Lists
Category
The Colours of This Autumn
I rarely write about trends these days, not because I have a problem with trends per se, but because I find them harder and harder to reconcile with my attempt to buy fewer items and be less influenced by big business. I am still interested in trends, though, and in particular the bigger shifts in mood, silhouette and palette that go beyond one season.
End of Summer Memo
I was planning to do an Early Autumn Memo for my re-entry into blogosphere, but it’s so warm in Brussels (up to 31 degrees expected in the coming week) that I cannot bring myself to talk about autumny stuff at the moment. Which is, in a way, good news, as I have quite a few things to share from this summer, and as they aren’t necessarily summer-specific, they may still be of use to you. So I am going to get them off my chest in this post, leaving all the talk of chocolate-coloured suede and plush perfumes for the next memo.
February Resolutions
I’m a weird person in the sense that I do not hate New Year’s resolutions. Of course, I don’t think they will miraculously fix all my problems, but there is something very appealing in having a reset, a fresh start. That said, I do not always feel the right energy at the beginning of the new calendar year. Often, I have this vibe in September, when I am rested after the holidays and determined to be more efficient at work and generally better at living.
Things I Want: 2023 Edition
It’s this time of the year again where I think about things I want, without worrying too much about whether I can realistically buy them. As I kept adding things, the list is now rather long. I will therefore stop the introduction here and promptly proceed to present the things I want.
The Best Books I Read in 2022
I had a rather shitty reading year in 2022, thanks, of course, to Vladimir Putin. I only hit my 100-book Goodreads target out of spite, refusing to give Vlad the Small the satisfaction of ruining my challenge. So I went ahead and finished 32 books in December (most of them in the last 10 days of the month), including four volumes of One Piece*, which absolutely count, thank you very much.
On Holiday Wardrobe Perfection: A List
There is no such thing as a perfect holiday wardrobe, but I still spend considerable amounts of time every year trying to put one together. There is something so seductive about a well-curated set of items for a week or two. It’s difficult to get one’s entire life right, but surely one can nail that trip to Sicily! Or at least the clothes!
Things That Help
If you are a regular reader of the blog, you have undoubtedly noticed that I have not been posting anything for a while. Since the beginning of the war, I was at first unable to write and later on deeply conflicted about blogging as people kept dying in Ukraine. I am of course aware that there have been other awful things happening in the world during the years that I have had the blog, but it’s simply a fact that while many of these events (Syria and Afghanistan in particular) affected me deeply, nothing has come close to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Best of 2021: Science Fiction & Fantasy
I didn’t do a separate ‘best of SFF’ post for 2020 and now I regret it, as I don’t have a good reference point for my favourites and I feel like I haven’t praised them enough. I also keep getting confused about when I read what and the pandemic obviously doesn’t help with trying to sort this out. In case you are interested, there is a list of some things in I read in 2020 the end of this post – it’s not ideal, but it’s something.
Best of 2021: Fiction
Very broadly speaking, I read equal amounts non-fiction and fiction, but as my fiction reads further branch out into different genres, literary fiction doesn’t have such a central place in my reading as it has for many other people. Still, as my overall book-count was rather high last year, I ended up reading a fair amount of fiction – some of it very good.
Best of 2021: Non-Fiction
2021 was a stellar non-fiction year for me. I read almost 70 books in this category, which made this list very difficult to put together. Even after setting aside my absolute top favourites that I have already covered, I ended up with more than 15 books I wanted to highlight. I could of course have steeled myself and whittled the list down to 10 or something else more manageable, but as I didn’t do regular monthly round-ups last year, I prefer to include more books rather than less.