Watched and read list of 2014

A bit late! Oh well. I only read two books and a trilogy in the first nine months, and then I caught up with twelve more books in the remaining 3 months. Which makes this really more of a movie list, with 55 movies and 2 TV series (I didn’t see many movies growing up, I’m catching up). I didn’t count non-fiction books, because they’re work-related (but in hindsight, perhaps not an optimal decision). In making this list, I’ve realised that I’ll watch and read basically anything that’s available. This isn’t a highly sought-after superpower, but if a book or DVD feels neglected in a 1 km radius, I will give it some attention. I am still recovering from watching all of Dawson’s Creek over several months in 2013 (I loved it).

Kate has a good, measurable goal of a book a month (plus many other “real person” goals) and to note them on Goodreads. As a binge-reader/watcher, my goal is to visit the library at least once a fortnight so I always have a pile of books or DVDs at home, ready for when I get the craving.

Credit for reading list tracking to E, who got the idea from another archivist, and of course Read Watch Play.

My word of the year (milquetoast) was from the movie Extra Man. I didn’t really have a favourite from the list, but I find that the more I enjoy something, the more I want to remember quotes so that I can keep it close (like pinning a butterfly to remember the colours, even if it is still faded from the real experience). Maybe it was Maleficent as I watched it twice. Magic Mike was fun but I forgot I had the DVD in the computer drive, so I spent ages trying to work out which internet tab was playing an interminable melody until I realised it was the DVD intro auto-play.

I’m excited to read the rest of the Bloodlines novels (last one out in February) and the sequel to Jewel (White Rose), but it isn’t out till 6 October! Ugh. At least it’s a little closer with each passing moment.

February

• Little red riding hood (movie)

March

• 50 shades of grey trilogy (books)
• Rewatching seasons 1-3 Game of Thrones (TV series)
• I saw the devil (Korean movie with English subtitles)

April

• Orphan (movie)
• Män som hatar kvinnor (Swedish movie with English subtitles)
• March hares (book)

[in the British Museum reading room] “It was as indeed as good as a play, this marvellous aggregation of human dramatic possibilities surging tirelessly before him. He wondered that he had never thought of seeing it before.” P. 4

[various notations about Pale flaxen hair picked with lemon in its lights and a Dainty rose-leaf of a chin]

“Placing her elbows on the table, and poising her chin between thumbs and forefingers, she bestowed a frank scrutiny upon his face, as intent and dispassionate as the gaze which a professor of palmistry fastens upon the lines of the client’s hand.” P. 30

“David piled up in reverie the loathly epithets upon the over-large bald head of his friend with savage satisfaction. “You preposterous clown!” he snarled at the burly blond image of the absent nobleman in his mind’s eye. “You gratuitous and wanton ass! Oh, you unthinkable duffer!” p. 139

“Who the deuce could it be?” p. 156

• Doughnut by Tom Holt (book) (lots of fun quotes)
• The Hunger Games: Catching fire (movie)
• Filth (movie)
• The people next door (movie)
• The gods must be crazy II (movie)
• Lego (movie)
• The hunt (Danish movie with English subtitles)

May

• The other woman (movie)
• Now you see me (movie)
• Miss congeniality 2 (movie)
• Butter (movie)
• Jackass 3 (movie)
• Magic Mike (movie)

June

• Maleficent x 2 (movie) The first movie I’ve ever enjoyed enough to see twice at the cinema! I wrote about it twice during blogjune, perhaps my double-consumption was symptomatic of having to write as a daily habit.
• Bruce Almighty (movie – couldn’t get through it)
• Horrible bosses (movie)
• Beasts of the Southern Wild (movie)

July

• How to train your dragon 2 (movie)
• The day of the triffids (series, 1981)

Ep1: “You’ve got eyes, use them goddamnit”

Ep 5? “The trouble with triffids is what we don’t know” “All the knowledge is there, in books, if only we’d take the time to read them.”

• Midnight in the garden of good and evil (movie)
• Café de flore (movie)

“Antoine radiates happiness from every pore.”

“Everything you touch turns to gold.”

“Dickwad! Quit busting my balls! I’ll rip out your eyes, scumbag! I’ll rip out your eyes… scumbag! And kick your teeth out your ass!” “I’m proud of you, tiger. Don’t smile. Let’s go home. Don’t smile. You did great.”

“Never wake up the monster who leaves its lair to eat little children!”

“Do you believe in soul mates?” “I’m not sure”. “I like it. I like the idea. That someone, somewhere is made for you, forever.”

“I just want to know more about my dreams. …I often dream about a little monster.”

“We can’t give in to setbacks or the opinions of so-called fat cat specialists.”

“It develops from the inside. It’s a matter of love, faith. Everyone can develop their paranormal abilities. It’s a question of desire and will.”

• Extra man (movie featuring Katie Holmes as a vegan!)

“It’s at a magazine. An environmental journal.” “I’m sure it’s all just a front for po***graphy.”

“Don’t be such a milquetoast.”

“I’ve never told anyone this, but sometimes, in my head I actually imagine there’s somebody narrating my life as if I’m the protagonist in a classic novel.”

“I need to put on my eyemask.”

• Finding Amanda (movie)
• Blue is the warmest colour (movie)

“A worm crawls out of a plate of spaghetti and says: “That was some gangbang!””

• Straight As (movie)

“Katherine alluded to the fact that you’re unreliable, so you have to promise.”

“Wow. Just so you know, you’re kinda being a c***.”

August

• Lucy (movie)
• Prometheus (movie)

“Nah, I’m out of here.” “Hey, Fifield! Where are you going?” “What? Look, I’m just a geologist. I like rocks. I love rocks. Now, it’s clear you two don’t give a shit about rocks…”

• My life in ruins (movie)
• Her (movie)

“The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”

“You’re failing your children! Lose 2000 Mom points!”

“The point is to get there first ‘cause then you get extra Perfect Mom points because the other Moms then know you’re a perfect Mom.”

“You’re always going to disappoint somebody.” “Exactly. So fuck it. I feel good. Ish. For me, I feel good.”

 “You think I don’t know that I’m not a person? What are you doing?”

• Bernie (movie)

September

• The Woman in Black  (movie)

[looking at drawing] “Why do I look so sad?” “That’s what your face looks like.”

• Rainman (movie)

“Of course, I don’t have my books and, cos there are no bookshelves, I’m definitely going to be bookless.”

• Mr and Mrs Smith (movie)
• The Hot Chick (movie)
• The Labyrinth (movie)

“I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave.”

• Snow White and the Hunter (movie)
• Season 4 Game of Thrones (TV series)

October

• The door in the floor (movie)

“…because of how it must feel against your skin.”

“Don’t expect any mercy from me. I’m going to grind you into a fine powder.”

 “The whole rest of your life, whenever you need to feel brave, just look at your scar. Your hand will grow bigger, and your finger will grow bigger, but your scar will always stay the same size.”

• Is anybody there? (movie)

[on death:] “What happens is, you think the last thought you’re ever going to think.”

“You accumulate regrets, and they stick to you like old bruises.”

“You spend your life accumulating stuff, and then you can’t find anywhere to put it.”

• The reckoning (movie)
• The secret of Dorian Gray (1970) (only first 30 minutes as the DVD busted)

 “Ah, Mr Business and Miss Pleasure.”

• Bliss (movie)

“It’s got nothing to do with the doctor.” “He’s got sausage fingers.” “Yeah, I know.”

“This was written in 1649.” “Yes.” “Well, it’s a bit out of date, isn’t it?” “We’re talking about eternity and you’re quibbling about 350 years! If it was true once, it must always be true.”

“Didn’t I notice you lift your eyebrow in a disagreeable way?”

“Only a crazy man would write a love letter that takes 8 years to arrive.”

“…and the trees …were not too busy to take this sigh back through their leaves.”

• Gone girl (movie)
• The glovemaker by Stacia Brown (book)

“Sometimes, when Walwyn was working on something, he would read a sentence or two out loud, and she could hear where her thoughts streaked across the horizon of his words, like old stars that light up the night sky as they are falling.” p. 238

“The words were beautiful. They swam toward her; they slid up onto the bank. the words became flesh and then the flesh took on wings and 337 then the wings made a picture; she could see things in her mind as she was going along. The words tapped at her, a woodpecker drilling a trunk. Then the tapping became new words and the new words grew, and what was grown was love.” pp. 336-7

November

• Bad neighbours (movie in English with Norwegian subtitles)
• X-Men: days of future past (movie)
• The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz (movie)
• Canterwood crest series, 15: Comeback, by Jessica Burkhart (book)

“He was wearing one of my fave colors on him – a fire-engine-red tee. The color looked amaze against his pale skin.” p. 121

• Deliver me from evil: a sadistic foster mother, a childhood torn apart, by Alloma Gilbert (book)
• Pan’s whisper, by Sue Lawson (book)

“Sorrow swoops in my chest like a swallow.” p. 135

December

• Life after Beth (movie)
• W.E. (movie)

“Your majesty, you certainly know your way to a woman’s heart!” “I wasn’t aiming that high.”

• Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (movie)
• Vampire Academy (movie)
• A Little Help (movie)

‘You’re pretty sassy for a hygienist, aren’t ya?’

• The Inbetweeners 2 (movie)
• Sightseers (movie)

“What were you like at school Chris?” “I wasn’t like anything, I was like, invisible.”

“It’s a bloody heritage place! …They’ve not been preserved for hundreds of years so that wankers like that can use them like a bloody toilet!”

“…That tree won’t involve itself in low-level bullying.”

“Poor boy. Those cheap crisps are full of horrors.”

“No, no, no, you don’t want clutter. You just want some plants and cushions and pictures and a tablecloth there…”

• Cold hands, warm heart by Jill Wolfson (book)

“What little social know-how I did possess came by analyzing characters on TV shows like reruns of Degrassi (both classic and Next Generation). I figured that if I 50 decided which character I most resembled, I’d have my social blueprint for knowing how to talk and act.” pp. 50-51

“So did he think I was nice at least? Being nice wasn’t a bad thing to be. No, nice was awful. the worst. Nice was coddled eggs and applesauce. Nice was totally bland and forgettable.” p. 58

“Everyone keeps talking about finding a heart for me, as though one were hidden behind the couch in a game of hide-and-seek, or it had been misplaced along with someone’s cell phone.” p. 60

“…the exposed heart beat back and forth like a small animal that had been chased and was breathing hard, cornered in a cave of strange red rock.” p. 80

• Bloodlines series, 1, Bloodlines by Richelle Mead (book)
• Bloodlines series, 2, The Golden Lily by Richelle Mead (book)

“Was he supposed to kiss me? Was I supposed to let him? Had that been the real price of my salad?” p. 88

• Ondine: the summer of shambles by Ebony McKenna (book – pleasant but with some clear anti-vegetarian rhetoric, p. 182 and a steak rant, p. 166)

“Laundry duty washed away another layer of skin, so really, all she had were memories.” p. 82

“He gave her a grin hot enough to melt her slippers.” p. 256

• Maze runner (movie)
• Bonechiller by Graham McNamee (book)
• The memory keeper’s daughter by Kim Edwards (book)

“A film closed over the past as she spoke, a barrier as brittle and fragile as ice forming. It would grow and strengthen. It would become impenetrable, opaque.” p. 88

“…for an instant she stood again amid the sound of rushing water form the mill, happiness as full around her as the night.” p. 89

“The geode was warm and damp. He gave it a sharp crack on the rock, splitting it open to reveal its crystalline purple heart. “So beautiful,” Norah murmured, turning it in her hand. “Ancient seas,” David said. “The water got trapped inside and crystallized, over centuries.” p. 111

“And the distance between them, millimeters only, the space of a breath, opened up and deepened, became a cavern at whose edge he stood.” p. 115

“…she was excluded from the conversation: object, not subject.” p. 181

• Magic bunny series, Holiday dreams by Sue Bentley (book)
• The year my voice broke (movie)
• The Jewel by Amy Ewing (book)