I do believe that since my last post, I've read at least through the entire series of The Protector of the Small, which is a quartet, and also "Ender's Game." The former I'd read before and really liked, while the latter was a new read for me! (Doesn't happen often.)
I really liked "Ender's Game", which brought me a little closer to the science fiction genre that I normally tend to steer a bit away from. There are spaceships, aliens, wars, laser guns and null gravity fight scenes, all of which are somewhat separated from my favorite genre of fantasy, with the good vs. evil, sword battles, archery, clever animals, and most importantly, magic. (Laugh it up now, har har har.) Anyway, I loved the beginning of "Ender", where Card forces you to figure out what the monitor is, why it was there and Ender's relationship with the members of his family and with himself. The middle was still good in a different way, with the whole part about Ender finding out that he is horribly clever and a natural tactician, but I started to dislike how bad he began feeling about his whole situation. I know that is the ENTIRE point, but still, didn't like it. Also, the fake-ending is a complete (and for anyone other than me, extremely obvious) anti-climax and I hit myself over the head because I didn't see it coming. It was not nice to see how deteriorated he was, and how he now was useless, his entire difficult puppeted life meant for some event that was now over, etc.
Which is why the real ending was fantastic. And I really don't think ANYONE would see THAT one coming.
Minor note: Didn't like how his No. 1 enemy wasn't ever punished; did like how he died in his late seventies when Ender is still in his twenties (figure that one out!).

I'm now reading the first book of a completely unknown (to me) series by Jonathan Stroud called the Bartimaeus Trilogy; the book is "The Amulet of Samarkand" and of course you can probably figure out the main components of this fantasy book. Non-surprising details: it's kind of Harry-Potter-ish, being that there are magicians and non-magicians, it's modern times in London and there's a lot of sneakiness going on under the noses of the non-magicians (read: Muggles?). Couple of twists: all magic is done by various demon individuals and not through any power of magicians at all (which leads to a LOT of nasty critters running around in the book), the little kid (Harry? No. Nathaniel.) is actually the bad guy now... or as far as I can tell. It's also written in the first person from the point of view of.... a demon! Ha! Turnaround there, huh. I guess Nathaniel isn't that bad, but he's only 11 and he's bent on revenge against another magician who humiliated him. Just cause, poor anger management. Have yet to discover if he's going to actually be a bad person or not.

After these ones, there's an already-read but still wonderfully exciting two-book miniseries in the same... um... "universe"? Literary geographical and time-setting? as the Protector of the Small quartet, which were oh-so-surprisingly delivered to me by mail from my wonderous former roommates. Can't wait!

Oh, holidays were good, saw Meena (yay! :D), relaxed with Adam, immediate and extended family, brother included, got a kickass new desk/bookshelf (and I'm going to need it, I think...), started working out more diligently and feel good (although my right bicep is KILLING me right now, I've had to shake it out about 10x since starting this post) and ate enough cookies for a small herd of ponies.
All in all, a good mishmash of excitement and relaxation to round out the days off from work.