I’ve finally started piecing together my highlights of 2009. I’ll be splitting this up into at least 2 blog posts – this one includes best album, movie and book. The next post will include best game, live event, TV Show and webcomic.
Obviously this isn’t an expert link – it’s restricted to only what I’ve seen, heard, read or played and to my own personal tastes. Your milage is going to vary, so leave a comment with your own “Best Of”s, suggestions for what I’ve missed out on, or a link to your own blog posts about it. You no longer have to be a registered site member to comment which should make things easier.
Best Album Of 2009
Biffy Clyro’s “Only Revolutions”
I love Biffy Clyro. A lot. They’re Scottish, they’ve got strong catchy melodies and beautiful lyrics, and since they broke out in the music scene with “Puzzle” they haven’t set a foot wrong. “Only Revolutions” takes things up a notch without compromise, and without losing the style that got them where they are.
Runners Up: Muse “The Resistance”, Placebo “Battle for the Sun”. Brand New’s “Daisy” could also be worth a place here once I give it a good play-through.
Best Movie Of 2009
“Up”
There were a lot of great movies this year, but when it comes to a balance of story-line, style, characters and soundtrack “Up” has to be my choice this year. A heart-string tugging return to brilliance for Pixar.
Runners Up: “Coraline” was a brilliant comeback for traditional claymation, and though “Avatar”s story gets a lot of slack it’s beauty, special effects and skilled use of what’s normally a gimmick have made it a game-changer for movies to come. “District 9” was another close one.
Best Book Of 2009
This wasn’t my best year for reading. I’ve been short of time to get through my own tastes, or any of the critically acclaimed newcomers like “Wolf Hall”. Instead it’s been a stream of stories forced into following the “Twilight” formula.
Not the best quality genre to pick from, but I have to restrict my choices to what I’ve read.
“Hush, Hush”
My favourite new YA of 2009, “Hush, Hush” a smart plot backed up with solid mythology, relatable characters and absolutely brilliant dialogue with sharp innuendo throughout. When other YA books are sticking to the formula Fitzpatrick unashamedly breaks out of the mold with her strong-willed protagonist and far from perfect love interest.
No book is perfect and it does suffer a bit from sledgehammer hints (inserting the words ‘angel’ in at every opportunity while the protagonist spends far too long figuring it out) it doesn’t stop the story from being completely gripping from start to finish. I can’t wait for the sequel.
B says
Are you kidding me? I started to read the book and got around 150 pages in and all that had happened was the girl sitting in her biol class, with – surprise surprise – a mean, devastatingly good looking boy. Then they flirt, she gets flustered, class ends, she goes home to think about him a lot and/or stalk him, and then repeat. I tried to like it, I really did. But it had no substance, it was one giant cliché (I practically laughed out loud when he started calling her Angel. Not to mention when I read he rode a motorbike) and the writing style itself just wasn’t compelling enough to keep me going.
E.Maree says
To each their own, B. :) I can’t fault your criticism – the biology class thing is getting cliche (which is a bit weird), and I mentioned above being annoyed at the various occurences of ‘Angel’.
As far as character dynamics go though, it kept me interested – I found the interactions were a lot more vibrant than a lot of what’s going on in YA right now.
Honestly though, this year was a pick of the best of a very similar crop of YA novels that have been shoved my way for review thanks to the Twilight trend.
I’m going to take a wild guesss and say you’ve been able to read a better variety of stuff. Any recommendations for your own book of ’09?
B says
Are you kidding me? I started to read the book and got around 150 pages in and all that had happened was the girl sitting in her biol class, with – surprise surprise – a mean, devastatingly good looking boy. Then they flirt, she gets flustered, class ends, she goes home to think about him a lot and/or stalk him, and then repeat. I tried to like it, I really did. But it had no substance, it was one giant cliché (I practically laughed out loud when he started calling her Angel. Not to mention when I read he rode a motorbike) and the writing style itself just wasn’t compelling enough to keep me going.
E.Maree says
To each their own, B. :) I can’t fault your criticism – the biology class thing is getting cliche (which is a bit weird), and I mentioned above being annoyed at the various occurences of ‘Angel’.
As far as character dynamics go though, it kept me interested – I found the interactions were a lot more vibrant than a lot of what’s going on in YA right now.
Honestly though, this year was a pick of the best of a very similar crop of YA novels that have been shoved my way for review thanks to the Twilight trend.
I’m going to take a wild guesss and say you’ve been able to read a better variety of stuff. Any recommendations for your own book of ’09?