Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

Looking back on my post of January 1, 2010…

I’ve failed on the givens: “spend less, save more, lose weight, blah, blah, blah.” Isn’t that a kick in the pants?

I did much better on my weirdo ones.

1. I didn’t learn what I expected to learn about Napoleon. I thought I’d find out about his military campaigns and the battles that made him a legend. Instead, I learned more about his civil administrations and his impact on European society. My slight headway into this hither-unexplored area of history has whetted my interest though. I’m sure I’ll come back to it if I don’t get carried away by something else.
2. I got through 33 out of 100 push ups, and then things got busy. I have to start all over.
3. “Do Something for Others Day” also didn’t turn out like I planned. Inevitably, the one designated day a month would just have nothing happen in it. So I just went back to trying to be good and nice in general… and beat myself up should I failed at it.

I realize that this is a really stupid end-of-year post, but I need it to satisfy my completion complex. This closes out my previously set goals, and I can start again tomorrow. Ha!

Tags: Life by Ms. SP
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I got through all my reading challenges this year.

What’s in a Name Challenge
Between January 1 and December 31, 2010, read one book in each of the following categories:

• food: Jubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
• body of water: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
• title: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
• plant: Spring Flowers, Spring Frost by Ismail Kadare
• place name: A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
• music term: The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy

Audiobook Challenge (12 audiobooks)

• The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams
• Ponzi’s Scheme by Mitchell Zuckoff
• Trafalgar (Nelson’s Touch) by David Howarth
• Inventing a Nation by Gore Vidal
• Waterloo – Day of Battle by David Howarth
• Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
• The American Revolution by Gordon S Wood
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
• Seven Ages of Man: An Anthology of Poetry With Music
• Never a City So Real by Alex Kotlowitz
• The Making of a Philosopher by Colin McGinn
• In the Wake of the Plague by Norman F Cantor

New Authors Challenge
I stopped counting on this one because I was going to blow by my initial sign-up number of 15. I probably made the next level, 25, but I stopped counting.

The 1% Well-Read Challenge goes through April 2011 so I’m pretty set there. I only have five more books to go.

Tags: Books by Ms. SP
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Books
In flipping back through the Book category on this site, I’m estimating that I’ve read/listened to about forty books this past year. Not everything got a write up, but I tried and I think I did catch most of them.

The best of the lot are Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novel series. Both experiences made me feel as if I was reading something inspiringly creative and uniquely special. They touched deeply.

I award the worst of the year distinction to The Human Stain by Philip Roth. Even Twilight picked up its appeal eventually, but except for a few flashing pages of goodness, The Human Stain by Philip Roth just remained so very tedious.

It was a good year for nonfiction, and I give life-changing credit to Colin McGinn and John P. Kotter for adding to my worldview and changing how I think. I also found two historians, Gordon Wood and David Howarth, whose works I will continue to seek out and learn from.

Movies
I’m going to guess that I saw about 47 movies this year. Here are the best:

• Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
• Vicky Cristina Barcelona
• District 9
• The Princess and The Frog
• Toy Story 3
• Man on Wire

The most disappointing movie that I saw last year is Where the Wild Things Are. The book presents such a possibility-rich set up and is virtually unlimited in its interpretations, and the filmmakers had to go and create something that is uncomfortable and unappealing to so much of its intended audience.

Tags: Books, Movies by Ms. SP
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