Dear friends, I don’t plan to spam you with a ton of emails. There was just too much content to put it all in a single post, so the first email was a roundup of more personal delights from 2022, and this is a list of my media recos. I’m sorry it’s so long.

TV

• Abbott Elementary - “Like The Office, but kind.”

• All Creatures Great and Small - The reboot. Quite charming.

• Andor - My husband loved this; I liked it fine. Not my favorite of it all, but I’ll take any Star Wars content I can get.

• Archer. This show is still so great! RIP Jessica Walter.

• Atlanta. They ended the series perfectly. I found this show hard sometimes. I worried about the characters.

• Barry. See this for the flavor.

• The Bear. Worth it for the emotional growth and the incredibly satisfying ending.

• Better Call Saul. Another one where the ending made the whole ride worth it.

• Better Things. I love this show for normalizing a lady like me - post-menopausal, tough, a little bitchy or prickly.

• The Book of Boba Fett - More (welcome) Star Wars content.

• Bones. Yes I love this show and continue to re-watch it for comfort. Sue me. I realized recently that the central character is highly annoying, and it doesn’t matter. The show is all about the people who love her anyway.

• Bosch: Legacy - You really have to be into Bosch to give a damn about this extended remix. Bosch is definitely a jerk, but he gets the job done.

• Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities is interesting, though variable. The third episode (set partly in a coal mine) was excellent.

• Dark. We binged it over about a week or two last month to get ready for 1899 (which we heard now they already canceled!). They really stuck the landing.

• Dead to Me - I was so moved by what I read about Christina Applegate’s perseverance through her multiple sclerosis diagnosis/treatment. I def cried a few times in the end. Not what you expect from a show that the word “zany” also absolutely applies to.

• Dickinson. Pretty good, though definitely weird. I love Toby Huss as her father.

• I tried Echo 3 and I’m not sure I give a shit. I generally like the genre of private heroes rescuing people and being badass, but I have yet to get stuck into this one.

• The Expanse ending! I love this whole world in both book and screen formats and I was very sorry to have it end.

• The Flight Attendant - This show is wacky. Better than the book, which I did like.

• For All Mankind - This show is epic. What would happen if the Russians beat the US to the moon?

• The Great British Bake-Off. Either it’s for you or it’s not. It’s for me.

• The Great Pottery Throwdown. Turns out this is for me as well, now that I’m potting.

• Julia - So wonderful! Has a Mrs Maisel vibe due to its era. The Childs are lovely.

• Hilda. It’s cozy cozy cozy. Hilda is a brat! But kind.

• Made for Love - With Cristin Milioti, who was “the mother” in How I Met Your Mother. My husband liked this more than me, but the acting was great.

• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

• Minx - In the words of Cosmo magazine, “Fierce, fun and feminist!” I’m sad that it didn’t get renewed. Jake Johnson being himself: He knows who he is and what side his bread is buttered on.

• Moon Knight - I’m pretty sure Oscar Isaac and Jake Johnson are the same person.

• Ms. Marvel is a treasure. I am loving Marvel for its inclusiveness.

• Obi-Wan Kenobi - I delight in all the Star Wars side stories.

• The Old Man. Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow, two old lions going head to head?

• Only Murders in the Building with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez to pull in the kidz. Does not disappoint. So, so fun.

• The Orville - Basically just Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Next Generation, and worthy of the title. In will-they-won’t-they-renew hell, I gather.

• Our Flag Means Death. What if What We Do in the Shadows was pirates? With Taika Waititi as Bluebeard? Ermahgerd!

• The Outlaws - I don’t know how they got Christopher Walken to do this British show about scofflaws who have to do public service together, but it’s great.

• Paper Girls, Amazon’s version of Stranger Things with girl energy? Still, loved it.

• Peacemaker! The intro is worth it alone. How did this ever get made?

• The Peripheral was a triumph IMO. Haters (critics) can suck it.

• Star Trek: Picard - I really liked this, my husband fell out of love with it over time. Here is Alison Pill doing Shadows of the Night, you’re welcome.

• Raised by Wolves - “What in the absolute F is happening” was what I was thinking half the time. But I did really enjoy it anyway.

• Reacher - I liked it; my husband was meh; my dad thought it was way too violent/gory (which in a second watching, I realized is true). At least the star is as big as the books describe him!

• Reservation Dogs. A love story to Oklahoma Native kids & culture.

• The Sandman. My husband is a superfan and said they managed to nail this. I am not, but enjoyed it a lot.

• Severance. Everybody is saying to watch this, and they are right.

• She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. More inclusive content from Marvel, hilarious writing, meta winking, and great performances from everyone.

• Shining Girls! Ooh, this was spooky and creepy and intricate and so rewarding. It relied on a sci-fi tool that I usually hate, but in this it really worked.

• Slow Horses. “What I wish Killing Eve was,” said my husband. I agree.

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is also ST: TNG: TNG.

• Station Eleven! Despite being set in a pandemic/post pandemic world, I didn’t find this upsetting (Covid) and the family-love story is very gratifying.

• Stranger Things, with that weirdly long last episode of the season.

• Ted Lasso, of course. Here’s a taste.

• Three Pines - Amazon’s Louise Penny TV show. It’s pretty comfortable. Not exactly the village I picture in my head, but close enough. Alfred Molina is a pretty great casting for Gamache!

• The Umbrella Academy - This season began with an episode that included the Footloose dance-off, which I can watch and re-watch. Joy.

• Wednesday (Addams) was a delight. Jenna Ortega, the young actress who played Wednesday, was so perfect. We binged the whole thing in one day.

• What We Do in the Shadows. I love these idiots.

• Willow. A worthy continuation of the story.

• The Witcher: Blood Origin is really fun. Don’t believe the haters.

• Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? Despite it being set in an antique period even my husband enjoyed this, and I thought it was delightful.

Movies

• The Adam Project - just delightful. I love Ryan Reynolds in everything and in this he sort of played against that guy for much of the movie, and it’s worth it.

• Amsterdam - that cast was pretty spectacular.

• The Banshees of Inisherin - I am adding it to this list to warn people. Because I hated this movie so much that I stopped halfway through, and from what I heard I am glad I missed the rest. It was cruel and awful. I had to go have an ugly cry over it.

• The Batman with Robert Pattinson - he was a good Batman, not a good Bruce Wayne.

• Bullet Train - entertaining, but I felt like I was on the outside of a lot of inside jokes between handsome people. And it was too long.

• Confess, Fletch was funny and Jon Hamm did justice to the Fletch character.

• Dog with Channing Tatum - it was sweet. Could have used more denouement than they gave us.

• Dune. I felt like I should have been more into this than I was. It was beautiful to look at, though.

• Everything Everywhere All at Once. Jamie Lee Curtis is unrecognizable and a joy. Michelle Yeoh is her usual ass-kicking self (in half of it) and a normal person in the rest. Try not to hear too much about it if you haven’t seen it yet; it got over-hyped to me and I was slightly disappointed.

• Ghostbusters: Afterlife - Goonies Bustin’ Ghosts Makes Me Feel Good

• The Lost City - Channing Tatum playing against his usual action character was pretty charming. There’s a dance scene that’s really sexy and sweet.

• Nope - what a thrill!

• Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio was pretty intense.

• See How They Run - fun and goofy

• Spider-Man: No Way Home - this was surprisingly touching and sweet. Going into it, I thought it was going to suck and I could not have been more wrong.

• The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent - Words cannot express how much I loved this movie. The meta, self-referential, winking approach did not in the least interfere with how enjoyable it was - in fact I have to admit it really kind of made the movie what it was.

• Weird: The Al Yankovic Story - HILARIOUS.

Books

• James Acaster's Classic Scrapes - I listened to this while walking and occasionally had to stop and put my hands on my knees because I was laughing too hard.

• Jonathan Ames - A Man Named Doll - He has a follow-up novel that is on my list.

• Kate Atkinson - Shrines of Gaiety - greatly enjoyed - and Transcription - could not finish, hated it.

• Louis Bayard - Jackie & Me - Lovely.

• Becky Chambers - A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk and Robot #2). Chambers’ earlier Wayfarers series was a favorite and I was very sad when she ended it.

• John Cleese - Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide - This very short (non-fiction) book was a huge surprise, in that it was gentle and encouraging and useful! I mistakenly thought it was going to be a retread of tropes about creativity.

• Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Water Dancer - I loved this book, although it was painful to read in many places, dealing with American Slavery. I never considered how much value was stolen from slaves in the form of their expertise and genius; this book made that quite clear. But it was also a really riveting story.

• Michael Connelly - The Closers, Echo Park, The Overlook, Nine Dragons (all fom the Bosch series). Okay, it’s weird that it took me so long, but I finally twigged to the fact that Bosch is … an asshole! I might not be reading/listening to any more of these. They’re certainly engaging, but: Man, is he a dick.

• James S.A. Corey - The Sins of Our Fathers (An Expanse Novella). I will read anything Expanse. And re-read too.

• KC Davis - How to Keep House while Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing. This is a great book about being gentle with yourself and not being a perfectionist about keeping up with your dumb housework, which after all is not an indicator of your worth. I so recommend it to anybody who is neuroatypical or is having trouble feeling like they are not doing/being enough.

• Robert Galbraith - The Ink Black Heart (Cormoran Strike series).

• David Grann - Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. This was eye-opening to indigenous folks’ troubles in Oklahoma! Pretty easy read, too.

• Michael Gruber - The Book of Air and Shadows. I am a huge fan of Gruber.

• Erik Hanberg - Semi/Human. A woman and a sentient semi-truck go on a rampage. Hijinks ensue. I really enjoyed it.

• Joe Ide - The Goodbye Coast. Meh. I love his IQ series, but this was disappointing.

• Arnaldur Indridason - Reykjavík Nights - set in like the 1970s? I wanted to read a book set in Iceland before our trip. I’ll probably go on and read more of this author; this was a prequel to the Inspector Erlendur series.

• Michael Lewis - The Premonition: A Pandemic Story - very compulsively readable non-fiction about the run up to the Covid pandemic.

• Val McDermid - 1979 (Allie Burns series, #1). I only just got around to Val McDermid. Despite being set in the ‘70s, a decade I don’t think is very appealing in retrospect, I liked the main character, the supporting cast, and will probably read more from the series.

• Chris Pavone - Two Nights in Lisbon and The Travelers. I have read all of his works now. I’ve enjoyed them all.

• Louise Penny - How the Light Gets in, The Long Way Home, The Nature of the Beast, A Great Reckoning, and Glass Houses (all Gamache series). These are comfort reading. My mom was a big fan, and I love reading them knowing she read them too.

• Nicole Perlroth - This is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race. Non-fiction about hacking, very readable.

• Thomas Perry - Vanishing Act, Dance for the Dead, and Shadow Woman (Jane Whitefield series). I like this series, although the main character is a Mary Sue (impossible ideal). I find those fairly annoying.

• Liz Moore - Long Bright River - I thought this book was amazing. It’s set in Philadelphia, a city I don’t like at all because I think it’s incredibly seedy, but the setting was super apt for the content. I was incredibly moved by the characters’ emotional arcs. And there was a TWEEST!

• John Scalzi - Kaiju Preservation Society - I love, love, love John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series. And I enjoyed this novel, not part of a series as far as I can tell.

• Robin Sloan - The Suitcase Clone. I also love Robin Sloan. I subscribe to some of his newsletters and I like how he thinks. This fun novel was kind of a prequel to Sourdough and Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, both of which I devoured.

• Adrian Tchaikovsky - Eyes of the Void. I thought this was a good wrap up to the Final Architects series, although I just saw that a third in the series is coming this May?

• Martha Wells - The Murderbot Diaries series (such a joy! I have now read them all multiple times)

  

• Rob Wilkins - Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes - Not enough about the wife & kid, but scratched an itch.

• Hanya Yanagihara - To Paradise. This was acclaimed, but I just thought it was okay. In retrospect, I liked the structure it was organized around a lot.

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