It’s not too early…
… to begin the ruminations on 2011, a year that will live, if not in infamy, then firmly sandwiched between 2010 and 2012.
Dave Pell’s nifty Next Draft offer a jump-start on the process:
Big Lists of Everything
– Atlantic Magazine’s 2011 Year in Review.
– NY Mag’s Year in Culture (movies, exhibitions, music, etc)
– Time’s Top Ten of Everything (and they sort of mean everything).
– AOL (with HuffPo) presents this year’s Best of the Best (in every category you can think of).
– LA Times Year in Review (lots of unique lists here, from memorable quotes to best Google Doodles).
– E! Online’s List of Everything Entertainment, Celebrity and Royal.
– MTV’s Best of 2011 (Movie Animals, Biggest Breakups, Photo Leaks, etc.)
Books and Articles to Read
– NY Times Notable Books of 2011.
– Slate’s Best Books of 2011.
– Salon: Writers Choose Their Favorite Books of 2011.
– Atlantic Editors Choose the Best Book I Read This Year.
– LongForm’s Best Articles of the Year.
– Give Me Something to Read’s 2011 Highlights.
Photos To Look At
– Atlantic’s InFocus Year in Photos: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
– Reuters Photos of the Year.
– BuzzFeed’s 45 Most Powerful Images of 2011.
– Time picks the Top 10 Photos of 2011.
– Buzzfeed’s 50 Best Animal Photos of 2011.
Things to Watch on a Screen
– Rolling Stone’s Best TV Moments of 2011.
– Daily Beast presents the Top Viral Videos of the Year.
– New Yorker’s 26 Best Films of 2011.
– Salon’s 10 Best Movies of 2011.
– Atlantic’s Best TV of 2011.
– Good Magazine’s Most Memorable Video Moments (in 1:34).
– AdWeek’s 10 Best Commercials of 2011.
Music to Crank
– NPR’s Year in Music.
– Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Singles.
– Pitchfork’s Top Tracks, Videos, Photos and more.
– NPR’s 5 Best Cover Songs of 2011.
Items for Purchase
– GQ’s Best Stuff of the Year.
– Wired’s Wish List.
News, Memes, and Oddities to Ponder
– NPR’s Top Ten News Memes.
– Atlantic’s Top Ten Politics Stories of 2011.
– Buzzfeed’s 40 Best Memes.
– WaPo’s Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year.
– Buzzfeed’s 16 Most WTF Moments of 2011.
– Atlantic’s Most Important Tech Stories of the Year.
– Buzzfeed’s 45 Things We Should Forget About 2011.
– Rolling Stone’s Top Ten Memes of 2011.
– Buzzfeed’s Top Ten Protest Signs of 2011.
– The 2011 Year’s News in Lego.
– Top 10 Geeky Marriage Proposals of 2011.
– Funny or Die’s Winners of 2011 in categories such as: Most Women Forcibly Bedded By a Guy You Never Heard Of Before This Year, But Almost Became Our President.
– And of course, the Onion’s Year in Review.
As we reminisce and assess, we might recall that it was exactly 200 years ago– on this date in 1811– in the Mississippi River Valley near New Madrid, Missouri, that the largest series of earthquakes in U.S. history began; by the time it was complete, it had raised and lowered parts of the Mississippi Valley by as much as 15 feet and changed the course of the Mississippi River. The earthquakes– measuring as high as 8.6 magnitude on the Richter scale– were felt strongly over roughly 50,000 sq. mi., and moderately across nearly 1 million sq. mi. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake, by comparison, was felt moderately over roughly 6,200 sq. mi.
“The Great Earthquake at New Madrid.” a nineteenth-century woodcut from Devens’ Our First Century (1877) source