Best stuff I did in 2010, media edition

[cahn]

Music: I heard Giuliano Carmignola playing the one of the Mozart violin concertos on the radio and was totally wowed -- it completely changed the way I thought about the Mozart violin concertos.

TV: Deep Space Nine. Oh, yeah, it's got the shiny happy Star Trek thing going, but it surprisingly... doesn't suck. Abigail Nussbaum talks about how it is actually kind of made of awesome, especially compared to other ST's and BSG.

Movie: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part I). I seriously loved this movie. A lot. (Even if I hadn't, well, it was the only movie I watched this year.)

Book (fiction): I read a lot of fiction books this year, both good and bad. Nothing that made my Favorite Books of All Time list, but some good ones I liked quite a bit. Ones that stick out: Demon's Covenant (Brennan) for solid YA; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Diaz) for edgy meaningful SF; This House of Brede (Godden) for thoughtful comfort read (except for one bit which is extraordinarily not comforting) -- this is the book this year I'm most likely to actually buy to own.

Also, The Merlin Conspiracy (Diana Wynne Jones) wins a Special Prize for Being Exactly What I Needed to Read When Suffering from Labor and from Post-Partum Lack-of-Sleep Delirium. I should probably reread it to see if it holds up as being as good as I remember, given that I was, um, not in my normal frame of mind when I read it.

Book (series): Daniel Abraham's Long Price quartet. I haven't liked an adult epic fantasy so well since... well, for quite a while.

Book (nonfiction): Checklist Manifesto (Gawande). Catapulted onto my "everyone needs to read this RIGHT NOW!" list.

Reread: Folk of the Fringe (Card) and The Dispossessed (LeGuin). Both were in my memory as okay, but on reread blew me away with how good they were.

Comments

[julianyap.livejournal.com]

The Dispossessed is on my short list for favorite book of all time.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

I have always liked Left Hand of Darkness better -- but now I'm going to have to go reread to see if I still do like it better. I'm thinking Dispossessed may have beat it out now.

[ase.livejournal.com]

I wandered away from DS9 somewhere between S3 and S5 the first time through; in late 2009 / early 2010 I finished rewatching the series and was surprised how well it held up.

Ha, I hear you about the "only movie": I only made it to the theater once in 2010.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

I had friends who were loaning me the series and forcing, I mean, encouraging me to stick with it; otherwise I probably would have folded around S2. It really got a lot better around S4 or S5, I thought, at which point I really started enjoying it. And (probably related) surprisingly dark for Trek.

Yeah, the only reason I made it to HP even was that my sister and parents were visiting at the time... sister demanded we go, and parents watched the baby :)

[ase.livejournal.com]

Dark isn't always good, but for DS9 it was the right fit. The last season got a little silly (the Ezri Dax mess and some of the Pah Wraith arc, though Dukat and Winn really are prime candidates for Characters Who Deserved Each Other) but I was more frequently entertained than otherwise.

Good parents! (I, uh, haven't seen the latest HP movie yet.) The only reason I made it to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was other people's late night shenanigans, ha. Perhaps in 2011 I should set a goal to see one good movie on the big screen.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Well, dark for the sake of dark is annoying (hello, BSG!) -- but so is happy shiny let's-all-be-friends (*cough*Next Gen). I thought DS9 struck a good balance between the two extremes.

Ezri Dax was awful. Dukat and Winn were hilarious. I'm not sure I was supposed to laugh as hard as I did during their little, um, dalliance and the results... but maybe I was.