This is the first part of my annual recap of my year in media. Tomorrow I will probably look back at the movies of ’09.
I didn’t really keep up with music this year as much as I normally do. But in no particular order, the releases I was most fond of from this year were:
1. Dan Auerbach – Keep It Hid
2. Chuck Ragan – Gold Country
3. A.A. Bondy – When the Devil’s Loose
4. Avett Brothers – I and Love and You
5. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – s/t
6. The Monsters of Folk – s/t
7. M. Ward – Hold Time
8. Mindy Smith – Stupid Love
I should probably confess to loving half of Only By the Night but hating myself for it.
The books I read this year are listed below. I again fell short of my goal, but in this age of illiteracy I consider any number over zero to be a personal triumph.
Fiction:
- A Happy Death by Albert Camus
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
- Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski
- God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut
- Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
- The Fall by Albert Camus
- The Plague by Albert Camus
- The Shack by William P. Young
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
- Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Non-fiction:
- A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
- Against Joie de Vivre by Phillip Lopate
- An Experiment in Criticism by C.S. Lewis
- Bachelorhood by Phillip Lopate
- Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins
- High Crimes: the Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed by Michael Kodas
- Interventions by Noam Chomsky
- Mystery and Manners by Flannery O’Connor
- Portrait of My Body by Phillip Lopate
- The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- The New Christians by Tony Jones
- The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose
- The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
- Vagabonding by Rolf Potts
Interestingly enough, we read a few of the same books.
Breakfast of Champions, Fahrenheit 451, The Shack, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.
After reading your posts and year-end recaps, I took out two pieces of paper and began making lists of media consumed in 2010, and barring disposal by my well-intentioned wife, I’ll follow your lead in posting year end lists next Jan. Until then, take ‘er easy, Dude.
What’d you think of The Shack? I’m guessing, like me, that you didn’t read it because you’d heard what a stunning work of literature it was.