Wednesday, December 28, 2011

2011 best of's


Lists help tidy up the year.  I read, saw and heard a lot but these will be memorable and made me happy.

I'm giving paperoverboard a bit of a rest as I work on some other writing projects in 2012.  But it will rise from the ashes as looming outrages merit.

Favorite books read 2011*
1.            Open City/ Teju Cole
2.            The Stranger’s Child/ Alan Hollinghurst
3.            Light Lifting/ Alexander MacLeod
4.            Greenbanks/Dorothy Whipple
5.            Zoo Station/ David Downing
6.            The British Book Trade/ Sue Bradley
7.            One Fine Day/ Mollie Panter-Downes
8.            The Warmth of Other Suns/ Isabel Wilkerson
9.            A Sense of an Ending/ Julian Barnes
10.          Believing is Seeing/ Errol Morris
11.          Mordecai:The Life & Times/ Charles Foran
12.          The Variations/ John Donatich
13.          Cat’sTable/ Michael Ondaatje
14.          Palladian/Elizabeth Taylor
15.          At Last/Edward St. Aubyn

* non Harvard, MIT, Yale- see here for those.

Favorite films (seen) in 2011
1.            Le Havre
2.            Wah Dem Do
3.            Weekend
4.            Another Year
5.            Certified Copies
6.            Melancholia
7.            Bridesmaids
8.            The Arbor
9.            Necessities of Life
10.          Incendies

Favorite drama 2011
I saw one play.  But it would have been best of the year had I seen 100: Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalismand Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures.

Favorite Tunes (heard and loved) in 2011
1.            The Color of Rain/ William Brittelle
2.            Dignified Man/ Songbird Sing
3.            I Never Learnt to Share/ James Blake
4.            Powa/ Tune-Yards
5.            Scandal at the Parkade/ Owen Pallett
6.            Stony & Cory/ Kid Creole & the Coconuts
7.            José Larralde-Quimey Neuquén/ Chancha via Circuito
8.            Excuse me baby/ Dizzy K. Falola
9.            Voice/ Ani DiFranco
10.          One Day we will Pay/ Coati Mundi
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2 comments:

  1. MarcDecember 28, 2011 at 2:31 PM

    Other writing projects?...

    Nice (non-amazon, substantive) linking.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Matthew LageFebruary 13, 2012 at 4:39 PM

    I always depend on John for dispatches from the front when it comes to fine writing. Couldn't agree more with his selection of the Hollinghurst, and now I have to pick up the Cole on his recommendation. And let's give a shout-out to the recent Elizabeth Taylor reissues from The New York Review of Books, as well as Picador's new omnibus of the Patrick Melrose novels by St. Aubyn (At Last).

    There's a movement being launched called "Twelve for Twelve," urging readers to choose a book of merit to read each month. One coud do worse than to sample from John's list.

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