Oh Simon -- you have just made me waste half an hour. Never mind, it was fun. It's a meme, of course, and here is what Simon says about it:
It's quite simple - use the first lines of each month on your blog, to give an overview of your blogging year (albeit one which is amusing rather than very useful!)
Yes indeed, I second that. But it was quite interesting to go through the year and see what I was up to. Not very exciting for the rest of you, I suspect.
January: This is a still from the recent BBC adaptation of Great Expectations.
February: Found on tumblr -- no idea where it came from -- perhaps somebody will tell me.
March: I saw this announced on the lovely Elaine's Random Jottings and thought I'd spread the word.
April: If you know me at all you'll be surprised to hear that I have just read two books that have been longlisted for the Orange Prize.
May: Several people who commented on Muriel Spark last week compared her to Beryl Bainbridge (1932-2010).
June: My life has been incredibly busy and complicated in the past couple of weeks -- I've been moving house though admittedly only into an extension next door -- and I simply haven't had the energy or focus for what I'd call serious reading.
July: I was urged to read this recently by a friend who was raving about it, and I was only too happy to as I loved Geraldine Brooks' two earlier novels, Year of Wonders and March.
August: I was going to say that I'd now read all four of Marghanita Laski's novels, but I find there's a fifth, her first, called Love on the Supertax, though it's out of print and expensive to get hold of.
September: Carl Vilhelm Holsoe (Danish artist, 1863-1935) was fond of painting back views of women reading, or so it seems to me.
October: As I'm sure many of you know, it's the centenary of Elizabeth Taylor's birth this year, and there's been a monthly readalong all year, all started by Laura's Musings.
November: Actually Lady with a Lute, painted in 1886 by the American artist Thomas Wilmer Dewing(1851-1938)
December: It's a well know fact that I'm in love with technology.