In any case, below is my list of favorite reads of 2011, with a brief description about the book or why I enjoyed it. To be clear, this is a list of favorite books I read in 2011. Not books that were published in 2011. In no particular order, but all well worth my time:

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
Okay, this one’s first for a reason. A beautifully written story about the power of words, told from the point of view of an empathetic Death. One of my favorite books of all time, not just of 2011. A must read for any fan of the written word.

Gator A-Go-Go, Tim Dorsey
They say you never forget your first time, and this was my introduction to Tim Dorsey. A wild, bizarre, slapstick ride through Florida’s spring break scene that includes federal agents, Girls Gone Haywire, and vigilante serial killing. Fun for the whole family!

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
A literary novel filled with wonderful characters. It’s a story about love and relationships and what people mean to one another. It’s about finding what you need, even if it’s not what you set out to find. A poignant, touching, heart-breaking, funny work of art.

Bite Me: A Love Story, Christopher Moore
The continuing darkly comic love story about a pair of San Francisco vampires that includes an Emperor, turkey bowling, and a giant shaved vampire cat named Chet. The third in the Bloodsucking Fiends series, this is classic laugh-out-loud Christopher Moore.

Little Bee, Chris Cleave
Rich characters, a brutal history, death, humor, politics, and social commentary are all interwoven into an unforgettable story about what happens when people make mistakes and what happens when they try to fix them.

It’s A Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Elf, The Santa Clause, Bad Santa, Miracle on 34th Street, Die Hard, and The Family Man. Though I’m not sure how many lists would have included Edward Scissorhands (yes, the climax takes place at Christmas) or Planes, Trains and Automobiles (true, it’s Thanksgiving, but last I checked that was still a holiday.)

So now that we’ve got that out of the way, here are my Top Ten Holiday Songs and the artists who sing my favorite versions:

“Winter Wonderland” (Louis Armstrong)
I love me some Louis Armstrong and no other version of “Winter Wonderland” hits the same notes with me as this one. This song is playing at the beginning of Chapter 50 in Breathers. Sing it, Satchmo.

“Happy Xmas” (John Lennon)
Yes, it’s a bit of a political song, but The Beatles are my favorite all time band and Lennon my favorite songwriter of the group, so this one makes the list. Plus I love the Harlem Community Choir signing in the background.

“A Holly Jolly Christmas” (Burl Ives)
This is the classic version from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer that always makes me feel like a kid again. I can almost hear the reindeer up on the roof.

“Christmas Time Is Here” (Vince Guaraldi)
This vocal choir version from A Charlie Brown Christmas is such a sweet holiday song and the instrumentals are absolutely beautiful. See “A Holly Jolly Christmas” for the way this song makes me feel.

“The Christmas Song” (Nat King Cole)
The perfect song to appreciate your friends or family or that special someone around the fire or the Christmas tree. Thanks Nat.

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (Petula Clark & Rod McKuen)
The most playful and risque version of this song I’ve heard. And you’ve got to love a holiday song about a guy who’s working hard to get some cold weather action.

“Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” (Judy Garland)
This is the It’s A Wonderful Life of Christmas songs. Sweet and poignant and filled with hope. No one owns “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” like Judy Garland.

“It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year” (Andy Williams)
No other song gets me revved up for Christmas like this version by Andy Williams. For some reason, it always manages to give me goosebumps.

“Father Christmas” (The Kinks)
I’ve always been a fan of the Kinks and came across this gem of a social commentary holiday song about poor kids threatening Santa. “Father Christmas, give us some money, don’t mess around with those silly toys…”

“Santa Claus Is Back In Town” / “Merry Christmas Baby” (Elvis Presley)
No list of Christmas songs would be complete without something from The King. I couldn’t pick just one and went with these two because I love the R&B influence in both of them.

On the 2nd day of Bookmas, my bookstore sent to me:
A Tale of Two Cities, and Silverstein’s The Giving Tree

On the 3rd day of Bookmas, my bookstore sent to me:
The Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities…
And Silverstein’s The Giving Tree

On the 4th Day of Bookmas, my bookstore sent to me:
Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities…
And Silverstein’s The Giving Tree

On the 5th day of Bookmas, my bookstore sent to me:
Slaughterhouse-Five!
Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities…
And Silverstein’s The Giving Tree

On the 6th day of Bookmas, my bookstore sent to me:
The Dark Tower VI
Slaughterhouse-Five!
Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities…
And Silverstein’s The Giving Tree

On the 7th day of Bookmas, my bookstore sent to me:
The House of the Seven Gables, The Dark Tower VI
Slaughterhouse-Five!
Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities…
And Silverstein’s The Giving Tree

On the 8th day of Bookmas, my bookstore sent to me:
Eight Men Out, The House of the Seven Gables, The Dark Tower VI
Slaughterhouse-Five!
Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities…
And Silverstein’s The Giving Tree

On the 9th day of Bookmas, my bookstore sent to me:
Nine Stories by Salinger, Eight Men Out
The House of the Seven Gables, The Dark Tower VI
Slaughterhouse-Five!
Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities…
And Silverstein’s The Giving Tree

On the 10th day of Bookmas, my bookstore sent to me:
Ten Little Indians, Nine Stories by Salinger, Eight Men Out
The House of the Seven Gables, The Dark Tower VI
Slaughterhouse-Five!
Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities…
And Silverstein’s The Giving Tree

On the 11th day of Bookmas, my bookstore sent to me:
The Count of Eleven, Ten Little Indians, Nine Stories by Salinger,
Eight Men Out, The House of the Seven Gables, The Dark Tower VI
Slaughterhouse-Five!
Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities…
And Silverstein’s The Giving Tree

On the 12th day of Bookmas, my bookstore sent to me:
Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, The Count of Eleven
Ten Little Indians, Nine Stories by Salinger, Eight Men Out
The House of the Seven Gables, The Dark Tower VI
Slaughterhouse-Five!
Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities…
And Silverstein’s The Giving Tree

(*Author’s Note: Thanks to everyone who gave me their suggestions for the 8th and 11th days)

Kockroach, Tyler Knox
Taking Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and flipping it upside down, this story about a cockroach who wakes up one morning to discover he’s a man in 1950s New York has everything you want in a noir novel – organized crime, a love triangle, and an inhuman antihero with a relentless survival instinct. Good fun.

The Little Sleep, Paul Tremblay
Another noir novel, this one takes its title from Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep and features a South Boston P.I. who nods off at the wrong times and suffers from hallucinations. Blackmail, corrupt politicians, and a narcoleptic detective. What more do you want? (If you like this one, check out the sequel, No Sleep Till Wonderland.)

Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
The not-so-heartwarming story of a family of carnival freaks. Art and Lily Binewski, the owners of a traveling carnival, decide to breed their own freak show by using experimental drugs to create genetically altered children. Dark, twisted, beautiful, and bizarre, this novel about a singularly dysfunctional family will stay with you long after you’ve finished.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach
The most likely book of the bunch to have been read, and the only New York Times bestseller on the list, STIFF is a wonderfully informative and delightfully humorous look into what happens to the human body when nature and medical science take over. Roach knows how to make non-fiction entertaining. (This book was an invaluable inspiration in the writing of my novel Breathers.)

Vamped, David Sosnowski
Martin, a suicidal vampire, living off blood derived from stem cells since humans are nearly extinct, finds salvation in the form of a six-year-old human girl who escaped from a preserve. Initially intending to snack on her, Martin instead finds himself growing fond of her company and becomes an unlikely guardian. An original vampire tale written with warmth and humor.

Below are my Top Five Films You’ve Never Seen. Why just five? Because one, I realize you have other things to do other than read this blog post. And two, I’m lazy.

In no order that matters :

Monsters (2010)
This thoughtful science fiction film set half a dozen years after a NASA space probe crashed to Earth with alien life samples takes place in a quarantined infected zone that straddles the U.S.-Mexican border. You don’t see much of the monsters who inhabit the quarantined area, but that’s not the point of the film. Just watch it. You’ll thank me. (Worldwide box office: $4.2 million).

Gentlemen Broncos (2009)
A comedy film from the writer and director of Napoleon Dynamite, this story follows the plight of an aspiring fantasy writer whose novel gets plagiarized by his idol. The scenes from his novel “Yeast Lords,” which are enacted with Sam Rockwell as the main protagonist, are ridiculously sublime. ($118,000)

Intacto (2001)
A Spanish psychological thriller about an underground luck trade where the main characters steal luck from others and engage in games of life or death chance with one another to determine who walks away with all of the luck. This film gave me the idea that would become my next novel, Lucky Bastard. ($307,000)

CQ (2002)
Set in late 1960s Paris, this film-within-a-film homage to European spy/sci-fi spoofs stars Jeremy Davies as a young film editor thrust into the director’s chair of the sci-fi adventure Dragonfly, where his infatuation with the film’s sexy star starts to affect his ability to separate fantasy from reality. ($414,000)

Hamlet 2 (2008)
Steve Coogan plays a failed actor turned high school drama teacher who tries to save his job and the drama program by writing and staging a controversial musical sequel to Hamlet that includes time travel, child abuse, and a toe-tapping number called “Rock Me Sexy Jesus.” A fun and irreverent riff on the inspirational teacher film. ($4.9 million)

Okay. That’s my list of the Best Films You’ve Never Seen. Or maybe you have seen them but you disagree. Or maybe you have your own films you’d like to share. Be my guest. We’re all friends here.

On Friday, I’ll share my list of the Best Books You’ve Never Read.

In no particular order…

Halloween (1978)
I watched this one at home alone on cable when I was fourteen-years-old and I stayed up until three in the morning pressed up against the wall in the corner of my bed with my baseball bat, watching my bedroom door. Not my finest hour.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)
This film is the reason I had nightmares about zombies growing up. The opening sequence is as creepy and terrifying as it gets. I still think it holds up after more than forty years. They’re coming to get you, Barbara.

The Exorcist (1973)
I haven’t watched this film in thirty years because it freaked me out so much the first time I saw it. Don’t ask me to watch it again.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Yes, the girl gets kind of annoying (who yells out “hello” when you hear something making noises in the woods out in the dark?), but you never see what’s chasing them and when it comes to doing scary right, I’m a firm believer that less is more.

The Haunting (1963)
The book by Shirley Jackson is better, but this one is the classic haunted house film. A little dated, but still creepy and spooky. In the night. In the dark.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Just. Plain. Scary.

REC (2007)
This one delivers the scares almost from the start and once it gets going, it doesn’t let up. More intense than moody, but heavy on the creep factor.

The Shining (1980)
Admittedly, I find the book far superior, but on its own this is arguably the best haunted house film, scare for scare.

Psycho (1960)
Hitchcock set the standard with this one. Everything that followed pales in comparison. Anthony Hopkins creeps me out to this day.

The Ring (2002)
I admit, I have a thing for Naomi Watts, which is probably why I liked this one more than the original Japanese version. And I will NEVER watch an unmarked video tape in a cabin. NEVER.

Okay, that’s my Top 10 List of creepy movies that scared the hell out of me. What are some of yours?

However, a search on Amazon reveals that quite a few other novels have been published under that same title. And every single one of them is a paranormal romance novel.

There’s Fated – A Doomsday Brethren Novella by Shayla Black (a paranormal romance)

And Fated (The Eternals) by Carolyn McCray (touted in the book’s description as the #1 historical and fantasy romance)

Then there’s Fated: The Cascadia Wolves Series by Lauren Dane (apparently a hot, sexy paranormal romance)

There’s also Fated (The Bloodstone Saga) by Courtney Cole (the second novel in her paranormal YA series)

And finally Fated by Rebecca Zanetti (another paranormal romance, this one with vampires)

Now, I don’t consider MY Fated to be fantasy romance, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, or any of their relatives. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve written a dark comedy and social satire with a romantic storyline. However, I realize everyone has their own opinions and perspectives, and that’s fine. And considering the company I’m keeping, apparently my title lends itself to hot, sexy, paranormal romance.

I’m thinking I needed more beefcake on my cover.

Now I realize that in some films people do stupid things because they’re stupid. That’s just the human condition. We do stupid things. We cheat on our spouses. We drink too much at parties. We believe politicians actually care about doing what’s best for the country rather than what’s best for their political party.

So I’m fine when people do stupid things in movies because that’s what reasonable humans do. But there’s a difference between doing something stupid in a movie and being a stupid movie person. A stupid movie person does something unreasonable that no one with any intelligence or common sense would do.

In the supernatural horror film Insidious, there’s a moment early on when the married couple, Josh and Renai Lambert, are talking in bed late at night while their son, Dalton, sleeps in an unexplained coma in one of the bedrooms. His brother, Foster,  doesn’t want to sleep in the same room as Dalton anymore because, as he explains to his mom, it creeps him out when Dalton gets up in the middle of the night and walks around.

(The fact that his mother doesn’t follow this up with something like: WHAT? HOW COULD THAT BE POSSIBLE? or YOU MUST BE IMAGINING THINGS bothers me, but that’s another issue.)

So while their infant daughter and sons are sleeping, one naturally and one not so much, there comes a knock on the front door downstairs. Once. Twice. Three times. Josh goes downstairs in his pajamas to investigate and turns on the outside light, which flickers and goes out. Unable to see who is outside, and hearing no response from whoever knocked on the door when he calls out to them, he does what any sensible husband and father of three would do: he opens the door.

But wait, it gets worse.

Josh checks the front porch, then closes the door, chains it, and turns on the house alarm. Moments later, when the couple’s infant daughter starts crying, Rose gets out of bed and goes in to check on her, only to start screaming when she sees a man behind her daughter’s crib. Josh runs upstairs to see what’s wrong, Rose insists that she saw someone standing in the room even though no one’s there. Then the house alarm goes off.

Good stuff. Except for the fact that these are stupid movie people. Or at least Josh is.

After telling Rose to take their daughter and son and go into Dalton’s room and lock the door, he goes downstairs to find the front door wide open and the chain dangling on the doorjamb.

Yes, this is a movie, but if this is real life, if this is you or me or Rain Man, we turn around and run back up the stairs into the bedroom and call 911 on the cell phone. Or we take our family and get the hell out of the house. Instead, Josh walks downstairs, closes the front door, then proceeds to search the downstairs with a fireplace poker or some kind of weapon, leaving his wife and children unattended and vulnerable upstairs.

While the film does a good job of building up the suspense, I didn’t care about Josh anymore because he was too stupid to deserve to survive the rest of the film. It didn’t help that the next day no one talks about the incident. No one calls the police. And then Josh stays at work/school grading papers late into the evening, leaving his wife and children at home alone after a traumatic evening. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. I smell a divorce. The incident felt like something that needed to be addressed but instead the main characters just ignored it. To me that’s either bad writing, bad editing, or both.

In The Big Lebowski The Dude abides, but when it comes to stupid movie people, I am most definitely not The Dude. Not if you want me to care about the characters.

And I won’t even mention the fact that the demon looks like a Cirque du Soleil reject.

Oh wait, I just did.

Steve Hockensmith is the author of seven novels, including the New York Times bestseller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls and the Edgar, Shamus and Anthony Award finalist Holmes on the Range. He is widely admired within the writing community for his lion-like mane of thick, dark hair. His posture, on the other hand, is shockingly bad. Every once in a while, he updates the blog you can find here.

I met Steve at ZomBcon in Seattle last October during a signing at the Barnes & Noble booth. I told him why I thought zombies were so popular right now and he told me he liked what I said so much that he was going to claim my ideas as his own. We’ve hated each other ever since.

Where do you get your ideas?

From my brain. Specifically, the frontal lobe. What’s not so easy sometimes is finding them in there and dragging them out. I do a lot of research before I start work on a novel, then I lock myself in a room for two weeks and think. And think. And think some more. Sometimes I yell, too. Things like “Why doesn’t this make sense yet?” Or “What happens next, dammit? What happens next?” Or simply “AAARRRRGGGHHH!!!” Eventually, I manage to squeeze enough ideas out of my head to fill a book. Or so I like to think.

What’s your daily writing ritual?

I wish I had one. I have kids, though, and my wife has a work schedule that varies day to day and week to week. So nothing’s consistent. In a perfect world, my daily ritual would look like this: I arise at 9; go back to bed until 10; drink coffee and reply to e-mails till 11; eat lunch and surf the Internet until noon; write until 5; hang out with my family until 9; go for a run until 10; read until 11; drink bourbon and watch old movies until midnight; sleep until 9; repeat. Wanna guess how close that is to my real life?

What’s the first story you ever had published?

Well, if we’re going to be sticklers here, I don’t even remember what it was called: I was first published in a literary journal when I was a sophomore or junior in college. The story was about a guy who decides to go to work naked, but no one notices. My first paid story was called “Arnold the Conqueror,” and it appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact in 1997. So I guess I can pretend I’ve been a professional for 14 years. Woo-hoo!

What started you off on the path of being a writer?

Reading. Then discovering that I actually enjoyed writing assignments in grade school. I think I started creating my own magazines and comic books around sixth or seventh grade. From then on, writing just seemed like my thing, and I always assumed it would be my career one day. Looking back, I almost wish I could tell myself “Hey! Dummy! Those ‘computer’ thingies people keep talking about? Learn how to use ’em!” But I guess things worked out O.K.

Are you a plotter or a pantser?

I’m a plotter writing-wise and a pantser in my day-to-day life. Meaning I outline everything, but I do so while wearing pants. Usually sweatpants. Sometimes jeans. Khakis every once in a while. But very rarely shorts, for some reason.

What’s your favorite word?

No contest: lugubrious. It’s so fun to say. Try it. Lugubrious. Lugubrious. Lugubrious. It’s especially satisfying if you stretch out the second u. Lou-gooooooooo-bree-ous. You can’t say it that way without feeling like Vincent Price. I also like the word because it encapsulates an approach to art that I like to make fun of, but that’s a whole other conversation.

What’s your biggest fear?

I’d say failure and death run pretty much neck and neck these days. I think my fear of failure might diminish over time, though. As a writer, I’ve failed a thousand times already, with more failures to come. All writers fail, in big and small ways. It’s part of the gig. Death, on the other hand, doesn’t strike me as the kind of thing you get used to through repetition…although, come to think of it, once you’ve experienced it the thought of going through it again isn’t likely to bother you.

Who’s your favorite author?

It’s the classic old story for me: I stumbled across Slaughterhouse-Five in my high school library, and nothing was ever the same. I don’t think Vonnegut would have much use for what I do, to be honest, and I certainly don’t sound like him. But I like to think that his outlook on life and writing is in there, in some way, if you look for it.

What music inspires you?

I can’t listen to most music while I write. Even instrumental stuff is too distracting if it has a melody. So when I need to crank something up to cancel out the sound of a 5-year-old having a tantrum downstairs, I turn to “New Age” music. There’s one CD in particular — Oneness by David and Steve Gordon — that I listen to again and again and again. It’s perfect because it’s basically just waves of sound, and I can completely block it out of my consciousness and focus on my own words. I have used music to try to get in the mood for writing, though. Bernard Herrmann is my go-to guy when I’m thinking about something dark or creepy. But if I put on his score for Citizen Kane or Vertigo or whatever while I was trying to write, I know what would happen: I’d stop hearing words and start hearing music.

If you were a comic book superhero, what would be your superpower?

I would be Dismissiveman, able to dodge any question at will.

*****************************

Well, thanks for answering these questions, Steve. And remember, if you want to keep up with all of Steve’s shenanigans and writings, you can follow him at www.stevehockensmith.com.

Super 8 was fun and entertaining, but I felt it lacked the emotional resonance of the Spielberg films to which it paid homage. Horrible Bosses wasn’t nearly as funny as I’d hoped it would be, especially considering the cast. And while I appreciated the acting and what Malick was saying in The Tree of Life, if I want to spend half an hour watching the evolution of life on Earth, I’ll turn on The Discovery Channel.

Maybe it’s because I have a subscription to Entertainment Weekly. Maybe it’s because I’m too familiar with the actors and directors. Maybe it’s because I read and hear too much hype about these films so that by the time I actually see them, they can’t possibly live up to my expectations.

I remember going to see movies and not knowing anything about them except maybe a little word of mouth buzz. I didn’t know anything about films like Big, The Untouchables, or Beverly Hills Cop before I saw them other than who the stars of the films were. I had no idea what the movies were about or who was directing them or what critics were saying. I don’t even remember seeing any television commercials. Or billboards. Or ads on the sides of buses. I just went to see films and enjoyed them without any preconceived notions.

I didn’t even have any expectations when I went to see Star Wars for the first time in 1977. And I didn’t have a clue what Raiders of the Lost Ark was about until I saw the film on video a year after it left the theaters. But today, the advertising is impossible to miss.

I don’t know if the saturation of information and hype is partially to blame for my less-than-enthusiastic response to some of these films, but so far the best movie I’ve seen this summer has been Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, which had no significant marketing or hoopla surrounding it but which was a fun, intelligent, and creative film. And which should at least get Allen an Oscar nomination for Best Original Script.