It's time to recap the year. As I've only been blogging publicly since the middle of August I don't have a whole year's worth of posts to dig from. So I'm going to do a best-of-2004 list that has some categories for blog posts too instead of a seperate post for such things.
Regarding books: I don't recall publication dates so my best-of books won't be books necessarily published in 2004, but that I happened to read in 2004. Also, I'm not going to include anything I read for my Pastoral Epistles project.
Here we go:
Best Non-Fiction Book Read: An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943, by Rick Atkinson. I didn't know much about the north African portion of WWII; or at least the part in which the Americans had a role. Atkinson's book is exhaustive and well-written. If you're looking for more info on this portion of WWII written as history, Atkinson's book is for you. My close second for this entry is Britain in Revolution: 1625-1660 by Austin Woolrych. My knowledge of the English Civil War and Cromwell's reign as Lord Protector was very spotty. Not anymore. Also recommended.
Worst Non-Fiction Book Read: Tough call here. I think I'll pick The Linguist and the Emperor: Napoleon and Champollion's Quest to Decipher the Rosetta Stone. The title is misleading. It should be: The Boy-Linguist and the Tyrant of Europe: The Boy-Linguist is a Coptic Wünderkind and the Emperor Finds some Rock in Egypt the Boy-Linguist Happens to Decipher. There is almost nothing in the book about the Rosetta stone itself and the actual decipherment process. The stuff on Napoleon pads out the thinness of the book's dealing with Champollion. I was disappointed with this one.
Best Fiction Book Read: I don't have a good entry for this. I don't read much fiction and the fiction that I did read was either not memorable or poor. The last really memorable fiction I read was in 2003 (or was that 2002?) — Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. Read the unabridged version someday if you haven't already. I had problems putting it down, it sucked me in so fast and so deep.
Best Album: This is tough. I've listened to a lot of new music this year thanks to RealRhapsody. But I've most enjoyed The Complete Norman Granz Jam Sessions, a series of studio recordings by some legends of jazz who just got together and let the music happen, for the most part. Incredible stuff. This was released as a boxed set in 2004, so it should qualify.
Best Movie: Since I saw Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on January 1, 2004, I suppose that will fit here. The extended DVD is better than the theatrical release; that one is hands-down the best DVD release of the year.
Favorite Event: The launching of my kayak, of course, on May 23, 2004. For those not in the know, I built my own 18 foot cedar-strip sea kayak. It took a few years, but it's pretty cool. Pictures and logs of the entire process are online. Here's a photo of the boat on top of the car after the inaugural paddle:
Best Biblioblogger Thread: The start of the thread was Eric Sowell's question about which to study first: Philo or the OT Pseudepigrapha. Responses were many, but Jim Davila nailed it out of the park and really got the discussion going with his response. Stephen C. Carlson's current string of posts on Luke 2.2 are a close second in my book, for reasons I've mentioned previously.
Favorite Ricoblog Post(s): This is a tough one. My attention span is somewhat short; I tend to hold whatever I'm working on currently as the most interesting thing. But I have a few posts that I'm fond of. Here they are:
If I listed most popular posts, I'd guess they'd include posts on Horrible Christmas Music, drippy bathtub spigots, cool typography blogs and the Linotype Manual of Typography. Those are the most common targets of Google searches at present, anyway.