A year in books: 2010

I had a look this morning over the list of the best books sold and recommended by Amazon. And, not surprisingly, I found a couple of books covering exclusively or partially aspects related to foreign affairs and international politics.

From the category "Biographies and Memoirs", you have, in this order of preference: Laura Hillebrand (1) - Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption; Laura Bush (3) - Spoken from the Heart (useful for understanding the mentality basis of the Bush family); Karl Rove (15) - Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight; George W. Bush (18) - Decision Points (Laura took it all in the family, apparently), Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices (24) (the only one from the list I've read and which, in my opinion, is full of stereotypes and who benefited of an undiserved - from the qualitative point of view - advertising), Andrew Young (26) - The Politician. An Insider's Account of John Edward's Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal that Brought him down.

From the category "Thriller and Fiction", on the 6th place you will find Glenn Beck's The Overton Window (the expression means a "window" in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, from a spectrum of all possible options on a particular issue). I don't like nothing about Glenn Beck, but I would be curious to read his book, as part of my usual documentation about politics and people who want to be part of them.

The politics are represented in the category of "Literature and Fiction" with Karl Marlante's Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, on the 1st place, Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen (3) and David Grossman (7) To the End of Land. (the last two books are on my shelves, waiting to be open very very soon).

Maybe today will be a day dedicated exclusively to reading and more and more writing to be posted very very soon.

New Year's Resolutions

The list of the next 25 posts - at least - is ready and hope to be able to finish them as soon as possible, including in the next two days. The priority lists of books and articles and topics I would like to write about is under evaluation. My objectives for the next 12 months?

Not too many, but pretty ambitious:

- To finish my wonderful book about Diplomacy 2.0

- To finish my e-book project dedicated to the most important events of the last year. The deadline was end of December, but various reasons pushed me to delay for the first half of January

- To continue to offer to my readers interesting articles and analysis on the top issues of foreign affairs, by regular posts and freelance articles

- To expand the area of expertise and knowledge and to get in touch with other people interested in the same topics

Brainstorming

As 2010 is about to end, but not yet at its end, it is about time to evaluate, think, measure, look back and plan the future. In 2009, I wanted to publish a book screening the most important events of the year, with publication deadline the beginning of 2010. For various reasons - the procrastination and the very bad time managements had their share here - the plan was postponed from a month to another, despite the careful documentation of the events. The last time I was thinking - but not writing - about publishing this project was probably September. Now, at the end of October, I remembered about this idea and insist to have it done - this time. This will be the writing project for the month of December, as November is fully booked with the project about 2.0 foreign affairs.

For the next week, the competition is open for ideas, suggestions and other inspirational advices about the events to be included in the 2010 foreign affairs diary.