I'm still not sure about the whole following-famous-people on twitter thing.

I get why you would follow someone's blog, because they might be interesting and say interesting things. So even if they have seven million followers and there's no chance you would ever interact with each other, it's still interesting.

But twitter is kind of a conversational medium to me. It's the back and forth that makes it interesting. And there's only so interesting a one-way conversation can be in 140 characters.

I could be wrong.

Once it settles down
and the fire has burned out
What do you think you'll find
Poking through the embers?

Memories that sting
Little splinters of your doubt
Things that you can live without

A Camp

Something in my eye.

Some samples from those picks (the first one is audio only as that's all I could find):

January

So it's time to start compiling my list of the best music of the year. Unlike my reading, which fell away this year, music is perhaps the one thing I have kept up with this year. In fact, I'd venture to say I've bought more new music than any other year, and explored a lot of new bands I'd not heard before.

So I'm going to go through month by month and pick out the best on my way to the uber-list.

Contenders for January:

The Lovetones Jessie Kilguss	Dimensions (actually Christmas eve 2008) Nocturnal Drifter
Mark Olson & Gary Lourie	Ready for the Flood
Animal Collective	Merriweather Post Pavillion
Antony & the Johnsons	The Crying Light
Robert Pollard	The Crawling Distance
AC Newman	Get Guilty
Franz Ferdinand	Tonight
Franz Nicolay	Major General
Andrew Bird	Noble Beast
Ben Kweller	Changing Horses

January wasn't a huge month for new releases but there are still some good albums in there.

My picks would be:

Dimensions... The Lovetones.

I have been a huge fan of Matthew Tow since his days with Drop City, but until this album his Lovetones output had left me a little nonplussed. This is a great album, though, and he seems to finally have found the right balance of psychadelic pop, of catchy and meaningful. I could name about five songs off the album that would be in my favourite songs of the year list. If you like Beatle-influenced, jangly pop songs, check this album out. Drop City were one of the most chronically overlooked Australian bands of the nineties and it's good to hear Tow back on song, as it were.


Merriweather Post Pavillion... Animal Collective

Perhaps the most critically anticipated and lauded album of the year. I hadn't heard Animal Collective before, but there was a lot of hype on music blogs about this album, along with Grizzly Bear's, being the albums to watch for this year. I don't know if I liked this album as much as the critics did. It straddles that boundary between a difficult, experimental album that rewards repeat listens with depth and brilliance, or just an album of not-very-catchy noise. My Girls is a great song, and there are a couple of others. Overall, it was an interesting enough album to stand out, but perhaps the hype was too much for it to live up to.

Major General... Franz Nicolay

This album was my major surprise of the year. It's also testament to the usefulness of taking a chance on new music. I had never heard of Nicolay, who it turns out is the keyboard player for The Hold Steady, another band I hadn't really heard before this year. But I heard the beautiful "Note on a Subway Wall" on a music blog early in the year, and it was a slow period for new releases, and so I decided to take the chance on this album. It was the best decision I made all year. Nicolay shifts between cabaret influenced rock and wordy, thoughtful ballads. His lyrics are never half-hearted; it's easy to be held captive by his words. And there are easily half a dozen really catchy melodies in here, as well as just an... energy... that you can feel when an artist is throwing themself into creating a strong work. Note on a Subway Wall remains my favourite song on the album; a truly beautiful, understated ballad of relationships lost.

I also recommend the Robert Pollard and AC Newman albums.

My job at work seems to have devolved chiefly into putting things in boxes. This is quite boring.

We only have one week left of work before the restructure comes into being, and we're all shunted off to different corners of the building. On the one hand I'll miss the people I work with. On the other, I'm looking forward to the challenge.

The first few weeks are bound to be quite chaotic and while other people are fearing that, I'm bizarrely happy that I'll have something to challenge me for a while.

This week is going to consist of lots of people panicking around me, I can tell, as they realise all the things nobody has planned for, the small processes that the grand design didn't deem worthy of explication.

I reckon I might be able to find a couple of months' worth of challenging times before work becomes boring again :-)

Also...the other thing I forgot in the previous post...

I never could quite get used to the anonymity thing. At first it felt very liberating, at a time when I felt like a lot of people were judging me.

But my blogging philosophy has always been a warts-and-all kind of approach, blogging both good and bad, as honestly as possible. And it felt kind of weird doing that behind a pseudonym.

I'm not saying anonymity always equals insincerity. I'm sure it works well for other people, and that they're able to be more honest, sometimes, because of it.

I always felt like it was a bit of a dilution, though, of who I was.

In the wash up, I have realised this year that I'm a pretty up-front person, and that I wear my heart on my sleeve, and for better or worse, that's how some deity or accidentaly collision of genes and circumstance made me. Some days it stands me in good stead, some days it gets me in trouble.

But I guess that's who I am. People are free to like me or judge me on that basis, if it makes them feel good. I will continue to try to be the best person I can be, and people are welcome to read me or to not read me as they see fit.

Life is too short to worry about it.

So just to make the whole exercise pointless, I have decided to go back to my old username.

There is one chief reason for this: (1) I got sick of explaining to people who I was.

Also, I just couldn't get used to posting under another name.

Still, that killed a few months didn't it?

So for 2010 I have decided to do the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.

The idea is pretty simple. Read and blog about 52 books over the course of the year.

I'll be using the challenge to clear some of my to-read pile, so I'm allowing partially read books, although I haven't read much on any of them.

I'm doing the challenge for two reasons. 1) to get back into reading good books, and (2) to get into the habit of writing about the books I read, which I've kinda fallen out of the habit of.

So anyhow, I'll be starting in December and finishing in December next year. Wish me luck!

Book Vortex lists its top 20 SF books to look forward to in 2010.

I keep being drawn inexorably back to that 1001 Books list. It tells me I need to read about 20 books a year to finish it, assuming that I live to 80 or 90 and haven't lost interest in the list by that point :-)

While that is perhaps unlikely, I figure that at the very least if I start the list it might lead me to some good books and authors I don't know. My knowledge of "literary" fiction starts and ends with undergrad uni at the moment, so it can't hurt to expand it a little. And if the books suck, I will simply stop reading them (yes I know, I have to keep repeating that bit to myself)

So I have decided that next year I will try to read 20 books off the list, just to see how I go.

I've divided it into quarterly installments, which is 5 books every 3 months. Which should be doable, amidst all the other thousands of books I plan to read!

So I have chosen semi-randomly 5 books from the list to begin with:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland... Lewis Carroll
Lord of the Flies... William Golding
The Sea... John Banville
Don Quixote... Cervantes
Journey to the West... Wu Cheng-en

Anyone want to read along? We could make it like a book club!!!

If, like me, you love reading other peoples' Years' Best lists, head over to Largehearted Boy's blog.

In addition to his usual excellent lists of new release CDs and best music of the year, he now provides links to the many and varied lists popping up around the internet.

An awesome resource.

In no particular order:

I love my house.
I love the park and trees near my house.
I love my little street.
I love Mrs Ben.
I love my friends.
I love being able to eat good food.
I love being able to buy awesome music that moves me.
I love reading books that make me think or cry or take me someplace cool.
I love the rain.
I love the sun on my skin.
I love an evening breeze and the smells of people cooking.
I love sitting on the edge of the water, just watching it.
I love laughing with people.
I love hugs, and touches of hands.
I love the smile lines on peoples' faces.
I love sleeping in.
I love lazing on the couch.
I love my family.
I love getting to know people and finding out who they are and how they think.
I love it when I feel like something I said made a difference to somebody.

That's just a few things that I love.

Interesting speech by The Chaser's Julian Morrow.

Thanks to kathrynlinge for the link!

In the musical, Eponine is a member of a serious love triangle. When we care about her we care about her as a serious third party to the Marius/Cosette relationship. More particularly, she is an outisder with perfect teetth.

In the book, Eponine is never a serious contender, she is toothless, ugly, poor, probably a whore, and she has a voice that could shred garbage (nobody does good voice anymore).

There is never any serious suggestion of Marius loving Eponine. She gives her life for him, not in a beautiful romantic gesture but in a horrible, beautiful celebration of futility.

"You must kiss me on the forehead after I'm dead.... I shall know", she says, knowing both that it's a lie and that it's the best she'll ever get.

In the musical, Marius gets some nice catharsis from Eponine's death. In the novel, there's nothing like that. After a couple of brief lines, Eponine and her dark, croaky voice are forgotten. Marius forgets about everything beyond his love for Cosette.

Eponine is allowed a brief, ugly, dying scene:

" ' You know, Monsieur Marius, I think I was a little bit in love with you.'"
" She tried to smile, and died."

Oh Eponine, you sad broken heart. I think I was  a little bit in love with you.

Because I don't seem to have anything to say this week, some links

Publishers' Weekly's best books of 2009

Amazon editors best books of 2009

Amazon editors best SF books of 2009

I looked in the mirror at my own reflection.The face before me was long and narrow, with black eyes a flashy red beard.

"You're a handsome devil," said the man in the mirror.

I blushed. "You're not the first person to say that."

Liberal MP Adam Giles has apologised for calling asylum seekers "scum", claiming that it was a slip of the tongue.

I can certainly see how that would happen. Just the other day I was intending to remark to a friend how "I hate the new vegemite" when I accidentally said "All refugees should be drowned in the waters off Christmas Island". Simple as that! And certainly no ill will was intended.

Admittedly the Liberal MP was actually referring to a decision to provide housing for asylum seekers, *not* people-smugglers, so he's caught in a bit of a quandry. Either he was calling asylum seekers "scum", or he was referring, as he claims, to people-smugglers, and is therefore simply talking without any knowledge or research into the topic.

Still, ignorant is better than ignorant, isn't it?

What is the point in owning a post box? All I have is an increasingly large collection of blue slips for mail which I can never retreive because the post office is never open outside work hours!

And now I find out they also cannot send my possible Kindle purchase to it!!

Honestly the point of having a post box was originally to receive mail, not to make the whole process ten times more complicated.

Tonight I read an oldish story I wrote and it gave me chills. Which is, you know, not saying anything much because hell, I'm a receptive audience. But still, it's good when you read something you've written and get the good kind of surprise.

I've started doing an inventory on my stories. How is it that so much time has passed since I last wrote anything? Or even, for that matter, submitted anything?

This has been a strange, strange year.