So a U.S. Senator has proposed that 2010 be designated the Year of the Bible (see Politico story here and Steven Waldman’s Beliefnet comments here). Sorry, I just can’t talk about the proposed Year of the Bible with a straight face … but it does bring to mind a few “year of” phrases to talk about. Perhaps you have your own to add.

I saw The Year of Living Dangerously on a four-inch screen sitting in a hotel room in Suva, Fiji in the summer of 1985, while making preparations to head off to some outlying islands for a year-long project. The movie, directed by Peter Weir, features a young and restless Mel Gibson as a journalist covering politics in Indonesia during the chaotic events of 1962 — an attempted coup and the resulting violent government reprisals. He also did his best to cover a steamy British diplomatic staffer played by Sigourney Weaver, then managed to get off the island just before becoming an unwilling target of violence himself. Fiji, heretofore a peaceful and independent former British possession, was on the verge of its own time of troubles, which began with a military coup in 1987 and continues off-and-on to the present. I managed to get off the island, too, although Fiji was certainly no Indonesia.

The Year of Living Dangerously beat out the Al Stewart album Year of the Cat for my vote — someone else will have to take that one. Any other nominations for “the year of …”?