New Year's Eve and Temaraire

For some time now my New Year's Eve has generally been spent at home, not doing very much, maybe playing some board games or reading, and enjoying a glass of fizz with my cohabitants at midnight. As robert_jones observed the other day, it's quite nice that this year we can feel entirely unembarrassed about the lack of wild parties in our lives. (Not, to be honest, that I've felt anything else for a few years now, but once upon a time I did worry a bit about getting old and boring). Tonight we're planning on playing the first chapter of My City, a legacy game that Robert gave to Ramesh for Christmas.

Over the last few days I've started reading the Temaraire series by Naomi Novik - swashbuckling historical novels set during the Napoleonic wars, only with dragons. I picked up a copy of the first one after seeing it recommended by sfred, and although it took me a little while to get into it, I've now been well and truly grabbed, and devoured the second half of book one and all of book two in pretty much one sitting. I like the relationship between the two main protagonists a lot, and am really enjoying watching it grow as they learn more about one another, and seeing how that changes the way they view the world and culture that surrounds them.