I admit to a guilty pleasure — I love those year-end ‘best this’ and ‘worst that’ lists. They are the modern equivalent of the memory palace artifice. I do alot of my CD shopping (although not my bookbuying, since I tend to keep up better with the latter throughout the year) after the music lists come out. Any links to quality year-end lists you send me will be gratefully appreciated and likely posted here. To start with, here’s what one Guardian observer wants to deep-six for the new year. Unless you are a devotee of English tabloid culture, you might miss some of the references, but you also might agree with many of them, as I do.

Addendum: and the suggestions start rolling in. Thanks to Sam for pointing to the compilation of year-in-review lists at Fimoculous.

And, thanks to walker, some top-10-words-of-the-year lists (top phrases, the top names, the best and worst product names, top Enron inspired words, top YouthSpeak words, and others….) which reveal how the mutable English language can be influenced even on the timescale of one year’s developments.