I just found a paper while clearing out junk from my workspace. Its almost an year old. I had made a list of books to read while at work. Before I lose it again, I decided to put it online so that i can come to it anytime anywhere.
1) Richard Price - Freedomland, Clockers, Ladies Man 2) Reynolds Price - Kate Vaiden 3) Philip Roth - Portnoy's Comlaint, The Counterlife, Everyman 4) Elmore Leonard - Glitz, LaBrava, Hombre, Get Shorty 5) Hanif Kureishi - The Black Album, Love in a Blue Time, Intimacy 6) Erica Jong - Fear of Flying 7) John Irving - Water, Method Man 8) Harunki Murakami - A Wild Sheep's Chase 9) Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose 10) David Grossman(Israel) - The Yelow Wind, The Book of Intimate Grammer 11) Guenter Grass(Germany) - Tin Drum, Cat & Mouse, Dog Years Naquib Mahfouz(Egypt) - Palace Walk
2008 was a very low key year as far as music & movies goes in my life. Esp after last 2 years of marathon movie watching & discovering music. But I would still go ahead & write a diary similar to last years Discoveries of 2007.
Books - I read a lot of books this year. I tried to read of lot from the Random's 100 list.
1) Animal Farm - George Orwell This was probably the most satisfying book I read last year. What happens to Boxer brought tears to my eyes. Thats very rare in my life. I can't believe I had not read this book till now.
2) The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald A year when Hollywood got curious about Fitzgerald, I finally read his classic. Loved it.
4) GUNS GERMS & STEEL - Jared Diamond http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns%2C_Germs%2C_and_Steel Pulitzer winning work. The story of civilization from a Biologists perspective. Highly reccomended. Why Eurasians conquered the world? And How?(The answer is diseases). Why Man could not domesticate Leopards(My fav part of the book). Etc etc
Sneha Khanwalkar - Oye Lucky Lucky Oye (Soundtrack) I think Oye Lucky Soundtrack was the best album made in 2008 anywhere in the world.
MGMT - Oracular Spectacular definitely was the album of the year for me. It was the sound of 2008. It pushed Electronic music into the living rooms of American kids. The JUSTICE REMIX of Electric feel is the most played song on radio in LA. And it just keeps growing on me.
Moby - Last Night A long awaited album. Although the magic of Moby is gone, this album had quite a good songs. Ooh Yeah & I Love to Move in here are my fav so far. Gnarles Barkley - The Odd Couple A Great second is so rare these days. Also the only big live show I went too. Gnarles Barkley to me is the best thing in Pop Music right now.
Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III My Hip-hop artist of 2008. His SNL version of Lollilop just blew me away.
But most importantly I loved a britney Spears song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4NayXtzsBo Piece of Me is the song. If you had told me that I wouldn't be able to stop listening to a Britney song I would have laughed at you. Also I also think this is the best & most personal lyrics a Britney songs can get.
FILMS -
I watched very few films this year. One film that stands out for recommendation would be Everything Is Illuminated. It was the best film I saw in 2008.
Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye was my fav film of 2008. Mainly because of how Dibankar showed us Lucky's life. My friend after watching the film said, there was something lacking in the film. My 1st thought was that it didn't have the standard "Arc" type 3 act story. And thats why it felt odd sometimes. As if questioning how this scene is moving the film. Because we are so conditioned of the standard stuff. It took some time to realize what Dibankar had created. And the music was amazing. After watching the documentary of how Sneha did the music, there was no question in my mind that this was the album of the year also.
I also liked DASVIDANYA a lot. The movie had the most heart of all the movies of 2008. This year again belonged to Vinay. ROCK ON was something that exceeded my expectation. Is Farhan Akhtar the most talented man in Bollywood right now? He might not be the best singer, best actor, best director, but he is good at everything he does.
HELLBOY II was my fav film of the year so far. This was the year when I watched a lot of SuperHero film. Even THE FANTASTIC FOUR. This was the year of Superhero films.
The best scene of the year so far also goes to Hellboy. Those were the best moments inside the theater this year. Even more so than Jokers presence in Dark Knight.
2008 movies that I missed and will watch this month would be - The Class ,Man on Wire, Waltz with Basir, Gomorrah, Che, Wendy & Lucy, Happy Go Lucky, The Wrestler & WALL-E.
TELEVISION
I watched the 2nd best show on Cable TV ever - THE WIRE Now that the show is over, I urge you guys to watch this series. Also you cannot call yourself a cinema lover & not know who OMAR is.
I also discovered what was the big deal about SIX FEET UNDER. Probably the best Pilot of a TV show I have seen. Alan Ball is one of my favorite writer/director right now.
2008 was also the year of SNL. Esp Tina Hey & Amy Poehler. My fav SNL video of last year Dick in a Box -
One of the major discoveries for me was Stop Motion Graffiti films. Check out this artist Blu from Buenos Aires
Like last year there are so much i probably don't remember right now. I will add them as we go along.
1) White Tiger - Arvinda Adiga The 4th debut to win the Man Booker Prize ever. I finished this book yesterday & today it wins the Booker. It was a very interesting book. But I'm very surprised that it was a finalist. Now it has become the winner. We have a new star here. Move over Arundhati.
3) Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov All these years of hype kind of spoilt it for me. I got a little bored towards the end.
4) Half A Life - V.S.Naipaul After reading Magic Seeds I was thinking I wanna know about Chandran's Life before Magic Seeds. And then next week I found out that Magic seeds is a sequel of sorts to Half A Life. Had to read it. Very good. But not among his best.
5) The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh Amitav is Subrat's sentimental favorite author. So I had to read his work. It was a good book, but maybe not his best. Next I'm gonna try Calcutta Chromosome.
I have decided to keep a note of all the books I'm reading. Just to have some kind of list for me. I been reading insanely last few months. Almost 8-10 books a month. So much that i find it hard to remember all the books i read last month. Hence this list.
3) Magic Seeds - V S Naipaul The first bad book from Naipaul. And what makes it worse is that its a sequel to HALF A LIFE which I have not read & didn't know about it till 30 minutes back. But also while reading this book, i kept think about Willie's past life in Africa & that Naipaul should have written more about that. Now i'm glad theres a whole book about that.
4) NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN - Cormac McCarthy Great book. Its really painfull to read a great book after having seen the film. But i'm doing this as a screenwriting exercise. Read the book -> Read the Script -> Watch the film. Lets see if its a good exercise.
5) ANIMAL FARM - George Orwell The best short novel I have read so far. 96 pages that can be finished in one afternoon over 3 cups of tea & lots of tears for 'Boxer'. I think ANIMAL FARM should be made required reading in schools all over the world. The best satire on communism that I have ever read.
The producer of Taxi Driver, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Sting tells her story of being the 1st female to win that Oscar to playing with the boys in the 70s. Half the book is about cocaine though. Everything else happens inbetween. Its the seventies. Everyone except Spielberg was high. Good but very long book.
http://tinyurl.com/6pwx7e http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns%2C_Germs%2C_and_Steel Pulitzer winning work. The story of civilization from a Biologists perspective. Highly reccomended. It gets boring at times. And you can tell Diamond has only only one good book in him. This is that book. Why Eurasians conquered the world? And How?(The answer is diseases). Why Man could not domesticate Leopards(My fav part of the book). Etc etc
