Best of 2009

So 2009 is drawing to a close. Some pretty horrible stuff happened to me and my family in 2009. I can't always shrug it off and look on the bright side. But I have been very lucky to have family and friends who love and support me. My sincere thanks to all these people. But for now, I'll just focus on the trivial and the little rays of light.

Actually, before I talk about trivial things, I will say that I'm currently editing the second to last chapter of my novel. For good this time. Last time I was just editing for the beta readers. Now I incorporated the comments of all those who finished in my editing. I'm so close I can taste it! So my New Years resolution is definitely to send my story to an agent in 2010.

Now for my exciting entertainment bests of 2009!

Best Movie: Counting both plot and special effects, Star Trek was the best movie I saw in 2009. Since we're counting plot, that's why Avatar's not here. My YouTube review of the film is the most watched of all my YouTube videos. Of course, this is just because I posted it as a video response to the amazing, hilarious, and beautiful CommunityChannel's video where she mentions Star Trek. But I still think my review's pretty good.




Best Novel: I confess I haven't finished reading it yet, but I highly suspect that Unseen Academicals will be my favorite novel published in 2009. Much as I love Pratchett, I normally don't like the wizard books of Discworld. But from what I've read so far, this one ranks up with Interesting Times as the best wizards' book. I mean, Ponder is the freakin' Carmerlengo! That alone is worth reading. But the rest is just as excellent.





Best Picture Book: I knew this was going to be published long before it was, but I'm ecstatic that it's finally here. It's easily my favorite modern poem ever. Although, I have to confess I'm not as crazy about the pictures. Dave McKean's always been a bit dark to me, which I wasn't sure entirely fit how I imagine the tone of the poem. But I know that Neil Gaiman really likes working with him, and the pictures aren't bad. It's just that they're more an acquired taste.

Anyway, I hope you all had a great year and happy 2010!

How America Protects Us From British Grammar

I've preferred British authors all my life. If you asked me to name my favorite authors, there would inevitably be more British than American in the mix. This means I've often considered myself to be quite savvy when it comes to distinctive British slang. Heck, I even had some articles published in an incredibly small British magazine. Seriously small. Like I may be the only one to still own copies.

I roll my eyes when American publishers change British book titles like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Philip Pullman's Northern Lights. It annoys me when they take the extra British u's out of words as if our American brains will melt upon seeing them. Who doesn't already know that they have an excess of u's across the pond?

Yet, somehow, I had never known of the difference in British quotation marks. It seems that, instead of quotation marks, the Brits use what look like apostrophes but are actually what they call inverted commas. This had entirely escaped me until I was recently reading the newest book, Unseen Academicals, by my favorite author, Terry Pratchett, and noticed that all the dialogue only used single quotation marks. My brain started to slowly melt with the consistency of what I perceived as a grotesquely glaring error. All the dialogue was barely protected from the surrounding words, crouching half-naked inside these inadequate half quotation marks! Was it a mistake? Was it some literary metaphor that I wasn't clever enough to grasp? Or was it a secret message from Pratchett telling us that the apocalypse would be brought by an excess of apostrophes? The mystery was just as bad as how much the apostrophe overload was making my eyes water.

But, finally, I can breathe easy again knowing that, while it is still a mistake for the American edition to have inverted commas, it's not a mistake on the author's part (thinking of Terry Pratchett as less than infallible was also quite difficult for me). For once something distinctly British just completely skipped past the censors, and I learned something new. I'll never give up my love for the full bosom of the American quotation marks. However, knowing that a whole country of people apparently read these flat-chested little dialogue markers every day with no ill effects, aside from a propensity to produce great literature, will help me immensely in making it through this otherwise brilliant book.