Saturday, December 29, 2007
So what was your favorite list of 2007?
If you are reading this, you are online. I goofed this week and didn’t get my column in by deadline.
My excuse?
Christmas day was a holiday. My biological clock was thrown out of whack. I thought the next day was a Monday and I would have several days left to gather my thoughts and get them into byte form.
This is really not much of an excuse. I normally work on Sunday mornings just like the Monday through Friday grind. I don’t come in early on Saturdays simply because we don’t publish a Saturday paper.
In my defense, I had the germ of an idea for the column. I had even gathered some source material from the Web. I wanted to talk about lists. It seems like the end of the year is a great time for journalists (and others) to pause and come up with the top ten this and the top ten that. To take this to its ultimate conclusion we should have a top ten list of lists.
Anyway here are some of the lists that struck my fancy as the end of the year approached.
From Forbes.com comes the top PR blunders of 2007. At the top of their list is the FEMA press conference held without the press. This phony press conference was held in response to the California wildfires. Staff members posed as reporters and asked officials pre-determined questions. They later needed to hold a press conference to explain the phony press conference.
I just wonder where they got the idea to try such a stunt. I shudder to think.
On a more positive note, Time Magazine listed what it felt were the top commercials of the year. The David Letterman and Oprah Super Bowl ad took top honors. The pair had not been together for some 16 years. It was considered quite a coup to bring it off. I didn’t see the ad. I’ll take their word for it.
Consumer Reports gave its list of top cars for the year.
The Honda Fit in the $14,000 to $16,000 price range, was listed as the “best overall in a new class of fuel-efficient cars.” It got high marks for fuel efficiency and got top scores for reliability, crash protection and satisfaction. Let’s see how it sells.
Honda also took honors for the Civic, and the Accord. Toyota was not outdone. The Rav4, Highlander Hybrid, Sienna and Prius were winners in the Consumer Report book.
But how about some of the stinkers. There also was a list of cars with the least satisfaction. Many of the cars in this list were larger and less fuel efficient.
I’ll just list the top three of this ignoble list. The Chevrolet Uplander was the least satisfying of the cars considered. It was followed by the Saturn Relay and the Buick Terraza.. I’ll stop there. I’ll just observe that most of the cars in this list were from traditional American manufacturers.
Entertainment Weekly had a list of the best books of the year. In the fiction category, The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver led the way. Shakespeare’s Kitchen by Lore Segal was in second. I may have to check them out.
Okay how about the top ten books for Web workers in 2007. This list is led by Rule the Web: How to Do Anything and Everything on the Internet—Better, Faster, Easier by Mark Frauenfelder. This guide is from the co-founder of Boing Boing. If you haven’t heard of Boing Boing, google it.
The New York Times lists several top fiction books for the year. Remember these are different from Entertainment Weekly. The list includes Man Gone Down a first work by Michael Thomas about four days in a black writer’s life.
Then We Came To The End, another first novel, this time by Joshua Ferris, is described as an “acidly-funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle.” Sounds like a page-turner.
Another book on the Times list caught my eye. Called Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, it is about “an Oslo professional (who) hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.” Sounds like jumping into ice water after a sauna. The cure for loneliness is to become a hermit? I hope not.
Well, there are more lists like the one by the Literaryreview.co.uk which lists awards for bad sex in fiction—but I won’t go there.
Enough of lists, Happy New Year.
As always you can reach me at rpolk@chespub.com.
And, if I get behind after the New Year’s break, I just might turn this work in for next week’s column. I hope you won’t mind.
My excuse?
Christmas day was a holiday. My biological clock was thrown out of whack. I thought the next day was a Monday and I would have several days left to gather my thoughts and get them into byte form.
This is really not much of an excuse. I normally work on Sunday mornings just like the Monday through Friday grind. I don’t come in early on Saturdays simply because we don’t publish a Saturday paper.
In my defense, I had the germ of an idea for the column. I had even gathered some source material from the Web. I wanted to talk about lists. It seems like the end of the year is a great time for journalists (and others) to pause and come up with the top ten this and the top ten that. To take this to its ultimate conclusion we should have a top ten list of lists.
Anyway here are some of the lists that struck my fancy as the end of the year approached.
From Forbes.com comes the top PR blunders of 2007. At the top of their list is the FEMA press conference held without the press. This phony press conference was held in response to the California wildfires. Staff members posed as reporters and asked officials pre-determined questions. They later needed to hold a press conference to explain the phony press conference.
I just wonder where they got the idea to try such a stunt. I shudder to think.
On a more positive note, Time Magazine listed what it felt were the top commercials of the year. The David Letterman and Oprah Super Bowl ad took top honors. The pair had not been together for some 16 years. It was considered quite a coup to bring it off. I didn’t see the ad. I’ll take their word for it.
Consumer Reports gave its list of top cars for the year.
The Honda Fit in the $14,000 to $16,000 price range, was listed as the “best overall in a new class of fuel-efficient cars.” It got high marks for fuel efficiency and got top scores for reliability, crash protection and satisfaction. Let’s see how it sells.
Honda also took honors for the Civic, and the Accord. Toyota was not outdone. The Rav4, Highlander Hybrid, Sienna and Prius were winners in the Consumer Report book.
But how about some of the stinkers. There also was a list of cars with the least satisfaction. Many of the cars in this list were larger and less fuel efficient.
I’ll just list the top three of this ignoble list. The Chevrolet Uplander was the least satisfying of the cars considered. It was followed by the Saturn Relay and the Buick Terraza.. I’ll stop there. I’ll just observe that most of the cars in this list were from traditional American manufacturers.
Entertainment Weekly had a list of the best books of the year. In the fiction category, The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver led the way. Shakespeare’s Kitchen by Lore Segal was in second. I may have to check them out.
Okay how about the top ten books for Web workers in 2007. This list is led by Rule the Web: How to Do Anything and Everything on the Internet—Better, Faster, Easier by Mark Frauenfelder. This guide is from the co-founder of Boing Boing. If you haven’t heard of Boing Boing, google it.
The New York Times lists several top fiction books for the year. Remember these are different from Entertainment Weekly. The list includes Man Gone Down a first work by Michael Thomas about four days in a black writer’s life.
Then We Came To The End, another first novel, this time by Joshua Ferris, is described as an “acidly-funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle.” Sounds like a page-turner.
Another book on the Times list caught my eye. Called Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, it is about “an Oslo professional (who) hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.” Sounds like jumping into ice water after a sauna. The cure for loneliness is to become a hermit? I hope not.
Well, there are more lists like the one by the Literaryreview.co.uk which lists awards for bad sex in fiction—but I won’t go there.
Enough of lists, Happy New Year.
As always you can reach me at rpolk@chespub.com.
And, if I get behind after the New Year’s break, I just might turn this work in for next week’s column. I hope you won’t mind.
# posted by Richard Polk @ 3:14 PM 
