pandalutions, etc.

Well, my New Year's resolution (or "Pandalution" if I'm feeling particularly witty) seems to have already hit a major road block. Turns out giant pandas are expensive, bitey, illegal to obtain, and consume MASSIVE amounts of bamboo. But I'm not giving up. Oh no. It's just proving a bit trickier than I originally thought, is all.

In the meantime, I have found this adorable, boffo picture to tide me over while I wait for Nathan to rob a bank, convert my backyard into a bamboo forest, and then find out where in the dickens the Chinese black market is located:

By my estimate, this should only take a couple of weeks. I'll keep you updated so you can start planning your visit.

In other resolution news, I've recently settled on one more, and since it somewhat involves this blog I thought I'd share. See, I have a bit of a problem in that I've developed a nasty habit of borrowing/buying books that then sit in limbo - half or completely unread - on my shelf. Times are tough, wastefulness stinks, and it's never cool to borrow and not return, and so I've made a vow that before I buy or borrow anything new, I first have to finish something I already have. And so, I will be reading, then reviewing, each of these books at some point this year:

Say You're One of Them, by Uwem Akpan*

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen*+

The Yiddish Policeman's Union, by Michael Chabon

Maps and Legends, by Michael Chabon*

The Enemy Within, by John Demos*

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers*

American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis+

Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer*+

Paper Towns, by John Green

Catch 22, by Joseph Heller*

Shadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez*

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez

Asylum, by Patrick McGrath*

Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer*+

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov*

American Pastoral, by Philip Roth*

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski

The End, by Salvatore Scibona*

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace*

I will call these twenty books my "Resolution Reads," and once I've started one of them I will not allow myself to read anything else until I've finally finished it. Many of them are frightfully long or frightfully British, so although I'm still going to try to review one each week understand if it doesn't happen, and if you have any thoughts or suggestions on my list (i.e., Throw it out! It's awful!) then please do share.

So there you have it. Enjoy your weekend, and Viva la Pandalution!

* Indicates titles I've started, sometimes several times over, but for whatever reason I just never finished.

+ Indicates dread.

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!