I meant to write little review posts about each of these and never did. I still might, because I have things I’d like to say about each of them. This year was a totally indulgent reading year. I gravitated towards pure mood and pleasure reading most of the time. These were the notables:
I actively enjoy reading on the internet as a hobby and consider it a valuable use of time, as much as sitting the newspaper on sunday and reading books – same enjoyment, different moods. I remember someone tweeting a joke about google reader graveyards last year (like who still follows entire blogs anymore? uhhh. I do!) I’m one of those holdovers that transitioned (just barely and way recently) from my feed reader to a neverending instapaper holding cell.
In 2012, it seemed I couldn’t stop discovering great online projects, zines and columns to follow. These were standouts to regularly check:
Storychord – a Sarah Lynn Knowles project featuring consistently fantastic writers, artists and musicians.
Self-Made Man - a column (on The Rumpus) by Thomas Page McBee, who is doing some of the most insightful and important writing about gender, bodies and otherness to happen in the last decade.
Brain Pickings - Maria Popova is the apex of curation culture online. Utterly addictive and delightful.
Happy last day of January. It’s around now when people are making their jokes about how only a few short weeks ago, they made resolutions that are now getting abandoned, forgotten or given up.
This year, just for fun on New Year’s Day, I tweeted random resolutions off the top of my head. My goals and somewhat silly vows ended up being more of a mini-bucket list than anything having to do with commitment, resolve or discipline.
This is my 2012 bucket list:
- Drink more whiskey in 2012. Since discovering hendrick’s gin, I’ve been neglecting all the whiskey that needs drinking.
- Spend a night on a boat
- Write (draw) a short webcomic.
- Read a novel in Italian
- Learn how to knit socks.
- Talk to my cats more.
- Learn to play top five Springsteen songs on the ukulele.
- Go on a rollercoaster.
So these are all good, and I fully plan on achieving them. I’m excited about achieving them. There is a bit of quality of life improvement, a bit of “I’d be proud to be able to do that” and a bit of “stuff I want to get around to doing”.
However…
If I’m being super honest with myself, there isn’t a hell of a lot of deep reflective challenge going on here.
So here it the part about resolve. It’s taken me all of January to figure out what I really want from my year. What I really want to push myself to change.
I’m terrible about starting things, too many projects, well-intentioned ideas and sometimes even great things that I care about a lot — and then for whatever reason, not finishing.
If I’m being honest with myself, that is my one real resolution for 2012: To stop being the person who begins and doesn’t follow-through. My simple steps to change this are:
- To finish the projects that I have started (the ones that really matter). - Let go of, abandon or table the things that are not priority. - Don’t start anything new that I can’t, or realistically won’t finish.
Oh hi, middle of January. It was time to do this 3 weeks ago. Alas, I had some priority issues over the past month – this blog being one of the things that had to go hang out on the back burner for a while.
So here’s my list of highlights from 2011:
Books
Music Some of these are albums and tunes I revisited this year, some are ones I discovered this year. Most were not new releases from 2011. Click albums to launch on spotify, the individual songs I listened to are all playable in that handy widget guy.
Albums
Songs
(in totally random order)
Movies
I didn’t see as many movies as I would have liked to this year. And I didn’t keep track of the older ones I watched (there were a lot of dvds from the library, netflix and hulu streaming this year). Here is a handful of movies from this year that I really enjoyed. I will do better keeping track in 2012.
J.K. Rowling is a master of building excitement, both in fiction and in real life. She doesn’t do anything small, does she?
Well, the geeks are all aflutter today and the reason is because of a little site called Pottermore. Through posts on several fan sites that contained coordinates for a secret streetview (you can read more about that here on Mugglenet), fans found letters that spelled out “pottermore”. Go to the pottermore.com and you see adorably twitchy owls and this:
If you click on the owls, it brings you to a special youtube page set up to count down to when J.K. Rowling makes an announcement on June 23rd!
First of all, I just think the logo has a video game look about it. There are already several regular games based on the movies and a series of LEGO Harry Potter games. It seems a little too cartoonish for any kind of supplemental book series and I have doubts that Rowling would approve any kind of tv series with new noncanonical storylines.
The thing that really clinches it though, is that I remembered hearing rumors that WB was working on a MMORPG a few years back. I went digging and found this news story on Mugglenet called “Potter MMORPG confirmed by WB VP of Marketing” from June 4, 2008. They quoted an email from Warner Brothers Vice President of Marketing Sandy Yi:
The notion of creating a Harry Potter multi-player online role playing game is something that we’ve been discussing at Warner Bros. for a number of years and continue to explore. We are currently investigating the possibility of creating our own MMORPG but unfortunately do not have any further details to share at this time.
So it’s entirely possible that they’ve been working on this for the last 3 years and now are getting ready to roll-out a release to coincide with the last film opening on July 15th, next month. Excellent timing.
I’m hoping it’s a true game with levels and challenges and not just Second Life meets The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Walking around in that world would be cool, but I need objectives for it to be worth it for me to devote time to it.
You can follow Pottermore on twitter as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if some more owls and other surprises show up before the official announcement next week!
Speaking of the impending release of Deathly Hallows, Part 2, if you haven’t yet seen the new trailer that was released today, you can watch it right here. It’s epic. Queue the tears.
On opera, writing, cats and the best tv series of all time.
I am very curious by nature. Usually after reading a good book, I spend a lot of time reading reviews, interviews with the author and sometimes the author’s blog. And that usually doesn’t even begin to cover the things that I’ve wondered about. (Very few authors discuss their love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer for some reason).
Author of The Metropolis Case, Matthew Gallaway was kind enough to let me ask him a bunch of random questions. His answers provide insight to his book, his ideas about work and writing and also display his excellent taste and proof that he is someone who has a book and record collection that I would greatly enjoy. Continue reading
