The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge 2011 was hosted by Michelle/The True Book Addict and ran from November 21st through January 6th.

Unfortunately, I’m still reading one of the books I picked up for this challenge; it’s proving a trickier read than I expected.

I did reach my goal for both the book and movie levels,  Mistletoe and also Fa La La La Films, respectively.

My Book List
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – Read but did not review. It’s seems odd to “review” a story that’s been around as long as this one.
A Vampire Christmas Carol by Sarah Gray – Still reading. [Edited 1/10/12: Read and reviewed.]
All Through the Night by Mary Higgins Clark – Read and reviewed.

My Movie List
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
A Christmas Carol (1951)
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
Frosty the Snowman (1969)
One Magic Christmas (1985)
Christmas Vacation (1989)
Elf (2003)

Thanks, Michelle, for such a fun challenge!

Synopsis

All of Alvirah’s deductive powers and Willy’s world-class common sense are called upon as the two stumble into a Christmas mystery. A woman abandons her newborn at a Manhattan church. Simultaneously, a thief is absconding with a treasured artifact, a chalice adorned with a star-shaped diamond. To elude police, he grabs the stroller and disappears. Seven years later, the mother returns to the scene and finds Alvirah and Willy helping neighborhood kids prepare for a Christmas pageant at an after-school shelter. Soon the savvy sleuths set out to solve the puzzle of the missing child and chalice — and to unmask scam artists threatening to shut down the shelter. (Source)

What I Liked Most

All Through the Night had a solid beginning and ending; there were questions for which I wanted answers. I’ll admit I even teared up a bit at the end. There was a positive vibe that warmed my heart which, as a Christmas story, it was probably meant to do.

What I Liked Least

During my teens I read several of Higgins Clark’s novels that I borrowed from my mom’s bookshelf. Those Higgins Clark novels were suspenseful, often involving a murder mystery, and usually featured a strong female lead.

All Through the Night lacked suspense and a strong mystery. It was too sugary for my taste. The mystery wasn’t really a mystery. The coincidences seemed way too thin to believe. And the connections Alvirah made in the story would, in the real world, have to be the result of psychic abilities, or some serious obsessing. I had to consciously suspend disbelief whenever Alvirah “solved” something because it was all just so darn easy. Sure, there was mild conflict but I didn’t believe anyone was in real danger; the overall tone felt like everything would work out fine for everyone anyway.

Final Thoughts

All Through the Night is a good selection for anyone, any age, who wants a quick and easy read filled with Christmas spirit. Remember, don’t expect anything thought-provoking or suspenseful, just light reading that’ll leave you with a serious case of the warm ‘n fuzzies.

Visit Mary Higgins Clark’s website for more about her this and other books.

I picked this up to read for the Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge 2011.

This year’s to-read list included many classics by authors such as Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, and Oscar Wilde; plus, the “must-reads” for horror writers that I hadn’t read yet, such as Richard Matheson and M.R. James. I also wanted to delve deeper into the works of Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. However, there was modern fiction I’d been dying to read by authors such as John Ajvide Lindqvist and Stieg Larsson.

Well it took most of the year before I realized I wasn’t reading as much as I wanted. Instead I was wasting time – and I detest wasting my time – doing pretty much nothing. I used to read every day for hours in my teens. So, in the last quarter of 2011, I read like I have always wanted to: daily. I didn’t meet the 2010 or the 2011 challenges, during which I read 32 books and 60 books, respectively, but I believe I will read 75 books in 2012.

Fiction: 38 | Non-Fiction: 22 | Total: 60

January 2011

1. By Cunning & Craft by Peter Selgin [About]
2. On Writing Horror (Revised Edition) edited by Mort Castle [About]
3. The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft edited by S.T. Joshi [About]
4. Small World by Tabitha King [About]
5. In the Shadow of the Master edited by Michael Connelly [About]

February 2011

6. On Writing by Stephen King [About]
7. Poe’s Children – The New Horror: An Anthology edited by Peter Straub [About]
8. Fear by L. Ron Hubbard [About]
9. The Year of Disappearances by Susan Hubbard [About]
10. Great Ghost Stories edited by John Grafton [About]
11. Classic Ghost Stories edited by John Grafton [About]

March 2011

12. Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond by Hans Holzer [About]
13. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James [About | Free eBook]
14. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan [About]
15. Let the Right One In (aka Let Me In) by John Ajvide Lindqvist [About] ←
16. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan [About]
17. The Ultimate Unauthorized Stephen King Trivia Challenge by Robert W. Bly [About]

April 2011

18. Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation… by Stephen Thrower [About]
19. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all small stuff by Richard Carlson, Ph.D. [About]
20. The 5 Things We Need to Be Happy by Patricia Lorenz [About]
21. The Everything Body Language Book by Shelly Hagen [About]
22. Let It All Bleed Out edited by Alfred Hitchcock [Front and Back Cover | Contents ]

May 2011

23. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey [About]
24. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan [About]
25. I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore [About]
26. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman [About | My "Review"] ←
27. Bones: A Forensic Detective’s Casebook by Ubelaker and Scammell [About]

June 2011

28. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan [About]
29. Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris [About] (paperback)
30. Darkness Creeping by Neal Shusterman [About]
31. Now You See It by Richard Matheson [About] (hardcover)
32. Hunted Past Reason by Richard Matheson [About] (hardcover)

July 2011

33. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan [About]
34. Cracking Creativity by Michael Michalko [About]
35. Container Gardening Through the Year by Malcolm Hillier [About]
36. Container Gardening for Dummies by Bill Marken [About]
37. Window Gardens by Stephen Roberts and Jane Forster [About]
38. I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells [About | My "Review"]
39. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro [About] ←

August 2011

40. The Radleys by Matt Haig [About]
41. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [About | Free eBook]
42. The Unauthorized X-Files Challenge by James Hatfield [About]

September 2011

43. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson [About]
44. Debt Free for Life by David Bach [About]
45. The Safety of Objects by A.M. Homes [About]
46. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke [About] (I stopped at page 82.)

October 2011

46. The Millionaire Messenger by Brendon Burchard [About]
47. The Power of Focus by Les Hewitt [About]
48. Getting Things Done by David Allen [About | My "Review"]
49. Silent Children by Ramsey Campbell [About]
50. The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston [About]

November 2011

51. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris [About]
52. The E Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber [About]

December 2011

53. Tell No One by Harlan Coben [About]
54. The Road by Cormac McCarthy [About]
55. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens [About | Free eBook]
56. Digging into WordPress by Chris Coyier and Jeff Star [About | My "Review"]
57. The Long Dark Night by Joseph Hayes [Front and Back Cover | My "Review"]
58. All Through The Night by Mary Higgins Clark [About | My "Review" (Coming Soon)]
59. Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto [About]
60. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway [About]

Did you read as much as you wanted in 2011?

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do.

(The links take you to a video on YouTube – I listen with my eyes closed.)

• I Want The One I Can’t Have by The Smiths
• My Favorite Mistake by Sheryl Crow
• Why Do You Treat Me Like You Do? by SoKo
• Linger by The Cranberries
• I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You by Colin Hay
• Screaming by Dashboard Confessional
• It Must Have Been Love by Roxette
• Against All Odds (cover) by The Postal Service
• Title Unknown by Michael Ortega (Instrumental)
• I’ll Kill Her by SoKo

Check out this page for 12 songs about loving someone you can’t have or loving someone you shouldn’t.

If you enjoyed these lists please Share them using the buttons below – thank you!

Photo credit: Juan David Ferrando

So I researched and compiled a list of print books. (Because you know how I feel about eBooks.) And, to be honest, at $75 USD Digging into WordPress wasn’t my first choice. But then some unexpected money arrived, yay!

Anywho, the book’s format is near perfect: spiral-bound, color-coded, and listed in a logical “quick reference” style. I did notice, from about chapter seven on, there were typos and missing words (oopsy!) Nitpicking aside, I’m quite pleased and foresee using this as a reference book for a long time.

Its impressive 420 pages are crammed full of descriptions, explanations, tips, tricks, demos, and code snippets. And when I say crammed, I mean it; some pages were even a little difficult to read because there was SO much on one page. Not complaining though. I’d rather have too much info than not enough :)

What I’ll use immediately (well not RIGHT this minute but in the coming months):

1. Custom taxonomies. Wow! I was totally oblivious to the power these give WP-powered sites. My geeky self was almost as excited about taxonomies as when I first learned about post formats.

2. Better organization. I haven’t ever been satisfied with my categories and tags: they’ve always seemed too much or too little. But thanks to my new found knowledge (see #1), I think my the layout will be just what I intended to do from the get-go.

3. Stronger permalinks. I already use pretty permalinks but the way I have them set up is way too nested (aka long). So I’m gonna change these up once my child theme is finished and my sites re-designed.

4. Security optimization. There are definitely a few doors that need closed.

5. Site optimization. Okay, so I did already start on this one – I deleted all deactivated plugins that I’d kept “just in case” – and I plan to make a few other tweaks as well.

Biggest suggestion:

It would be fantabulous if the authors would create and include an index with future versions. A way to quickly find the page with something that was referenced only in the sidebars, for instance.

Note: Digging into WordPress is geared more towards the intermediate user / developer. Newbies’ heads might pop off once they’re past the beginner info in the first few chapters. And advanced developers would find the repetition (and the sections of duplicate content) useless. But for those who are familiar with the basics of HTML, PHP and CSS, you’ll see the big picture enough to know what you can do, what you might want to do, and then how to go about doing it.

WEB RESOURCES:

Digging into WordPress (companion site)
CSS Tricks
Perishable Press

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.

On Sunday, November 20th I woke up with the intention of getting some things done around the house, many of which I’d put off for months.

I read the item, “Replace duct cap in yard’s northwest corner.” Then I heard, “Man, that will take forever and I want to play Just Dance 2 with my kid instead.”

I read the item, “Install hook and eye type ‘lock’ on pantry door.” Then I heard, “Man, that will take forever and I want to read instead.”

I read the item, “Prepare spring bulbs for winter storage.” And then, you guessed it, I heard the same over-exaggerated time to completion and what I’d rather be doing.

That’s when it hit me: I was putting off all these less-than-15 minute tasks because I perceived doing them right then and there would take up so much time I wouldn’t be able to do anything “fun” that day. When in reality not one of those repairs / maintenance would take me longer than 15 minutes (each) to complete.

Now, I thought I’d absorbed the idea of perception stunting focus and fueling procrastination back when I read Getting Things Done. But not until I actually caught myself in the act did I really get it. So I completed all six repair / maintenance items in under two hours. Not only that, I also completed the fall clean up / garden prep I’d wanted to do weeks earlier but kept putting off. You see, once I was in the act of doing, I didn’t want to stop. Forward motion and all that. Pretty cool, huh?

And wouldn’t you know it, that Monday, temps dropped and it rained. If I would’ve procrastinated on those items, even just one more day, the work would’ve been a lot more muddy (and cold!) and a lot less fun.

Here’s my two cents: When you find yourself reading (and re-reading) your “To Do” list, really tune into your self-talk. What do you hear? What reasons are there for not doing that thing right then? Are they factual reasons? Or simply made up excuses? Don’t let yourself off the hook either; dig into what you’re telling yourself, and why.

I’ve been doing this the last few weeks, and it’s working! Whenever I hear myself saying, “Ahh, I can do that tomorrow,” or “I need to do that,” I ask myself why I can’t do it right then. If the answer is a load of malarkey then I do the task straight away.

Obviously certain tasks and projects cannot be done the moment you think of them but many can, even if it’s just the first step. For example, “Get new tires” has been on my list since summer. But it wasn’t until I took the first step, “make calls for price quotes,” that I made progress. And on Saturday, December 10th I marked “Get new tires” off my list.

Remember, most things are not as complicated as we – our thoughts – make them out to be. If we can stop that Inner Drama Queen (or King) from blowing things out of proportion there will be a much higher tendency to do that thing today instead of tomorrow or next week or when we have more time to think about the “best” way.

Photo credit: Rphotos