I’ve mentioned previously that I have a thing for end-of-the-year lists. So I thought I’d post my own, since all the other cool kids are doing it. Here’s the 19th Floor Entirely Subjective List of The Year’s Best for 2005.
Best Song for Sunny Warm Days–Middle of Nowhere by Hot Hot Heat. For a song with such bleak lyrics, it has a hook so infectious that it should be plastered with QUARANTINE stickers.
Best Song for Solitary Evenings–So Here We Are by Bloc Party. This song makes me feel both incredibly alone and incredibly hopeful.
Best Book I Read–Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Yes, I know this book was published in 2004, but let’s leave that aside. This is a book about Big Ideas; about our capacity for cruelty and thirst for power; about what it means to be civilized. But it’s a theme that’s revealed gradually, in stories that span time, settling, and genre. But when you finally see the whole picture, it’s nothing less than stunning.
Best Film I Saw–A History of Violence. Cronenberg’s unflinching examination of the nature and legacy of violent behavior includes a brief but memorable appearance by William Hurt as a total badass. And I can’t stop thinking about Maria Bello in that cheerleader outfit.
Best TV Show–Lost. The addition of new cast members was a brilliant move. And the flashbacks constantly add more depth to the characters. I just worry that the writers won’t be able to sustain the story for much longer without getting tediously cryptic a la The X-Files.
Best Blog–Metafilter. I can always rely on this site for at least one interesting morsel of information on any given day.
Best Day–The day I sat on the Trocadero in Paris and gazed at the Eiffel Tower for about twenty minutes.
Best Friend–Why, you, of course.
