You may be asking yourself the question, "What is the point of this navel-gazing post? Why not just post a screenshot of your streaming app's "wrapped" stats and move on with your life?" Well, first of all, now that I have a son, my streaming stats are dominated by children's songs. I love those songs & I enjoy dancing around the apartment with him while they play, but I also don't think they give an accurate picture of my aesthetic tendencies.
Second, streaming services have narrow scopes of interest. I get different "wrapped" notifications for music, books, & films. I want to share an overview of the things I enjoyed this past year, but there's no way I'm going to post screenshots from a bunch of different apps. That's tacky.
Finally, and most importantly, I read this blog from Hearing Things and then I saw Tom MacWright's post about making his own wrapped for Bandcamp purchases, and these two well-timed posts kicked off a train of thought. I've emerged at the end of this train pretty adamant that passively letting data harvesters tell me what is or isn't my taste does not feel like an act of self-discovery. Instead, it feels like relinquishing control of my own sensibilities to a corporation.
In light of this, here are my curated highlights of the art and entertainment that I've engaged with this past year. I tried to approach this as an opportunity to provide succinct recommendations for things I genuinely enjoyed and less of a coldly analytical look back at the year.
Here are the high-level stats:
| genre | count |
|---|---|
| non-fiction | 8 |
| fiction | 18 |
| total | 26 |
I typically aim for about 24 books a year, give or take. Previously I've written about the blend of translation, author backgrounds, &c. I'm not going to dive too deeply into that here. Instead, this section is based entirely on what I would recommend to you if the opportunity came up in casual conversation.
I'm long overdue for a write up of why I think everyone remotely interested in technology and science should be required to read every novel that Lem wrote. I read this book toward the beginning of the year and it immediately went into my Top 5 all time books.
Lem's ability to take a common science fiction trope (e.g. we've received a message from outer space) and unwind it in the most philosophically and logically rigorous way possible (e.g. we can never hope to fully understand it, maybe it's a test we've failed) is unparalleled.
Well-executed body horror whose staying power isn't due shock value alone is rare. In this book, you both fear for the protagonist and despise him for how he lived his life prior to the car accident that left him wholly dependent on his mother-in-law's care.
A very personal and incisive collection of essays from a writer who was not on my radar prior to this year. O'Gieblyn moves seamlessly between deeply personal accounts over her own wrestling with religion and analytical inquiries into technology's manifestly religious status in contemporary society.
I debated whether or not to include this one on the list. It was incredibly hard to read. Touched so many raw nerves. But also, it was a deeply profound look at the relationship between a mother and daughter, life and death, acceptance and denial, and how incredibly hard it can be when all of these collide.
This one is a last minute entry, as I finished reading it just this past week. It is also the exception to my criterion this section. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to someone in casual conversation.
My biggest quibbles revolve around the fact that: a) Ellul trained as a lawyer and this really shines through in the ways that he structures his arguments (i.e. so thorough & meticulous as to make you set the book down), and b) I think that Ellul's Christianity dilutes his analysis at times (i.e. causes him to go out of his way to assert that propaganda is possible because western societal values have eroded and morals are no longer fixed).
Setting caveats aside, though, this book was most interesting in how it approached the phenomenon of propaganda in modern, technological societies. One of Ellul's main insights is that propaganda is not necessarily β or only? β an action taken by nefarious actors seeking to brainwash the masses. Rather, he views it as a sociological phenomenon that is inevitable wherever large, technological societies emerge. Fascinating analysis that had me re-evaluating my own understanding of the use, purposes, and threats of propaganda in modern society.
Let's get the overly sentimental one out of the way first. David Bazan was a pastor's son who moved around as a kid. I was a pastor's son who moved around as kid. He's currently releasing an autobiographical album for each town he lived in during childhood. These albums feel like they were written for me. The latest, Santa Cruz, is my favorite of the series so far:
I stumbled across Taylor Kirk's music completely by accident and I can't stop listening to it. He manages write these songs that can be both haunting and inviting in all the right ways.
There's something special in Caiano's album Vou Ficar Neste Quadrado that I have trouble putting my finger on. It feels like a head-on collision between old and new, and the wreckage turns out to be something wholly its own.
An art rock band from Mexico City, their album After Destruction really transcends the form. It's not a collection of songs so much as it is a sonically conveyed dramatic play. At the same time it doesn't feel right to call it a concept album? I have trouble putting it into words. Regardless of category, this is an album that demands your attention. Monopolizes it. Every time I have put it on this year, I have been absorbed by the story that unfolds. Unusable as background music, and therefore highly recommended.
I won't dive into the details for these bands. But I've been in a real post-punk, avant-garde, jazz wormhole the last few months of this year and I've discovered a few great bands that'll probably end up in next year's write up.
In no particular order:
I did not realize this until I sat down to write them up, but all of the films I enjoyed most this past year came out in the previous decade. Listen, it's hard to stay on top of my to-be-watched list.
I finally got around to watching this psychedelic horror, revenge film this past year even though it came out over half a decade ago. Nic Cage was amazing, as always[1]. Even more, though, I found the film to be original both aesthetically and thematically.
Thrilled that someone is still out there making weird, unexpected films. The cinematography, dialogue, and symbolism on display is some of the best in recent memory.
My favorite film that I watched this past year, and to my eternal surprise it's an understated little story that takes place in Columbus, Indiana. The cinematography is exceptional, the characters feel real and complicated, and the story unfolds on its own terms and tugs at your heart with its yearning. Turn off your phone, dim the lights, and let this film absorb you.
I won't litigate this argument here. But I will state unequivocally and in no uncertain terms that I think Nicolas Cage is one of the most innovative and interesting on-screen performers of our time. The movies he is in are not always good, but any movie I see him is inevitably a delight simply because you get to experience what he does with the material.