Best of 2019

I actually wrote up a long post on my favorite movies of the year and put it up for a few days, but something just didn’t feel right. I wrote a freaking novel to wrap up last year, but I’m feeling much, much more stripped down for 2019. ’Twas a great year, don’t get me wrong, but it just feels right to put up the lists and let them speak for themselves.

Before the lists themselves, I’ll post here the data I diligently collected on my movies, TV, books, and music.

The one picture needed to sum up the year.

Spotify (where I listen to 97% of my music) said that I spent 43,000 minutes listening to music this year, which is about 30 days… so, at least 1/12 of my year was accompanied by music.

I fell short of my reading goal (36) just at the very end. I read 10, 783 pages across 35 books, according to goodreads, which does not include the hundreds of pages in books and articles I did for class/research this year.

I watched 86 movies this year, according to my letterboxd, 12 of which were re-watches. (There even more unrecorded rewatches…) If the average movie length is two hours, that comes out to about 7 days.

According to the app I use to track my tv watching, I watched 24 days and 10 hours of television, over 911 episodes. I don’t have the heart to go in and verify those numbers, but they also don’t include the consistent casual viewing of episodes of Friends and The Office (or the multiple rewatches of shows on my best of list…).

Best Movies of 2019

1. Parasite

2. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

3. Marriage Story

4. Pain and Glory

5. Transit

6. Knives Out

7. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

8. The Farewell

9. Ad Astra

10. Long Day’s Journey Into Night

11. Joker

12. Ash is Purest White

13. The Lighthouse

14. Midsommar

15. Honey Boy

16. The Report

17. Jojo Rabbit

18. Booksmart

19. Monos

Best Television of 2019

Like film, 2019 was a landmark year in television, with some all time greats arriving or continuing.

1. Watchmen
2. Fleabag
3. Barry
4. Euphoria
5. Rick and Morty
6. Russian Doll
7. Mindhunter
8. Ramy
9. Patriot Act
10. Dear White People

Best Books of 2019

(In no particular order, and not counting any books that I began before 2019) All of these were superlative.

Fun Home, Hollow Kingdom, Haunted, You Should Have Left, A Lucky Man, Exhalation, Lincoln in the Bardo, Dune, Pet Sematary, Interpreter of Maladies, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, A Soldier of the Great War, Ill Will, Doctor Sleep, It, The Elementals, The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Flights, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead, Disgrace.

My Music of 2019

Again, in no particular order, here are a jumble of songs that were year-defining for me.

break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored (Ariana Grande), Spirit (Majid Jordan), SUGAR (BROCKHAMPTON), No Guidance (Christ Brown feat. Drake), Kevin’s Heart (J. Cole), Icon (Jaden), bury a friend (billie eilish), Come Down (Anderson .Paak), Workin Out (JID), All of Us (Labrinth, Zendaya), BOY BYE (BROCKHAMPTON), July (Noah Cyrus), All Mine (Kanye West), It’s Black (‘Ol Burger Beats), Thru the Night (Jack Harlow, Bryson Tiller), Damage Done (cehryl), 1999 WILDFIRE (BROCKHAMPTON), Prone (Masego), Dwa Serduszka (Joanna Kulig), I Been On (Beyonce), Potato Salad (Tyler, the Creator, A$AP Rocky), Down Bad (Dreamville), The Wave (Se So Neon), I Don’t Care (Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber), Evil (Stevie Wonder), Can I (Drake), Bennie and the Jets (Elton John), EARFQUAKE (Tyler, the Creator), ilomilo (Billie Eilish), Come Back to Earth (Mac Miller).

Happy New Year, everyone. I’ll be back next year.