6 Movies I Watched From Beginning to End This Year Because I didn't see enough to make a Best Of List. In no particular order:
Iron Man
Indiana Jones 4
The Incredible Hulk
Doubt
The Forbidden Kingdom
W.
If I get to see 6 more 2008 movies in 2009, they'll be:
Pineapple Express
Burn After Reading
Quantum of Solace
Slumdog Millionaire
Harold & Kumar 2
I think I read enough this year to make a slightly decent Best of the Books I Read 2008 list. "The Chicago Way" will not be on it. "The Secret History" might make it if I finish it tonight.
2008 in Books I took up the 888 challenge this past year and succeeded, although with much less ambition that I intended. I tracked my books through my LibraryThing, which was a blast even while it managed to show me just how middle and lowbrow so much of my reading has become in the past year. In the 888 challenge, you read eight books in eight different categories and are allowed eight repeats. My initial categories were things like politics, history, over 25 years old and books I've been avoiding (generally meaty classics). By the end of the year, poker had its own category, I had split crime and pulp into two separate categories while combining history and politics into one and filling it out with a history of the World Series of Poker, and those books I'd been avoiding? Still generally avoiding them.
That said, my reading has always had more than its share of comics, sci-fi and crime. I shouldn't be shocked by how it looks in cover view.
Two of my favorite books of the year were admirably lowbrow. I can't say enough good things about Lucky at Cards and Grifter's Game, both reprinted by Hard Case Crime. Both are long on obsession and cons and short on meandering. Someone once described a good novel as being like a Ramones song. Bang! Bang! Bang! and you're done. Grifter's Game was initially published as Mona, but you should get the reprint because the cover of the original, while much more lurid, gives away the shocking and poetic ending. And Lucky at Cards features my favorite tag line of the year - "He could handle cards like a master. But could he handle her?" If that doesn't crack you up, go read James Patterson.
My political reading of late has been largely depressing. I'm sending Worst President Ever off with a bunch of anti-Bush books. Trainwreck:The End of the Conservative Revolution (and Not a Moment Too Soon)by Bill Press (and researched by Kevin at Ghost in the Machine) bookended the year nicely with Paul Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal. Jacob Weisberg's The Bush Tragedy spends no time establishing that W was a horrible president - you already knew that - but tries to explain the possible psychological/Shakespearean family dynamics that lead to W's awful mental make-up. It's a slightly rude poke in the brain of the president. (Excuse the word brain there.) It does contain a lot of personal and Bush family information that may be new to you.
For complete and utter depression, however, I recommend The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How America's War on Terror Turned into a War on America's Ideals by Jane Meyer. It exhaustively details our inexcusable rendition and torture program. Dick Cheney is the star of the book, to his eternal shame. I'm glad I read it, but it truly made me sad.
Kid's books did not. I proudly used children's literature as one of my 888 categories. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing was even better than I remembered. Peter is a true character, in every sense, and by the end of the book I disliked Fudge just like one might dislike a younger sibling - and this comes from someone who is but does not have a younger sibling. I'm too old to have read Holes as a kid, but I can easily see why it is heading for classic status. It will be read by generations of subversive kids. Tightly plotted and funny.
Nothing blew me away in 2008, the way Watership Down did in 2007. Although with two strong Lawrence Block novels, a new name may have achieved "Grab at Any Library Sale" status. I'll start 2009's 888 challenge conceding that poker, crime and children's literature may as well be categories and we'll see where it goes.
