The display is open 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. weekdays, at the University of Illinois Press, 1325 S. Oak St. in Champaign.  There will be a special reception with light refreshments on Friday, April 5, from 3:00-5:00 p.m.   All viewings, and the reception, are free and open to the public.

Featured in this year’s show are two covers designed for University of Illinois Press books: Sonic Persuasion: Reading Sound in the Recorded Age (author Greg Goodale) and From Jim Crow to Jay-Z: Race, Rap, and the Performance of Masculinity (author Miles White).

A high quality catalog shows each entry in full color with typographic, paper, printing, and binding information, along with designers’ and judges’ comments.  A limited number of catalog copies will be available for free.

Kathleen Anderson, Rights & Permissions/Awards Manager
Favorite Book: The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
Books I wish I had read in 2012: The Twelve by Justin Cronin and May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes
Favorite CDs: Transcendental Youth by the Mountain Goats, Celebration Rock by Japandroids
Favorite movies: Moonrise Kingdom, Safety Not Guaranteed, The Dark Knight Rises
Favorite TV Show: Girls
Best breakfast sandwich: http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Ham-Cheese-Egg-Lemon-Sandwich
Best website: http://animalstalkinginallcaps.tumblr.com/
Favorite Live Performance: Metric live at The Pageant in St. Louis

(see live Metric footage in the new video for ”Breathing Underwater”)

Margo Chaney, Exhibits Manager
Favorite Book:  The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer
Favorite CD:  Stephen Wade - Banjo Diary
Favorite Movie:  Lincoln
Favorite TV Show(s): it’s a 3-way tie for me— Call the Midwife, Parenthood, Scandal
Favorite Live Performance: Crosby, Stills, & Nash at Ravinia
Website:  don’t go to any one website everyday (apart from work)

Lisa Connery, Desktop Publisher/Coordinator
Favorite Book: Locke & Key (Graphic novel by Joe Hill)
Favorite CD: fun. Some Nights
Favorite Movie: Wreck It Ralph
Favorite TV Show: Game of Thrones, New Girl
Favorite live performance: Carnivale Debauche or Polkaholics @ Porkapalooza
Website I visit every day: cuteoverload.com, http://www.abominable.cc/ (weekly web comic)

Dawn Durante, Assistant Acquisitions Editor
Favorite Book: Veronica Roth – Insurgent (the second book in the Divergent Trilogy)Favorite CD: Gary Clark Jr. – Black and Blu
Favorite Movie: The Hunger Games
Favorite TV Show: The Mindy Project
Website I visit every day: weather.com (boring but true)

Heather Munson, Journals Production Editor
Favorite Book: Tell Everyone I Said Hi by Chad Simpson
Favorite CDs: From the Ground Up by John Fullbright, The Carpenter by the Avett Brothers
Favorite TV Shows: Call the Midwife, Parks and Recreation, Up All Night
Favorite live music performances: John Hiatt at the Castle Theater in Bloomington, Peter Cooper and Eric Brace at Sandwich Life House Concerts, Bottle Rockets at Sandwich Life House Concerts
Favorite web comic: Lunar Baboon

Joe Peeples, Catalog and Copywriting Coordinator
Favorite book: Walter Isaacson – Steve Jobs (actually from 2011; I’m always a year or two behind)
Favorite albums: Sleigh Bells – Reign of Terror
Favorite movies: Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Moonrise Kingdom, and The
Hobbit (which as of this writing hasn’t opened yet but of course it will be
awesome)
Favorite Ebertfest movie: Take Shelter — beautiful and deeply unsettling
Favorite TV shows: New Girl, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad
Favorite live performances: Metric at the Pageant in St. Louis; The Lemonheads at the Bijou in Knoxville, TN (playing It’s A Shame About Ray in its entirety, plus much more)
Favorite anticipated live performance that was cancelled because the guitarist broke his hand in a skateboarding accident, for crying out loud: Sleigh Bells at the Canopy Club, Pygmalion Festival
Website I visit every day: The A.V. Club
Favorite way to take an arrow in the knee: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Favorite donut: Glazed Old Fashioned at Carmella’s Creme Donuts in Champaign
Favorite cocktail: The Godfather at Big Grove Tavern (or, as I make it at home, The War-Time Consigliere)

Jim R. Proefrock, Desktop Publisher
Favorite Book: Chad Harbach – The Art of Fielding
Favorite Long-Playing Vinyl Record Album: Police Teeth – Awesomer than the Devil
Favorite Movie: Wreck It Ralph
Favorite TV Show: The Regular Show
Favorite Live Performance: Police Teeth – Hexagon Bar, Minneapolis
Website I Visit Every Day: Electrical Audio Forums

Willis Regier, Director
Favorite Book: I’ve spent much of the year reading through volumes in the Collected
Works of Erasmus, preferring (as many do) the volumes of his correspondence.  For a refreshing detour, I was steered to Lucius Shepherd’s A Handbook of American Prayer by Professor Jad Smith, a trusted source for recommendations for science fiction.  For graphic novels, nothing surpassed Chris Ware’s Building Stories. The title applies to a box and its assorted contents that a reader can build into a book, or not, as if it were both a construction and a demolition site.  Ware’s irony is like that.  As always, his drawings are meticulous.
Favorite CD:  Once again I’m debt to Michael Roux for his recommendations, including Marina and the Diamonds’ Electra Heart.  I replayed it more often than anything else I
bought this year.
Favorite Movie: Spielberg’s Lincoln.
Favorite TV Show:  Carol Baxter was astonished I hadn’t seen Big Bang Theory.  Now I know why.  Its characters are charming and funny and weird. Still, I again have to rank Justified #1, and will have to bow to friends’ recommendations next year and try Homeland.
Favorite live performance: Thanks to Carol, I saw The Book of Mormon at the Bank of America Theatre in Chicago.  I was surprised to see the the Church of Latter Day Saints had purchased multiple advertisements in the program.  That surprise deepened as the show proceeded, though surprise was submerged by admiration for the creative energy of the performance.  A great cast, great production, and superb satire.
Website I visit every day: Huffington Post, DailyKos, TalkingPointsMemo

Tad Ringo, Senior Editor
Favorite CD: California 37 – Train
Favorite Movies: Lincoln, Argo
Favorite TV Show: Elementary
Favorite live performance, sports: Game 3, NBA Playoffs, 2^nd round (May 17, 2012): Pacers 94, Heat 75
Best restaurant: Maury’s Tiny Cove, Cincinnati, OH
Best beach: Pass-A-Grille, St. Petersburg, FL

Michael Roux, Marketing Manager
Favorite Books: Kurt Andersen – True Believers (Every year I take home a handful of forthcoming books from Book Expo. True Believers was my favorite from this year’s crop. For some reason I picked up and then put back down Kevin Powers’s Yellow Birds, which has appeared on many end of the year best of lists. Oops.), John Taylor – In the Pleasure Groove: Love, Death, and Duran Duran (Admit it. You want to read about the making of the Hungry Like the Wolf video in Sri Lanka.)
Favorite CD: Electric Guest – Mondo (I first heard Electric Guest when the band performed on Jimmy Fallon.  The vocals had a Smokey Robinson vibe and I played that DVRd clip over and over.  Danger Mouse produced the album. Check out This Head I Hold.

Favorite Movie: Argo
Favorite TV Shows: Homeland, The Hunted
Favorite live performance: Buddy Mondlock at Music Folk in St. Louis - The older kid next door who used to play acoustic guitar in his front yard grew up to write songs with and for Janis Ian, Art Garfunkel, Garth Brooks, and others.  I hadn’t seen him for 30+ years.
Website I visit every day: Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, ProFootballTalk.com (during fantasy football season)

Vijay Shah, Assistant Acquisitions Editor
Favorite Book: Tom McCarthy-C
Favorite CD: The Head and the Heart-self titled album
Favorite Movie: A Separation
Favorite TV Show: The Big C, Enlightened
Favorite live performance: Impromptu jamboree by Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello at a peace rally in Chicago
Website I visit every day: Common Dreams/Glenn Greenwald

*****

Previous years’ Best Of lists: 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007.

Lisa Bayer, Marketing Director
Favorite Book: Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. I didn’t know how important it would be. A must-read.
Favorite Graphic Novel: Special Exits by Joyce Farmer. For the sandwich generation.
Favorite CD: The King is Dead by The Decemberists. You know it’s good when your 8-year-old knows every song and learned none on Nick.
Favorite Movie: The Tree of Life by Terence Malick. By sheer accident, the screening I attended at the Art Theatre included an intro by the UI team from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, who contributed two amazing scientific visualization sequences. Also: I like dinosaurs.
Favorite TV Show: Downton Abbey, Hell on Wheels, Mad Men, Colbert
Favorite live performance: tie: The Decemberists, The Pageant Theatre; and the still marvelous Matthew Sweet, Blueberry Hill

Leslie DeLucia, Database Administrator
Favorite Book: Stieg Larsson  - “The Girl Who….” trilogy
Favorite CDs: Adele – 21; Lupe Fiasco – Lasers
Favorite Movie: The Help
Favorite TV Shows: Sons of Anarchy, Parenthood
Favorite live performance: Lupe Fiasco, Assembly Hall

Dawn Durante, Assistant Acquisitions Editor
Favorite Book: The Magician King by Lev Grossman
Favorite Translation: The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky
Favorite Albums: Adele’s 21 and Raphael Saadiq’s Stone Rollin’
Favorite Movie: Cowboys & Aliens
Favorite New TV Show: New Girl
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.: Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick in Scottsdale, AZ (all attendees were told to wear sombreros in an effort to break the Guinness World Record for most sombreros in one place).

Rohn Koester, Journals Production Editor
Book: Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Documentary: Charles Ferguson, Inside Job
Performance: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Choir, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
TED Talk: Malcolm Gladwell, The Strange Tale of the Norden Bombsight
Museum: 21st C. in Louisville, Kentucky

Kathleen Kornell, Awards Manager & Rights and Permissions Manager
Favorite Book: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Favorite CD: It’s a tie! All Eternals Deck by The Mountain Goats and Wild Flag by Wild Flag
Favorite Movies: The Tree of Life, Super 8
Favorite TV Shows: Revenge, American Horror Story
Favorite live performances: The Mountain Goats at The Vic Theatre, God of Carnage at The Station Theatre
Favorite Food: the duck fat fries at Hot Doug’s

Danny Nasset, Acquisitions Editor
Favorite CD: War on Drugs – Slave Ambient
Favorite Movie: Hugo
Favorite TV Show Discovered Too Late to Watch in Its First Run: Mad Men (thanks Netflix)
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.: Pacifica Quartet

Joe Peeples, Catalog & Copywriter Coordinator
Favorite Book: I didn’t read anything published in 2011, but I read last year’s Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, and I got halfway through David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest this year, a new record for me (third attempt).  I still have a few days left in 2011 to finish it!Favorite CDs: Dum Dum Girls – Only In Dreams, Death Cab for Cutie – Codes And Keys, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong
Favorite comedy CD that’s also a great rap CD: The Lonely Island – Turtleneck & Chain
Favorite Movies: Beginners, Super 8, and the Ebertfest showing of I Am Love, featuring a post-movie panel with the always lovely Tilda Swinton
Favorite returning TV Shows: Parks & Recreation, Louie
Favorite new TV Show: Happy Endings
Favorite musical live performance:  Dum Dum Girls at the Empty Bottle, Chicago
Favorite theater live performance:  QED at the Krannert Center for Performing Arts

Willis Regier, Director
Favorite Book, fiction:  Francis Spofford, RED PLENTY (Graywolf Press)  The last decades of the Soviet Union as seen through characters who believed for most of that time that they were on the brink proving that a planned economy could out-perform its capitalist rivals.  It has fascinating chapters on Soviet science and the beginnings of soviet computerization, with plenty of attention to internal politics and social stresses.
Favorite book, non-fiction:  Marjorie Garber, THE USE AND ABUSE OF LITERATURE (Pantheon) A smart and engaging defense of poetry and fiction, and of several methods for studying it.
Favorite CD:  ADELE 21 (Columbia) released in February, this CD held off challenges from all comers.  Very impressive song writing in several genres, with a delivery that is convincing no matter what emotion is driving.  2nd Place:  Rachael Yamagata’s CHESAPEAKE.
Favorite Movie:  CONTAGION.  This was a very pleasant surprise.  Unlike the flood of movies that use stars to convert a public calamity into a private drama, this movie used its impressive cast to explain how a new epidemic would actually be combatted by national and international agencies, which depended on the heroism of many people.  As a result, what might have been a cliché-ridden disappointing thriller was instead a depiction of what steps would be taken to combat a worldwide epidemic.  2nd place: RISE OF PLANET OF THE APES.  Excellent special effects with an ape hero who steals the show from James Franco.
Favorite TV Show:  JUSTIFIED (FX) Timothy Oliphant finally gets to act, and he does superbly as a U.S. Marshall, opposite the cunning villain, Boyd Crowder (played perfectly by Walton Goggins), in hill country where the best way to make a living is to break the law.  Each season has a well plotted narrative arc with plenty of unexpected mayhem in between.
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.:  Valerie Hotchkiss’s lecture on the history of the English Bible at the University Library’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection.

Will Ridenour, Programmer
Favorite Book: Special Exits, Joyce Farmer’s unblinking graphic novel, a memoir of her parents in their final years.
Favorite Album: The Guilt and the Ambiguity (Johnny Ridenour). What I’ve heard so far of my son’s unfinished opus is richer and braver than anything else I’ve heard this year. OK, I’m prejudiced, but this is going to be a good album.
Favorite Movie(s): Another Year (Mike Leigh, dir), The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet, dir), Hugo (Martin Scorsese).

Michael Roux, Publicity Manager
Favorite CD: Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow
Favorite Hit Song on the Radio while Driving My Kids Somewhere: Wiz Khalifa – Black & Yellow
Favorite Movie: Source Code
Favorite TV Show: Homeland
Favorite TV Show Discovered Too Late to Watch in Its First Run: Veronica Mars

Lisa Savage, Journals Production Editor
Favorite Books: Jeffrey Eugenidies – The Marriage Plot; Roger Ebert – Life Itself: A Memoir
Favorite CD: The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
Favorite Movies: Bridesmaids; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Favorite nostalgia trip: The Muppets
Favorite TV Show: Parks & Recreation
Favorite quote from Parks & Rec
Favorite live performances, theater/music/comedy/etc.: Wild Flag at the High Dive; Matthew Sweet at Blueberry Hill
Favorite restaurants that are new to me: Girl & the Goat, Chicago; Ranoush, St. Louis
Favorite encased meats emporium and sausage store: Hot Doug’s

Vijay Shah, Assistant Acquisitions Editor
Favorite Book: Dinaw Mengestu-How to Read the Air
Favorite CD: The Roots—Undun
Favorite Movie: Even the Rain
Favorite TV Show: Hung
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.: No Place Like Home, play about Iraqi refugees on campus

Here are the previous years’ lists: 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.

Best Book: John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society & Other Writings, 1952-1967, Library of America. 
I read Galbraith’s The New Industrial State when everybody was reading it and forgot most of it.  The Library of America’s new volume of Galbraith’s writings were just what I needed after the November 2010 election, addressing as they do the common economic assumptions of American business and American voters, why the different parties differ on some basic notions and share many more, and why politicians can successfully persist in reviving economic ideas that were discredited by the Great Depression.  Included in the volume are three books I had never read:  American Capitalism, The Great Crash, 1929, and The Affluent Society, as well as The New Industrial State.  All four were as good as new to my aching eyes, and all four kept those eyes open late into the night.

All four clearly explain economic theory and history, asserting at key points the necessity of matching ideas and experience.  Common themes run through the books, two of which gathered urgency as the years went by:  the absurdity of laissez faire economics (if left alone, the market solves all problems) and the dire consequences of increasing income disparity. For Galbraith, economics is all about power relations and conflicts.  In his view, economists should not presume to define immutable laws or inevitable cycles, and citizens should beware economists’ predictions.  He skewered the Ivy League experts who, at the advent of the Great Depression, assured the public that all was well.  Galbraith considered the Civil War and the Great Depression to be the two defining events in the history of the Republic.  He made the latter his special study in The Great Crash, 1929 (1955; revised 1972), a book that resonates profoundly in our current economic slump. 

All four books are beautifully written.  “Conventional wisdom,” a phrase he coined and defined in The Affluent Society, has become part of the daily discourse.   Galbraith had an uncanny ability to sustain a high tone without shrillness, possessed the gift of metaphor and a knack for aphorism, and handled irony with masterful restraint, a skill that reached its peak in The Affluent Society (1958, revised 1969).   It is my favorite of the four.

The longest and most demanding book of the quartet is The New Industrial State (1967; revised in 1971 and again in 1978; Galbraith learned from his critics).  He called The Affluent Society “a window” to the house that is The New Industrial State.  The latter is his single greatest attempt to survey the entire American economy at the time of its writing.  Its key argument is that the largest corporations no longer serve the market:  they determine what the market will be.  They don’t anticipate or respond to customers’ wants and needs, they create and control them.

A few samples of Galbraith: anyone looking for a monopoly in the modern oligopolistic economy is searching “for poison ivy in a field of poison oak” (52).  “Always when markets are in trouble, the phrases are the same: `The economic situation is fundamentally sound’ or simply ‘the fundamentals are good.’  All who hear those words should know that something is wrong” (183).   “To proclaim the need for new ideas has served, in some measure, as a substitute for them” (361).  “Whatever the faults of economics as a field of scholarship, it cannot be criticized for failing to foster scholarly self-confidence and ego” (615).

Also seriously considered for this year’s “Best Book” were Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Wind Up Girl (Night Shade Books) and Lynn Ward’s Six Novels in Woodcuts (Library of America).  Best book read in 2010 that was previously published was Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007), recommended to me by Tim Newcomb.

Best CD: Joanna Newsom, Have One on Me, Drag City.
Michael Roux recommended Newsom’s three-CD set to me and a week later I was buying copies for friends.  Michael, I owe you big for this.  I’ll let him enumerate the CDs’ appeals.  Other 2010 CDs that got plenty of rotation were Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, The National’s High Violet, and Neil Young’s Le Noise.

I began the year playing an array of Scriabin, but those CDs were recorded earlier and were already favorites.  Finding attractive new releases of classical music remains of a challenge, one best answered by the Naxos and CPO labels.  In 2010 CPO released symphonies by the 20th-century Dutch composer Henk Badings, previously unknown to me.  He was prolific, and I’ll try more.

Not released in 2010 but the best album I had not heard till then (thanks Michael, for this, too) was Crowded House’s Recurring Dream (1996), closely followed by Imogen Heap’s Ellipse (2009), Stars’ Set Yourself on Fire (2005), Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest (2009) and Yellow House (2006), Bat For Lashes’ Two Suns (2009), and The National’s Boxer (2007).  Biggest disappointment of 2010 was Sheryl Crow’s 100 Miles from Memphis.

Best Movie: Inception, Warner Brothers. 
The University of Illinois Cinema Censorship Committee attended a dozen or more movies in 2010, but never in more force or with more discussion afterward than with Inception.  Dream sequences are movies’ catch-all solutions to any number of plot problems, but Inception defies the convention by making the most of it, adding only two peculiar conditions:  that dreams can be shared and their scenes can be designed.  The movie has given the word “architect” a new meaning.  The pace, acting, dialogue, framing, and of course, the scenery made Inception a feast for the eyes.
 
It had a bonus:  I approve any movie in which Leo DiCaprio gets killed (Blood Diamond, The Departed, even Titanic) and Inception satisfied that criterion, too.

Best TV Series:  Terriers, FX.
I liked the first season of Justified, was disappointed with the all too formulaic new episodes in Burn Notice, continue to think Dexter is the best thing Showtime has ever done (and hope that Julia Stiles returns), marvel at how the leads in Weeds find new ways to sink ever more deeply into trouble, and watched Spartacus because Lucy Lawless was in it, but give the nod to the best of 2010 to Terriers.  Like my other favorites, it attracts me because the dialogue is sharp, the characters are distinctive, the plots have intersecting arcs, and the production values are high.  What set Terriers above the rest may be mere novelty, but at this moment I think its signal virtues are in its long-range plotting and complex ethics.  Its heroes drive a ratty old truck through the storylines with the speed and twists of a grand prix.  Their grubby nobility makes them unique and endearing and made me look forward to Wednesday evenings.  But no more: Paul Arroyo informed me that FX has canceled the show.  Tad Ringo says it figures:  FX canceled Firefly, too.

Best Live Performance: Wagner, Das Rheingold, Metropolitan Opera. 
Not exactly live, but broadcast live to the Savoy Theatre.   Went with Wagner experts Katherine Syer and Bill Kinderman and enjoyed the company of two Rhine maidens, Anna and Marie, my god-daughters, who paid close attention to every scene and every note, even when Marie dropped one her tiny toy penguins.  Katherine was excited about the new production by Robert Lepage which was so impressive it restored the term “Wagnerian” to grandeur for several hours.

Barbara Evans, Assistant Production Manager 
Favorite Book: Dennis Lehane: Moonlight Mile (mostly ’cause it’s the one I’m reading now); anything by Ken Bruen
Favorite CD: Casals playing the Bach Cello Suites 
Favorite TV Show: Nova; House; haven’t seen Dexter but loved all the books
Favorite live performance: all concerts by the Pacifica Quartet; Paul Asaro playing stride piano at the Blind Pig and Iron Post; The Music of Django Reinhardt at the Iron Post; A Steady Rain at the Station Theatre

Clydette Wantland, Journals Manager
Favorite Book:  Christmas in Illinois (really!)
Favorite CD(s):  Lady Antebellum & Sugarland
Favorite Movie:  It’s Complicated
Favorite TV Show:  Modern Family
Favorite live performance:  Lisa Williams

Heather Munson, Journals Production Editor
Fiction: Amy Greene–Bloodroot, Brady Udall–The Lonely Polygamist
Non-fiction: Selina Hastings–The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography
Live music event: The Sandwich Life 2010 concert series (David Olney and Sergio Webb, Kristi Rose and Fats Kaplin, Peter Case, Jason Ringenberg)
CDs: Los Lobos–Tin Can Trust, Alejandro Escovedo–Street Songs of Love, Ray Wylie Hubbard–A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There is No C), Patty Griffin–Downtown Church
Heirloom tomato: Red Velvet
Garden vegetable of the year: Red Russian Kale

Lisa Savage, Journals Production Editor
Favorite Fiction Book: David Nicholls — One Day
Favorite Nonfiction Book: Rebecca Skloot – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Favorite Worst Book Title: Decision Points
Favorite CD: Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
Favorite Movies: Inception, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (pt. 1)
Favorite TV Show: Mad Men
Favorite (new) TV Shows: Raising Hope, Top Chef All-Stars, Conan
Favorite live performance: Kathy Griffin, US Cellular Coliseum, Bloomington, IL
Favorite man: Jon Hamm
Favorite drink: Hot Screamer

Tamara Shidlauski, Production Coordinator
Favorite Book: The City & the City by China Mieville
Favorite Single (who buys CDs anymore?): Love Will Tear Us Apart by Evelyn & Evelyn (if you think this song couldn’t be any more sad than the original by Joy Division, take a listen to this version); Best Napkin I Ever Had by Black Lips (these guys are totally wacky, I bet their concerts are great)
Favorite Movie: Inception; The Secret in Their Eyes (thanks Art Theatre!)
Favorite Diner in Spokane, WA: Frank’s Diner (Why I never went to this place when I lived out that way is astonishing! Thanks for making me walk so far and through construction to get there, Kathleen!)
Favorite TV Show: Fringe, The Vampire Diaries, The Good Guys (now cancelled, *sob*)
Favorite Drink: Hot Screamer
Favorite live performance: Parkland College’s Battle of the Bands, especially the winner Sun Stereo. And So Many Dynamos afterward.

Kathleen Kornell, Rights & Permissions/Awards Manager
Favorite Book: Mary Roach — Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
Favorite CDs: Cap’n Jazz — Analphabetapolothology (new to me in 2010); Ted Leo & The Pharmacists — Brutalist Bricks; The National — High Violet
Favorite Movies — Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and Inception
Favorite TV Shows: Raising Hope and The Walking Dead
Favorite TV Episode: Psych‘s homage to Twin Peaks
Favorite Live Performances: The National at The Pageant in St. Louis, Deke Weaver’s Elephant at the Stock Pavilion in Urbana
Favorite Drink of 2010: The Hot Screamer
Favorite City: Wallace, Idaho (it’s the center of the universe!)

Joseph Peeples, Catalog and Copywriting Coordinator
Favorite Book: Herman Melville – Moby-Dick — I learned a lot about whales.
Favorite CD: The National – High Violet
Favorite Movie: Inception; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; You, The Living at Ebertfest
Favorite TV show: Mad Men, as usual; 30 Rock’s return to greatness
Favorite live performance: The National at the Pageant in St. Louis; Pink Martini at Grant Park in Chicago; Paramore at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas

Will Ridenour, Programmer, Electronic Publishing
Favorite Book: I liked C by Tom McCarthy and How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu (both 2010), but I liked Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses (2007) a lot more.
Favorite Movie:  Winter’s Bone and The Last Station in a near dead heat for entirely different reasons
Favorite CD: Various artists, Slack Key Guitar Volume 1 & 2; Aly Bain and Ale Moller, Beyond the Stacks; and Sharon Isbin, Journey to the New World, are sharing top spots on the IPOD
Favorite TV Show: Merle Haggard: Learning to Live With Myself (PBS, American Masters), Slings and Arrows (Canadian TV series)
Favorite live performance: Celebration Company at the Station Theatre, Picasso at the Lapin Agile

Vijay Shah, Assistant Acquisitions Editor
Favorite Book: 2666-Roberto Bolaño
Favorite CD: The Black Keys—Brothers
Favorite Movie: The Search
Favorite TV Show: Bored to Death
Favorite live performance:  Dedicated To Emmett Till at the Armory Free Theater, Santah’s in-store performance downtown

Lisa Bayer, Marketing Director
Favorite Book: James Scudamore — Heliopolis (2009) and, of course, the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy
Favorite CD: Jónsi — Go
Favorite Movie: Winter’s Bone; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Favorite TV Shows: The Good Wife, Mad Men, Sherlock, Storage Wars, Wallander
Favorite live performance: John Mellencamp, No Better Than This tour, November 6, Fabulous Fox Theater, St. Louis. JM is a sentimental favorite. I saw him twice at arena shows as a youngster in the 80s. His new T. Bone-Burnett-produced Americana album allowed me and my closest friend of +40 years to take our 7-year-old daughters to their first show (and get their first concert t-shirts) in a gorgeous venue.

Matthew Smith, Design Manager
Favorite Book(s):
1. The Return of Religion and Other Myths (Basis Voor Actuele Kunst) 2. Karel Martens, Printed Matter (third edition, Hyphen Press) —”There are so many ways to exploit a limitation.”
Favorite CD, LP, Cassette, or MP3 Album(s): 1. Oneohtrix Point Never, Returnal (Mego Editions) —youtube channel: sunsetcorp 2. Emeralds, Does It Look Like I’m Here? (Mego Editions) —youtube channel: lifephaser 3. Le Révélateur, Motion Flares (Root Strata) —video collaboration with Sabrina Ratté on UbuWeb
Favorite Live Performance: Emeralds at the Viaduct Theater in Chicago, August 21
Favorite Movie(s):
1. Double Take, directed by Johan Grimonprez (Europe 2009; USA 2010) —”If you meet your double, you should kill him” (Borges).
2. The Eclipse, directed by Conor McPherson (festivals 2009; theaters 2010) —”Cinema + psychoanalysis = the science of ghosts” (Derrida).
Favorite Exhibition(s):
1. Everything I Tell You Now Is True: The Short Films of Emily Wardill, at the Siskel Film Center in Chicago 2. Dexter Sinister: The Plastic Arts, at Gallery 400 (the University of Illinois at Chicago) 3. Liam Gillick: Three Perspectives and a Short Scenario, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Rohn Koester, Journals Production Editor
Favorite Book: Terry Eagleton — Reason, Faith, and Revolution
Favorite Movie: Laurent Cantet — The Class
Favorite Music: Sufjan Stevens — All Delighted People and The Age of Adz
Favorite Local Performances: The Velvet Rut (Station Theatre) and Elephant (UIUC Stock Pavilion)
Favorite Podcasts: Radiolab, Democracy Now, Black Agenda Report
Favorite TED Talks: Hanna Rosin, The LXD, Rachel Sussman, Aditi Shankardass

Michael Roux, Publicity Manager
Favorite Book: Jonathan Tropper — This is Where I Leave You (2009)
Favorite CD: 1. Joanna Newsom — Have One on Me, 2. Midlake – The Courage of Others
I confess, Joanna Newsom taps straight into a Lionheart-era Kate Bush nerve that has slowly withered as Kate now takes up to ten years between recordings. AK-momo helped me through the early part of the decade.  Joanna, how about a 4-cd set next time?

Favorite Movie: Never Let Me Go
Favorite TV Show: Rubicon, NFL Red Zone, 30 Rock, Modern Family, The Good Wife

It’s been 60+ degrees this week so I haven’t been thinking much about the upcoming holidays.  However, my favorite post every year is the Press’ end-of-the-year collection of staff favorites.  Spoiler alert: Joanna Newsom remains #1 on my favorite CD list.

Colleagues, begin compiling your lists.  Until the results are posted, enjoy perusing my iTunes easy listening mix. Wow, that is one collection of uncool. But, listen to a Bee Gees song (above) which I bet you’ve never heard.

Richard Harris - MacArthur Park
Glen Campbell - Highway Man
Roger Nichols & The Small Circle Of Friends - Don’t Take Your Time
Bee Gees - Kilburn Towers
Bread - Make It With You
The Carpenters - This Masquerade
The Carpenters - Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft
Dionne Warwick - Do You Know The Way To San Jose
Seals & Crofts - East Of Ginger Trees
Seals & Crofts - Summer Breeze
The Mamas & The Papas - Got A Feelin’
Al Stewart - On The Border (Live)
Al Stewart - Year Of The Cat
America - A Horse With No Name
America - Ventura Highway
Crosby, Stills & Nash - Shadow Captain
Crosby, Stills & Nash - Cathedral
Crosby, Stills & Nash - Fair Game
Neil Young - Old Man
Steely Dan - Rikki Don’t Lose That Number
Supertramp - The Logical Song
Supertramp - Breakfast In America
Clifford T.Ward - Wherewithall
Glen Campbell - By the Time I Get to Phoenix
Klaatu - Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft
Glen Campbell - Wichita Lineman

Tamara Shidlauski, Production Coordinator
Favorite Book: The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (if you liked season 5 of Lost, you’ll like this book)
Favorite Singles: “Return of White Rabbit” – Ash, “Gold Guns Girls” – Metric, “New Bones” – So Many Dynamos
Favorite Movie: District 9
Favorite TV Shows: Fringe, Dollhouse, Supernatural, Lost
Favorite Board Game to Play with the Gang: Apples to Apples
Favorite Mexican Restaurant on Springfield: Mas Amigos

Lisa Savage, Journals Production Editor
Favorite Book: Dave Eggers, Zeitoun; Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City
Favorite CD: 500 Days of Summer soundtrack
Favorite Movie: Up (because I haven’t seen An Education, A Serious Man, or Up in the Air)
Favorite TV Show: Top Chef, 30 Rock, The Office, Community, Mad Men, The Daily Show
Favorite TV Show that will end as of 2009: Flight of the Conchords (sob!)
Favorite quote from this season of The Office: “‘R’ is among the most menacing of sounds. That’s why they call it murder, not muckduck.”
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.: Kathy Griffin at The Chicago Theater; Flight of the Conchords at The Fox Theater; Neko Case at The Canopy Club.
Favorite reason to never watch golf again: Oh wait, I don’t need a reason!

Heather Munson, Journals Production Editor
Favorite Fiction Books: Kathryn Stockett, The Help; Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs
Favorite Nonfiction Book: Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
Favorite CDs: Neko Case, Middle Cyclone; Gary Louris and Mark Olson, Ready for the Flood; Wilco, Wilco (The Album)
Favorite TV Show: Mad Men
Favorite live performances: Justin Townes Earle @ Rose Bowl, Urbana; Kristi Rose and Fats Kaplin at Ernie & Cynthia’s house

Will Ridenour, Programmer
Favorite Book: Robert Wright — The Moral Animal (I’m about 15 years behind on my reading)
Favorite CD: Holly Williams: The Ones We Never Knew, Marianne Faithful: Easy Come, Easy Go
Favorite Movie: The Hurt Locker, Goodbye Solo, and Up
Favorite TV Show: American Masters: Dalton Trumbo, Ken Burns’ The National Parks, Daily Show, Colbert Report
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.:  Station Theatre: The Cripple of Innishman

Vijay Shah, Assistant Acquisitions Editor
Favorite Book: Aleksandar Hemon – Love and Obstacles
Favorite CD: Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
Favorite Movie: Goodbye Solo
Favorite TV Show: In Treatment
Favorite live performance: Fela!

Tad Ringo, Associate Editor
Favorite Book: Mitch Albom – Have a Little Faith
Favorite CD: Trans-Siberian Orchestra – Night Castle
Favorite Movie: Avatar
Favorite TV Show: Burn Notice

Angela Burton, Assistant Managing Editor
Favorite Book: Diane Setterfield – The Thirteenth Tale (last year’s suggestion from Tamara); Martha Cooley – The Archivist (old, I know, but I read it in 2009)
Favorite CD: Regina Spektor – Far; Sonic Youth – The Eternal (nice to hear their discordant music again)
Favorite Movie: A Christmas Tale; The Watchmen (I know a lot people hated it, but I loved the look of it, the skewed history, the fact that the filmmakers added Lee Iacocca to the movie and didn’t even try to explain who he was to the young demographic, and Jackie Earle Haley’s wonderful performance.)
Favorite TV Show: The Daily Show; Dexter; The Big Bang Theory
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.: The Pose or Play Reunion at the High Dive, Champaign, IL
My favorite new media-related thing this year: Netflix streaming on XBox 360. Netflix added thousands of foreign and independent films to their instant streaming service, and the quality of the download is now as good as DVD. Sunday is now my official foreign film night.

Lisa Bayer, Marketing Director
Favorite Book: Julia Child and Alex Prud’Homme – My Life in France (memoir); Elizabeth Strout – Olive Kitteridge (fiction)
Favorite CD: Sid ‘n Susie (Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs) – Under the Covers, vol. 2
Favorite Single: Electric Feel, MGMT
Favorite Movie: Fantastic Mr. Fox
Favorite TV Show: The Good Wife, Mad Men, Modern Family
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.: Portland Cello Project, Canopy Club
Favorite online resources: reddit.com; nodepression.com
Favorite blogger: dooce.com
Favorite serious magazine: Virginia Quarterly Review

Leslie DeLucia, Database Administrator
Favorite book: To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis
Favorite CD: Heavier Things, John Mayer, especially “Clarity”
Favorite movie: An Education
Favorite TV shows: Sons of Anarchy, Glee, Dexter, Fringe, Hell’s Kitchen, Legend of the Seeker, Bones
Favorite Live Performance: Diana Krall, Ravinia, Chicago

Denise Peeler, Direct Marketing & Advertising Manager
Favorite Book: The Retrieval Artist novels by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (published over the past 9 years)
Favorite Movie: Star Trek
Favorite TV: Better Off Ted

Jennifer Reichlin, Editorial, Design, and Production Manager
Favorite movie: Zombieland (so many funny touches)
Favorite YA book: Impossible by Nancy Werlin
Most entertaining Christmas read: Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
Favorite YA book series: Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan (final volume published in 2009)
Favorite live performances: Mary Poppins at Broadway in Chicago; Doc Watson with Richard Watson and David Holt at the Coronado Performing Arts Center in Rockford
Favorite local event: Monthly performances by the Prairie Dogs at the Iron Post
Favorite TV show: Glee

Cope Cumpston, Art Director
Favorite book:  Savvy by Ingrid Law – young adult, recommended by Deborah Stevenson of Center for Children’s Books. Zany and wonderful story of a girl turning 13 and getting her “savvy.”
Favorite CD: Regina Spektor / Far
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.: The Truth about Injustice Always Sounds OutRageous, House Theater in Urbana
(tv, don’t watch it, movies, took the year off)

Roberta Sparenberg, Sales and Publicity Assistant
Favorite Book:  Dewey:  The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World (by Vicky Myron and Bret Witter)
Favorite CD: On Fire, David Syme, Piano (still is)
Favorite Movie:  Blind Side
Favorite TV Show:  Monk, Pysch, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, White Collar
Favorite Live Performance:  David Syme in Concert with the Champaign-Urbana Symphony

Rohn Koester, Journals Production Editor
Favorite music: The Welcome Wagon-Welcome to the Welcome Wagon, Dirty Projectors-Bitte Orca
Favorite movies: Joel and Ethan Coen-A Serious Man, Benson Lee-Planet B-Boy
Favorite books: Idan Ben-Barak-The Invisible Kingdom, Geoff Manaugh-The BLDGBlog Book
Favorite talks: Margaret Visser-The Gift of Thanks, Ben Dunlap-The Story of a Passionate Life
Favorite performance: Everything at the Station Theatre (but esp. Love Song)

Michael Roux, Publicity Manager
Favorite Book: Nick Hornby-Juliet, Naked (plus, a few years late, Dennis Lehane-Shutter Island)
Favorite CD: Bert Jansch-L.A. Turnaround reissue, Wild Beasts-Two Dancers
Favorite Movie: An Education
Favorite TV Show: Daily Show, Colbert Report, Modern Family, 30 Rock, 24, The Good Wife, Mad Men, Burn Notice, The Unit in syndication

New Order
Art of Noise
Jose Gonzalez
Big Star
Al Stewart
Bright Eyes
Bottle Rockets
Fingerprince
Random Hold
General Public
Bloc Party
Husker Du
Hum
Honcho Overload
Luna
Wilco
Indigo Girls
Throwing Muses
Joan Jett
Alison Krauss & Union Station
Elastica
Beth Orton
Damien Rice
Gogol Bordello
Robert Randolph
Go-Gos
20/20
Glenn Tilbrook
Starship
Alvin Lee
Dio
Ron Sexsmith
Didjits
Low
Midnight Oil
‘Til Tuesday
INXS
Liz Phair
Teenage Fanclub
Echo & the Bunnymen
Kiss
Todd Rundgren
Chameleons
Rod Stewart
Molly Hatchett
Sammy Hagar
City Boy
Starsailor
Blackfoot
Off Broadway
Stiv Bators
Procol Harum

LA Times posted a list yesterday titled The 46 Essential Rock Reads. No UIP titles are included but maybe one of these will enter the canon in the next few years.

And, All Songs Considered issued the challenge to list, off the top of your head, 50 Bands You’ve Seen.

Here’s my 5-minute contribution:

AC/DC
Scorpions
Police
XTC
Jam

Simple Minds
Teardrop Explodes
TV 21
Golden Earring
UK
UFO
Pat Travers
Guns n Roses
Tool
Eagles
Psychedelic Furs
Culture Club
Jane’s Addiction
Ministry
OMD
Blancmange
English Beat
REM
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Kinks
Peter Gabriel
10,000 Maniacs
Billy Bragg
Michelle Shocked
Dolly Parton
Elton John
Bell Biv Devoe
Vanilla Ice
MC Hammer
Black Crowes
Stranglers
B52s
Bon Iver
Flaming Lips
Hellacopters
Soundtrack of Our Lives
Bettie Serveert
Sunny Day Real Estate
Heart
Def Leppard
Prince
Bangles
Let’s Active
Bert Jansch
Rush
Ted Nugent
Arcade Fire
Elvis Costello
Iggy Pop
Big Audio Dynamite
999