Best of 2008 Picks -- Kage Baker

2008 was, for me, a hectic and scary year, and so its highlights shone all the more brightly in their dark setting. Here they are:

Best Music I found in 2008:

I'm long past the top ten list these days; generally by the time I notice a band, they've broken up and at least one member is dead. Jethro Tull still dances along, though their keyboard and bassist positions have a pretty high turnover, and any year they release a new album is golden for me. It didn't happen this year, though, so all my musical delights ended up coming from the dim and distant past. The most youthful of my dead guests was Nick Drake, with the album I Was Made to Love Magic. Drake was, quite simply, the finest acoustic guitarist who ever lived, and I won't get into the whole mythos around his early death here; but suffice to say he neatly fits in that vegetation-god space equally occupied by James Dean or Elvis. His music is haunting.

Another great find was a whole album (LebendigeVergangenheit: Italo Tajo) of stuff recorded by my all-time favorite opera singer, Italo Tajo, who had a bass-baritone like... like... not like dark chocolate, because there was a rough edge to his voice. Blackest coffee, maybe. He excelled in character parts that called for comedic readings, like Leporello in Don Giovanni, but my favorite has always been his urbane assassin-for-hire Sparafucile up against Leonard Warren's lyric Rigoletto. Tajo never got the recognition he deserved in America, so his recordings are hard to find, and it was a gleeful day when this one arrived in the mail.

Another discovery was The Pageant of PT Barnum, a forgotten concert piece by the forgotten American composer John Alden Carpenter. The second movement ("Joice Heth-- 161 year old Negress") is one of the most beautiful tone portraits I've ever heard.

Finally, the four-disc compendium A Night at the Music Hall brightened my days. Marie Lloyd! Harry Champion! Vesta Victoria! Gus Elen! George Robey! There are some odd omissions-- no Little Tich, no Dan Leno, no Harry Lauder-- but for the most part it's a splendid collection, just the thing to pop into the CD drive when you need to slip away into 1908. Which I'm afraid I needed to do rather a lot this year.

Best Books I found in 2008:

Terry Pratchett's Nation takes the number one spot, hands down. If you tend to dismiss his Discworld series as lightweight, jokey stuff-- and you shouldn't, by the way-- you'll be struck by how comparatively serious his excellent books for young readers are. In the alternate universe of Nation, a boy and a girl from very differing cultures both face the ends of their respective worlds and survive, with bravery and cleverness. This is Pratchett at his best, doing what I love best in him as a writer: gently and ruthlessly telling you the absolute truth about life, and then showing you how you can live and even manage a happy ending. I'll take his books over Pullman's any day.

Other Bests... certainly Gene Wolfe's superb Pirate Freedom, reviewed earlier in the year in this journal, a book to be respected as well as thoroughly enjoyed. And a fortuitous discovery while researching a steampunk novel I wrote: Constantinople During the Crimean War, by Emelia Bithynia Maceroni Hornby. It's public-domain available in a facsimile edition, complied from an English lady's letters home during the war, splendid primary source stuff. Yes, the writing is quaint and mannered, with lots of florid descriptions of oriental gorgeousness and complaints about sanitation-- what would you expect? But there is also a lot of shrewd observation of politics and people. I got a similar book about Russia in the same era, written by a couple of English merchants, and it's dry, tough going by comparison. Facts and figures, but no sense of the place. Mrs. Hornby wins.

Best Cinema:

We all saw the same movies, right? So you know that Pixar's WALL-E was a masterwork, and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian was more interesting and darker than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army was a delight from beginning to end (though a respected colleague of mine thought it was horrible-- he just didn't get the Barry Manilow scene at all) and damn, with the Joker in that Batman sequel, Dark Knight, Heath Ledger made his place right alongside Elvis, Nick Drake and Jimmy Dean. Quantum of Solace, the second Daniel Craig James Bond film, worked for me despite an opening sequence that was so choppily edited I couldn't tell what the hell was happening. The rest of the film flowed smoothly, the end was particularly satisfying, and Craig remains the finest Bond since Connery and perhaps the closest to Fleming's character.

And a last-minute surprise... every few years I'll grit my teeth and put on It's a Wonderful Life at Christmas time, for a glimpse of my mother, who is briefly visible as a crowd extra in one scene. Yes, it's a wonderful film, et cetera, et cetera. But this year, in early middle age, in the beginning of our generation's Great Depression, it packs a particular punch. Been diagnosed with something, and you can't afford your meds? Lost your job when the plant/store/office closed down? About to lose your home? The sick misery, the rage and fear and frustration in George Bailey's eyes will speak to you as never before. His generation made it through, somehow. Maybe ours will too.