2010 Best of the Year

Robert Gomez — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 04:56:02 +0000

Well it’s the first day of the New Year. This day means different things to different people. For my wife it means washing off the post-New-Year’s-Eve-bash Sharpie moustache that she woke up with this morning. For me it means it’s time to assess what I thought was the best of the media I consumed this past year.

Movies

Like last year, there really wasn’t anything that truly amazed me this year. My best rated films were Moon and The Maltese Falcon. I watched more T.V. than I have in recent years, so I suppose I could add Lost, V or The Walking Dead as honorable mentions.

Books

Towards the second half of the year I started reading a bit more than usual and found several books truly grabbed me in ways that no movie or show did this year. If I had to pick a favorite from this year it would be George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, especially if considered along side the three other books in the series that I also read and loved. At a near-tie for the number one spot is Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, which started my on my current fantasy lit kick. Finally, rounding out the top was Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. Honorable mentions would go to Mistborn books 1 & 2, Devil Born Without Horns and Racing the Beam.

Video Games

I played a ton of games this year. My highest rated game was House of the Dead: Overkill for the Wii. It was stupid, crude, violent and hilarious… loved it. My runners-up would be Mass Effect and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Mass Effect further proves that the best science fiction is in video games these days, and Zelda is Zelda… ’nuff said. I am still mid-game in GTA IV and Metroid Prime Trilogy but I suspect those two titles would have made this year’s list too had I completed them in time. I also played a few casual games I liked such as Puzzle Quest and Plants vs. Zombies.

Steam just finished their massive annual game sale and I stocked up so there should be no shortage of gaming for me in the next year and beyond.

2009 Best of the Year

Robert Gomez — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:54:49 +0000

It’s the end of another year and I think it would be a good time for me to recap my personal best of lists for 2009. In case you haven’t noticed, much of this site is devoted to keeping track of all the media I digest. I review and rate just about every movie, game or book I finish. I also keep track of the music I listen to, but I don’t really buy much music anymore, so that section doesn’t really give a good overview of the new music I have heard lately. So, anyhow, here it is. The Pages of Fun Best of 2009!

Best Book

Flying Colours by C. S. Forester – I’d ran out of Aubry/Maturin Napoleonic era novels so I guess Hornblower had to suffice for this year. This series has its highs and lows, and never quite matches O’Brian, but this book in particular was very good.
Honorable Mention: Twisty Little Passages – An Approach to Interactive Fiction by Nick Montfort – This one is probably a bit too nerdy for the average reader, but I really enjoyed this academic analysis of text adventures.

Best Movies

The Dark Knight – Really? This is the best film I saw this year?!
Sukiaki Western Django – At least this one had some indie cred to it.

I guess it was a pretty lame film year for me. I have a pretty big back list of films yet-to-see, so hopefully 2010 will fare better.

Best Video Games

Braid was my highest ranked game this year. A wonderfully inventive platform game.
I also have a couple of honorable mentions in this category as well: Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge were both incredible games.

All of these games were bought using Valve’s Steam download service, and all were very cheap! PC rules!

top 10 – Pages of Fun