It's time for the 1998 awards! The envelope please....

Book Awards

1998 awards are given for books read by Kevin in 1998, regardless of publication date. It was a pretty dismal book year, saved only by three fine books that I read in November and December. With that caveat, the winners are...

• Best fiction: A Man in Full, by Tom Wolfe. This was the only outstanding piece of fiction I read this year, and it was a real hoot. Wolfe's ability to write convincingly about everything from high powered real estate developers in Atlanta to the inside of a prison in Oakland is truly remarkable. A weak honorable mention goes to The Jungle Books, by Rudyard Kipling. Some of the stories were charming and engaging, but many were not, and its uneven quality made me happy to put it down at the end even though it was a short book.

• Best science fiction: Chung Kuo, by David Wingrove. This is truly a magnificent work, although it fails just a bit through excessive length. Even Shakespeare pales after 5,000 pages, and after finishing Chung Kuo (a six month task since I had to take a four-month break halfway through) I breathed a sign of relief. Still, it's one of the most highly textured and intelligent sf books I've ever read, and if you're up to it it's highly recommended. A (very) weak honorable mention goes to Magician, by Raymond E. Feist, a fairly ordinary fantasy tale but nonetheless the second best sf-ish book I read this year.

• Best nonfiction: Titan, by Ron Chernow. An excellent biography of John D. Rockefeller, the kind that leaves you thirsting for more even though it spans 700 pages. It's a great portrait of Rockefeller's conflicting natures (ruthless businessman, charitable churchgoer) as well as a fascinating glimpse of how he built the Standard Oil trust. The parallels with Bill Gates really are kind of spooky....

• Honorable mention nonfiction: American Aurora, by Richard N. Rosenfeld. This is a very unusual and very interesting history of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. The story is told almost entirely by quoting original source material from the Philadelphia Aurora, a Democratic-Republican newspaper that was an implacable opponent of both the government and the two acts, and also from the main Federalist newspapers that supported the government. Despite the liberal use of such material, American Aurora is very readable and very entertaining. Its only minor downfalls are its length (900 pages was a bit too much for the subject) and the brevity of the supporting material (it would have been nice to know today's consensus about some of the issues that were the subjects of such vicious attacks during the time). Highly recommended if the subject interests you.

• Worst book of the year: Endymion, by Dan Simmons. A very disappointing sequel to his excellent Hyperion books. It was mostly travelogue and very little actual story.

A complete list of 1998 books, in the order read, is below:

Movie Awards

1998 awards are given for movies seen by Kevin in theaters in 1998, regardless of production date. As with the books, it was a very weak year for movies, but there were a few I though were worth watching. Here are the 1998 winners...

• Best drama: Bulworth. This was a pretty easy choice for #1, although that may be as much a reflection of the rest of the field as it is of the quality of the movie itself. Still, Bulworth had some terrific biting satire, great acting by Warren Beatty, a finely tuned script, and--rare these days--a point worth making. It's the kind of film that would leave almost anyone with something to think about.

• Honorable mention drama: Titanic was a good movie and a grand entertainment, but of course it shows up here only because I didn't see it until January of 1998. Other decent dramas included Primary Colors, an entertaining and insightful look at the character of Bill Clinton, and Saving Private Ryan, a pretty good war film, though not as good as its hype.

• Best comedy: There's Something About Mary. This was a funny movie, despite its frequent misfires, with enough good jokes to keep it going for a full two hours. However, I sure hope it doesn't spawn a raft of raunchy imitators made by people who believe that it succeeded mainly because it "pushed the envelope" more than its competitors.

• Honorable mention comedy: You've Got Mail was an engaging, if slight, romantic comedy that seemed like it was made by taking every Doris Day-Rock Hudson ever made and putting them in a blender. Zero Effect was an offbeat picture that never really took off but nonetheless showed promise.

• Worst movie of the year: The only truly bad movie I saw all year was my very first one: Fallen, a truly idiotic film about an evil spirit that possesses people and turns them into murderers. It did have a little twist at the end that was fairly interesting--but unfortunately it was ruined because it was right alongside a second twist that was both moronic and telegraphed a mile away.

A complete list of 1998 movies, in the order seen, is below:

The final 1998 Top Ten Movie list looks like this:

1. Bulworth
2. Titanic
3. Primary Colors
4. There's Something About Mary
5. Saving Private Ryan
6. You've Got Mail
7. Zero Effect
8. Enemy of the State
9. Great Expectations
10. Ronin

This is a genuinely pathetic list: 1998 was one of my worst years for movies in a long time. In fact, I think that probably only the top two or three of these movies would have made it onto my 1997 list, which wasn't that strong either. On the other hand, I saw fewer genuine stinkers than in 1997, so I guess there's a silver lining to every cloud.

Book and Movie Statistics

The total number of reviewed books was 27, down from 35 last year, and they broke up as follows:

• General fiction: 6
• Science fiction: 7
• Nonfiction: 14

The total number of reviewed movies was 26, down from 40 last year. Grade distribution for books and movies in 1998 was as follows:

Note: a grade of B- is the cutoff point for recommendations: anything above it is recommended, anything below it is not, and anything that received a B- is on the edge.

Bridge Awards

With Rick up in Seattle, we only played twice this year. Even so, there's got to be a winner, right? The envelope please...

• Best average: Kevin wins first place this year, barely edging Dave in both points and ordinal score. Jay came in third and Rick was fourth.

• Highest single-night score: Jay scored 3030 points in our June game.

• Lowest single-night score: Jay scored 460 points in our January game.

• Most first place finishes: Jay and Kevin both finished first once.

• Most last place finishes: Jay and Rick both finished last once.

• Steadiest player (aka the Gross Abuse of Statistics Award): Rick may have done poorly, but he did consistently poorly with a standard deviation of only 395, easily outdistancing Dave, with a standard deviation of 770.

• Most erratic player: Jay had a standard deviation of 1817, shattering Kevin's 1997 record of 1001.

• Best streak: Jay and Kevin both finished first one time in a row.

• Closest score: Not much of a contest here, but in the January game Kevin beat Dave by 210 points to take first place (3010 to 2800).

Complete 1998 bridge statistics are below:

Tennis Awards

• Best overall record goes to Dave Dvorman, with a 75% win rate and a record of 48-16 for the year.

• Best record in tiebreaks goes to Kevin, with a year-end record of 5-3.

• Longest streak goes to Dave Dvorman, who won 7 sets in a row early in the year.

• Most improved player goes to Kevin, who improved his overall record from 19% in 1997 to 25% in 1998.

Complete 1998 tennis statistics are below:

Kitten of the Year

This was a tough call considering the explosion in kitten popularity this year, but the winner--as chosen by a completely unbiased panel of judges--was Jasmine, our ultra-cute little tabby furball. The only dissenting vote came from Rosebud, who is upset that she is no longer undisputed queen of the roost.

Wife of the Year

It's hard to believe, but once again, for the eighth straight time since 1991, the winner is:

Marian!

How does she do it?