2008: a scattershot reflection

I'm been a bit manic with my posting this week, I know, but it turned out that I had more ideas for end-of-the-year posts than I had time to write them.  If you're even reading this - my fifteenth or something post in the last four days - then congrats.  You're a more patient person than I.  I promise to slow things down next week, but before putting 2008 in its grave I have a few more things to say.

My initial intent was to pen separate posts on my favorite moments, books, albums, movies, etc of the year, but after looking back on it, 2008 - although a great year for music - was a fairly average year for books and a downright underwhelming year for movies, so this is the sort of situation when a more scattershot approach will do. 

Musically speaking, my personal favorites would be a four-way tie between Basia Bulat's Oh, My Darling, Liam Finn's I'll Be Lightning, Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago, and Dr. Dog's Fate. I've written about all of these before so I won't say anything else other than this list is based purely on personal preference and was compiled in the most haphazard of fashions, so if you ask me about it tomorrow I'd probably produce a totally different list.  

Discussing books is harder because I feel like there's so much that I haven't had a chance to read yet, however of what I HAVE read, I'd probably list Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 as my favorite "for pure entertainment" book, Jane Mayer's The Dark Side as my favorite "important stuff you should all read" book, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother as my favorite Young Adult book (my review's coming soon), Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay as my favorite "book that wasn't released this year but that I finally got around to reading already" and Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else as my overall favorite new release of the year.  

And as for movies...I got nothing.  Although, I did recently see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire, and liked them both quite a bit.

Finally, on a personal level, 2008 was a pretty meh year for me.  Sure, there were plenty of good moments (the election being a particularly notable one), however looking back on it 2008 certainly had its fair share of moments that tested both my patience and generally sunny disposition.  I have not and will not get into any of that here, but trust that 2008 had some shitty bits for yours truly.   Some good bits to be sure, but some shitty bits too.

So, what does a girl do to fare better in 2009?  Well, Jessica from Jezebel recently referenced this excerpt from Anne Lamott's book, Hard Laughter, and I think it's a stellar idea:

I said that I thought the secret of life was obvious: be here now, love as if your whole life depended on it, find your life's work, and try to get hold of a giant panda. If you had a giant panda in your back yard, anything could go wrong — someone could die, or stop loving you, or you could get sick — and if you could look outside and see this adorable, ridiculous, boffo panda, you'd start to laugh; you'd be so filled with thankfulness and amusement that everything would be O.K. again.

So there you go.  My one and only resolution for the new year is to get me a giant panda.  And I shall keep it in my backyard, which is, thankfully, quite spacious.  Cheers!