, courtesy of Amanda Lee

    And from Kara, a list of things she is not

    Literary outreach at Tumblr would be a pretty sweet job, don’tcha think?

    Ms Career Girl shares eight things she loves about not being self-employed anymore

    In the market for a financial advisor? Sam has some questions you should ask first

    Up at Urban Muse are 12 Days of Freelancing, a list of handy posts for perusal if you’re a freelance writer

    Was it just last week I shared a recipe for ice cream cake? Well, here’s another, from one of my favourite food blogs ever

    Happy weekends!

  • December 14, 2012

    Friday Five: Things I can’t get enough of

    Payday

    If only payday could be every day. Alas, next week marks my last payday for the year. When’s yours?

    Putting money into savings

    I transfer my whole paycheque into savings every month, then transfer out money every week thereafter as needed (rent, groceries and the other big expenses are all weekly) – so actual savings transfers only occur when I have extra income. And damn, those feel good.

    Chips

    Fries, potato chips, veggie chips, prawn crackers, corn chips … doesn’t matter what it is, I lose all self-control around them. It’s not pretty. But it’s worth it while it lasts…

    Books

    Especially when I’ve just made it through a challenging read (cough Anna Karenina cough), there’s nothing like rewarding myself by devouring the equivalent of literary fast food. Best found on the recently returned shelves at the library.

    Running in the breeze

    One foot in front of the other. The sun on your back, warm and familiar, but not oppressive. A light wind that keeps you from sweating. Light shorts and a tank. Bra-less, if possible. This is about as free as you can feel while outside and clothed, IMO – and it’s glorious. End with a masochistic sprint – deliriously lovely in that brief feeling of near-weightlessness, terribly painful when you’re forced into a premature stop, wondering if you could even manage a sub-20 second 100m today and knowing you wouldn’t dare time yourself.

  • December 13, 2012

    On age and how others perceive you

    I’ve always been touchy about my age, and how old others think I am.

    This stems back to a time when I was introduced to someone my parents knew, shortly after we moved to New Zealand, and just after we built our house (to my best recall).

    “How old is she? Seven?” he asked.

    I was in fact nine, and deeply insulted.

    At 16 I got my first ever job. I worked in a cafe, mostly clearing tables and washing dishes. My coworkers thought I was in my early 20s.

    Somewhere along the way, I’ve gone from looking young for my age to looking older. I think the glasses probably contribute. That, and my weirdly prematurely wrinkly forehead.

    It also apparently stems from the way I conduct myself. “You’re so not Gen Y!” I was told earlier this year (said in a tone that suggested being Gen Y was on par with being a Nazi or an animal abuser).

    Confidence is not one of my inherent qualities. I second-guess myself at every opportunity. I doubt my skills whenever faced with something new. I secretly think most of my work is terrible and that I’m a fraud. As I told my best friend the other week when we enlisted the help of a security guard to boot the people occupying our seats at Coldplay, if it had been me plonked down there and some other people had come along suggesting we were in the wrong row, I would be instantly convinced that I was the one who’d made a mistake (even if I wasn’t) and leap up to check.

    But apparently I manage to carry off the illusion of confidence at work, which suits me just fine. In a generation where people are staying at home and at university longer, I think I’ve got an edge, having been independent from 17 (somehow I’ve become the go-to person on all things adulthood in my circle… housing, work, cars, etc). And I suppose I’m lucky in that I’m not an assistant drone at the bottom of a corporate ladder. I have a lot of autonomy, relatively speaking, and being constantly wooed by PR types on a daily basis has probably inflated my sense of power.

    Is looking older than you really are a bonus in the workplace?

    I think this can actually be a advantage. People are more likely to take you seriously if you look 35 as opposed to 15. As we all know, appearance counts for way more than anyone likes to admit (and that includes everything from your wardrobe to the pitch of your voice).

    On the other hand, that can lead to higher expectations of you, and pressure to deliver what you might not be able to carry off. Pull it off though, and you’ll be a rockstar.

    I’ll probably be regretting this when I’m 40 and staring into the mirror wondering where I went. But in consolation, I did recently get carded at a bar (annoyingly, I didn’t have my ID on me at the time). I still have it … sometimes.

    Do you look your age? Do people normally guess your age correctly?

  • December 12, 2012

    2012 in review: The literary edition

    I am a freak of the 2.0 genereation.

    I despise the notion of e-books and refuse to read books on a screen (the exception being a few classics I loaded onto my iPad for free before leaving for our South Island trip. I only finished one while we were away and I’m slowly making my way through the rest of them now. I do enjoy being able to look up the definition of a word right there and then on the page, but physical books and I shall not be parted.) I already spend at least 8 hours a day staring intently into a computer screen, and have no desire to increase that time.

    Yet I am not a book buyer. I am an unapologetic library slut. Somehow, though, I’ve managed to accumulate a small pile of novels by my bed, and it’s making me antsy. Books are bulky and annoying (I like to borrow them, read them, and hustle them back out of my house).

    Aside from books on loan from the public library, these books are:

    • Freebies from work – some I reviewed, some I did not
    • Lent to me by a friend
    • Gifts (one, to be precise)

    I need to clean these out.

    Seeing as we’re getting close to the end of 2012, I thought I might recap some of my more memorable reads of the year.

    I read quite a bit of non fiction. Among this category, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother squeaks in as the most impactful of them all. Later I found out that Sophia, the older daughter (beautiful! accomplished! younger than me!), has a blog, which I promptly subscribed to. And as you do, I did a spot of Googling and was dumbfounded by some of the vitriol aimed at this family – the girls, too – unbelievable. This was an unsolicited review copy (woop!) and I actually want to keep this book around, that much did I enjoy it. I can only hope to blend the best of Chinese and western parenting with my kids – the discipline, the drive, with individualism and creativity. That may be a tall ask.

    I also loved Caitlin Moran’s memoir How to Be a Woman on so many levels (Moranthology, a collection of her published work, also rocked it for me), and Mindy Kaling’s (Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?) for sheer likeability and entertainment. See this post.

    As memoirs go, The Glass Castle stirred up a maelstrom of emotions; hope for the human spirit and despair at the very worst of humanity. Heartbreak for the Walls children and the countless others like them out there. Jeannette’s tale is beautifully, blamelessly and unflinchingly told. You must, must read it.

    Other non-fiction included Gilmore Girls and the Politics of Identity. Meh. I had high hopes for insightful analysis into one of my all-time favourite TV shows, and there were a few essays worth a read, but overall it was pretty weak.

    Moving into fiction territory…

    O (a presidential novel) may have received bad reviews, but I rated it four stars on Goodreads. I am neither a political buff nor a hardcore news buff, but I guess we media types like to read about ourselves and our industry. O was published back in 2011, a projection of what the 2012 battle could look like, but I read it in September 2012 – an interesting time, obviously, with campaigning actually underway. (And immediately after finishing it, I came across this Vanity Fair profile of the real Obama. All very synchronous.) Obviously the author couldn’t have anticipated Romney, exactly; his Republican nominee is Tom Morrison, a military type with an innate understanding of human psychology, who doesn’t want to play dirty, and is a formidable opponent. Sadly, there is no definitive end; this is  a novel about the process, but the narrative is the really interesting part for the junkies – the subtle power plays, the inner workings of campaigns and government and the news media.

    Its faults? Look, the wee ears around the O on the cover were cute, but the  references to the president as only O got ridonkulous real fast, particularly in the news stories toward the end. The fictional liberties taken to humanise the president were hardly worth blinking at, and overall the characterisation is dreadful (weak, or in fact, non-existent). The thinly veiled characters based on real people occasionally were genuinely amusing (Palin, Huffington) but the treatment of women was unspeakably medieval. Of course both the beautiful, tough journalist and the sexy young volunteer would both sleep with the top O campaign staffer. Of course. At least he gets his just deserts in the end, and to the author’s credit, Regan also gets shot down very sharply by an actress at a political dinner, though I’m not sure who she was modelled on – Angelina Jolie?

    A Woman in Berlin trod a similar line as an anonymous diary of a journalist in WWII, as did Night by Elie Wiesel. Both are stark in their simplicity, but a simply told tale was probably the best way to try and convey firsthand the atrocities of war. In the former, the women who were able to struck up alliances with Russian soldiers, who acted in part as their patrons, protecting them from rape by soldiers and bringing them essentials. In the latter, they experienced the horror of the Holocaust first hand, shipped into a concentration camp, mined for gold fillings, forced to turn upon one another.

    Novel-wise, carrying on in the same vein, Fatherland offered a peek into a parallel universe, one in which Hitler triumphed and continued to hold Germany in his grip and keep the Holocaust under wraps from the rest of the world (see earlier review).

    Life of Pi was a slightly frustrating read. Yes, gripping. Yes, fantastical. But the reason academic analysis doesn’t push my buttons is I’m really just a literary dilettante. I don’t like to thrash out symbolism and themes to death. This is one of those books. You can read it at its surface or accept the underlying tale it hints at, which is too terrible to accept. So while I loved this as a story, I didn’t love the work that goes into interpreting it. Absolutely a must read, however.

    Love in the Time of Cholera reminded me of a Woody Allen film. Hateful characters I didn’t give a shit about. A spot of casual rape and pedophilia tossed in right at the end. Yes, it left that much of a nasty impression on me that I’m mentioning it. Would love to hear your take.

    And last of all, I finally clued into Jane Austen with Emma and Pride and Prejudice – which I loved! Where have you been all my life? (I know, I know – I was too cool for the classics and looked down my nose at them. How wrong I was on this count.)

    What books stood out to you this year?

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