Best of 2009

Here are my favorite books, music and movies from this year

Always more books to read than I have time to. Really enjoyed Moneyball. How statistics and numbers were overlooked in baseball for so long is fascinating. Made me think of all the other facets of life that go unmeasured. If only they were measured, so many insights to improvement could be made.
Really liked What Would Google Do. I’ve been reading Jeff Jarvis’s blog Buzzmachine for a while now. I would recommend it to anyone as a base for best practices online.
Being a new dad, Punished by Rewards made me think deeply about how I want to raise my daughter. The “do this and I’ll give you that” form of motivation is not only not effective but counter productive. Will probably end up reading this one again someday.
There are a lot of behavioral economics books out there. I think Predictably Irrational is the funnest and most real-world-applicable to read.

Best New Music I listened to in 2009

All four 5 of these CDs are fantastic. I saw Teenage Bottlerocket twice this year in Denver. Saw Cobra Skulls once. Off With Their Heads brings out the nihilist in me. Rancid’s CD is good as they all are. Dillinger Four’s song,”Ode To The North American Snake Oil Distributor” rocks as hard as they get.

Best Movies I saw in 2009

Hard a hard time compiling these four. I have a much longer list of movies that sucked including, but not limited to, Knowing (utterly ridiculous, Nicholas Cage you suck), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Sam going to Transformer heaven at the end was only one of dozens of retarded parts), Synecdoche New York ( which is a shame because Charlie Kaufman’s movies Adaptation and Endless Sunshine were brilliantly awesome).

Taken is sweet. I loved the part in 500 Days of Summer when they split the screen and show reality and his expectations compared to each other. Star Trek was also sweet. Drag Me To Hell reminded me of Evil Dead which made me happy.