The Purpose and the Plan

Here it is the last day of December, 2012, and like so many people I am reflecting on how I spent my year--and how I want to spend the next one. Of course I have the typical goals--lose weight, be more adventurous, learn a new hobby (I have had a guitar sitting in the corner of my library for about three years now, and I still can't play a chord)--but I also wanted to do a better job this year thinking more critically and more carefully about one of the ways I spend so much of my time: consuming media. Ironically, I've chosen a media tool that is a little out of date to do so: the personal blog. But you know, sometimes I have more than a tweet's worth of thoughts to express, so this format seems to work.

I am not expecting to change the world with this blog, and it's for me more than anyone else, but I wanted to have a record of the books, movies, games, and other media (occasionally comics and TV shows, probably) that I spent my time with. More importantly I wanted a place to work out my thoughts, ratings, ideas, dissections  and commentary, even if just for myself. See, I consume a lot of media, but I retain far less than I would like to. I hope that by writing out and occasionally reviewing my reactions and interpretations they will "stick" a little more permanently--at least for the year. After that, maybe I'll make a book out of this or something. I hear Blurb does "blog to book" vanity publishings. That could be something. At any rate, I hope the process will make my media analysis a little more thoughtful and meaningful for myself.

So, my media goals for the year:

Video Games: I'll handle the most straightforward category first. I don't have as much time for games as I used to, especially when work heats up. So the goal this year is pretty basic.

• Beat five video games

Movies: My love of the old movies is still strong, but I sometimes lack the motivation to watch a movie from the 60s or 70s when I've got a shiny new blu-ray on my coffee table. So this year I'm looking to strike a balance between the old and the new.

• See at least 30 new releases
• See at least 30 new-to-me films from Sight and Sound's 250 Best Films List. (My personalized text version)

Books: My favorite category, perhaps. In years past I've tried to read a specific number of books (52). In 2012 I tried a pattern that was successful: fiction, non-fiction, classic, repeat. This year I'm going to try to hit a few specific long novels--the kinds I shy away from typically because I feel like I need to move on to something else. In between the long novels (which are in no particular order) I will spend time reading whatever I feel like until I'm ready to tackle a beast again. The six long novels I plan to read this year are

• Infinite Jest (1104 pages)
• Moby Dick (864 pages)
• The Fountainhead (752 pages) or Atlas Shrugged (1200 pages)--I can't remember which my wife wants me to read
• The Instructions (1026 pages)
• The Discovery of Heaven (736 pages)
• Anna Karenina (862 pages)
• Possible bonus novels if I have room for another long one: Don Quixote, Les Miserables, 2066, Cryptonomicon, IQ84, or whatever else strikes my fancy...

This is the goal that will be toughest, I think, and one where the blog will come in handy. While movies and games will probably mostly feature "reviews" that deal with the work as a whole, I imagine that my books posts will be a bit more of a commentary/work in progress as well.

So that's the plan. In between I can't promise I WON'T enter some posts/journal entries about my life, but for now the focus is on the media. We'll see where it goes from here.