Music - Tracking my best of's

I'm working on my music best-of list for 2010, but it's much harder than the books because there are sooo many more. But also, the methods for tracking them aren't very reliable.

iTunes tracks when you acquired a song, but if you re-upload it then it gets a new date. I occasionally rebuild my library, and I eventually turn all my songs to mp3s so they take up less space, which also reloads them. Then all the stats (# of times played) disappear as well. So when I try to track which songs I acquired this year, and how often I listened to them, it's a mess.

I also use lastfm.com but I don't know exactly how it tracks these things either. Eg. it says I listened to Bette Midler's "Beast of Burden" 9 times this year, but that sounds very low to me.

Plus you can't go strictly by # of times played, because a song I bought and loved in October will still have a smaller play count than a song I bought and loved in February.

MEEPS.

I'm also trying to compile my fave songs that came out before 2010--songs I played a lot this year, or just discovered, or always had in my head. I only have 450 songs that were made in 2010, but leaves 11 001 that weren't.

I tried creating a playlist for each month of uploading, minus the 2010 songs, but I hit a month with hundreds of songs in it--which I'm sure were re-uploads. So that was only so much help.

It's all vair vair confusing. I've got to figure out a better way to do this in the new year, for next year's list.

Further adventures of Minion Vs the Christmas Tree: The lobotomized tin soldier

Here's Minion looking resentful after I made the tree more Minion-resistant. She refuses to sit on the cushion I provided for her--she actually stuck her nose under it and pushed it away.

But like most cats, she loves to sleep under the tree.

Day before yesterday: Pondering what to attack next...

The metal bell ornament!  Arrrr! chomp chomp chomp. (I can't imagine what the vet's going to say next time I bring my cat in with teeth ground down to nubs.)

The wood cranberry strand! chomp chomp chomp

"You think you can put these styrofoam balls too high for ME? Ha! Shazam!"

And then a little break.

"Ahh paparazzi!"

The ornament I've seen her play with most is the pig, dangling right where she likes to sleep. She bats at it as she falls asleep, like a baby with a mobile.

Yesterday:
Is there any point keeping score? Other than its ability to soothe the savage beast and send her into nap mode, the tree is losing. Yesterday I woke up and found a lobotomized soldier on the floor.

Series: My Best Reads of 2010 #6

BEST BOOKS I READ IN 2010 - PUBLISHED EARLIER THAN 2010

Books about non-western countries

Girls of Riyadh - Raja al-Sanea - Saudi-American author (Published in 2004, published in English in 2007)

Maybe this is a weird category, but I consciously try to read a little outside my Western Reality. Girls of Riyadh is about four upper class university-aged women in Saudi Arabia, and their troubled love lives. One Goodreads reviewer was teaching English there at the time it was banned, and felt that her students were put off by the book because it rather accurately showcased their usually very private daily lives.

Besides enjoying the characters and caring about what happened to them, here's why I liked the book: I think in the west we're exposed to the most sensationalistic stories about Islam or the Middle East (kidnapping, female circumcision, stoning), and Girls of Riyadh provides us with a different piece of the tapestry--a more everyday one. To see what I mean, here's an excerpt from another Goodreads reviewer:

As an outsider, I've been judging them ["women of Islam and the Middle East"] based on my own values and culture, painting quite the unflattering picture in my head. To me these were mousy, dumb women who have neither the courage, nor the ambition to stand up for themselves. But I also refused to believe this was the entirety of it, I wanted to believe that there's some big piece of the puzzle that I was missing. ...the women Al Sanea describes are real and relate-able, making it difficult not go get wrapped up in their fates. I mean what woman hasn't suffered a broken heart? or dreamed of marrying her soul mate? or shared her deepest secrets with her friends? or hasn't been burdened with the expectations of society or family? These are just some of the things that I have in common with them; we're all just working within the confines of the world we were born into, doing the best we can with what we've been given.

I think if you're interested in another culture, the best thing you can do is set out to understand, rather than judge. Hopefully this book will help a few readers do that. And I would recommend it to teen readers as well.

Further Reading: The Yacoubian Building, another Arabic book about a bunch of people in Egypt. There was one main character I loved, who was very sweet. (Or see the movie!) Something I own but haven't read yet is Novel winner Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy--supposed to be excellent. And I also recommend Honeymoon is Purdah, though it's written by a non-Iranian (it's a travel journal by a Canadian.) It's interesting, funny, and the people the author meets are so warm and friendly to strangers--it made me think my husband is living in the wrong country.

COVERS

Though I like my red cover, I like the original one best--it reflects the internet setting of the book (which is written in the form of an email newsletter.)

Here's some others...