It’s rare that I get a moment to read anything that doesn’t come to me for review, and the week off TOC gives us at the end of the year provides provides one of those rare moments. So I figured I’d share what I’m planning on reading between now and my return to the office in January:

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino (finally!)
You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon
Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner
The Slide by Kyle Beachy
The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno

We’ll see if we can get through them all, but I get ambitious this time of year.

I’ve been wanting to get some sort of best-of, favorites thing up on the blog—along with much basketball talk—but it’s been difficult to find the free time at the day job. So here is a completely idiosyncratic list of my favorite experiences (including books, music, movies) of 2008, in no particular order:

Marriage
The one thing I’ve done that I know I couldn’t have done better.

Celtics championship
Four moments in particular stick out to me, in order:
1. Pierce’s knee. When he came back and hit those threes.
2. Leon Powe. Game 2. 21 points in 15 minutes. The dunk at 1:05 brought me to a higher level of consciousness.
3. Kevin Garnett. Game 6. The one-handed jump ball on Pau Gasol. The whole season seemed wrapped up in the way he owned Gasol at that moment.
4. Ray Allen. Game 4. The destruction of Sasha Vujacic, which led to this moment. Sports and politics are really the only two arenas where I allow myself to indulge in some schadenfreude.

Let the Right One In
I don’t know if I’d call it the best movie of 2008—I don’t think I saw a movie in 2008 that I really loved—but this one has definitely stuck with me the longest. I walked out of the theater disappointed, but my opinion and appreciation has grown a lot as it banged around in my head.

Captives, by Todd Hasak-Lowy
One of the best novels I read this year. Here’s my review.

Reading Tinkers by Paul Harding while listening to Bon Iver
Wintry all around. Somehow the book and the album blended perfectly.

Birthday dinner at Green Zebra
And now, let us praise incredible vegetarian dining.

Reading Theft by Peter Carey in Belize
Okay, so the book and the setting didn’t really have anything to do with each other, but it was a great book, and reading a great book on an island beach warrants a mention.

Wrestling a shark in Belize
It was more of a “nervous cradling” than a “wrestling,” but still… I wrestled a shark.

Other people’s marriages
My bro, and some really good friends, all hitched this year, and it was a blast to travel around and be there when it happened.

Turns out, Jesse, Jr. is Candidate #5. I can easily explain this mistake: I often don’t know what I’m talking about.

It’s possible that his “emissaries” were not acting with his knowledge, I guess. And if it’s true that he’s “not a target of this investigation,” then the feds must think he’s clean. It’s my guess that if he, or even one of his advisors, had offered to raise $500,000 for Blago, he’d be strung up, too. I’m not convinced of this point, since it’s possible that the feds aren’t targeting him because they want his testimony.

But still, I don’t see him getting the seat if he’s this closely linked to the whole mess. Please, stay tuned for further inaccurate “insights.”

Marc Ambinder has some thoughts on who “Senate Candidate 5″ is, as does Capitol Fax. The main link here to Jesse Jackson, Jr. comes from his meeting with Blago, shortly after Blago said he would meet with #5.

Blago on tape: “…but if they feel like they [meaning Obama's people] can do this and not fucking give me anything…then I’ll fucking go [Senate Candidate 5],” which to me implies that this is someone Obama does not want to get the seat. But Jesse was the national co-chair for Barack’s campaign, and was the guy who stomped out the fire his father lit when he declared he wanted to cut Barack’s nuts off. Even if Obama, for whatever reason, felt Junior shouldn’t get the seat, I can’t imagine the sudden animosity toward a member of his campaign staff would be so great that Blago would see Jesse’s appointment as an opportunity to stick it to the pres-elect. It’s more likely, if we’re picking between the two, that Senate Candidate 5 is Emil Jones, who is tight with the guv, and friends with Obama, but is certainly not the kind of old-school politician Barack would want taking up the rest of his term.

Though I guess, in the end, all of this is trying to read Blagojevich’s actions as if he had a normal, healthy, human psychology. And that’s not going to fucking give us anything.

Ever since Obama looked like he was going to win, and the big Party in the Park was planned, there’s been non-stop chatter about how good this will be for the city (especially among those who think bringing the Olympics here in 2016 is a good idea). But now, in the same way Obama has been tamping down expectations for his first-term, Chicagoans may want to dim their own expectations. Yesterday, Tribune Media, owner of the Chicago Tribune filed for bankruptcy. Given that the Sun-Times has been on its last legs since fish grew legs, this is bad news for the city.

Oh yeah, and now Illinois has two consecutive governors come under federal indictment (or will, very soon). Just as former guv George Ryan tries to weasel a pardon out of the departing Bush administration, it turns up that current guv Blagojevich attempted some exceedingly unsubtle horse-trading to get a new gig or a big payoff for appointing Obama’s senatorial replacement. Obama, for his part, comes off clean to my mind and many others’. So far as I can recall, Obama has never really been in Blago’s corner, despite the occasional meaningless ad, etc.

It’s been fun today to read the country’s reaction (and not only because every news account has to breakdown the pronounciation (bluh-GOY-uh-vitch). Here in Illinois, we’ve known Blago’s as corrupt as they come since he set foot in office, prompting a fairly strong recall movement here (In Cook County, 60 percent of voters approved an advisory constitutional amendment that would allow for the recall of elected officials in the state). This is a man who declared at a Cubs playoff rally that he often asked himself—when making executive decisions—”What would Lou do?” And he got booed. At a Cubs playoff rally! And lest you think it’s because he’s a Sox fan, watch this video from the statue dedication at the Cell. Booed. Mercilessly.

GQ named Chicago as its City of the Year for 2008—thanks in large part to the prez-elect—so I wrote a short piece about why the literary scene here tops all. It was pretty fun, and I hear that Leo DiCaprio is excited to be in the same magazine as me, which makes all kinds of sense.

I’ve been working on some other year-end stuff of my own for TOC, trying to figure out which—of the small selection of books that jammed my radar—I would label as “best.” As soon as I figure that out, I’ll let you know.

Other exciting news: A new Dollar Store. January 9, with a hot as Hades lineup. Please tell your friends.