10 thoughts on “2018 Year-End Lists

  1. Ann Hornaday’s 10 best films of 2018, with accompanying essay.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/best-movies-of-2018-roma-is-intimate-epic-and-the-years-finest/2018/12/05/e37fda5c-f7f1-11e8-863c-9e2f864d47e7_story.html

    1. Roma
    2. If Beale Street Could Talk
    3. The Rider
    4. First Reformed
    5. BlackKkKlansman
    6. Green Book
    7. Eighth Grade
    8. Tully
    9. Blindspotting
    10. A Quiet Place

    I saw numbers 6 through 10 in theaters and already have the rest saved to queue. I listen to Hornaday’s podcast, so I already had The Rider and First Reformed lined up.

  2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/the-10-best-tv-episodes-of-2018-from-atlanta-to-this-is-us/2018/12/04/455d2688-e453-11e8-b759-3d88a5ce9e19_story.html

    The Washington Post’s 10 best TV epidodes of 2018.

    1. Atlanta: Teddy Perkins
    2. The Americans: START
    3. Barry: Make Your Mark
    4. Killing Eve: I Have a Thing About Bathrooms
    5. This is Us: The Car
    6. The Haunting of Hill House: Two Storms
    7. Brooklyn Nine-Nine: The Box
    8. Forever: Andre and Sarah
    9. The Good Place: Rhonda, Diana, Jake and Trent
    10. BoJack Horseman: The Stopped Show

    I have seen three of these. That episode of Atlanta was amazing (and surreal as heck) but I would have gone with “Woods,” the eighth episode of season 2. I’m planning to go through Barry once I either get through seasons 1 and 2 of Patriot or decide not to continue with it.

    I also find it interesting that the writer chooses an episode from season 2, early in 2018 rather than from season 3, later in the year. Challenged to name a better episode, I just couldn’t do it. They’re almost all about the same level of amazing. I find it weird that in this age of new streaming platforms, my favorite scripted show is on broadcast TV.

  3. As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing the tradition of sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to reflect on the year through the books, movies, and music that I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. I hope you enjoy it: https://t.co/qz6TCMKnkL— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 28, 2018

    1. From his list of older titles, I’ve read two: Factfulness by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

      This is an excerpt from my review of Factfulness:

      Try as many of us might to remain optimistic, reasons for hope appear to dwindle in numbers as we long for better days. Are they ahead of us, or are they all behind? The authors of Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (Macmillan, 2018) insist that not only are things getting better, but they’ve got the data to prove it. Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund offer hard stats indicating dramatic (and convincing) decreases in bad stuff such as disease, environmental catastrophe, and accidents, and increases in good stuff such as literacy, access to clean water, environmental protection, and health.

      I can privately send any of you a link to the rest of my review if you find that kind of thing interesting. I closed it with “For these reasons, we give this book our highest recommendation. Buy it, read it, and pass it around!” Yes, I write in the plural first-person. It’s weird but I write on behalf of an organization so I have to.

      I haven’t even heard of the titles on his 2018 list. Would you put it past him to have included the book on Federick Douglass to take a jab at his successor? I wouldn’t.

      His favorite movies in alphabetical order:
      Annihilation
      Black Panther
      BlacKkKlansman
      Blindspotting
      Burning
      The Death of Stalin
      Eighth Grade
      If Beale Street Could Talk
      Leave No Trace
      Minding the Gap
      The Rider
      Roma
      Shoplifters
      Support the Girls
      Won’t You Be My Neighbor

      I’ve seen five of these and several are queued up.

      From his list of songs, I was pleased to see how much current pop he’s consumed. Is it because his daughters are young women, or does he consume like this anyway?

      I’m going to have to check out that Prince cover of “Mary Don’t You Weep.”

      Mildly disappointed that our Boomer president doesn’t have any classic rock bands on this list. Slightly more disappointed that there’s no metal. C’mon.

  4. Lit Hub’s Ultimate Best Books of 2018 List is a compilation of 52 best books lists available on the web. Emily Temple, the list’s compiler, ranks titles based on how often they’re mentioned in these lists.

    https://lithub.com/the-ultimate-best-books-of-2018-list

    19 lists: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh and There There by Tommy Orange.

    18 lists: Circe by Madeline Miller
    17 lists: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
    16 lists: Educated by Tara Westover

    Click the link for the rest of the list. I didn’t read anything on it, but I purchased (and might actually read) two of them, the Bob Woodward and Michael Lewis books, which each made three lists.

  5. Another from Lit Hub. The website’s writers, editors, and contributors name their favorite book of the year. I like lists like this better than compilation lists by groups of people. A book could make the top of a compilation list if five people rated it their second-favorite novel. I’m usually more interested in a person’s favorite novel, and here are fifty-nine of them, each with a short write-up by the contributor. I actually bought one of the books before I was finished with the list: Helen Hoang’s The Kiss Quotient.

    https://lithub.com/lit-hubs-favorite-books-of-2018

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *