It was back to the grind for me this morning. Fortunately, it hasn’t been too grindy as of yet; everyone around my office seems to be taking their own sweet time to start up the assembly line again, which is fine by me. It’s a funny thing — even though it’s been years since I last worked at the movie theater, whenever I have an extended period of time off my body clock always seems to revert to the hours I used to keep as a projectionist. This means that during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, I started staying up until 2 AM and sleeping until 10. Which means that I only managed about four-and-a-half hours of sleep last night, and I’m probably not going to be much good as a proofreader today.

Slow workday or not, I am rather bummed that my holiday vacation is already over. I had a lot of things I wanted to accomplish during that time, and I only managed to do about five percent of them. C’est la vie, I suppose, but it’s frustrating to look back on some eleven days of free time — the most precious commodity our overscheduled society currently enjoys — and not have much to show for it. At least I managed to finish Stephen King’s gargantuan magnum opus, The Dark Tower series, which, as I now recall, was one of my goals for the year.

That’s not a terribly good segueway into my annual recap of the previous year’s media consumption, but it’s the best I’m probably going to manage today. As I said, I’m running on only about four-and-a-half hours of sleep…

Looking at last year’s media lists, I am amused to note that I saw exactly the same number of movies in a theater — 31 — as I did in 2004. Apparently my theater-going habits are pretty consistent. My home viewing of previously unseen movies was down slightly — only 23 titles this year instead of 25, probably because I was busily watching so many old TV shows on DVD — but my reading was up somewhat. Last year, I read only six novels and seven non-fiction books; this year I bumped fiction up to 13 titles and non-fiction to nine, for a grand total of 22 books read last year. Yay, me!
I’m sure the suspense is killing you, so without further ado, here are the lists for 2005:

Movies Seen in 2005

1. The Aviator
2. The Phantom of the Opera
3. Finding Neverland
4. In Good Company
5. Sideways
6. Million Dollar Baby
7. Constantine
8. Be Cool
9. Robots
10. Sin City
11. Hitch
12. Sahara
13. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
14. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
15. The Interpreter
16. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
17. Batman Begins
18. Land of the Dead
19. Man with the Screaming Brain
20. War of the Worlds
21. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
22. Fantastic Four
23. Wedding Crashers
24. Lord of War
25. Corpse Bride
26. Serenity
27. Good Night, and Good Luck
28. Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon in 3-D (IMAX documentary)
29. Shopgirl
30. The Ice Harvest
31. King Kong

Videos Seen in 2005

1. In America
2. The Girl Next Door
3. The Petrified Forest
4. The Public Enemy
5. White Heat
6. The Door in the Floor
7. The Jackie Robinson Story
8. Freaky Friday (1975 version)
9. Fat Albert
10. Sleepover
    [Ed. note: in case you’re wondering about the last three titles, no, Bennion did not lose his mind at the video store; I watched these, ahem, uncharacteristic flicks one Saturday evening in order to placate The Girlfriend’s twelve-year-old niece, who was staying with Anne for the weekend. Oddly enough, pre-teen girls apparently prefer these sorts of movies to the Alien quadrilogy. Who knew?]
11. Cold Mountain
12. We Don’t Live Here Anymore
13. To Live and Die in LA
14. The Iron Giant
15. Rabbit-Proof Fence
16. Three Coins in the Fountain
17. Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
18. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
19. The Rundown
20. Man on Fire
21. The Little Shop of Horrors (1960 version)
22. Garden State
23. Bad Santa (unrated “Badder Santa” version)

Books Completed in 2005 (Fiction)

1. Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman (writer) and Andy Kubert (artist) [graphic novel]
   [Ed. note: some people would quibble about whether “graphic novels” qualify as literature, or if they should be counted alongside “novel-novels.” I say “yes” and “yes.” Especially if they’re written by Neil Gaiman.]
2. Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Greene
3. Marvels by Kurt Busiek (writer) and Alex Ross (artist) [graphic novel]
4. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
5. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
6. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover
7. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King
8. The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King
9. The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands by Stephen King
10. The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
11. The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
12. The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah by Stephen King
13. The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower by Stephen King

Books Completed in 2005 (Non-Fiction)

1. Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 by Bryan Burrough
2. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum — How We Made Movie Magic by Andy Serkis
3. Howard Hughes: The Untold Story by Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske
4. All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists by Terry Gross
5. Black Dahlia Avenger by Steve Hodel
6. Fire by Sebastian Junger
7. The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger
8. All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
9. A Year at the Movies: One Man’s Filmgoing Odyssey by Kevin Murphy