Best books of 2011

The Great or Very good:

1. A Monster Calls
2. Ender’s Game
3. Ship Breaker
4. Chime
5. Between Shades of Gray

A Monster Calls was a moving book that was more affecting than anything else I read this year. The tale of a boy struggling to deal with the impending death of his mother by calling on a fantastical monster to save her was on the top of my list.  Ender’s Game was as good as its been billed and I was glad to finally get to it.  There were so many issues raised like the best scifi always does: can our future be predetermined? at what point is it unethical to follow orders? are child soldiers better because they are easier to control and manipulate? and on and on.  Hopefully, they get the movie right.  Ship Breaker was a great dystopian novel to read at a time when I’ve been tiring of the genre.  It showed me that as long as the focus stays on character and not just plot, even an overused genre can breathe new life.  Chime mixed witches, dystopias, a Victorian/Steampunk setting with remarkable language to create a fully realized world that felt unlike any other world I read about last year.  Finally, Between Shades of Gray illuminated WWII era Lithuania when I thought I knew all I needed or wanted to know about the War and Eastern Europe.  I was wrong.  The incredible and disturbing heartbreak of WW2 certainly was felt in Lithuania as well and I’m glad that I am more aware of it now.

The Good:

1. Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour
2. Zombies Vs. Unicorns
3. The Help
4. Future of Us
5. Jasper Jones
6. Ranger’s Apprentice: Kings of Clonmel
7. They Called themselves the KKK
8. Habibi

All these books were enjoyable though I doubt I’ll remember much about them in the future.  Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour was a fun YA road trip novel with some interesting format choices that livened things up a lot (lots of lists, playlists, and maps).  Zombies vs Unicorns was a fun anthology where different YA authors sided with one type of creature by writing a story featuring the creature.  As with any multi author anthology, the results were mixed.  I’d generally side with the zombie stories but there were a few good unicorn tales as well.  The standouts from both sides were, “Bouganvilla” by Carrie Ryan, “The Care and Feeding of Your Killer Baby Unicorn” by Diana Peterfreund, “Princess Prettypants” by Meg Cabot, “The Children of the Revolution” by Maureen Johnson, and “Inoculata” by Scott Westerfeld.  Some of the tales are pretty disturbing, but you can always skip those.  Enjoyed The Help, but much has been said about it, I don’t have much to add.  It was interesting to see my daughter’s reaction to it since her knowledge of the Civil Rights era and segregation in general is developing.  I suspect the book will be fairly important to her long term, which is probably a good thing.  The Future of Us and Jasper Jones were good YA books, but both had some fundamentally unbelievable things going on in them from a character point of view (not the scifi aspects) that lessened their impact.  The graphic novel, Habibi, was years in the making and it looks it.  It tells the story of a young girl forced into slavery in the Middle East somewhere (when and where is hard to discern).  A young boy comes under her care and they escape into the desert and live in an abandoned ship for years.  Eventually they are separated and continue on their separate paths until they reconnect later in life after years of misery.  The artwork is astounding and I would expect nothing less from Craig Thompson.  Unfortunately, the story was a bit long for me and there were some problems with stereotypes concerning some of the Arab characters.  When I heard years ago that Thompson was working on a story set in the Middle East, I knew it was always going to be a tricky path for a Westerner and a graphic novelist / cartoonist to tread.  By and large, it is an interesting tale, told beautifully.  It’s worth looking at just for the artwork.

The Average:

1. Dance With Dragons
2. Daughter of Smoke and Bone
3. Berlin Boxing Club
4. Revolver
5. ESPN: Those Guys Have All the Fun
6. Call of the Wild
7. Blink & Caution
8. Dark tower 7
9. What Ever Happened to Goodbye
10. Ranger’s Apprentice: Halt’s Peril
11. Dead End in Norvelt
12. Beastly

I had high hopes for A Dance with Dragons, but was somewhat disappointed with the slow pace and how little the characters actually advanced.  I think (and hope) that the last two books have been a pivot point for Martin and he will have a clear path forward now to advance his narrative and push us towards the ultimate endgame.  The first three books were SOOO good, it’s hard to see him struggling with these past two.  Daughter of Smoke and Bone started out great.  I was worried that it was a story about angels, but the author took the time to ground the book in character early on.  Karou is an art student in Prague with typical teen problems, save for the demons who raised her.  As we learn more and more about this other world she interacts with, the books gets further and further away from the interesting person Karou starts out as.  By the time we reached the cliffhanger ending signalling another book (or more), I didn’t care much about what was left of Karou and the war with the angels she is about to fight.  The ESPN book was interesting, but not as good as the author’s SNL book from a few years back.  I suspect the world of sports is too sprawling to contain in a narrative made up of interviews.  ESPN sounds like a crazy and interesting place, though problematic for women, particularly in the early years.  I reread Call of the Wild with my son and found it interesting, though probably because of it’s cultural impact rather than the storytelling.  I guess I just don’t care for stories with animal POVs.  Knowing some of London’s background definitely adds to the reading though.  It was fascinating to see what ideas he was trying to write into his story.  I finally finished the Dark Tower series, and while the ending was ambiguous and frustrating, I can see King’s rationale for ending it as he did.  Ultimately, he was telling the archetypal hero and quest tale, and that never ends.  I found it more interesting than satisfying, and I guess that’s worth something.  Most of the YA books in this group were ok, but didn’t really affect me or change me in any way.  That’s ok too.

The Bad

1. Stolen
2. The International Baccalaureate & the School Library

Stolen was a disturbing tale about an abduction of a teenage girl and her falling in love with her captor.  Was it Stockholm syndrome or true love?  Too creepy to think about frankly and I kind of hated every minute of reading it.  The other was a nonfiction book about IB programs and libraries. Had some good lists of books, but it was basic academic nonfiction – repetitive and boring.

My goals for this year are to finish some of the books I’ve started over the past couple years (Cicero, Numerati, Trust Agents, Visit from the Goon Squad and some others).  I’d also like to read some more of the classics the kids are starting to read for school as well as some history, especially Doris Kearns Goodwin’s A Team of Rivals (movie out in December).  Of course, I need to keep up with the YA books too.  We’ll see how I do.   This wasn’t the best year for books for me, but A Monster Calls was extremely good.  I would recommend it anyone looking for a powerful story and who doesn’t mind a sad book.  If you’re on Good Reads, feel free to connect.

Songs of the Year 2011

Took a look at ‘ye ole ipod’ at the end of the year to see what songs we have played the most as a family(admittedly this is mostly from my daughter and myself).  Not surprisingly, the albums that came out early in 2011 by Adele and the Decemberists are well represented.  I’ve left out any songs made before 2010, so this is a pretty recent list.  Clearly we like folky, mellow Americana around here for the most part with a British powerhouse thrown in for good measure.  Lots of great music this year, so take a listen to some of these if you have the chance.

1. Rox in the Box – Decemberists (played 224 times this past year – hard to believe)
2. Set Fire to the Rain – Adele
3. New Morning – Alpha Rev
4. Rolling in the Deep – Adele
5. This is Why We Fight – Decemberists
6. Cough Syrup – Young the Giant
7. Under Control – Cary Brothers
8. That’s Some Dream – Good Old War (saw this band open for Joshua Radin AND Fleet Foxes)
9. Give Me Something – Scars on 45
10. Down by the Water – Decemberists
11. Dead American Writers – Tired Pony
12. Grown Ocean – Fleet Foxes
13. Winter Winds – Mumford and Sons
14. My Love Follows Where You Go – Alison Krauss and Union Station
15. Barton Hollow – Civil Wars
16. Lost in My Mind – Head and the Heart
17. Raise Your Glass – P!nk
18. Whataya Want from Me – Adam Lambert
19. 20 Years – Civil Wars
20. Chains – Abigail Washburn
21. People Say – Portugal the Man
22. Paper Airplane – Alison Krauss & Union Station
23. Perth – Bon Iver
24. High Road – Broken Bells
25. Only Girl in the World – Rihanna

A Monster Calls – A case for non epic, emotional storytelling

So much of the time with realistic YA books, the “problem” in the narrative feels so immense and epic that finding a satisfying conclusion to said problem poses extra challenges for the author.   Some meet the challenge while many falter.  Part of the problem is that when kids are saving the world, their feelings often seem irrelevant. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness feels like epic storytelling, but when you stand back and look at it, it’s a story about a boy dealing with the impending death of his mother from a serious disease.  There is really nothing unusual about that event, it happens frequently unfortunately.  Yet, the gratifying thing about the book is that it is an emotional and epic event for the boy, Conor.  Surpisingly, this smaller scale problem makes all the difference.

As Conor’s world changes, he calls on an ancient monster to save his mother.  When the monster comes in the shape of walking, talking Yew tree – the tree proceeds to “help” Conor deal with his various problems, usually with extreme violence.  The tree also relates stories to Conor in order to make points to the boy that everything is not always as it seems.  Good things happen to bad people while the bad things can often happen to the good.  As the story progressed, I had to question whether the fantastical elements of the story were really happening or if they were all part of Conor’s coping with his immense sadness.  By adding elements of magical realism to the plot, it’s unlikely Ness could have found a more effective way to relate the deep emotional turmoil Conor is going through. When it’s time for Conor to deal with his mother’s fate, the tears are earned.   The use of illustrations in the novel also add to the horror and fantasy of the tale.  I can easily imagine a movie being made of this by Guillermo del Toro a la Pan’s Labyrinth.  Ness and del Toro are mining the same nightmarish vein in their tales.

A Monster Calls is emotional storytelling on a level that I haven’t experienced in the YA books I’ve been reading this year. It’s a sad book, yes, but if you’re looking for something more than an escape, a book that makes you identify with a character and feel true emotion, A Monster Calls might be what you need.  Any middle or high schooler can read this, though the reader needs to prepared for an intense reading experience.

Epic Fantasy & “The End”

I recently spent my reading summer working through the most recent books in two ongoing fantasy epics and both made me think a lot about what an author must go through to create this type of story.  The series in question are The Song of Ice and Fire (aka A Game of Thrones) by George RR Martin and the Dark Tower series by Steven King.  While King has finished his epic, Martin still has two highly anticipated books to go (I sure hope it’s only two).  Both men kept their readers waiting quite a while between books, and invariably, this anticipation has lead to some disappointed readers.  King admits as much in the last chapter of the Dark Tower.  He practically begs the reader not to go any further because he knows the ending will not satisfy.  But, as he likes to say, he told the story that he needed to tell, not the one that would make the most number of people happy.  Martin has a penchant for defying expectations as well (don’t fall in love with any of his characters, no matter how important they seem).  Reading these series over the years allows the reader to see them change as writers as they work their narratives out of tight spaces, as they speed up or slow it down and as they reach their endgames.  Did Stephen King reach the ending he foresaw when he started Roland’s search for the Dark Tower? Hard to say, but his plan for getting there definitely took some unplanned turns.  Is Martin reaching the ending he planned for?  I suspect he is still on track, but the pace has slowed to a crawl compared to the first three books.  I’m hoping the middle two books allowed him a chance to get his characters in place for the endgame and will allow for a quicker, faster pace for the final books.  Time will tell (hopefully not too much time though).

Needless to say, but SPOILERS AHEAD.

The Dark Tower series has become a meditation on writing.  I’m not sure this is what King had in mind when he started, but as the books went on, more and more of his creations showed up in the series.  This was at times thrilling because it would jog my memory of a book I’d read years ago and it offered the possibility that King had an overarching theme that runs through all of his books.  But when King himself becomes a character later in the series, things when off the rails for me.  Nothing takes me out of a narrative faster than a large dose of the real world.  King as a character added some interesting parts to the story, particularly his faux obituary at the end of book 6 which gives you more insight into King as a writer than just about anything he’s written save his book, On Writing.  But King as a character reveals the overarching theme to be writing and King himself.  The Dark Tower becomes an autobiography of King’s writing life and Writers in general.  Is Roland King’s creation or is he an archetype as old as time that King just borrowed?  Does he have the right to give him a happy ending or must he send him off on another quest as soon as this one is done?  These are the questions King poses and answers.  His other characters get a happy ending of sorts at the end of the story, but only after each one has sacrificed themselves to the narrative so that Roland may continue his quest.

While the meditation on writing is interesting, it’s not the series I started 25 years ago, so I had to lower my expectations.  The turning point for King and the Dark Tower narrative was obviously King’s near fatal accident in the late 90s when he was hit by a van while walking on the road.  He still had three volumes to go in the series at that point and it seems that the only way forward for King was to write about the accident in the books.  Of course, the question has to be asked, how would the series have developed had King never had this accident?  Would he have finished it even?  His brush with death clearly lit some kind of fire in him because he finished it quickly after his recovery.  He nearly admits in the story that he had lost the passion for the narrative before the accident.  Was it writer’s block?  Is there some force (the muse) that all writers tap into from time to time?  Could King only tap into when he was in an altered state of mind?  All interesting question, just maybe not the ones I expected he would be answering.  But maybe some of this was planned from the start.  I’m glad I finished the series, but the last couple of books were very hard to get through.  I wonder how I would feel if I had read all the books together without the weight of my own aging and historical baggage weighing the books down with lofty expectations.  But this is what reading is about right?  An interaction between the author’s mind and the reader’s expectations.  That’s what makes reading fun and interesting.

It’s hard not to wonder if George RR Martin is suffering from a similar writer’s block.  The fifth book of a Song of Ice and Fire series, a Dance with Dragons, came out this summer to much fanfare.  While the first three books in the series came out in quick succession, the last two have taken a combined 11 years to write.  The last two have also added lots of new characters, settings and complications.  While it is always interesting to read these new character perspectives simply because Martin is a fabulous author, the effect on the overall narrative has been to slow everything to a crawl (it has clearly slowed Martin’s writing as well).  Maybe this is necessary after the epic changes in book 3.  The pieces needed to be moved around and reset, which he has done.  My hope is that all the prophecies that he has hinted about can now start happening and we can move towards the epic ending.  There are two big events that still need to occur and I’m not sure which order they will go in.  There needs to be a battle with the wights/ghosts/zombies of the North and there needs to be a final battle over who controls Westeros.  Since the next book is called The Winds of Winter, I suspect the battle for the North will begin there.  Who knows, maybe there won’t be much of Westeros left to rule once that battle is done.  In either case, I’m hopeful that the pace of the novel (and the writing) will go quicker.  Fingers crossed.  With the added pressure of a successful TV show on HBO breathing down his neck, particularly child actors rapidly aging, Martin doesn’t have 11 more years to finish the last two.

Again, SPOILERS: As for the events of A Dance With Dragons, it’s hard not to be frustrated when you see your favorite character “die”.  Of course, I should be used to that with Martin, but after spending this much time inside Jon Snow’s head, I cannot believe Martin will just kill him.  He will be back in some shape or form.  Hopefully, this “death” frees him from the Wall and the Night’s Watch, because that was getting tedious.  Dany’s journey was interesting but she also spent most of the book spinning her wheels dealing with the politics of Mereen and the other cities she’s conquered.  I’m hopeful that now that she is riding a dragon, we will get some action (Martin has stated he wanted to write one more epic battle scene for the book, but decided to wait for the next one in order to get this one published).  I’ll agree that this book could have used a good battle scene to pull things together at the end, but I also am glad I didn’t have to wait another year to get it.  Tyrion didn’t seem to accomplish much during the book, which was disappointing, but it’s always interesting spending time with him regardless.  The events at Winterfell were horrible and disheartening.  I so much wanted Jon to head south and free Winterfell from the Bolton’s.  It’s really time for the Starks to make some sort of comeback.  I also find it a little unbelievable that Cersei managed to get out of her predicament.  If anyone should have perished, it was her.  When characters make bad decisions in these books, they die.  Why didn’t she?  Sometimes it feels like evil is rewarded by Martin and being noble is a curse.  I fear for Jaime because of this.  He is finally becoming a man worth caring about and I think Catelyn/Stoneheart will end him soon.  It’s a sign of Martin’s skill as a writer that an event I would have relished in book 1 or 2 is now something I dread.  In general, I liked it slightly more than the fourth book because of the main characters of Jon, Tyrion and Dany – but it pales in comparison to the first three books.  Here’s hoping he finishes with energy of the early books and not the stolid pace of the last two.

The future according to Asher & Mackler

When you consider the fact that I didn’t start a series book that I had been waiting to arrive for six years (A Dance With Dragons) because I was in the middle of an Advance Reader’s Copy of The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler, that tells you something about what Asher and Mackler have accomplished.

I won’t go so far as to say this is one of the best books I’ve read, but it’s set up and follow through are so compelling that it is incredibly hard to put it down once you start.  It’s 1996 and Emma installs a new America Online disc from her neighbor and former best friend Josh.  Yet, instead of finding AOL in all it’s 90s glory, they stumble upon Emma’s facebook profile from 2011!  As the teens search and dig for information on their future lives, they begin to question the decisions they are making in the present and contemplate who they really are and who they want to be.  While Josh is pleasantly surprised by his future self, Emma is disheartened to learn that she is not happy.  She sets out to change her future and finds that she is able to alter it by her actions in the present.  And yet she doesn’t appear to get any happier, if anything, things get worse.  Alternately, Josh’s knowledge of the future gives him more confidence in the present and leads him to bolder choices now.  And while their future selves alter who they are in the present, their already fragile friendship begins to unravel.

While there are several plot points that don’t make a lot of sense (Emma is a better name for a main character in 2011, not 1996) and some that don’t come to a satisfying conclusion (or any conclusion at all), Asher and Mackler make the interesting choice of allowing Emma to be a little self-centered and unlikable, especially in comparison to Josh.  Her flaws are irritating, but they make the character believable in a way that Josh might not be, even though I like him a lot.  Those flaws in 1996 are undoubtedly what lead to her unhappiness in 2011.  While the end of the book is satisfying, there is no indication that Emma has realized where her future unhappiness stems from.  It would be interesting to explore whether happiness stems from single choices in a person’s life or hard earned character traits established over years of mistakes and bad choices.  Learning her future allows Emma to make an end run around potentially valuable learning.  Does she now need to make new mistakes or can she just be happy?  There is certainly room to take these characters further if the authors choose to do so at some point.  

The book is a quick, easy read that will appeal to most teens 13 and up, particularly girls.  The romantic scenes are pretty tame, but the book is almost entirely about relationships, so it will appeal primarily to upper middle and high school readers.  It’s like a teen version of The Time Traveller’s Wife in some ways.  I expect the book will be very successful once it is released later this year.  Movie to follow.

Tales of Two Beasts

After finishing Alex Flinn’s Beastly, I couldn’t help but compare it to crazy beautiful from last year by Lauren Baratz-Logsted.  Both books attempt to update the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale with varying degrees of success.  Both approach the task from a different angle and while each have their strong points, I was unsatisfied with both for different reasons.  Admittedly, I am not the target audience, teens are.  But as the trend in teen books towards adapting classic works and fairy tales continues, I’m left with many questions that neither of these books help me to answer.

Beastly takes aim squarely at updating the older tale.  It is obvious what the source material is and they even find a way to weave some other fairy tales into the book as the main character visits a chat room for cursed people that resemble fairy tales of old.  There is magic in this world, but the main point of the book is to teach the main character some humility through his cursed appearance.  All the pieces eventually fall into place: a witch sets the curse, a girl is left as a prisoner in the Beast’s mansion by her father, the Beast must win her over, he eventually allows her to go back to her father only to come to her rescue later when she is in danger, and breaking the curse at the last moment possible.  There are a couple of decisions that were somewhat inspired (her father is a drug dealer not a kindly man), but the choices were mostly already dictated by the source material.  I have to wonder how hard it would be to do an adaptation and how to make one soar when so much of the plot is preordained.  Maybe the trick is to adapt one of the lesser known stories ie Book of a Thousand Days.  The graphic novel series of Fables mines the old fairy tales for useful adaptations with continued success.  You would think novels could do this as well.

crazy beautiful takes a more subtle approach.  I didn’t realize for the longest time that it was based on Beauty & the Beast.  The main character, Lucius Wolfe,  had tried to create a bomb, but only succeeded in damaging his house, hands and his looks.  He starts at a new school and must learn to adapt to life with his altered abilities.  Of course, he meets a beautiful girl who can see through this ugly exterior.  Her father is a kindly librarian (it’s always good to have a librarian in your books – librarians notice and we do buy books) who is eventually persecuted by the school bully, much like in the source material.  The tale is told through alternating chapters (Lucius then Aurora’s point of view), which is well done and part of the reason I didn’t catch on that it was an adaptation.  This wrap up a little too neatly at the end, and I wonder if trying to follow the original Beauty and the Beast hamstrung the author a bit.  In general, I liked crazy beautiful more because it wasn’t so obviously an adaptation.  But Beastly was a far more successful book (and now film), probably because you could identify the original tale.  So here is another quandary, when adapting, is it better to stray from the original concept a lot and risk your marketability or make fewer changes and tell a tale that is fairly unoriginal?  Does it matter if the intended audience has never read the source material?  Will the story seem odd because of this?

With the plethora of teen titles updating classic works and fairy tales, I have to question what IS the purpose of this endeavor.  Are these books meant to familiarize teens with the source material?  Or is this an easy way to get teens/adults interested in your book in a crowded and increasingly competitive marketplace?  Hopefully it’s the latter, but if that is the case, I’m not sure many of these books will give me what I’m looking for in a reading experience.  When I look back on the adaptations that I’ve enjoyed the most, the ones that were trying to tell a different point of view like Wicked (not for teens either) or the ones where I wasn’t familiar with the original story like the aforementioned Book of a Thousand Days were the most successful.

Stolen – part of a new developing genre, creepy lit

Stolen was not a book I was ever planning on reading, but through some strange circumstances that I won’t get into, I did.  It was as creepy and disturbing as I thought it would be.  If you are drawn to books like Room by Emma Donoghue, then Stolen is probably worth your time.  The premise is that 16 year old Gemma is writing a diary to her abductor after she has been rescued recounting the abduction from her perspective.  She describes in first person detail her thoughts and feelings on her abduction from a Bangkok airport, waking up tied to a bed in the Australian Outback, her subsequent escape attempts and her increasingly complicated feelings towards her captor.

As a reader, you want Gemma to hold onto her hatred throughout the story, but you can tell by her voice and perspective that her disgust is being overwhelmed by the warm and caring feelings she develops for her captor.  It’s not an easy transformation to read through, though it is handled effectively.  By and large, you can believe that her feelings are changing by the end of the book.  But it’s not a pleasant trip and I was constantly hoping that she would maintain her focus and not fall for him.

I didn’t like Stolen.  I can’t imagine many people can say that they “liked” it, but it was effective at delivering a look at an extreme teen trauma.  Teens looking for intense personal drama will gravitate to this book.  It’s Prinz honor award this year certainly indicates that it has a following, though I can’t count myself in that group.

Ship Breaker – Worthy of its Printz award

I may be reaching my breaking point with all the post-apocalyptic fiction coming out for teens lately.  That’s part of the reason I waited to delve into Ship Breaker, but when it won the Printz award this year (a library award for best Teen book), I figured I should take the plunge.  It was well worth it.

Set in a far too believable Gulf Coast of the future after massive hurricanes have decimated much of the area.  What’s left is a ragtag group of survivors that scavenge raw materials from what’s left of the ships that used to travel the Gulf.  Nailer is part of the “light crew” that crawls around these dying ships looking for copper wire and other useful items.  He is still small enough to do this useful job, but the day is coming when he won’t be, and he’s not yet big enough or strong enough to join the heavy crew.  If he loses his value, his drug addicted father will surely kill him.  He needs to find a “lucky strike” – oil or money or something that will change his fortunes.

After a big hurricane hits the beach, he and Pima catch the break they’ve been looking for.  They spot a ritzy schooner wrecked along a secluded stretch of the beach.  Once inside they find money and jewels and many other riches that they can scarcely imagine.  They also find a girl, barely alive.  The smart thing to do would be to kill her and take her money, but Nailer decides to save her.  This leads him on a dangerous path where he must disobey his father and leave the only home he has ever known in the hopes that he can reunite the girl with her rich father and get some sort of reward and better life out of his troubles.  The adventure that follows leads him by high speed train to what used to be New Orleans and on a climactic chase out on the open sea where he gets a glimpse of a possible future far from the life he has known.  There is a hint of romance as well, but that is a tiny part of the overall book.

Bacigalupi envisions an all too plausible future with realistic characters and world building that doesn’t overwhelm the motivations and reality of the characters he’s created.  He examines the stark class differences of this possible future that I have to believe are closer to reality in some parts of the world right now.  There is a good amount of violence in the book, so it’s probably best for 13 and up.  This is a great book to add to my list of reliable books for boys (though girls will like it too).  It’s a great book with solid character development, many meaningful ideas and themes to think about along with a fast pace and lots of action.  Highly recommended.

Favorite Movies of 2010

With the Oscars all wrapped up, it’s a good time to rank the movies I saw last year.  In looking at what I saw, I find that we’re not seeing anything too challenging.  It’s pretty much comfort food.  I can’t tell if that’s because there just aren’t challenging films being made anymore or we’re playing it pretty safe.  Probably some of both unfortunately.  What were your favorites from 2010?

My top films of 2010 were:

1. Social Network
2. The Town
3. Inception
4. Toy Story 3
5. Easy A
6. King’s Speech
7. How to Train Your Dragon

The lowlights of the year:  Valentine’s Day, The Wolfman, and Knight and Day

The Rest:

A-Team – surprisingly good
Alice in Wonderland
Book of Eli – end of the world trash
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Clash of the Titans – pedestrian
Date Night
Daybreakers – mildly entertaining vamp movie with some interesting concepts
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Get Him to the Greek – painful in so many ways, but there is something human and redeeming about Russell Brand that saves it.
Girl With the Dragon Tatoo – pretty good adaptation
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows – ssssllllloooowwww, should have been one movie
Iron Man 2
Karate Kid – about what you’d expect
Kick-Ass – had it’s moments, pretty trashy though
Knight and Day – pretty ridiculous, no chemistry between Cruise and Diaz
Last Airbender – sleepytime, zzzzzzz
Letters to Juliet
The Losers – another comic book movie, ok
Morning Glory – had a few interesting observations, but pretty standard
Ondine
Percy Jackson – a disappointment
Prince of Persia – fun but too long
Robin Hood – ok, kind of too serious
Runaways – interesting history of this all girl group though it follows the typical rock band story to a “T”
Salt – some fun stuff, but generally ridiculous and unbelievable
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World – some genius stuff, some painful stuff, enough with Michael Cera though, I need a break from him
Shutter Island
Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Tangled – good solid Disney fare
Tron: Legacy – fun, but a little long
True Grit – good, entertaining film
Eclipse – ready for this to be done too

Our household’s most played songs of 2010…or how my daughter has taken over iTunes

I guess librarianship is a good fit for me because I love keeping track of these lists from year to year to see what we’ve been playing as a family.  Here is our list from 2010.  I generally find the music to put on our ipods and then my daughter plays the songs over and over again.  She’s starting to warm to some classical as well. My son enjoys the songs but doesn’t go out of his way to play them.

1. Requiem for a Tower – Escala
2. All the Right Moves – OneRepublic
3. I Gave You All – Mumford & Sons
4. 40 Dogs – Bob Schneider
5. Uprising – Muse
6. A Complete Unknown – AM
7. Assassin – John Mayer
8. Turn it Off – Paramore
9. They Bring Me to You – Josh Radin
10. The Night Sky – Keane
11. High Road – Broken Bells
12. Winter Winds – Mumford & Sons
13. Head Full of Doubt – Avett Brothers
14. Palladio – Escala
15. What I’ve Done – Linkin Park
16. Steady As She Goes – Raconteurs
17. The Other Side – Cee Lo Green & Bruno Mars
18. My Shadow – Keane
19. Need You Now – Lady Antebellum
20. I and Love and You – Avett Brothers
21. Silgo Creek – Al Peteway
22. Calling Me – Alva Leigh
23. Lasso – Phoenix
24. Forever – Chris Brown
25. Bad Bad World – Guster