AFRESH, AFRESH, AFRESH: Best of 2007. I’m going to New Jersey tomorrow, and it’s unlikely that I’ll do more than maybe a kitchen-adventures post between now and the champagne. So I’m doing my best-ofs list now. (2006, 2005, 2004)

Best books read (nonfiction): Rene Girard, The Scapegoat
Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII
Richard Klein, Cigarettes Are Sublime
Philip Roth, Reading Myself and Others
Ye gods, slim pickin’s here. I’m going to cheat and name St. Aelred’s Spiritual Friendship as the fifth-best, since I don’t think I understood it the first time around.

Best books read (real books): Albert Camus, The Plague
Edmund White, Nocturnes for the King of Naples
Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
Tim Powers, Last Call
Philip Roth, Everyman

Best movies watched for the first time (thus Withnail & I doesn’t count–but I need to tell you that if you buy the DVD, you get an awesome poster!):
The Battle of Algiers and Nobody Knows (tie, because they’re in the same post, so I feel like I can get away with it)
The Queen
The Chimes at Midnight
The Importance of Being Earnest
Sullivan’s Travels

honorable mentions: A Night to Remember–an exceptionally well-paced Titanic movie; I was shocked at how strongly it affected me–and Ratatouille, an intensely sweet, conscientious kids’ flick.

Best blog posts: This was a strange year for me and the blog. I wrote a lot less, partly because I was focusing on finishing the novel and partly because I was practicing the better part of valor for once. (I say it so you don’t have to!) So this list isn’t quite up to previous standards, hence the category below. Still, here it is, six of the best (and yes, as the phrase suggests, this is a punishment):
That’s what you get for having fun (random notes about New Haven and theology and humiliation and… hamburgers)
Age of Apocalypse: medieval manuscripts as comics
The Man-Mary (This post, I think, should be treated as a thought experiment rather than a position statement. When I think about it as A Defense Of The Male Priesthood I think it’s tinfoil; when I think about it as a way of using gender roles to illuminate modes of Christian life, I think it’s kind of awesome. And also, I know you haven’t heard back from me yet, if you emailed me about this post–I totally read your email and thought it was terrific [everyone who emailed me about this post said something amazingly helpful] and I will try to respond soon…ish.)
All alone at the ’64 World’s Fair: The Politics of Dancing takes on “Ana Ng” (and more)
You’re gonna need someone on your side (a prayer to St. Simon of Cyrene)
Voice-casting the New Testament

Best things I wrote (nonfiction, non-blog):
“O tell me the truth about love” (homosexuality and the Catholic Church–a reply to Luke Timothy Johnson)
“Grace Is the Hardest Pillow” (I review Kathy Shaidle’s poetry collection Lobotomy Magnificat)
“The Sacred Cardoon” (I review a show of Spanish art, “El Greco to Picasso”)
“Naked but not Exposed” (I review an Edward Hopper retrospective)
“Job Wears Prada” (I bite the shins of a chick-lit rewriting of Job)

Best new candidate for political office who isn’t Ron Paul: Shamed! Shamed! Shamed! I swear I’ll give you money next month!

Best new blog I haven’t told you about yet: The Cigarette Smoking Blog. I’m biased, but I think this blog about “Conservatism, Catholicism, Yale, film and music, one cigarette at a time” is always fun and intermittently brilliant (which is more than I can say for my own, that’s for daggone sure). Film noir, cheatin’ songs, and counterpleasures, with Wilde on her side. I don’t think undergraduates should blog. But if they must blog, they should blog like this.