A Gilded Planet

Woodrow Eastwick, The Prophet of Peoria Hector Wentworth, The Wizard of Wichita Ray Pinchot, The Shaman of Shreveport Earl Norris, The Diviner of Duluth Spiro Fallon, The Telepath of Topeka Hamish Perlmutter, The Clairvoyant of Cleveland Hoover Framingham, The Nostradamus of Nashville Jeremiah Hubbard, The Buddha of Bloomington Neve Linklater, The Sage of Salt Lake City Thomas Mogenson, The Enchanter of Evansville Isaac Fairbanks, The Sorcerer of Springfield Adam Tertius, The Guru of Grand Rapids Victor Kerosene, The Mage of Missoula

10. José Martí 9. Rutherford B. Hayes 8. Julián Trujillo Largacha 7. Fidel Castro 6. Andrés Avelino Cáceres  5. George Crook 4. Abraham Lincoln 3. Venustiano Carranza 2. Máximo Gómez 1. Chester A. Arthur

Guildford Damford Shingleton Archibald Horace Shuckburgh Edward Teshmaker Busk Francis Saxon Snell Basil Scarisbrick Walker Hugh Urquhart Scrutton Montague Hayes Bythway Henry Burrows Gallimore Leonard George Colbeck Francis Kennard Bliss P.C. Bentley Blair Cecil Weston Dawswell Arthur Creasy Roscoe Bertram Hopkinson Chubb Neville Eustachius Wallingford Thurgood Ambrose Cumberbatch Bertrand Benedict Beauchamp Rawson Maynard Lincoln Marshall Langtoft Dinsdale Dudley Thurber Banvard Leland Carleton Muggeridge

Bernstein & Garfunkel Laverne & Bullwinkle Abbott & Hardy Starsky & Hooch Donnie & Cher Gilbert & Hammerstein Itchy & Kumar Romeo & the Sundance Kid Thelma & Luigi Bonnie & The Brain Penn & Stimpy Seals & Oates Ike & Cleopatra Bill & Silent Bob Siegfried & Rosencrantz Batman & Butthead Leiber & Gretel

The Curious Fundamentalist The Reasonable Anarchist The Principled Democrat The Lucid Republican The Empathetic Libertarian The Pragmatic Socialist The Thoughtful Militarist The Adamant Liberal The Relevant Nationalist The Tolerant Conservative The Agreeable Progressive The Triumphant Trade Unionist The Useful Independent The Casual Authoritarian The Reluctant Interventionist The Traveling Isolationist

5. The Pimps of Joytime 4. Kapowski 3. Beep 2. The Deadly Gentlemen 1. In One Wind

The Undulating Earth  by Yekaterina Lazarova Cosmocrat by Darwin Fallon The Autobiography of Hoover Framingham by Hoover Framingham The Butterfly Auction by Li Shao Adam's Fictions by Ray Pinchot Internal Travel by Alexander Williams Oliver A History of Snakebites by  Frances Perlmutter Nostalgiac  by Hamish Dohr The Perpetual Fortune by Tia Tula Unusual Contraption by Eric Tertius Intention by Tsung-dao Liang Directions to an Unknown Road  by Fox DeMoisey Season of Amnesia by Zülfü Erdogan Eddie Notorious  by Katherine Eastwick This Moon's Labyrinth by Jônatas Gusmão The Dioramic Dynamic by P.C. Bentley Blair

5. Wu Massacre - Raekwon, Ghostface Killah & Method Man This cracks my top five for the album artwork alone. I got to see the Wu Tang Clan  live this year, and they were actually fairly underwhelming - all shouting over each other and sich. But Method Man is a beast and Ghostface Killah has an inimitable style, both of which made this album quite enjoyable. The three standout tracks are "It's That Wu Shit" along with "Our Dreams" and "Gunshowers" but the whole album has a brisk energetic tone to it which I dig. There's a big gap between this and the rest on my list, except for the album art where it matches or exceeds some of the other awesome album covers of this year. 4. Down There - Avey Tare Avey Tare of Animal Collective deploys some pretty groovyspooky beats and bleats on this record. I especially like "Ghost of Books" which has a fairly mesmerizing end refrain that I was repeating a lot with variations on a recent moun...