Recapping January.

I keep a hand-written journal of the books that I've read. On a whim, I decided to make an on-line version of that same journal -- I've found it's much easier to type my thoughts to a blog than it is to sit and write them by hand (though I do still copy the blog to a notebook).

Earlier in January, I thought it might be fun to keep a similar journal for movies I've seen. Being a subscriber to Netflix and having a great many movies available through my local public library, I thought that this might be a fun way to keep track of what I've seen.

And then... well, since I'd seen a few short plays in January, I decided to start a theatre review journal as well. You can see all these other blogs by clicking on the "view my complete profile" at the top of this page.

And now, looking back at these other blogs of mine, I thought I'd pick my favorites....

I didn't finish reading many books in January. This was mostly because of my time involvement with the one-act play at the local high school. And because I didn't get a lot of reading in, my pickings here were rather slim. Based on what I've got in my journal, I'd have to say that the best book that I finished reading in January was The Best American Essays 2004 collection. The fact that a collection, which contained many selections that I didn't particularly care for, was the best read suggests that I didn't fare particularly well with books for the month.

There were many more videos to choose from for my month's best. This too is a result of my busy schedule with the one-act. I found it rather relaxing to come home to unwind by tossing a movie in to the DVD or VCR. I think that the best movie I saw was easily Anatomy of a Murder. This really was quite a well-done film. The acting, the script, the direction, the score were all wonderful. Preminger's The Man With the Golden Arm was also much more enjoyable than I had expected (especially the jazz score!), but my second favorite was most likely a tie between Chocolat and Through a Glass Darkly -- both extremely well done films.

The best theatre I saw was the one-act play, Line by Israel Horovitz. This was well performed. As I mentioned in the theatre journal blog, my problem with Horovitz plays is that I feel he writes stock characters rather than actual people. This worked well, though, for this group of actors.

January seems to have kept me busy, and I can only speculate (and look at my calendar) to see what February holds in store.