At last, I’m finally finishing my four-part series. As I said before, I read a whole lot of books (though a handful were rereads and not eligible for this list. I will also state here that I’m sorta of cheating – a few of my stories will actually be lumped together because they were part of a series and I didn’t prefer one over another.

I do have to get into a pet peeve of mine. This list actually has more non-fiction on it than fiction, which is pretty surprising, including several memoirs/biographies. But what I really really really really really can’t stand is everyone’s insistence when writing their own memoir (or even a biography) is for the first chapter to be some pivotal moment in that person’s life, then chapter two starts at the beginning and the rest of the story is getting to that moment and its aftermath. Is there a handbook for memoir writing that mandates that you must write like that? I mean, seriously. It’s so tired.

That out of the way, let’s get it on, I’m sure I have much to say about these books.

7. 127 Hours (Between a Rock and a Hard Place) – Aron Ralston: The basis for the movie 127 Hours (which I’ve still not seen), this is a very good retelling of a horrifying and unbelievable story. It is said without too much pomp and, without knowing the author at all, I felt like he was being level about everything. He told the story in a even-keeled way (not putting blame on other things when it didn’t belong, not having a no-fear attitude more than he would have in that situation). A good read, almost a nail-biter (though the problem with auto-biographies about near-death experiences is you know that they don’t actually die or they wouldn’t have been able to write about it).

6. Heart of the Game: Life, Death & Mercy in Minor League America – S.L. Price: See, this is a biography about death. It had very good reviews and I found it very cheap at the bookstore, so I picked it up. I think there’s a pre-requisite that you need to be a baseball fan to truly enjoy this book, but if you are (even casually), this is a great underdog story, and ultimately a very touching retelling of the life of Mike Coolbaugh. Not much else to say, just a great read which tugs at just the right heartstrings.

5. Lucky Man/Always Looking Up – Michael J. Fox: These are two books, one basically leading up to his Parkinson’s diagnosis (and just a bit of aftermath) and the second book was almost entirely about his PD efforts. Most reviewers tend to talk about Fox’s amiable tone and his golly-gee ability to make you fall in love with him, but more than that I was taken aback by how good a writer he was. These were not ghost-written and I’m glad for that. He speaks about his life with optimism that I wish people in “everyday” life would have, myself included.

4. A Game of Thrones/A Clash of Kings – George R. R. Martin: Here, I’m totally cheating. I read both and they were equally as enjoyable, but it does seem like cheating to have almost 2000 pages in one entry. A few of my friends are die-hard fans who basically swore that my life would change by reading them. Well, sadly it didn’t. In fact, I’ve had these read for over 8 months and I haven’t started on the third book (which is universally considered the best) because I am not DYING to. That being said, they are thoroughly enjoyable epic novels with some fantastic characters and plot twists that you don’t really see coming. Death in these books is for plot, but no one seemingly is immune. My only real beef with the books is the needless description in them. I swear, if he simply did not describe what people were wearing and eating, he’d shave 200 pages off these books combined. Definitely worth a read if you have PLENTY of time.

3. Physics of the Impossible – Michio Kaku: I like physics. I like space. I like learning things. What’s more, I like reading about things that haven’t happened yet, but PROBABLY WILL. This was a very enlightening (and almost entirely accessible to most people) read that tells about various scientific breakthroughs and not IF, but WHEN these crazy things will happen. It struck me as amazing that things I thought were totally impossible (teleportation, invisibility, and even time travel) are not only possible, but could happen in the next few centuries (not time travel, that is WAY down the line). Some of the writeups got a bit heavy-handed in the science jargon for me, but in general, it was a good read to have around as both entertainment and a reference.

2. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal – Christopher Moore: I had heard that this was a very very funny book (as all of Christopher Moore’s books are), but not having read anything by him, I didn’t know what to expect. Many of the “funny” authors I’ve been referred to in the past end up being quite juvenile or, worse, not good writers. He surprised me on both counts. His writing had depth, the humor not in your face or egregious or slapstick (the subtlety of a young Jesus putting dead frogs into his mouth to heal them was awesome). His writing was also much better than I’d thought, partially because many times the authorship craft gets buried beneath the attempts at humor. With Moore, he always treads a fine line between storyteller and joketeller. In fact, I was almost shocked when I got the ending and it got all heavy. I mean, I guess I should have expected it (spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well for Joshua), but the emotion he brought out there didn’t seem to contradict the earlier lighthearted style (though I’d argue he worked himself into a hole from the onset by trying to write a funny book that ended with the most famous death in history).

I read an eye-popping 32 books this year, with only six of them being rereads (5 of those were so I could read the 6th in a series I hadn’t read in a while). That is the most I’ve ever read in a year, particularly when you consider that 5 of the books alone were a combined ~4000 pages and I have two kids. It was a very divided year literarily with some very good books and a few clunkers. So let’s start with the bad. And some of these were pretty bad. Bear in mind, these are books that I have FINISHED. So let’s start with #0, a book I disliked so much I finally gave up and gave it back to the bookstore.

0) Red Prophet – Orson Scott Card: I had tried twice to slog through this book and only got a few chapters in each time. It’s the second in a series, and the first, The Seventh Son, wasn’t amazing but decent enough to warrant moving on in the series. The problems I had in this book were only two, but they were big. 1) It’s racist. Racism is part of the story, in fact, but the descriptions of Indians are downright upsetting. It’s like he couldn’t go a single passage without mentioning they were lazy or drunk. Now, I can get by racism, particularly if it’s integral to the story (which I’m inclined to think here it wasn’t), but 2) the book was skull-crushingly boring. I got maybe 50 pages in and I was waiting for anything to happen. Sequels shouldn’t be boring as much of the exposition is already established. Anyway, good riddance to this one. Now onto the list proper.

6. First Meetings in Ender’s World – Orson Scott Card: Ouch, the 2nd OSC to appear on my bad list. This one isn’t truly that bad, and really I only got it to have the original short story version of Ender’s Game. It was pretty cool to see how that had evolved (and more surprisingly how little changed). But the other three stories were pretty meh. In fact, one thing that bothered me about it was how hard OSC tried to make every single decision have significance. The story about Ender’s parents meeting was WAY too prophetic for me to swallow it for even a second.

5. Why We Suck – Denis Leary: If the entire book were written like the first chapter I’d probably like it more (random snippets of thought about various topics, something at which Leary excels). But then the rest of the book takes a meandering look at various things, lodging itself somewhere between an autobiography, a comedy book, and a vanity piece. It certainly had its chuckle moments, but not enough to support it.

4. Airframe – Michael Chrichton: One of my all-time favorite Dash definitions was Corey’s definition for “skimmington”: a talking stuffed bear that never made it on the market due to the fact that young British children couldn’t give two shits about yard work. It’s a great concept. Unfortunately, I feel the same way about this “thriller” Airframe. It’s not a bad story, per se, and there’s a charming whodunnit appeal to it, but really, I just find myself not giving a shit about airplane building and maintenance. It’s like he wrote this for a convention of plane mechanics or something.

3. The Motley Fool Investment Guide – David & Tom Gardner: I will start by saying that I bought this right as I was starting to do research about retirement and stocks. It was very cheap (it was an old edition, maybe from the mid-90s?). After finishing it, I was all revved up to follow their suggestions – it was a good sales pitch. However, I did something smart – I went online to see how their recommendations did historically. Well, lousy – worse than market average. What’s more, their “genius secret plan” was debunked shortly after writing this and they quickly stopped preaching what was written in these pages. So this is factually a bust, but I only ranked it 3rd because I found out quite early that it was all bollocks.

2. And Another Thing – Eoin Colfer: I wanted to like this story. I really really did. Hell, I wanted to go against the mainstream opinion that this book was borderline blasphemous. I didn’t care that he was a ‘young adult’ author – if you read HHGTTG again with a critical eye, you’d find out that it isn’t at a much higher level than young adult. But man, it just isn’t a good book. The best parallel I could say is this – let’s say The Simpsons hired a guest writer to write a season. And that guy was Seth McFarlane (Family Guy). Family Guy took a few ELEMENTS of The Simpsons and catered the show around that. That’s what Colfer did. He took things Adams did (the random guide entries that were only tangentially related) and the silly names and expanded just them – what resulted was so non-sequitur and disjointed as to be unenjoyable reading (the 260 pages took me longer than several of the 500+ pages). There were other negatives: a) it was no longer Arthur’s story, b) he totally copped out in terms of plot just SO he could get “the old gang” back together, c) the Guide entries were distracting and often unfunny, and WAY too frequent and d) some of the characters behaved/spoke in ways that I thought were completely uncharacteristic of them. Highly disappointing.

1. Killing Yourself to Live – Chuck Klosterman: I’ll say it now, I don’t like Chuck Klosterman, and I wish I had realized that after the 1st book I read of his. He’s pretentious, he’s not at all charming, and I want to just smack him in the face. He loves putting words like “paradigm” in each chapter when it really doesn’t belong (even if it is *technically* the correct word). He begins with an interesting idea – touring famous hotspots for rock stars’ deaths and trying to find tying elements between death and music – and turns it into this bitchy, self-centered diatribe about himself and the couple of girls he hasn’t manage to repel with his conceited personality. This book did have one fortunate bonus – it taught me not to buy any more Chuck Klosterman.

And now, the moment few have waited for, the BEST CDs of 2012. Reminder, these didn’t necessarily COME OUT in 2012, I just bought them in 2012. In fact, I think only one of the CDs I got this last year actually came out then. I’m not exactly “with it” in terms of anything nowadays.

It was a disappointing year for music, which was okay since the year for books was so very good. Very little was outstanding. Hell, I bought a Mountain Goats CD and a Paul and Storm CD. Neither cracked the top 5, and the latter was close to making my bad list for being so disappointing. If it weren’t for the title track, which really is 45 seconds of awesome, it might have landed there. Anyway, onto the list.

5. Richard Cheese – Lounge Against the Machine: This is a very silly album, and it’s a one-note joke. It’s lounge versions of heavy metal and rock songs. The guy is pretty famous for his campy campy covers. I found it for $1. That being said, a few of the tracks had me genuinely laughing out loud, particularly “Rape Me” and “Come Out and Play”

4. Days of the New – Days of the New II: Another $.29 Grassroots purchase (don’t worry, after this one all the CDs on my list were purchased online) that I knew nothing of the band. Listening to them, I have much trouble classifying what type of music they are, though online everyone seems to just lump them with Alice in Chains. I disagree. It sounds maybe like acoustic post-grunge, but I think they are a very different breed. The singer isn’t amazing, but the songwriting is very interesting. I was quite pleased with this purchase.

3. Afro Celt Sound System – Volume 5: Anatomic: It’s hard for Afro-Celt Sound System to do something I don’t like (other than their ill-fated attempt at changing their name to The AfroCelts). This album is not their strongest effort (the first three are), but it stands maybe a slight bit over Vol. 4. The real problem they face is that they slowed down their style so that their music became more ambiance than cool tunes. Don’t let this criticism fool you, though, this is still a really good album, especially if you’re a fan of world music at all.

2. The Wailin’ Jennys – Firecracker: I had only heard the 30 second Amazon.com snippet of one of their songs “Long Time Traveler” and I put this on my wish list and got it for my birthday. It’s a three-woman folk band, so know right away that if that doesn’t sound appealing to you, chances are it won’t be. However, it’s very craftily arranged folk, and the harmonies are among the tightest I’ve heard since Eddie From Ohio stopped putting out new material. The biggest criticism I have is that two of their songs, Long Time Traveler & Avila are clearly ripped off versions of inspired by Down to the River to Pray & The Gambler (respectively), so much so that it does diminish my enjoyment of their songwriting to some degree. However, it is undeniably enjoyable folk.

1. Nighwish – Imaginaerum: In a strong musical year this would have still vied for the top stop. When Nightwish got rid of the opera singer Tarja, I (like most) wondered if the band would survive. When they put out their first CD with Anette Olzon (Dark Passion Play), I was happy with it and thought it was a pretty good effort. It wasn’t until Imaginaerum came out that I realized how wrong I was. DPP is a decent album, but the major problem with it is that Nightwish didn’t adapt their style at all to the new singer. Rather the songs on it are simply songs that Tarja would have done better. So it’s a GOOD album (particularly the opening track) but something is off. With Imaginaerum they catered the style to the singer. And the results are pretty amazing. It’s not all just banging goth rock, either. There’s a slow sultry tune (Slow Love Slow) which, as much as I love Tarja, she would not have done justice to. There’s some Danny Elfman-inspired songs (Scaretale and Arabesque) and of course a few more traditional sounds (I Want My Tears back). But here Anette doesn’t sound like she’s trying to replicate the past. They are modifying their sound in pretty brilliant ways. If I were to recommend any single goth album, I’d have trouble deciding between Once (Nightwish’s best Tarja album) and this one. A must buy.

And I just realized how diverse these 5 CDs are. 1 comedy lounge, 1 alt-grunge, 1 african/celtic CD, 1 folk, 1 goth metal. Such is my tastes.

So it’s that time of year again, for my Best-of and Worst-of entertainment (books and music).  To see last year’s entries, click here:

Worst of 2011 – Music

Best of 2011 – Music

Worst of 2011 – Books

Best of 2011 – Books

Like last year, I’m stretching this into a four-part series.  I’ll start with the Worst CDs.  In all, I’ve obtained around new 50 CDs last year, not counting random online downloads from Amazon (free!).  For this list, a few notes: these CDs didn’t all come out in 2012, they were just obtained this year.  I’ve included release date years.  Also, I’m not including gifts on here, which I usually rip before giving away. Let us begin.

Runners Up: Paul & Storm: Gumbo Pants (more disappointing than bad); The Black Keys: El Camino (nothing stands out except the radio track, which I hadn’t even heard until I won this CD)

7. Wilco – A Ghost is Born (2004): This album made me coin a term. To “Wilco” a song is to take a perfectly good song and then let a tone-deaf one-armed chimpanzee have a guitar solo in the middle of it. Half the songs on this album would be perfectly fine if they didn’t have annoying guitar noise interrupt them halfway through. But alas, almost all of them do. Not as good as Yankee Foxtrot Hotel, which isn’t as good as many of the other albums I own.

6. The Corrs – In Blue (2000): This was a random whim. I had a song of them playing with the Chieftains and that song rocks. So I picked this one up for $.29. Well, it’s bland pop from start to finish. One of the songs is even famous (who knew? I certainly didn’t when I purchased the album). If it weren’t for the surprisingly good instrumental track at the end (which sounds more like what I HOPED this album would sound like), this album would not have fared so well.

5. Rockapella – Don’t Tell Me You Do (1999): Rockapella with Sean Altman fronting the band? Pretty awesome. Rockapella without Sean Altman? Not so much. Another CD with only one decent track.

4. Various Artists – People Make the World Go Round (1996): So far each of these CDs was bought at Grassroots for $1 or less, so that explains why I didn’t properly vet them. In fact, all the worst-of CDs this year were from Grassroots. However, I’ve typically done well with world/jazz/atypical music. So this “Jazz” CD seemed pretty cool, especially with some of artists on there (Herb Alpert, Lionel Hampton, Herbie Hancock…) Turns out this CD is just lame R&B, one of my two least favorite styles of music.

3. From Autumn to Ashes – Too Bad You’re Beautiful (2005): To be fair, this CD isn’t bad for what it is. They aren’t an untalented band. The problem is the style of music is one I absolutely abhor (and clearly didn’t glean based on the liner notes when I blindly purchased it). It’s thrash metal – not particularly good, but not particularly bad – but the style is just so not me that I couldn’t bring myself to find a single track I liked.

2. Ben Harper – Fight For Your Mind (1995): I remember a time where a few of my friends were going to see Ben Harper and Keller Williams in concert together and they were oohing and aahing over it. I had never heard much by either artist. But when I saw this Harper album for $.29, I figured, why not? I’ll tell you why not. This CD bores the ever-loving stuffing out of me. This whole album is just monotony incarnate. Don’t purchase this unless you are having trouble sleeping or if you want to study how to make your songwriting less interesting.

Alas, the final episode of my 4-part Series.  See here for Worst Music, Best Music, and Worst Books.  Let’s finish this strong!

7. Earth: The Book – The Daily Show Staff:  Quite frankly, this was an improvement over America: The Book, which I felt was funny in parts but too juvenile, even for me.  The science jokes were very intelligent and definitely chuckle-worthy if you got the references.  This one was funny almost the whole way through.

6. The Pluto Files – Neil deGrasse Tyson:  A history of Pluto, including (and focusing on) Pluto’s “fall from grace,” the only reason this isn’t higher is the caliber of the books I read this year.  I had wanted to read this since I saw the inimitable Mr. deGrasse Tyson appear on The Daily Show a few years ago, advertising it.  What I never quite realized was how much NdGT had to do directly with Pluto’s seeming demotion.  I, for one, agree, but then again, that man is so likeable he could lobby to eat a penguin alive and I’d probably agree.  A very fascinating read.

5. Timeline – Michael Chrichton: I’ve read an awful lot of Chrichton since moving to Reno (thank you Grassroots Books!) and this was one of his best.  Time travel stories always capture my fancy, and this one being so far in the past gave me a little something different. Again, his research that goes into his books never ceases to amaze me.  I think the major detractor of this book was simply how many times the protagonists were in “well, we’re done now” situations only to be saved at the last possible moment.  I had just wanted them to be killed just for difference sake.  But really, this was a fun romp from start to finish.

4. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie: I liked this book far more than I thought I would.  I had seen the movie version of it back in middle school or grade school, but remembered nothing about it.  When I saw it for $1, I figured, why not?  And it was just an enjoyable old-school caper.  It’s actually a shame that this is the only pre-1940 book that made my best-of-list, but I imagine if this had been a Top 10 list instead, it might include Jules Verne’s “The Chase for the Golden Meteor” and H.G. Wells’ “Island of Dr. Moreau.”  I’m just glad I didn’t try to figure it out on my own, because I would have been hopelessly wrong.

3. Bad Astronomy – Phil Plait: For the most part, I really like Phil Plait (and his Bad Astronomy blog), even if he didn’t respond to my repeated question I’ve emailed him about the Big Bang Theory.  My only real gripes are that his skepticism shows a bit of favoritism.  And while I agree with him about things like the anti-vax movement, he tends to be much less skeptical when a scientist or astronomer makes some new untested discovery than when something he doesn’t believe in makes a proclamation.  Anyway, that aside, this book is great.  It debunks common misconceptions about astronomy, a few of which I (an avid astronomy fan) even fell prey to.  For instance, did you know you can stand eggs on their end any day of the year?  Yup.  I did it.  Crazy.  Anyway, read this book if you’re not knowledgeable about astronomy, or even if you think you might be.  It might open up your eyes a bit.

2. Sphere – Michael Crichton:  MC’s second entry this year, Sphere was one of the few books that genuinely creeped me out.  I’ve read thrillers that are supposed to be scary, but really just leave me thinking, “If this were a movie, it’d probably be scary.”  But [spoiler alert] when the crazy jellyfish start doing boring through the one scientist, and nobody had any real clue why, it really just sent a shiver through me.  The movie does a decent job of relating to the book, but the book is definitely better (as just about every book is, except for Apollo 13 – just watch the movie.)  This is my favorite MC book, though The Lost World would come close.

1. Shades of Grey – Jasper Fforde: I’m going to be honest here: I have no real idea why this book is #1 on my list.  I spent most of the book not having a clue what was going on.  Fforde is great at setting up worlds that are similar to, but drastically different from, our own.  And he states these differences up front to some degree.  In the Thursday Next books, he lets you know that it’s a world where literature is next to godliness.  In “Shades of Grey”, he puts you in a world of some crazy color heirarchy but never once explains any of it, except anecdotally throughout the book.  He doesn’t explain why swans are so dangerous.  He makes reference to things that seem commonplace, but without context (and he doesn’t give you any), you have no real understanding of how any of it ties together.  Yet I found myself really digging what happens to the main characters, and really excited for the 2nd installment (it will be a 3-part series if the back cover is to be believed).  So yeah, this is an excellent book, I am just not sure who I can recommend it to.

So I read 26 books in 2011, which is pretty good for me.  5 of the books were re-reads, so I’ll only be worrying about the other 21 (if I didn’t Ella Minnow Pea would be on the top of my good list every year).  Like the CDs from this year, there wasn’t a whole lot of bad this year, though a few were disappointing for the reasons below.  I hope to have the best books up before 2012, but we’ll see.  Oddly enough, a surprising amount of the books – about 20% – were books written before 1950.

5.  The Davinci Code – Dan Brown: It is perhaps unfair that this appears on my “bad books” list.  The truth is that it was a pretty fun read – a little sleuth romp.  At worst, when I finished it, I felt rather ambivalent about it.  So why does it make the list?  My biggest problem with the book was the short bit he put at the beginning, where he tries to validate all the things in the book by saying “But all this stuff is based on real facts!”  To me, it’s these few paragraphs that have polarized everyone’s opinions of the book.  If it were just a work of fiction, nobody pays much attention to it.  Instead, readers who don’t know that he’s based much of his work on theories walk away having their faith shaken to the core.  They’re really silly, that lot.

4.  The Age Altertron – Mark Dunn: I think I have myself to blame.  As soon as I’d heard that Mark Dunn (author of the revolutionary Ella Minnow Pea and Ibid) had a new book coming out, I ordered it immediately.  Had I done the research to discover this was a young adult book, I might not have been so disappointed by it.  However, I can look past it being a book geared for kids.  It seemed to be dumbed down too much – Dunn’s a smart guy and a clever author, and I think he underestimates kids by writing this book as basically as he did.

3.  Baby Signs – Linda Acredolo & Susan Goodwyn: Bought as part of a Grassroots Bag sale, this book probably only cost me a quarter.  I was interested in learning the “official” method for using signs to communicate with a baby.  I have two major problems with this book.   First, the book seems like a billboard for the book.  Seriously, every other page is just reinforcing that no matter what you do, continue to do everything in the book.  Second, and here’s my real beef: there already exists a system to communicate with your hands – it’s called sign language.  Yet they invent a whole bunch of signs to communicate, several of which are far more difficult for klunky fingers to attempt than their ASL counterparts.  I walked away from that book thinking, “Forget this, I’m going to get out my ASL book and just work on these.”

2.  Ender in Exile – Orson Scott: There’s a very important reason that Orson Scott Card had skipped a large portion of time in Ender’s life – from the end of Ender’s Game to the beginning of Speaker for the Dead.  That reason is because that period in his life is mind-numbingly boring.  Simply put, this book did not need to be written.  I’m okay with the large gap in Ender’s life, especially because it is touched upon a bit in the subsequent series.  It’s be like finding the missing years of Jesus’ life’s manuscripts, only to realize he spent nearly all of it watching “Cribs”.  Also, it seems like OSC forgot to put any sort of dramatic tension in the book, which he crams into the last few chapters.  An uneven, uninteresting read, probably only for true Ender fanatics, and even then a weak link.

1.  Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society – edited by Bill Bryson: This is probably the book I was most disappointed by.  Ash got it for me last Christmas, and at the time I didn’t even know it existed.  I was super excited.  Not only was it [edited] by Bill Bryson, but it was about a subject I didn’t know a whole lot about.  Turns out this isn’t a history of the Royal Society.  It is a collection so essays about science that are each, in one way or another, somehow related to the Royal Society – often times tangentially.  It would be like calling a book “The History of Baseball”, then having Ch. 1 be about ERA, Ch. 2 be about Pete Rose’s gambling problems, Ch. 3 be about home run records, Ch. 4 being about grass vs. astroturf… etc.  Add to that that some of the chapters were downright uninteresting (I’m looking at you, several chapters about meta-physics).  It wasn’t all bad; a few of the chapters were interesting reads, like Margaret Atwood’s chapter about mad scientists, and most of the ones about astronomy.  But all in all, unless you want to read a collection of unrelated essays written in MLA format, this book probably isn’t for you.  And that’s really a shame.

All right, time for the best music I bought in 2011.  Same rules apply to the Worst of, which can be found HERE.

7.  Ken Burns Jazz – Louis Armstrong (2000) – It’s no surprise that I like big band music.  But I have very little Louis Armstrong for a guy who likes it so much.  When I saw this one, I had to pick it up.  It’s a great collection, from his early Dixieland-esque work with several groups, to his later more familiar style.  It’s just a great selection of songs.  That Ken Burns knows an awful lot about many things.

6.  The Rhythm of the Saints – Paul Simon (1990) – Here is an admission – I think this CD is on the list because I WANT to like it so very badly.  The truth is I do like it, and although Simon gets a bit too much credit for his inclusion of “world musicians” (read: pretty much strictly African), you can’t deny that the music on this album is pretty great.  Noteworthy tracks include “Can’t Run But”, “The Coast”, “Thelma”, and of course the famous(ish) “The Obvious Child”.

5.  Undercard – The Extra Lens (2010) – I was pretty stoked to hear that John Darnielle’s side-project The Extra Lens (formerly Extra Glenns) was coming out with a new release.  For a while, this album was my favorite thing that Darnielle had released since Sunset Tree.  However, after repeated listenings, it is very good, but perhaps not on quite the pedestal it once was.  First off, it’s only 12 songs, and one is an oldie he’s done for years, and another is a cover.  However, two of the songs on here are probably among the best in his entire massive catalog: “How I Left the Ministry” and “Some Other Way”.  In fact, the only real dud on the album is the version of “Rockin’ Rockin’ Twilight of the Gods”, which is particularly not-rocking.  They should have just given it the frenzied energy they give it live.  Definitely worth a listen, especially if you are a Mountain Goats fan.

4.  All Eternals Deck – The Mountain Goats (2011) – Speaking of Mountain Goats, Darnielle somehow sneaks onto my list twice this year.  That seems unfair.  This is his 7th release with his full band, and like the last few, it seems to have few stand-out blow-your-socks-off songs, but conversely no duds.  That’s right, not one song that’s worse than 3 out of 5 stars on my iTunes.  I will say this – unlike the last few, he did at least play with the sounds of the songs a bit.  I found that, before this album, their songs tended to start to sound much too much alike, and on this one, using instrumentation and composition, he varied up the sounds, particularly on “Age of Kings”.  Oh, and for the record, “Never Quite Free” might be the best song of 2011.

3.  Jurassic Park Sountrack – John Williams (1993) - I always assumed Danny Elfman’s soundtracks would comprise pretty much all of my top 10 lists.  But I think as much as I love the man, and as much as his soundtracks are the BEST accompaniment for the film they belong to, you can’t deny that Williams is probably the best theme-writer out there.  It showcases here, as Jurassic Park may have finally vaulted over Edward Scissorhands and Braveheart as my favorite score of all time.  Epic.

2.  Mighty Wind Soundtrack – Various (2003) – I’d seen this movie first probably a year or two after it came out, thought it was charming with a few chuckles, and was happy to have seen it.  Then, many years later, I was still haunted by the song “Kiss at the End of the Rainbow”.  When the came on television recently and I watched it again, I was just captured by the music in it.  Sure, it was written by Michael McKean and not an actual folk artist, per se, but man does he do the genre justice.  I always felt all the styles that the Christopher Guest movies parody are less about parody and more about homage.  That is most true here, where they write genuine folk music that’s tongue-in-cheek, and not trying to be super funny.  I rated about half this album as 4-star songs, including all the songs that are featured in the movie and “Fare Away”, “Blood on the Coal”, and the harmony-solid “When You’re Next to Me.”  This is a great buy for anyone even remotely tolerant of folk music.

1.  Artificial Heart - Jonathan Coulton (2011) – I was nervous that Jonathan Coulton was going mainstream.  He made his calling as an internet darling, doing the Thing a Day series, and that was great.  He was the lovable nerd.  Now that he was under the tutelage of John Flansburg of TMBG (who was once a loveable nerd, but has become too mainstream for my liking), I feared that the album would fall into some of the same traps as TMBG’s recent efforts.  How wrong I was.  Sure, the first 10 seconds of the album sound exactly like a TMBG album, but after that, it is pure Coulton from start to finish.  At 17 tracks, I get the impression he put most of what he recorded on it, and there are a few ones that I pass over (I’m looking at you “Je Suis Rick Springfield”), but the album showcases what Coulton does best: has you cracking up one minute, and quietly reflecting the next.  There’s few artists who can achieve this: Moxy Fruvous and Eddie From Ohio are pretty much the only other two I can think of.  What I appreciate most about the album is that it is a return to melody.  I swear, music today has completely unforgettable melodies, and Coulton deftly carves out a dozen of them on this album alone.  The first half of the album is great, but it is the second half, tracks 10-16 specifically, where it takes off.  Aside from “Good Morning Tucson”, that clump of songs is possibly the strongest string of songs on any album I own, reaching its apex in the trilogy “Down Today”, “Dissolve” and the simple-but-amazing “Nobody Loves You Like Me”.  I heartily recommend this to anyone you know.

So it’s that time of year again, for my Best-of and Worst-of entertainment (books and music).  To see last year’s entries, click here:

BEST/WORST OF BOOKS

BEST/WORST OF MUSIC

This year, I’m stretching this into a four-part series.  I’ll start with the Worst CDs.  In all, I’ve obtained nearly 70 new CDs last year, not counting random online downloads from Amazon (free!).  For this list, a few notes: these CDs didn’t all come out in 2011, they were just obtained this year.  I’ve included release date years.  Also, I will NOT be including any kids CDs that we had, nor any music I bought specifically for Ash (because some of that country and the Black Eyed Peas would probably appear on the list).  One other note, the music from this year was not nearly as big a failure as last year, so this is probably the hardest list to come up with.

4.  Join Us – They Might Be Giants (2011): The reviews I’d read on this album were across the board.  Many say it was a nice throwback to their old shorter-song style, some said it was the same miserable stuff they’d poured out of their last few albums.  I was skeptical, but I bought it.  I have to say I lean toward the second.  It’s not the actual songs that are bad; in fact I feel there are a few pretty good songs on the album (When Will You Die, Spoiler Alert, and Three Might Be Duende), but it’s the fact that they’re no longer a band playing songs they wrote.  They are constantly experimenting with different annoying sounds, silly voices, and in my opinion trying to be weird in an attempt to recreate their olden days, rather than writing and performing songs like they used to.  Disappointing.

3.  Weezer – Green Album (2001): I know nobody says to buy this CD as the best example of Weezer, but given the catchy hooks of the Blue Album and songs like Beverly Hills, I expected more from this than album.  This is some of the blandest music for a band with theoretically as much personality as Weezer.   I’ve had the CD for 4 months and I couldn’t sing you a single lyric from it.

2.  Past, Present & Future – Rick Wakeman (2010): I was so excited when Ash bought me this 3-CD collection of new piano music.  Almost anything that Rick touches is gold.  However, I think there should be a disclaimer that this isn’t a collection of 40 well-composed songs.  It sound more like him just improvising and recording it.  I mean, if you listen to the bass hand in each song, it sounds identical in different key signatures.  Sure they’re pretty, and if they pop up randomly on my player, chances are I’ll like the song a great deal, but you simply can’t listen to these CDs in order, it is simply too non-descript.

1.  Monkey – UNLV Orchestra (1999): Okay, yeah, I bought this one because of the name.  It’s basically a collection of orchestra pieces from a college orchestra.  And the playing is fine.  But man, they picked an assortment of really lousy songs.  There’s a number of them I skip outright, and few others that I make it a ways through before thinking, “Wow, this is a lousy song.”  The band sounds fine, at least.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, and while watching Colin Quinn suffer on Conan last night, grabbing at straws to attempt to get laughs, I decided the time was right.   It’s pretty self-explanatory: people who are supposed to be funny who just aren’t.  What do you think of the list?  Agree?  Someone I left off?

10.  Jason Schwartzman – He might only be on this list because I haven’t ever liked any of the movies he’s been in.  That’s got to be partially his fault, though.

9.  Cheri Oteri – She was almost exempt from this list because I feared she wasn’t relevant enough anymore to include on the list.  But her exceptionally forced characters and “I’M LOUD SO I’M FUNNY” shtick was glaring enough to stick her on the list, even if not as high as she might have been 5 years ago.

8.  Ben Stiller – More than probably any other actor, he bothers me.  He’s fashioned a career out of either being a) a douchebag or b) the character who everyone is a douchebag to.  That sort of awkward insult/humiliation humor is tired and never funny.  He’s only not higher on the list because of Tropic Thunder, and even that was almost entirely because of Robert Downey Jr.

7.  Seth Rogan – Not to be confused with Joe Rogan, who occasionally scrapes a laugh out of me, Seth is an overexposed actor who, in small doses, might have enough charm to escape the list.  However, with 23498065 movies where he plays the exact same character, who might be funny to people already high, but not at all funny to people with intact senses of humor.

6.  Jerry Seinfeld – Some of you may be surprised that he’s not higher on this list, due largely to my abhorrence of the TV show.  Well, that’ll put into perspective how unfunny I think the last five people are.  Anyone who made their career out of pointing to something banal and saying “What is up with that?” should never have made it further than a curtain-jerker at Topeka’s second-rate comedy clubs.

5.  Jay Leno – His show has a slew of funny writers on it, yet he can ruin each and every joke he gets with his patented delivery, which seems to hinge largely on using awkward inflection to ruin jokes.  He might not have cracked the Top 10 a few years ago, but after he or NBC (or both) decided he was better than Conan, he gets bitch-slapped down here.

4.  Colin Quinn – I am having trouble remembering anything that he has ever said that made me laugh.  Ever.  This guy makes Mencia seem witty.

3.  Daniel Tosh – The only thing unfunnier than his stand-up show is his desperate attempts to garner laughs with Tosh.0.  I mean, seriously, when Chris Hardwick, who does the same thing on G4′s “Web Soup”, seem downright perfect with his comedy, you know something is wrong.  Then again, I happen to think Chris Hardwick was funny even in Singled Out.  And especially his cameo here.

2.  Jimmy Fallon – He wasn’t funny in Saturday Night Live, when he spent the majority of his time breaking character and giggling.  Heck, he wasn’t funny when he wasn’t spoiling scenes.  He wasn’t funny hosting the Emmys.  He isn’t funny in those credit card commercials.  And he isn’t funny in his TV show.  The worst part is he seems to think he is.  I daresay he’s probably his biggest fan.

1.  Jonah Hill – Please please please please please please please please please please please please stop putting him in movies.

honorable mentions: Ashton Kutcher, Will Farrell, The Rock, Lisa Lampanelli (really most of the “comedians” on the Comedy Central roasts), Norm McDonald, any minority comedian who spends 90% of their set making jokes about being black/Hispanic, Jewish/gay/fat…

I didn’t buy many albums that came out in 2010, but that didn’t mean I didn’t get 40+ new CDs in 2010.  Here are my best of and worst of lists.  Listen to my suggestions, they’re awesome.

BEST ALBUMS

7.  The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – Open Up: Whatcha Gonna Do for the Rest of Your Life: This was a random purchase for $.50 at Grassroots.  It’s some good Louisiana blues arranged and played by local musicians (as far as I can tell.)  I holds up better if you hear a few songs on random than if you just plug through the whole album, but it’s got some really interesting tunes.

6.  Various Artists – Bluegrass Roots: I purchased this album online because it was the only inexpensive way I could find to purchase the version of “I’ll Fly Away” that’s actually featured in O Brother Where Art Thou? (as opposed to the one that comes on the soundtrack.)  The inclusion of other Kossoy Sisters songs is what makes this album so good – many of the other tracks seem like instrumental fillers, but it’s worth the purchase if it can be found cheap.

5.  Jellyfish – Spilt Milk: This band has apparently been labelled power pop, but I don’t know that I agree with it.  In the first track, it harkens to Imogen Heap, the second to Queen, and the third to Beach Boys, though it’s from ~1993.  The band didn’t last long, having only put out one other album, but this one is fun enough to get you by.  Good upbeat melodies, fun harmonies, and songs that won’t make you think too hard.

4. Glenn Miller Orchestra – In the Christmas Mood, Vol. 1: Every year, I try to get more Christmas music so that we have an alternative to stores which only seem to have 7 different Christmas songs.  Combining it with my love of big band music and this album is a no-brainer.  The worst song on the album is probably the “original” song, In the Christmas Mood.  Some of their renditions of classics are themselves classics.

3.  The Nevada Bachelors – Hello Jupiter: I found this band by accident in 2009 and found several of their melodies and chord progressions to be quite revolutionary.  I purchased this, their other album, and it is much of the same.  For anyone who likes music that you can’t predict the melody on each track, pick it up.

2.  Joe Henry – Scar:  It’s hard to quantify what type of music Joe Henry plays.  He’s listed as country in a few places, and his earlier stuff have some country roots.  But by the time Scar came out, at least, he had moved over to a very swanky, jazzy, bluesy sound.  His voice isn’t the greatest, but I listen to him for the vibe that I get from listening to his music.  It seems like I need to sit in a room with a few candles lit and just stare at something.  And not in a bad way.

1.  Tripod – Entire collection: Okay, I’m cheating.  I managed to grab basically all of this Australian comedy trios music this year, mainly because I found a place that actually offered it all.  Being from Australia, their music is hard to come by.  I like alot of comedy music, but much of it finds a funny concept then writes a song about it.  What sets Tripod apart (particularly live) is that often it IS the composition of the song itself that makes it funny.  After all, this is the same band that has written dozens of songs as challenges in an hour.  Definitely worth a buy if you can find them.

WORST ALBUMS

5.  Various Artists – Timeless Christmas Classics: I suppose I can’t fault this album for it’s title, or at least the descriptor ‘timeless’.  That’s because nearly every version of these famous Christmas songs is either much too fast or much too slow.  Believe me, I like Silent Night done slowly as much as the next guy, but I also like it to finish the first verse before I have to shave again.

4.  Various Artists – Guitar Heroes: Ash had seen this as a special at Best Buy and we hopped right on it, figuring it was songs from the video game.  It wasn’t.  That was a strike against it.  But then I saw that it was labelled as new versions of classics recorded by the original artists.  Okay, that should be a decent substitute.  Problem is they are nearly all live recordings, and many of them not of high quality.  We both feel bamboozled by this cheap ploy to make money.  (edit: I just noticed that one of the songs they included, Sentimental Avenue by Night Ranger, has no guitar – in fact, no other instruments besides piano and voice – awesome.)

3.  John Cale – Walking on Locusts: I had had a Cale song or two on my computer from various compilations, and thought they were decent, so when I found this one for $1, I picked it up.  It is not decent.  It is pretty personalityless.  Maybe it’s all in the lyrics, but the music (and to a lesser extent his voice) won’t permit me to listen to the album long enough to find out.

2.  Grateful Dead – Infrared Roses: I think I am more mad at myself for this album and not the Dead, per se.   I vaguely remember hearing that my brothers didn’t like this album, but seeing it for $.50, I couldn’t pass up to get a Dead album I didn’t have.  I forgot (and didn’t bother to read) that this wasn’t an album of tunes, but the “best of” their live jams Drums & Space.  Saying these are the best is sorta like being the tallest midget, no?

1.  The Phylum Chordata – A Sequential Proportion of Line and Mass Intended Mostly for My Muse: If you’re like me, you’d look at this album and think it is something nerdy and pretty cool.  You, like me, would have been very wrong.  This makes last year’s worst album, The Flaming Lips Embryonic, sound like Vivaldi.  These “songs” are more experiments with synthesizes and voice modulators.  It’s not often that I delete an album from my computer, but this will be one of the first to go.