D-List: January 09

To be honest, I think I'm all 'listed out' after the mega end of the year best of list. Still it wouldn't do to mess with tradition, especially at the start of the year and some of you have been grumbling about my lack of posting AND I am otherwise uninspired and (still) sort of sick....so here is your regularly scheduled monthly d-list. And then after this I promise no more lists till the end of this month!

So without further ado:

Best Movie: I didn't see a whole lot so far so this will have to go to the Dark Knight. I'm not a big super-hero fan, nor do I like action movies so this is more by default than anything. BUT as super-hero, action movies go this was pretty good. Heath Ledger was good and some of the plot twists were fun. I don't buy that this has any thing deep to say about good and evil like a lot of people have said- I just think it was good old TP (time pass), as they say in India.

Best Book: A most wanted man- John le Carre. I'm a little late to the party but this was a really solid, well paced book with some great insights about immigration, the clash of cultures and liberalism, intelligence, terrorism and the post 9/11 culture of fear. Also Arvind Adiga's heart breaking story called The Elephant in the New Yorker which in my opinion was better than White Tiger (does he have a thing for animals in his titles??)

Best Article: Now here I have a lot of contenders. I really liked this article discussing the Bush legacy through his most famous pictures, I also liked Zadie Smith's great article on comedy in the New Yorker.

Blog of the month: This has been a great month for discovering cool blogs. My favorite is one I already link to- David Lebovitz's food blog- great writing about Paris, desserts and desserts in Paris, easy recipes and lovely pics

Discovery of the Month: 1. Grilled Cheese Sandwiches 2. How the heating in my apartment really works- and now I'm in T shirts 3. I'm anemic (No. 1 and No. 3 may be related to each other)

Best Moment: Probably the euphoria of the inauguration AND the birth of Violet's very coolly-named baby!

Worst Moment/ Challenge of the month: a smorgasboard of health problems and knowing I have to get over my fear of doctors :(

Well, that's that for the lists. Feb is going to be an exciting month for sure- tons of work, ISA in New York via my first time on amtrak (stay tuned for a NY diary) and the Oscars, more snow, probably more recession and yes, amidst all of this- a birthday!