http://thelongwrite.com/2010/03/28/choosing-what-not-to-read/

For The Love of God, People, The Slush Pile Isn’t Dead
http://therumpus.net/2010/01/for-the-love-of-god-people-the-slush-pile-isnt-dead/

A long, but interesting article on James Patterson (who has more NY Times bestsellers than anyone else).
James Patterson Inc.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/magazine/24patterson-t.html?pagewanted=all

Mystery visitor to Poe’s grave is a no-show
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100119/ap_en_ot/us_poe_mystery_visitor

The monetization paradox (or why Google is not my friend)
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/the-monetization-paradox-or-wh.html

The Future of Air Travel

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZfbTlYpKYo

The Secret Cities of Yemen
http://trifter.com/asia-pacific/the-secret-cities-of-yemen/

The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu
http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=7612

Do You Thinking Teaching Fighting Skills Could Honor the Lord?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Lg6aUZykw

Video game success may be in the mind, study finds
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8471182.stm

My favorite non-fiction books of 2009:

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
Jake Adelstein
Not the best written book ever, but the subject material is fascinating.  An American reporter got a job as a crime reporter in Japan and ended up breaking a story about the yakuza paying for liver transplants in the US.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Dan Ariely
One of the books that followed in the wake of the success of Freakonomics.  Fascinating stuff.

Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
Why some people succeed and others don’t.  Lots of interesting stuff in here.

The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World
Tim Harford
Another freaky behavioural book.

Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions
Christian Lander
The funniest book I read this year.  Lots of telling observations in here.

Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
The book that opened up a new publishing niche.  Examines why do people do what they do.

The Last Lecture
Randy Pausch & Jeffrey Zaslow
Randy Pausch shot to fame when he gave a lecture about how to live a good life.  He was a professor of computer science and had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He died last year

Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
John Scalzi
The collected amusing and insightful blog rantings of science fiction writer John Scalzi.

Born on a Blue Day
Daniel Tammet
Tammet is an autistic savant who experiences numbers in a different way from most people.  Details some of his accomplishments such as reciting pi to more than 22,000 decimal places and learning to speak Icelandic in less than a week.

Booklife
Jeff VanderMeer
I’ve read lots of books on writing and this is one of the best.  There are plenty of writing books that give advice about how to write, but this book focuses on how to be a writer.

I also enjoyed Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan, where he talks about some of Japan’s disappearing traditions and Paul Theroux’s Riding the Iron Rooster, his travel book about riding the trains in China.

That’s the impression you could get from the fact that swarms of best of the year lists were released in November and early December.

It seems just a tad presumptious to chronicle the best books or films of the year when the year hasn’t even finished.

Publishers Weekly published their Top 10 Books of 2009 at the start of November!
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6704595.html

And even organisations that you might suspect would be a bit more accurate in defining what they meant by “year” didn’t have the patience to wait.  Google released their list of search terms that had increased the most in popularity in 2009 (this is different from “most popular” search terms) on December 1st.

2009 Year-End Google Zeitgeist
http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/press/zeitgeist2009/

The abundance of best of the year lists ranged from the widely inclusive:
Time’s Top 10 Everything of 2009
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1945379,00.html

to the more specialised:
Best Lesbian Films of 2009    
http://www.shewired.com/Article.cfm?ID=24057

And since (depending on what point you start counting from) it’s the end of a decade, there are more lists covering the 00s.

The 100 Best Films of the Decade
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6902642.ece

The 100 Best Books of the Decade
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article6914181.ece

20 Best SF Books of the Decade
http://io9.com/5423847/20-best-science-fiction-books-of-the-decade

20 Greatest SF Movies of the Decade
http://io9.com/5426147/20-greatest-sf-movies-of-the-past-decade

Is this just another symptom of our impatience?  When you can get information so easily, why do you want to wait until it’s relevant?

I don’t buy the argument that nothing significant is released in December (or indeed November).  It isn’t all just family Christmas fare.  Just a couple of days ago,  a small film called Avatar hit cinemas.  Many of the early reviews haven’t been favorable, but excluding a new James Cameron film sight unseen from consideration for a list of best SF films of the year strikes me as a dubious practice.

I enjoy reading best of lists and indeed making my own lists.  But since the Christmas/New Year period is often a time when I get a lot of reading done, you’ll have to wait until 2009 is over before you can get my opinion on what I thought were the best books and movies of 2009.

I’m sure you all can’t wait.