1. Nixonland, Rick Perlstein. Covering the rise of the the brilliant and amoral Richard Nixon and the not-unrelated fracturing of American politics and society, this is one of the most fascinating history books I’ve ever read.
2. Herzog on Herzog, Paul Cronin and Werner Herzog. A series of long interviews with German auteur/professional daydreamer Werner Herzog, in which he talks about his life, films and idiosyncratic philosophy. And chickens.
3. Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, Chris Ware. Incredibly dense and painfully sad, even as a lifelong comics reader, this was a real revelation about what a graphic novel could be.
4. 2666, Roberto Bolaño. A degree in English literature has left me with a distinct distaste for the explicitly “literary”, something this massive novel flirts with, but ultimately leaves behind in favour of pulpy mystery. It’s like walking the streets of a strange city alone late at night.
5. The Terror, Dan Simmons. Chilling historical horror novel about the doomed 1845 Franklin expedition, which sailed into the arctic aboard the aptly-named HMS Terror and met an ignoble end of madness, starvation and cannibalism. Impossible to read unless buried under warm blankets with a hot mug of tea in hand.
6. All-Star Superman, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. After a lost decade of continuity obsession and “darker-and-edgier” wanking, superhero comics have been making steps toward readability again, as writers like Morrison, Millar and Bendis have been rebuilding the stories and characters that made superheroes appealing to begin with. This is the best of what I’ve read, a stripped-down and poignant new myth of Superman.
7. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer. Krakauer juxtaposes the story of modern fundamentalist offshoots of Mormonism with the bloody history of the LDS to look at the dark side of religion in America.
8. Scott Pilgrim, Bryan Lee O’Malley. O’Malley’s brilliant ongoing series of graphic novels uses his obsessions with videogames, manga and Canadian indie pop to inform this unexpectedly moving and original story of a Toronto slacker who must defeat his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes.
9. Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, Suketu Mehta. An Indian-American writer revisited Mumbai after a decades-long absence and sought out the entrepreneurs, gangsters and transvestite dancers that have made the city, and recorded their stories.
10. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers. Definitely attracted its share of detractors, and a lot of the criticisms are valid, but I still enjoy this book immensely for its wit, humanity and way with language.

Do we have honourable mentions? Yes, we have honourable mentions!

World War Z, Max Brooks.
Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography, Chester Brown
A Brief History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon.
JPod, Douglas Coupland
American Gods, Neil Gaiman.
The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene.
On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins
Areas of my Expertise, John Hodgman.
Born Standing Up, Steve Martin
Asterios Polyp, David Mazzucchelli
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami.
The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser.
Y: The Last Man, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
Fables, Bill Willingham et al

Anyway, without further ado, my Top 50 Albums of the 00s. Feel free to post your own list in the comments, but be aware that my list is, oddly enough, completely correct and entirely objective, so there’s not really a lot to be gained by disagreeing with it. I expect it to be taught in music history classes by 2030.

Whew! And here are some more that I really liked but didn’t quite make the cut. You can consider them tied for 51st:

Andrew Bird – Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs
Aphex Twin – Analord, vols 1-11
Autechre – Quarstice
Beirut – The Flying Cup Club
Black Mountain – Black Mountain
Black Mountain – In the Future
Blonde Redhead – Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons
Boards of Canada – The Campfire Headphase
Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
Buck 65 – Talkin’ Honky Blues
Burial – Untrue
Cat Power – The Covers Record
Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles
Cul de Sac – Death of the Sun
Deadbeat – New World Observer
The Decemberists – Picaresque
Elliott Smith – Figure 8
Explosions in the Sky – All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
Explosions in the Sky – The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place
The Field – Yesterday and Today
The Flashbulb – Soundtrack to a Vacant Life
Four Tet – Pause
Franz Ferdinand – Tonight
Fuck Buttons – Street Horrrsing
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Raise Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
Hol Baumann – Human
Iron & Wine – The Creek Drank the Cradle
Junior Boys – So This is Goodbye
Ladytron – 604
Low – The Great Destroyer
Metric – Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?
Modest Mouse – We Were Dead Before the Ship Ever Sank
Mouse on Mars – Idiology
Mouse on Mars – Radical Connector
Múm – Finally We Are No One
Neko Case and Her Boyfriends – Furnace Room Lullaby
The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema
The Organ – Grab That Gun
Pole – 3
The Postal Service – Give Up
Prefuse 73 – Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives
RJD2 – Dead Ringer
Radiohead – In Rainbows
The Strokes – Is This It?
Sufjan Stevens – Illinoise
Sunset Rubdown – Random Spirit Lover
Thievery Corporation – The Mirror Conspiracy
Wolf Parade – Apologies to the Queen Mary
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz
various artists – Clicks + Cuts

The book is divided into four sections, roughly covering the election cycles of 1966, 1968, 1970, and 1972. Though the bitter and amoral genius Nixon is at the centre of the book, it’s Nixonland itself that the book spends most of its time in. Perlstein does a terrific job of letting us into the minds of the hippies and radicals and concerned middle-class parents and resentful blue-collar workers that live there. The author is, himself, a post-Boomer, and he argues persuasively that the country he grew up in is still Nixonland. Watching George Bush (and Sarah Palin), it’s hard to disagree.

The timing of my much-delayed completion couldn’t be better, because this past week I was also finally able to put aside enough money from my job for my planned post-PhD 2010 trip across Asia, which will certainly include several months in India. In fact, after reading this book, I’m thinking that I may well want to spend more time in there. Not that the book makes India seem glamorous, or that it glosses over the bad stuff — in fact, there’s a hint of wallowing in the poverty, disease and crime. But the one thing that comes through is that for Roberts, India is a country that rewards trying to understand and adapt to her. Actually, to hell with spending more time there — this book makes me want to pick up and go there, learn the language, and live in Bombay for a decade or two.

The only downside is the schedule. I work 10 to 12 hours a day, and that’s not counting the 45-minute commute each way. I go to the gym two or three nights a week, and out for dinner, movies or concerts a couple of other nights. I typically leave the house at 8 AM and get home at 10 or 11 at night. Saturday is usually spent running errands, and Sunday is my day of rest.

And so, other things have to fall by the wayside a bit. I don’t think I’ve looked at YouTube in a month! A month! And I’m lucky is I see more than one movie a week (though my commute means that I’m reading a ton of books, which is pretty cool, though I have an iPod Touch to watch videos on now). This blog is another victim. I just don’t feel like I have the time or energy for full, thought-out posts. Not that what I write is usually more than “Here’s a cool link. BLANK is cool! (Insert joke here.)” Even so, I do have opinions and I know how much you care about them. But maybe for now, I’ll just do a bit of a random thought dumpage. Let’s try it, shall we?

The new Caribou album, Andorra, is terrific — kind of a wistful sixties psychedelic pop version of Caribou that perfectly fits walking though downtown Vancouver in the fall. I’ve been listening to the entire album pretty much daily. My roommate even liked it so much she blogged about it, too. Actually, 2007 has been a great year for Canadian indie music. Besides Caribou, I’ve been really enjoying the 2007 releases of The New Pornographers, The Arcade Fire, Tegan and Sara, Pink Mountaintops, Champion and You Say Party! We Say Die!. And I’m sure there’s plenty of others I haven’t heard yet.

As I mentioned before, somebody used my credit card to commit several thousand dollars worth of fraud. It’s taken a few calls to the bank, but the damage seems to have been undone — at least the damage against me. I wonder how common this kind of thing is. Somebody is out a lot of money — there’s no way the bank has made anything like the money the lost off my past half-decade of credit-card use.

I’m still hugely looking forward to my post-PhD trip across Asia in a couple years, but I haven’t had anything particularly insightful to say lately. The part of the route from India to Turkey will be interesting. I will either have to go through Pakistan and Iran, or through the Central Asian republics and Russia. I’ve been reading a bit about both. On the one hand, Iran has better transportation and I culture I’m very interested in. On the other hand, Central Asia has thrilling headgear. But I think the final decision will depend on the state of the region when I get there, c. 2010.

Can you believe 2010 is now the near future? Like, I’m making plans for that year? The mind boggles. I feel all the time like I live in a William Gibson novel.

I’m still on Facebook, though all I ever do is update my status message every couple of days, which I see as kind of a creative exercise. I don’t even read the updates of people on my network very often. However, I still find it kind of fascinating — I think its genius is that it’s the first web page on the internet that is explicitly targeted toward the extroverted majority of human beings. The people who (unlike, say, me) honestly want to know what all their friends got up to last weekend, and who (also unlike me) typically do something with their free time that’s more sociable than watching DVDs or reading comics and books about statistics and economics.

Speaking of books about statistics and economics, I recently read and enjoyed Tyler Cowan’s Discover Your Inner Economist and Nassim Nicholas Taleb even more interesting Fooled by Randomness. Each of these looks at how the authors’ fields (economics and financial mathematics) informs their worldview in subtle and unintuitive ways, complete with amusing anecdotes. While I’d recommend these books in general, I think I personally got a lot out of them because while I’m neither an economist nor a statistician (a shocking revelation, I know), my own research owes a lot to these fields, and I increasingly find myself looking at the world through a haze of utilities and variances. Also, Taleb’s book provides some evidence that it is possible to work on interesting problems in finance, be well paid, and not turn into (or start off as) a boring, status-obsessed asshole.

Wednesday night I saw Tokyo Police Club at The Plaza. The band didn’t even come on until midnight (on a Wednesday night!), and then the sound was pretty awful. Tired and bored from standing around waiting for the show, and disappointed by the shitty mix and always too-hot Plaza venue, we left after about five songs. Enough people were bolting that there was already a fairly long queue for the coat check at that point. Nice try, boys. I don’t know whether it’s the Plaza or TPC to blame, so I blame both.

His essay from the Globe and Mail has got to rank as one of the most elitist, arrogant, clueless things I’ve ever read. Certainly, ever read from someone I formerly respected.

Do we count for nothing, you philistines, I felt like shouting down at the House. Don’t you know that Canadians love their books and songs and paintings? Do you really think we’re just parasites feeding off the honest, hard work of our fellow citizens? Truly I say to you, there are only two sets of tools with which the rich soil of life can be worked: the religious and the artistic. Everything else is illusion that crumbles before the onslaught of time. If you die having prayed to no god, any god, one expressed above an altar or one painted with a brush, then you risk wasting the soul you were given. Repent! Repent! But I have no talent for spontaneous prophecy. Besides, guards would have landed upon me like football players and I would have been hustled out, bound for Guantanamo Bay.

Thank-you, state-subsidised millionaire Canadian novelist, for saving us from becoming soulless automata. No, your sacrifices have not been in vain. Is it too soon to start calling you Yann “Book Jesus” Martel?

• Link. (via Nathan Whitlock)

I started reading Vonnegut in high school, and I was blown away by his powerful storytelling and his bleak wit. Above all, though, there was the feeling that here was someone who had the same thoughts and ideas that I had, a worldview and temperament that only alienated me from most of my peers. Of course, he was smarter and wiser than me, and expressed himself infinitely better than I ever could, but it was clear he drew strength from some common source of introversion and non-conformity.

Years later, after graduating university and moving to the big city, I re-read several of his books. I was kind of surprised to find his work had not lost any of its impact. If anything, I was even more able to appreciate his blend of pessimistic humanism. Though to be fair, I never really shed my adolescent angst.

The AV Club has a great feature today, which kind of sums it all up. It’s probably time I read his books again.

• 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will

My most recent bout of insomnia has allowed me to finally finish off Dan Simmons’ 784-page novel, The Terror, based on the Franklin expedition. Simmons’ Sir John Franklin is fueled by a combination of Victorian hubris and a desperate need to redeem himself following a previous arctic failure, which leads him to take the expedition into dangerously risky territory (the echoes of Iraq are never overdone, but they’re hard to miss). As a series of catastrophes — natural, manmade and supernatural — unfold, the story shifts to Crozier, captain of the Terror and the huddled band of survivors, at which point, the novel kicks in and never lets up. The survivors must deal with scurvy, mutiny, and winters of constant darkness and unrelenting cold. And that’s not even counting the thing out on the ice that’s killing the men one by one.

The novel paints arctic exploration as inept intrusions on a relentlessly hostile and unforgiving world, exacerbated by the arrogance of explorers who mistake their accidental survival for triumph over nature. Only Crozier and his crew’s determination to survive for the sake of survival keeps them going. As things get more and more dire, it becomes clear that this instinct is not necessarily heroic.

I’ve never read any of Dan Simmons’ other work, but I might have to now. The Terror is a grim story, but it never feels nihilistic — Simmons is surprisingly warm and humanistic even while he’s killing his characters, and the details of 19th-century polar exploration are fascinating without ever interfering with the story. It may be 800 pages long, but it’s a damn entertaining 800 pages.

The big change, though, is that I used a few of the huge number of WordPress plug-ins to add info about my media consumption habits. Now you can see what I’ve been listening to, reading, and watching. I actually kind of dig it when I can go to other people’s web sites and find out stuff like that, so hopefully some of you out there will dig it here. I’m especially looking forward to having a forum to write glib little mini-reviews of movies I’ve seen, since I tend to do that on a pretty regular basis anyway.