What are you doing New Year's Eve?

I've been in love with Joseph Gordon-Levitt for a long while, but fell in love with the Zooey-Joseph pairing in the amazing (500) Days of Summer.

Happy New Year, y'all!

On beyond 2011...

In a little more than eight hours, we here on the East Coast will bid adieu to 2011. It has been an interesting year, and I look forward to what 2012 will bring.

Equality took a number of steps ahead and a number of steps back this year. Don't Ask Don't Tell became one for the history books, and despite what some conservatives may tell you, the military has felt no ill effects from allowing openly gay soldiers to serve. President Obama also vowed to no longer defend the outdated Defense of Marriage Act, and Congressional Democrats introduced bills that would replace this antiquated law, but to date, only one Republican has expressed support.

New York lawmakers approved same-sex marriage in the state, while lawmakers in North Carolina and Minnesota took steps toward implementing Constitutional bans against same-sex marriage. And nearly every Republican candidate running for President in 2012 has promised to amend the U.S. Constitution to include this same inequality. Bullying of gay students continues to increase at an alarming pace, as does the number of gay teenagers committing suicide and the number of acts of violence perpetrated against gay people or those "suspected" to be gay.

But looking beyond politics, I think it has been a fairly good year. I was able to get out from under a horribly demoralizing job to find a position in an organization that values my skills and challenges me (sometimes more than I want, but that's life), and I look forward what 2012 will bring professionally.

I've enjoyed the opportunity to spend some wonderful time with friends and family this year, read some terrific books, and see some memorable movies. I visited the summer camp I attended for 10 years between the ages of 10 and 19 for the first time in 19 years, and it was an eye-opening experience to be reunited with people who played a big role in my childhood. And on a sad note, we said goodbye to my great-aunt Eileen, who was a truly terrific person.

Wishing all of you a happy and healthy New Year, and I hope that 2012 brings each of you everything you're dreaming of!

Book Review: "The Marriage Plot" by Jeffrey Eugenides

It's been nearly 10 years since Jeffrey Eugenides published a novel—his last book, Middlesex, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002, so one could imagine that was a pretty hard act to follow. His new book, The Marriage Plot, has been hailed by critics as one of the year's best, although reaction from readers has been somewhat mixed. In my opinion, this is a terrific story led by three complex characters, but from time to time, it gets mired in its own intellectualism.

It's the early 1980s at Brown University. English major Madeleine Hanna, who grew up privileged in the New Jersey suburbs, is in love with romantic novels by Jane Austen and George Eliot, and is truly in love with love. Widening her horizons in her senior year, she takes a semiotics class, which causes her to challenge her beliefs and think more philosophically, but she also meets Leonard Bankhead, one of her classmates, a highly intelligent—and troubled—biology major. Meanwhile, Madeleine's friend, Mitchell Grammaticus, is obsessed with her and believes that she is his true soulmate. Even traveling around the world after college, exploring the history and philosophy of different religions, can't seem to shake her from his mind. The Marriage Plot tells Madeleine, Mitchell, and Leonard's stories, views the world and their interconnectedness through each of their eyes, and gets fully immersed in their happinesses and challenges.

I really enjoyed the three main characters and really became invested in what happened to them. The problem I had with the book, however, is that I felt it tried to be an intellectual novel, and it didn't need to. It gets a little too in depth in its literary and philosophical references, and spends more time than necessary providing a religious framework for Mitchell's explorations. While I understand these characters were intelligent and thoughtful, the same story could have had even more impact if I didn't need to wonder what each literary reference meant. That being said, however, the story and Eugenides' writing is too good to pass up, so if you go into reading this knowing you may need to look things up in the dictionary (or maybe you're smarter than I am), you'll realize the novel's strengths faster than I did.

What bravery looks like...

This is the face of 18-year-old Ben Breedlove of Austin, Texas.

Breedlove suffered from a dangerous heart condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition in which one part of the heart is thicker than the other parts, making it difficult for the heart to pump blood.

On December 18, Breedlove posted two videos to YouTube in which he told his story.

He talked about his heart condition not allowing him to play sports like his friends.

He discussed cheating death three times, the first time when he was four years old and the last time on December 6, when he collapsed while at school and awoke to EMS workers giving him CPR.

In his videos, he talked (using handwritten index cards) about visions he saw the first and third times he cheated death.

He talked about not being afraid to die.

And on Christmas Day, he suffered a heart attack and died in the hospital.

Watching Ben's videos, I am overwhelmed by his bravery. I hope his parents are proud of the child they raised, because he clearly was a special person who never took one minute of his life for granted.

"It was obvious to all of us that knew him that he knew what he was doing when he made that video," close family-friend Pam Kohler said. "There are times that [the family is] overwhelmed by the pain and the loss of Ben, but then it's replaced with knowing that he was at peace with what was going to happen."

If heaven and angels exist, undoubtedly Ben Breedlove is among them. I'd encourage you to watch his story (have tissues handy) and then share it with those you love.

Encourage them to live their lives as Ben did, with no fear, embracing the joy and wonder of every day.

RIP, Ben. You've given the world something to think about and left an incredible example behind, one to which we should all aspire.

The year in movies...

In my opinion, this has been a really great year in movies, and I've not yet seen several of the year-end releases.

Matt Shapiro created this amazing montage of the year in movies, called Cinescape: 2011. He's apparently been doing these for five years now. (Check out his YouTube channel for the previous years' montages. His user name is oyguvaltshappy.)

They should get Shapiro to put together the montages for the Oscars. This really is brilliant.

Book Review: "I Knew You'd Be Lovely" by Alethea Black

Short story fans, or those who simply love great fiction writing, go out and pick up Alethea Black's magnificent story collection (or download it onto your eReader), I Knew You'd Be Lovely. I read this collection in one day and nearly every story left me moved beyond words, intrigued, amused, or simply amazed at Black's abilities. (And sometimes more than one of those happened simultaneously!)

The characters in each of Black's stories are at some sort of emotional crossroads. In the incredibly moving "Someday is Today," a young woman comforts her sister and young children after her brother-in-law's unexpected death, and struggles with questions of faith and her own purpose. "The Only Way Out is Through" follows one man's struggles to get through to his troubled son, with nearly cataclysmic results. The main character in "Mollusk Makes a Comeback" struggles to remain positive as events in her life spiral out of control, and in the title story, the narrator's search for the perfect birthday present for her boyfriend leads her down an intriguing path. And those descriptions just scratch the surface of the stories in this collection.

I love short stories, but I really found this collection exceptional. Black created some truly memorable characters, many of whom could have a whole book written about them. (There are definitely more than a few characters about whom I'd like to know what happened when the story ended.) I didn't want this collection to end, but now that it has, I'm more than ready to read what Black has in store next! Don't miss this one, seriously.

Book Review: "Pictures of You" by Caroline Leavitt

One foggy day, about three hours from Cape Cod, two women's cars collide on the road. Both appear to be running away from their marriages. April dies in the crash, while Isabelle survives, and is left not only to pick up the pieces of her life in the town she had wanted to escape, but becomes entangled with April's devastated husband, Charlie, and their young son, Sam, who is riddled with guilt about the accident. Charlie can't understand why April wanted to leave, and what she was doing on that road far from home, Sam wants nothing more than to talk to or see his mother one last time, and Isabelle is torn between again wanting to escape and wanting to stay to take care of Charlie and Sam, despite her role in their misery. And as their lives unfold, they realize the impact of every decision, and how sometimes the "best" decision isn't always the right one.

Pictures of You had moments of heartbreaking poignancy and moments when I wanted to shake each one of the characters into action, and both contributed to my enjoyment of the book. No character was drawn to be flawless; at times I sympathized with each of them, and at times I wished someone would just tell them to get a grip. The book definitely exceeded my expectations and surprised me in a number of ways, and that made me happy. And while I am, admittedly, a total sap, it was Caroline Leavitt's well-written story, combined with the emotional power it packs, that kept me reading this book well into the night in order to finish it. Very well done.