2008 Year in Review: Favorite Books

Here’s my annual list of my ten favorite books read in the year.  As always, this is merely the best books I read this year not books published in 2008.  For previous years see 2007 and 2006, and of course Every Book I’ve Ever Read are cataloged in Library Thing.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy [...]

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Book Review: Great Fortune by Daniel Okrent

Great Fortune : The Epic of Rockefeller Center (2003) by Daniel Okrent is a lively and engaging popular history of the origins of the most famous urban development in the world.  It’s chock-full of facts that I never knew.
For example, the land Rockefeller Center is built upon was originally the “Upper Estate” of Columbia [...]

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2008 Beer in Review

Another year of beer drinking will soon come to an end.  Consumption was low in the early part of the year due to my back injury, and parenthood has kept me out of darkened saloons in general.  Also in my old age I tend to forget to write up reviews, so there are some beers [...]

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2008 Year in Review: Movies

Listed below are all the movies I’ve watched in the past year.  Much like last year, I’ve rated all the movies on a five star scale. Five stars is an all-time classic, three stars is the baseline for an enjoyable film end-to-end, one star is a bad movie with perhaps one good sequence or performance. [...]

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2008 Year in Review: First Sentences

The first sentence from the first post of the first day of each month of this year.  Exciting, eh?
January:  “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) tells a familiar story.”
February:  “It’s early morning on Sunday 1 February 1998 and mist shrouds Galway as I board a bus to Rossaveal.”
March:  “On the first of March 1998, I made [...]

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Christmas Eve

It’s Christmas Eve.  As you wrap (or unwrap) gifts, sip eggnog, and/or get ready for Midnight Mass, you’ll want to start off by clicking the youtube link below:

Then you’ll want to click this youtube link, and replay it in a loop for about 3-4 hours.

If you need [...]

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Book Review: Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest To Wash Dishes in All Fifty States by Pete Jordan

I’m the official dishwasher in our household and love travel and eccentric characters so it was natural for me to want to read Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest To Wash Dishes in All Fifty States (2007) by Pete Jordan.  It is pretty much what it’s long subtitle say it is:  a ten-plus year journey around the [...]

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Movie Round-Up

I’m way behind on movie reviews. Here’s everything I viewed since October (I think?).

Word Wars
A documentary about four of the top competitive Scrabble players. I didn’t find it as engaging as the similar documentary Wordplay, about crossword puzzle players, nor was it as insightful as Stephan Fatsis’ book Word Freak. The movie seems to emphasize [...]

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Beer Review: Leinenkugel’s Fireside Nut Brown

I just can’t resist the name Nut Brown Ale, especially on a snowy day.
Beer: Fireside Nut Brown
Brewer: Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company
Source: 12 oz bottle
Rating: * (5.7 of 10)
Comments:  Not all Nut Browns are created equal.  This one had the earthy brown color and a musty aroma, but OMG! this beer is so sweet.  I’m just [...]

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Book Review: The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet by Neil Degrasse Tyson

The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet by Neil Degrasse Tyson is a Library Thing Early Reviewers advance copy book and a very enjoyable one at that.  Tyson, an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, writes of the former ninth planet Pluto and [...]

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