It’s a new year and time for my annual reflection on the books I read and movies I saw in the past year. In terms of numbers, I’m very close to last year’s totals: this year I read 45 books and saw 52 movies. These numbers are so close to last year’s that if there were such a thing as a margin of error, they would be identical.
I again attempted a breakdown of movies by genre, but I have to admit that some of these are fairly arbitrary. But hey, this is my blog, so I can do my own thing. Here is what I came up with: Children’s – 2, Comedy – 6, Documentary – 4, Docu-Drama – 9, Drama – 17, Literary Adaptation – 4, Musical – 1, SciFi/Fantasy – 8, Silent -1. As happened last year, I simply could not pick the Top 10, much less the Top 6, so I’m offering the following, listed in alphabetical order, as “most deserving of being better known than they are.” So these are by no means the best movies I saw last year, but simply the ones that I thought are most deserving of a larger audience:
- The Descendants
- Hugo
- Mommo
- Rabbit Hole
- Rock of Ages
- A Separation
It was easier, I think, to categorize the books I read. Of course, fiction vs nonfiction is the basic division: I read 20 nonfiction books and 25 fiction. Here are the sub-classifications for nonfiction: Autobiography/Biography – 8, History – 3, Science – 3, Social Science – 6. My fiction sub-classifications are more subjective: Classics – 1, Historical Novel – 5, Mystery – 7, Novel – 9, SciFi/Fantasy – 3. As with the movies, I’m offering these titles, in alphabetical order, as the books most deserving of being more widely read than they are:
- Bastard of Istanbul
- Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
- Common Ground
- Confessions of Zeno
- Primate’s Memoir
- The Submission
Click here for the complete lists. So update your movie queues and get yourself to your public library. There are treasures waiting there for you!