Best of 2021

FICTION BOOK 

Piranesi – Susanna Clarke

Wolf of the Plains - Conn Iggulden

Bones of the Hill - Conn Iggulden

The Sisters Brothers - Patrick deWitt (far superior to the film)

The World of Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse

Honourable mention:

Arrival – Ted Chiang

Lord of the Bow - Conn Iggulden

POETRY

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes – Billy Collins

NON FICTION (MUSIC)

Never Met A Story I Didn't Like – Todd Snider

The Beatles and the Historians – Erin Torkelson Weber

A Dream About Lightning Bugs – Ben Folds

Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink – Elvis Costello

Honourable mention:

The Record Men: The Chess Brothers and the Birth of Rock Roll – Rich Cohen

 

NON FICTION (OTHER)

Born a Crime – Trevor Noah

Fathers, Sons, Blood - Harry Crews (essay in Classic Crews: A Reader)

FILM

 

Doctor Sleep (Director's Cut)

Free Guy (Disney +)

Dune (pt.1)

The French Dispatch

Spiderman: No Way Home

Honourable mention:

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

King Richard

BEST BAD FILM

Airport '79: The Concorde (Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_DT8BST4FY)

TV

Ted Lasso (season 1) (Apple TV)

Honourable mentions:

Ted Lasso (season 2) (Apple TV)

Call My Agent (seasons 1-3) (Netflix)

We Are Lady Parts (E4)

COMEDY SPECIAL

Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999 – James Acaster (Vimeo)

Rory Scovel: Live Without Fear (Youtube)

Honourable mentions:

All James Acaster's specials (Netflix)

Trevor Noah: Son of Patricia (Netflix)

DOCUMENTARY

The Dawn Wall (Netflix)

The Black Godfather (Netflix)

Todd Snider: The Storyteller (Youtube)

Get Back (especially ep. 1) (Disney +)

Honourable mention:

The Movies That Made Us (Netflix)

ALBUM

War and Peace – Edwin Starr

Spike – Elvis Costello

The Complete Duets – Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell

Billion Dollar Babies – Alice Cooper

 

SIX THINGS YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD WATCH/READ/LISTEN TO 

Piranesi – Susanna Clarke – utterly beguiling. Like nothing you've ever read before.

Airport '79: The Concorde (Youtube) – absolutely hilarious, defying all laws of physics, aerodynamics and character development.

Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999 – James Acaster (Vimeo) – hilarious and structurally ingenious.

Ted Lasso (season 1) (Apple TV) – heart warming, funny, great characters. I would say “if you don't love it you're dead inside”, but this show will resurrect you anyway.

The Dawn Wall (Netflix) – An incredible life affirming story, of friendship amputation, terrorism, murder and rock climbing.

Get Back (ep. 1) (Disney +) - like watching Picasso at work (on his worst canvas). A privilege. And funny too.

Best of 2020

 

Here's my fave things I discovered in 2020

 

Favourite Albums of 2020 

Oxymoron (Nik Kershaw)

Magnified (Rosie Abbott)

Too Hard to Please (Phil Grafton)

(Honourable mention: Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast)

Favourite books I read in 2020

The Colour Purple (Alice Walker)

In Search of Al Howie (Jared Beasley)

Educated (Tara Westover)

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyrou)

An American Marriage (Tayari Jones)

(Honourable mention - Riding So High (Joe Goodden). I also reread the Dragon Tattoo trilogy and No Country for Old Men (twice! - hey remember lockdown?).

Four of my top five were recommended by my daughter

 

Favourite Films I watched in 2020

The Gentlemen

State of Play

Easy A

(watched them all twice!). Honourable mentions: Two Popes (netflix), Good Boys, Parasite, How to Build a Girl (prime), Mulan (disney+). Also watched The Big Lebowski (four times!) and The Nice Guys and Hot Fuzz (three times) never get old, man.

Favourite TV I watched in 2020

 

Broadchurch (all three seasons)

The Tick (prime) (season 2 is best)

Douglas - Hannah Gadsby (netflix)

Scott Bennett Live in Nottingham (youtube)

Honourable mention: The Umbrella Academy season 2 (netflix) and True Detective season 1 (for the fourth times!)

Best Of 2018

Here's my favourite things I read/watched etc this year for the first time (I know a lot of them were created in previous years - so don't even @ me Bro!)

Books

Lincoln In The Bardo - George Saunders (Tenth of December also had some great moments - especially the final story)
Les Miserable - Victor Hugo (almost unabridged translation by Norman Denny)
The Power - Naomi Alderman
In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead - James Lee Burke
A Behanding In Spokane - Martin McDonough

TV

The Good Place (season 2 and 3)
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective's Agency (season 2)
Fargo (season 3)

Films

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

and then in no particular order

Wheelman (Netflix)
Moonlight
Milk
Avengers: Infinity War (have watched this 4 times so far!)
Ant-man and The Wasp
Loveless (bleak and beautifully shot)
The Shape of Water
Don't Worry He Won't Get Far on Foot (Amazon Prime)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Spiderman: Into The Spider-verse

Documentary

Quincy (Netflix)

Comedy Special

Elder Millennial - Iliza Shlesinger (Netflix)
Nanette (Netflix) - Hannah Gadsby. Not really a comedy special but something powerful and hard to define.

Albums

The Nashville Sound - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Xoa - Anais Mitchell. Two incredible songwriters.

Really Old Albums

The Milk-eyed Mender - Joanna Newsom
Clouds - Joni Mitchell

Grammar For Vampires

Really enjoying Grammar For Grown-ups by Craig Shrives but it just makes me want to break the rules

The vampire searched for a drink in vein

The Best Of 2017

Here's the books, films, TV shows that I most enjoyed in 2017 (hardly any were released in 2017 though)

Non-fiction Books

Marie Kondo: The Life Changing Magic Of Tidying
Joshua Wolf Shenk: Powers Of Two
Primo Levi: If This Is A Man/The Truce
Christopher McDougall: Born to Run

Fiction Books

Thomas Pynchon: Inherent Vice
Martin McDonagh: The Cripple Of Inishmaan
Raymond Chandler: The Long Goodbye
Victor Hugo: Les Miserables

Films

Hunt For The Wilderpeople (Netflix)
Paddington 2
Free Fire
Selma (Netflix)
Shimmer Lake (Netflix)
Manchester By The Sea
War For The Planet Of The Apes
Trumbo (Netflix)

Logan, Spiderman: Homecoming and Wonder Woman were also good

TV Shows (all available on Netflix)

The Good Place
Atypical
Backstrom
Narcos (especially S3)
The Mighty Boosh S1

also two comedy specials

Rory Scovel Tries Stand Up For The First Time
Brian Regan: Nunchucks and Flamethrowers

Documentaries

The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young (Netflix)
Miss Sharon Jones! (Netflix)
13th (Netflix)

Music

Randy Newman: Harps And Angels
Loudon Wainwright III: A Live One
Ani DiFranco: Ani DiFranco

Gershwin Poem

Poetic notes on Fascinating Rhythm by Deena Rosenberg

Two brothers
Fascinated by the polyrhythmic city
Meshing gears

The syncopation of different races
Black notes and blues notes
Afric' an' Jew notes
From slaves and from synagogues
Cantors in Cadillacs
An Empire Statement sound
Resounding
Jitterbugging through their brains

The Wit And Wisdom Of Haruki Murakami

Asleep like a tuna (p.126)

My puss was puffy like cheap cheesecake (p.128)

From Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

(I liked the book by the way)

Hurry Up Cormac!

I'm reading A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway.

I'm enjoying it, but I can't help feeling a little melancholy. The only reason I'm reading it is that there is no more Cormac McCarthy to read. Since watching No Country For Old Men about 2 1/2 years ago I've read every novel, play and screenplay.

Why is the Cormac all gone?

Update: Over the summer hols reread All The Pretty Horses, Cities Of The Plains and watched No Country For Old Men.

War And Peace

I just finished War And Peace. Took me about 100 pages to get into it (constantly referring to the 'who's who' in the front) but I enjoyed it. Apart from the 40 pages of philosophy at the end.

From the age of 20 to 40 I read almost exclusively books on some aspect of Protestant Christianity, maybe averaging one fictional book per year. In the last 6 years my taste in reading has become a lot more 'catholic'.

Of the 58 books on my 50 Books To Read Before You Die metal bookmark I've now read 15. War And Peace didn't make the list.

I enjoyed

Pride And Prejudice
To Kill A Mockingbird
Hamlet
The Bible
Moby Dick
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time
Heart Of Darkness
Life Of Pi
A Christmas Carol (and Great Expectations – not on the list)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Wasn't Too Bothered About

On The Road

I Hated

The Catcher In The Rye
Frankenstein (though I loved Dracula – also not on the list)

And I gave up on

Ulysses (though I did enjoy it in parts)
The Count Of Monte Cristo

(I intend to live forever simply by never reading the His Dark Materials Trilogy).