Biggest Event Of The Year: Up and borning a kid.
Second Biggest Event Of The Year: Finally getting “Who Let The Dogs Out” out of my head. ARGH NOW ITS IN THERE AGAIN FUCK!
Favorite Movies Seen In The Theater: Lost In Translation (Yeah, it’s a 2003 film, but I saw it early in 2004), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (ditto), The Incredibles, Garden State, Shaun of the Dead.
Most Disappointing Movie Seen In The Theater: Didn’t see any real duds this year, although the headache-inducing shaky-cam style of The Bourne Supremacy prevented me from really enjoying it.
Best TV Shows (Seen On DVD): Freaks & Geeks (so great!) and The Office (so great!).
Movie I got on DVD and didn’t watch for weeks because I was scared that it would be godawful and ruin my fond childhood memories of it, but turned out to be pretty good: Ghostbusters. Dan Ackroyd’s delivery of “I couldn’t help it, he just popped in there” is one of the funniest moments in cinema.
Movie I Watched On DVD That Inspired The Aforementioned Dread By Being Awful And Fond-Memory Ruinous: Tron.
Favorite Fiction Books Read: You know, I can’t say that I read any particularly outstanding fiction books in 2004. Recommendations for 2005 in the comments, please.
Favorite Non-Fiction Book Read: The Elegant Universe, The Last American Man, Stiff.
Book I Read The Least Of: Foucault’s Pendulum (text on back, first paragraph)
Favorite Album: I listened to the Garden State Soundtrack a lot, despite owning almost all the CDs the songs were taken from.
Only Show I Went To: Sondre Lerche.
My Review: “The best show I saw all year!”
Favorite Board Games: Ticket To Ride, Attika, Hansa.
Video Game Tried At A Friend’s House That Made Me Want To Devote The Remainder Of My Life To Playing: Katamari Damacy. Exhibit A as to why I don’t own a video game system.
Life Lesson Learned Playing Panda Pang: If you see a bomb on the ground, do not pick it up.
Thing That I Really Like That I Continued To Really Like In 2004: Beer.
Thing That I Really Hate That I Continued To Really Hate In 2004: Powerpoint.
Worst Ramification Of The Presidential Election: Bush wins second term.
Most Astute (And Depressing) Observation Made After The Presidential Election: “I feel rotten for wasting so much of my spare time reading political blogs. It’s like when I got hooked on the OJ Simpson trial — I could have learned a foreign language or written a book in the block of time I allocated to OJ.” — my dad
Best Ramification Of The Presidential Election, And A Direct Result Of The Above Two Items: I haven’t paid a whit of attention to politics since November 2. I’m so much happier! I’m like a born-again apathetic!
Longtime Goal That I Actually Met in 2004: Started riding my bicycle to work.
Longtime Goals That I Failed Meet In 2004: The rest.
Hey, the same thing happened to me with Tron! How could I have ever liked that movie!?
Depends what you like, but the novels I particularly enjoyed this year were:
Freedom & Necessity by Stephen Brust and Emma Bull
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Age of Innocence and The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
Plus anything by Alice Munro or Terry Pratchett.
My favourite book of 2004 was Joseph O’Conner’s (did I get the apostrophe right?) ‘ Star of the Sea’. It’s worth sticking with ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’ if only so that you can do even more effective eye-rolling and tutting when people mention ‘The Da Vinci Code’.
…oh, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is wonderful.
Another Tron victim and GB celebrant here.
Dang, a browser crash prevented me from being first to mention The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
I must tell you, in all honesty, that The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is one of the books I read in 2004 that I found “not particularly outstanding”.
“Lamb: The gospel according to Biff, Christ’s childhood pal”, by Christopher Moore
“Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the west” by Gregory Maguire
Excellent fiction books!
Having read as much as one-third of Foucalt’s Pendulum, I know infinitely more about it than you. Which winds up being nothing, because the entire book is merely the first paragraph and back cover text repeated.
I found it much more entertaining to listen to the babies scream on the airplane than to read that book. Thank God I didn’t buy it.
Man, and I even misspelled the name. Screw you, Foucault.
war games is another childhood movie that doesn’t stand up.
Thanks to this blog I read — and enjoyed — Stiff. I just finished reading Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, which I highly recommend. The best re-read of 2004 was An Instance of the Fingerpost. Larry McMurtry’s Sin Killer trilogy was excellent, but his recent Loop Group is a bit of a dud.
If you read all the way through Foucault’s Pendulum, there is a coupon on the last page that entitles you to get those hours of your life back.
(No, there isn’t. Don’t make the mistake I made.)
Heh, my disappointment at Tron pales in comparison against the let down when I saw “Silent Running”. That was awesome at age 10, and one of the worst I’ve seen as an adult. Ack!
I read Foucault’s Pendulum when my truck was broken down for 3 days in the middle of nowhere in Texas, and all I had was a copy of that book, a carton of cigarettes, and a drinking fountain to keep from dying of thirst.
Trust me, as someone who has had nothing BUT that stinker that Eco pooped out to occupy their mind, you aren’t missing much!
I’m still reeling from the sheer greatness that was Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. The world needs more literary sci-fi.
Jenny and the Jaws of Life by Jincy Willett
hitchhikers guide to the galaxy – douglas adams…
not a 2004 orginal – but damn if it’s not fun to read.
The very best tv show ever, and by far, is Hamish Macbeth. Where you would find a copy of this series is beyond me, though.
Presuming your ditto for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” was to mean “it’s a 2003 film, but I saw it early in 2004”, just wanted to point out that the film’s IMDB listing says 2004. I think it was a February or March release, so it just *seems* like it was the previous year ;)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. You’ll love it.
Recommended bookage : “Facing the Music”, a story collection by Larry Brown, very minimaist ain’t-a-gonna-be-no-fuckin’-around-here style, and heavy on the heartbreak. Also “The Etched City” by K.J. Bishop, the oddest and coolest fantasy I’ve read in years (NOTHING like Tolkien, which I think is a Damn Good Thing).
If any of you haven’t, read:
1984
Fahrenheit 451
Animal Farm
Demian
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
They got me through summer school without severe atrophy of the brain.
Top Fiction Reads of 2004 (in alphabetical author order):
The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad – Minister Faust
Sock – Penn Jillette
Fluke – Christopher Moore
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Jesus’ Childhood Pal – Christopher Moore
i’m not sure if it’s actually classified as fiction but you’re looking for a light entertaining read i recommend mcarthy’s bar by pete mcarthy.
Proud to say I never bothered with tron.
And I realy want to see garden state now.
hope you continue riding your bike to work and elsewhere in 2005 and forever. bicycle commuting is better for everyone.
Sorry, rgedob, but I have to pitch this in: I found A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius to be a Tedious Work of Self-indulgence.
And here’s another vote for A Curious Incident.
I wish I could stop reading political blogs. At least I don’t comment anymore. Now I’m just watching the train wreck.
“Gringos” by Charles Portis is good. Heck, it was recommended by none other than TMN’s Rosecrans Baldwin!
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is the best novel I’ve read this year that was actually published this year. One of those great novels about novels, in the tradition of If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler….
i totally talked up Tron to my 5 and 6 year old sons before getting the DVD.
watching same has re-enforced their low opinion of my parental competence.
The Pleasure of My Company – Steve Martin
Max’s First Word by Rosemary Wells held up to repeated (and I mean these-words-have-ceased-to-hold-meaning repeated) readings.
In between “bang!”s, I read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, which was finely written, and blessedly parent-lengthed.
Not sure if you have ever heard of a book called House of Leaves by Mark Z. Dainielewski, but you REALLY, REALLY need to check it out. Trust me, once you pick it up and flip through it you will understand why the book is amazing. Look for it the next time you are at a book store, and just flip through the book.
I didn’t like Tron as a kid because me brother watched it incessently and I didn’t know jack about computers. Now that I know what a central processor is, I actually enjoyed the film. Funny how understanding what is going on can heighten your movie experience.
Not sure if you have ever heard of a book called House of Leaves by Mark Z. Dainielewski, but you REALLY, REALLY need to check it out. Trust me, once you pick it up and flip through it you will understand why the book is amazing. Look for it the next time you are at a book store, and just flip through the book.
I’ve been lusting after Katamari Damacy for a while now. It just looks so ridiculously interesting, and more than a bit creepy.
I personally avoid Massively Multiplayer Online games, because I recognize that they would be a huge time sink for me.
Who Let The Dogs Out?
GODDAMN YOU!!!!!
Check out the Neal Stephenson’s System of the World series.
tron rules, end of story.
Seconding Wicked (I read it for the 4th time this year… again. The author’s other books are mostly crap though.) and the Neal Stephenson series (though I’ve only just started the third book).
George Saunders- Pastoralia
and also Civil Warlands in Bad Decline
Paul Auster- Oracle Night
(or really anything by him if you haven’t read much of him yet; especially The New York Trilogy, In the Country of Last Things, Timbuktu and The Book of Illusions.)
David Benioff- When the Nines Roll Over
This one isn’t a new book for 2004 by any means but this was the year I read it first – Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow. It’s the story of Jesus’s half-sister, born via immaculate conception (at a sperm bank) to a bachelor jew in modern Atlantic City New Jersey. Morrow approaches religous satire similiarly to the way Vonnegut writes about the human condition but with a very different writing style.
Quoth Swamp, “Check out the Neal Stephenson’s System of the World series.”
You can check it out, but don’t forget to renew it as well. As I found out, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll finish before it’s due back.
Engrossing, well-written books (at least the first one which I’ve read so far), but a little gratuitous in places, and very long.
My husband recently retrieved our copy of Katamari Damacy from the friend who’d borrowed it, and we’ve gotten hooked all over again. Solving the game is disappointingly quick, but after that you can go back and try to get better times/sizes on each round, thereby unlocking… stuff. Each time we discover some new feature, my husband bounces up and down and laughs his fool head off. He keeps saying, “I can’t believe this was only $20!”
Major. Time. Sink. Absolutely loving it. It is a Box Full Of Fun.
mindsuckr – none of my friends who’ve borrowed it like it much, but HOUSE OF LEAVES blew me away and absolutely fucked my mind over. It is responsible for several nights running of me lying awake and staring at the walls in the dark, mentally daring them to move. The bit with the bookshelf, and the chapter on echos, were acts of especial genius.
Fave GB quote at the moment: “When someone asks if you’re a God, you say YES!!!”
I was very much enjoying Seven Types of Ambiguity by Elliot Perlman until I left it on the plane earlier this week. I will most likely buy it again just so I can finish the thing, even though it will greatly pain me to do so, it being a hardback and all.
All the other books I read are poker books, so…probably wouldn’t interest you much. :)
(Although, even for someone without much interest in the game, Positively Fifth Street by Jim McManus is a great read as well)
Another vote for Christopher Moore’s “Lamb” here. Fantastic funny story!
“Foucault’s Pendulum,” is one of my all-time favorite books. No kidding. An intellectual farce based on the idea of conspiracy theory as the secular replacement to the religious impulse — great stuff!
I’m absolutely baffled that people recommending Stephenson’s 2800-page “System of the World” wouldn’t like “Foucault’s Pendulum”. I mean, if you don’t like long, meandering stories filled with tangents of intellectual gamesmanship, that’s one thing, but if you like “System of the World,” then I would think “Foucault’s Pendulum,” would be your cup of tea.
Fond memory ruinous: Mad Max.
ok, here’s two fiction rec’s: “dirt music,” by tim winton. aussie writer, brilliant. shortlisted for the booker prize, methinks. perhaps also try “hardboiled wonderland and the end of the world,” by hurakai murakami. both take fictional badassery to new levels, even if they are a few years old.