Best of 2008: Best Discovery

Are you ready for a shock… I’m telling you, it will be a big one.  NOBODY will see this coming.

My favourite new discovery of 2008 is…. drumroll please…. EZRA KLEIN!!!!

(cue balloons and streamers)

Seriously, though, reading Ezra’s blog has been a wonderful part of the year.  It’s taught me to write with a new kind of voice… to balance the serious and the fun.  It’s taught me to incorporate writing into my daily life in a way I never imagined- and to express both whole and half-thoughts.  Plus, I’ve learned new ways of finding information and of engaging with the world around me.

I think I have learnt more this year than in all the years of my life preceding it, at least partially because reading Ezra’s blog (and others) and the reading that has followed from that.

I was actually thinking about listing the US Political blogosphere as my best discovery, since I read far more than just Ezra’s blog (Yglesias, Coates, et al), but it was his blog that enabled me to fully engage with it all.  And it really has made me a better writer.

*Edit* Honestly, of all my posts, this is the one that gets linked?  This one? That’s almost as bad as The Rain Situation.

The Best Album of 2008

While a few albums make the short list of best album I bought in 2008 (Midlake’s The Trials of Van Occupanther, Kanye West’s College Dropout, MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular and  Math and Physics Club’s self-titled album round out the top five) the honour really must go to Lykke Li’s Youth Novels.  As I posted a few weeks ago, I think the best songs (and the best albums) sound good, are lyrically relevant, and connect to a time in your life.  Youth Novels was 2008 for me.  I discovered LL through Megan, which makes it especially special.  Plus, Youth Novels got me started on a whole new musical odyssey, expanding my tastes beyond my folky-indie-pop and into a whole new range of music.  Not necessarily music like Lykke Li, but finding Lykke Li made me braver and more willing to try more stuff.

So, one more time, the first single from my Album of 2008, Youth Novels, here is Lykke Li’s paen to frustrated and probably-unreciprocated love, Little Bit.

A kick-arse live version, because all the copies of the original clip have been removed from YouTube.  I guess that means she’s really getting famous:

And here’s the most recent single, I’m Good, I’m Gone, of which I am immensely fond:

Finally, here is the classic every-girl song about those nights when you just don’t feel like dancing.  It wasn’t on the original release of Youth Novels (which I bought back in FEBRUARY, thank you very much!), but it was on the Australian release, which I bought last month (damn extra tracks). (btw this isn’t much of a video, but you can hear the song, and that’s what matters)

The Best of 2008

It’ll be a bit light-on blogging this weekend: much to do before I leave.  But I have a heap of (I think) compelling drafts I’ve been working on that should make their appearance in the early days of next week… and then it’ll be CHINA BLOGGING.

But in addition to those, I’ll be, over the next week or so, be posting my Best Of 2008 list.  They won’t all be things that came out in 2008, but things that I discovered in the course of the year.  It will include:

• Best Novel
• Best Album
• Best Song
• Best Moment
• Best Discovery
• Best Purchase
• Best Movie
• Best TV Show
• Best Football Match
• Best Meal

Oh, there is much to be said!