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chicafrom3Happy new year! 2020 is dead. May it stay that way.
I know time is a social construct but it's nice to get to bury 2020.
I'm mostly just waiting for new Doctor Who so I figured I'd take the opportunity to do my yearly media roundup post and also take the opportunity to shoutout Yuletide -- I both wrote and received in the same fandom, the teenage love trilogy from Taylor Swift's folklore album; soupytwist wrote me the absolutely gorgeous the hope of it all taking on the story from the perspective of the narrator of august, and giving her so much room to grow and breathe and connect, and everyone should read it; I got to write I Don't Know Anything (But I Know I Miss You) for hernameinthesky exploring things from James's side and indulging in my feelings a bit.
Every year I do this media roundup of stuff I've read/listened to/watched the last year. Why? I don't know. It interests me. I like patterns.
In 2020 I read 173 books, exceeding my Goodreads goal of 150 books.
As I mentioned in a post a little earlier, this included a lot of trash reading, including a lot of comic books (a lot of comic books), a bunch of Scholastic books aimed at sixth-graders, and a ton of Doctor Who novels. It's fine. It was a trash year. You can find my Goodreads year in review here. Goodreads informs I read 21,723 pages; the shortest book was Constantine #11 at 20 pages, and the longest book was Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone at 544 pages; the average book length was 125 pages. The most popular book was, again, Children of Blood and Bone (shelved by 478,036 other people); the least popular was Colourful Irish Phrases by Micheál Ó Conghaile (shelved by 13 other people). My average rating was 3.7 stars.
Browsing through the list of books I read this list, a few books stand out among the trash. Children of Blood and Bone was, unsurprisingly, very good and deserves to be shelved that many times! Among the comics, I loved the John Constantine: Hellblazer reboot and thought the Manhattan Projects was really good. Craic Baby: Dispatches From A Rising Languages was super interesting. I really enjoyed Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows and How Long Til Black Future Month?, and I learned a lot from Seven Ages of Paris.
With the news of Big Finish getting Christopher Eccleston (news I am still wildly excited about and looking forward to), that also spurred me on to getting into their back catalogue, something I do periodically, and a few of the ones I listened to stand out particularly -- The Natural History Of Fear (did not see the ending coming at all and loved it), Jubilee, Neverland, Zagreus, Scherzo, Three's A Crowd (hits differently in 2020, I'll tell you that), The Marian Conspiracy, Doctor Who And The Pirates...
My 2021 goal is to read more good books. Not necessarily fewer bad books -- I think there's a place for trash books, especially when the world is trash -- but I want to read more good books as well.
In music news, last.fm informs me that I listened to 6547 scrobbles in 2019.
Same as last year, I listened to a lot of podcasts, which last.fm does not track. Top artist, unsurprisingly, remains the Pogues (525), followed by Taylor Swift (444), then new entry Guerilla Poubelle (362), the musical Hamilton (299), and Dropkick Murphys (298). If we cut out musical theatre, Declan Bennett slides back into the top five (270). Top albums: Punk = Existentialisme (Reissue + Bonus) by Guerilla Poubelle (105), Rum Sodomy & the Lash by the Pogues (102), folklore [Explicit] (deluxe version) by Taylor Swift (100), Il faut repeindre le monde... en noir by Guerilla Poubelle (92 plays), and If I Should Fall From Grace With God [Expanded] by the Pogues (91). This is slightly deceptive because folklore is actually listed twice in the top ten, once as the deluxe version and once as the original version; if those plays were combined it would be bumped to the top of the list with 181 plays, and the fifth slot would be taken by evermore by Taylor Swift with 90 plays. Top tracks (leaving out unlabeled things): this is me trying by Taylor Swift (17), cardigan by Taylor Swift (16), Streams of Whiskey (12), and then a many-way tie for fourth with hoax, illicit affairs, mad woman, mirrorball, my tears richochet, seven, the last great american dynasty illicit affairs, mad woman, mirrorball, my tears richochet, seven, and the last great american dynasty by Taylor Swift and Dirty Old Town and The Body of An American by the Pogues (11).
As I mentioned, Guerilla Poubelle was a new discovery of mine this year! An artcore punk band from Paris, I discovered them...in July, according to my paypal receipts? And they became my third-most-played artist of the year. So you can guess how much I like them. They are a really great punk band, even if my French is not up to understanding most of their lyrics, and I highly recommend giving them a listen, at least on YouTube if nothing else.
Lots of new albums came out this year. Taylor Swift released two quarantine albums and just dominated my last.fm plays. I love them both. She also technically released a third album in the form of folklore: the long pond studio sessions, so you know, what have you done in quarantine? (I have done nothing.) Declan Bennett released LIVE AND ALLOWED, a compilation of previous live recordings, including the first official recording of "Yesterday", and I love it to pieces. The Chicks came back on the scene with a vengeance with Gaslighter (first album in fourteen years!!) and it is spectacular. Sing Street's cast recording came out even though they failed to open due to the pandemic; (did -- did I mention I had tickets to see the show? it was going to be my first trip to Broadway? haha fuck you covid for so so many reasons this is just one of the pettiest) and it's a delight, I love blasting Drive It Like You Stole It, I look forward to them finally getting to rock their shit on Broadway when one day we can do shit like that again. The Weeknd's album After Hours is brilliant and I have no idea what the Grammys were smoking when they snubbed it. I also really liked Selena Gomez's Rare? I don't know if that's an unpopular opinion, I feel like it might be.
According to trakt.tv I watched 776 hours of TV this year! They don't give me any other stats and that may not be accurate because I don't pay for their app, but it's good enough!
I don't actually track my TV habits anymore, because it got exhausting and not-fun a few years ago, but I try to some up some of it anyway. 2020 has been roughly a century long, so I don't know how good of a summary this one's going to be -- when discussing the upcoming Doctor Who special a few days ago someone mentioned that DW Season 12 was in 2020 and I went "no that's wrong".
DW Season 12 was in 2020.
Time isn't real.
So Doctor Who season 12 was in 2020! I liked it. It's okay if you didn't. It was very polarizing. I'm looking forward to season 13, I'm interested in how the dynamic is going to change with the cast shakeup and with the filming restrictions. We live in frustrating times.
It's been a weird year for TV. I'm genuinely sitting here trying to remember what I watched this year. There was a new season of This Is Us, I remember that because they addressed Covid19 and Black Lives Matter head on and it was clumsy. New Amsterdam was wrapping up a season as Covid19 was getting bad and went "shit we have a pandemic episode in the pipeline . . . let's not do that."
His Dark Materials just wrapped up its second season and ended me. I've read the books, roughly a lifetime ago, and had forgotten several details and was not prepared for certain things to go the way they did. I'm glad it got picked up for a third season even though I remember liking the third book least of all.
I keep watching the Crown mostly out of trainwreck syndrome. It's just fascinating to watch these people who can't function as people, I think? Monarchy is a hell of a drug. Like capitalism. Also I love Gillian Anderson but loathe Thatcher with every bone in my body and that is a very conflicting feeling.
I started watching more cooking reality shows on streaming this year. Why? IDK. I've been into the GBBO for several years now, I think, but this year I started watching, like, Nailed It and Chef's Table and Lords and Ladles and whatever. Just make food in front of me. It's soothing.
I'm continuing to very slowly marathon Stargate SG-1. I've reached the Cam Mitchell years.
Oh, and The Mandalorian season two! That was spectacular, I loved that. I want to rewatch the whole series in one go now. I can't believe we're going to have to wait two years for season three. I have very little interest in the Book of Boba but will probably watch it anyway.
What DC shows aired this year? DC's Stargirl was this year, right? (I genuinely just had to go check my last year's post to see if I'd mentioned it.) I really liked Stargirl, it was sweet and fun and hit all the right notes. Beth and Yolanda alternated being my favorites. I really hope moving to the CW doesn't kill it. I finally got around to watching Black Lightning and really liked it, so of course the CW has now announced that the next season will be the last. I had to look up DC's Legends of Tomorrow to remember if it aired this year (it did! but in January which was roughly a hundred years ago!) but, yeah, I liked that, too, although iirc the season was shortened due to Covid? I might be misremembering. I also checked out the animated Harley Quinn on DC Universe and enjoyed that as well.
IDK, this year was ridiculous.
I have literally no idea how many movies I watched this year. The only ones that stand out are the ones I watched most recently. Go watch Wolfwalkers (available on Apple TV), it's amazing and Cartoon Saloon needs the support. I liked the Prom (available on Netflix), but if you're not super into musicals you probably won't be into it. I finally got the chance to see The Band's Visit after loving the musical adaptation; the original movie is just as gorgeous. Oh, and I saw Hamilton! Like everyone else.
As far as live theatre goes, before Covid19 shut everything down, I did see the national tours of Waitress and The Play The Goes Wrong at the very beginning of the year. (I was scheduled to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well. Tickets were rescheduled, and then cancelled. Can't say I was surprisedor particularly that that was the last show of my season tickets.) I loved both shows, but probably loved The Play That Goes Wrong slightly more. The way the set is used? *chef's kiss*
One day there will be widespread live theatre again. I'm sure.
Happy new year, and may we all survive to see it through to another one!
I know time is a social construct but it's nice to get to bury 2020.
I'm mostly just waiting for new Doctor Who so I figured I'd take the opportunity to do my yearly media roundup post and also take the opportunity to shoutout Yuletide -- I both wrote and received in the same fandom, the teenage love trilogy from Taylor Swift's folklore album; soupytwist wrote me the absolutely gorgeous the hope of it all taking on the story from the perspective of the narrator of august, and giving her so much room to grow and breathe and connect, and everyone should read it; I got to write I Don't Know Anything (But I Know I Miss You) for hernameinthesky exploring things from James's side and indulging in my feelings a bit.
Every year I do this media roundup of stuff I've read/listened to/watched the last year. Why? I don't know. It interests me. I like patterns.
In 2020 I read 173 books, exceeding my Goodreads goal of 150 books.
As I mentioned in a post a little earlier, this included a lot of trash reading, including a lot of comic books (a lot of comic books), a bunch of Scholastic books aimed at sixth-graders, and a ton of Doctor Who novels. It's fine. It was a trash year. You can find my Goodreads year in review here. Goodreads informs I read 21,723 pages; the shortest book was Constantine #11 at 20 pages, and the longest book was Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone at 544 pages; the average book length was 125 pages. The most popular book was, again, Children of Blood and Bone (shelved by 478,036 other people); the least popular was Colourful Irish Phrases by Micheál Ó Conghaile (shelved by 13 other people). My average rating was 3.7 stars.
Browsing through the list of books I read this list, a few books stand out among the trash. Children of Blood and Bone was, unsurprisingly, very good and deserves to be shelved that many times! Among the comics, I loved the John Constantine: Hellblazer reboot and thought the Manhattan Projects was really good. Craic Baby: Dispatches From A Rising Languages was super interesting. I really enjoyed Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows and How Long Til Black Future Month?, and I learned a lot from Seven Ages of Paris.
With the news of Big Finish getting Christopher Eccleston (news I am still wildly excited about and looking forward to), that also spurred me on to getting into their back catalogue, something I do periodically, and a few of the ones I listened to stand out particularly -- The Natural History Of Fear (did not see the ending coming at all and loved it), Jubilee, Neverland, Zagreus, Scherzo, Three's A Crowd (hits differently in 2020, I'll tell you that), The Marian Conspiracy, Doctor Who And The Pirates...
My 2021 goal is to read more good books. Not necessarily fewer bad books -- I think there's a place for trash books, especially when the world is trash -- but I want to read more good books as well.
In music news, last.fm informs me that I listened to 6547 scrobbles in 2019.
Same as last year, I listened to a lot of podcasts, which last.fm does not track. Top artist, unsurprisingly, remains the Pogues (525), followed by Taylor Swift (444), then new entry Guerilla Poubelle (362), the musical Hamilton (299), and Dropkick Murphys (298). If we cut out musical theatre, Declan Bennett slides back into the top five (270). Top albums: Punk = Existentialisme (Reissue + Bonus) by Guerilla Poubelle (105), Rum Sodomy & the Lash by the Pogues (102), folklore [Explicit] (deluxe version) by Taylor Swift (100), Il faut repeindre le monde... en noir by Guerilla Poubelle (92 plays), and If I Should Fall From Grace With God [Expanded] by the Pogues (91). This is slightly deceptive because folklore is actually listed twice in the top ten, once as the deluxe version and once as the original version; if those plays were combined it would be bumped to the top of the list with 181 plays, and the fifth slot would be taken by evermore by Taylor Swift with 90 plays. Top tracks (leaving out unlabeled things): this is me trying by Taylor Swift (17), cardigan by Taylor Swift (16), Streams of Whiskey (12), and then a many-way tie for fourth with hoax, illicit affairs, mad woman, mirrorball, my tears richochet, seven, the last great american dynasty illicit affairs, mad woman, mirrorball, my tears richochet, seven, and the last great american dynasty by Taylor Swift and Dirty Old Town and The Body of An American by the Pogues (11).
As I mentioned, Guerilla Poubelle was a new discovery of mine this year! An artcore punk band from Paris, I discovered them...in July, according to my paypal receipts? And they became my third-most-played artist of the year. So you can guess how much I like them. They are a really great punk band, even if my French is not up to understanding most of their lyrics, and I highly recommend giving them a listen, at least on YouTube if nothing else.
Lots of new albums came out this year. Taylor Swift released two quarantine albums and just dominated my last.fm plays. I love them both. She also technically released a third album in the form of folklore: the long pond studio sessions, so you know, what have you done in quarantine? (I have done nothing.) Declan Bennett released LIVE AND ALLOWED, a compilation of previous live recordings, including the first official recording of "Yesterday", and I love it to pieces. The Chicks came back on the scene with a vengeance with Gaslighter (first album in fourteen years!!) and it is spectacular. Sing Street's cast recording came out even though they failed to open due to the pandemic; (did -- did I mention I had tickets to see the show? it was going to be my first trip to Broadway? haha fuck you covid for so so many reasons this is just one of the pettiest) and it's a delight, I love blasting Drive It Like You Stole It, I look forward to them finally getting to rock their shit on Broadway when one day we can do shit like that again. The Weeknd's album After Hours is brilliant and I have no idea what the Grammys were smoking when they snubbed it. I also really liked Selena Gomez's Rare? I don't know if that's an unpopular opinion, I feel like it might be.
According to trakt.tv I watched 776 hours of TV this year! They don't give me any other stats and that may not be accurate because I don't pay for their app, but it's good enough!
I don't actually track my TV habits anymore, because it got exhausting and not-fun a few years ago, but I try to some up some of it anyway. 2020 has been roughly a century long, so I don't know how good of a summary this one's going to be -- when discussing the upcoming Doctor Who special a few days ago someone mentioned that DW Season 12 was in 2020 and I went "no that's wrong".
DW Season 12 was in 2020.
Time isn't real.
So Doctor Who season 12 was in 2020! I liked it. It's okay if you didn't. It was very polarizing. I'm looking forward to season 13, I'm interested in how the dynamic is going to change with the cast shakeup and with the filming restrictions. We live in frustrating times.
It's been a weird year for TV. I'm genuinely sitting here trying to remember what I watched this year. There was a new season of This Is Us, I remember that because they addressed Covid19 and Black Lives Matter head on and it was clumsy. New Amsterdam was wrapping up a season as Covid19 was getting bad and went "shit we have a pandemic episode in the pipeline . . . let's not do that."
His Dark Materials just wrapped up its second season and ended me. I've read the books, roughly a lifetime ago, and had forgotten several details and was not prepared for certain things to go the way they did. I'm glad it got picked up for a third season even though I remember liking the third book least of all.
I keep watching the Crown mostly out of trainwreck syndrome. It's just fascinating to watch these people who can't function as people, I think? Monarchy is a hell of a drug. Like capitalism. Also I love Gillian Anderson but loathe Thatcher with every bone in my body and that is a very conflicting feeling.
I started watching more cooking reality shows on streaming this year. Why? IDK. I've been into the GBBO for several years now, I think, but this year I started watching, like, Nailed It and Chef's Table and Lords and Ladles and whatever. Just make food in front of me. It's soothing.
I'm continuing to very slowly marathon Stargate SG-1. I've reached the Cam Mitchell years.
Oh, and The Mandalorian season two! That was spectacular, I loved that. I want to rewatch the whole series in one go now. I can't believe we're going to have to wait two years for season three. I have very little interest in the Book of Boba but will probably watch it anyway.
What DC shows aired this year? DC's Stargirl was this year, right? (I genuinely just had to go check my last year's post to see if I'd mentioned it.) I really liked Stargirl, it was sweet and fun and hit all the right notes. Beth and Yolanda alternated being my favorites. I really hope moving to the CW doesn't kill it. I finally got around to watching Black Lightning and really liked it, so of course the CW has now announced that the next season will be the last. I had to look up DC's Legends of Tomorrow to remember if it aired this year (it did! but in January which was roughly a hundred years ago!) but, yeah, I liked that, too, although iirc the season was shortened due to Covid? I might be misremembering. I also checked out the animated Harley Quinn on DC Universe and enjoyed that as well.
IDK, this year was ridiculous.
I have literally no idea how many movies I watched this year. The only ones that stand out are the ones I watched most recently. Go watch Wolfwalkers (available on Apple TV), it's amazing and Cartoon Saloon needs the support. I liked the Prom (available on Netflix), but if you're not super into musicals you probably won't be into it. I finally got the chance to see The Band's Visit after loving the musical adaptation; the original movie is just as gorgeous. Oh, and I saw Hamilton! Like everyone else.
As far as live theatre goes, before Covid19 shut everything down, I did see the national tours of Waitress and The Play The Goes Wrong at the very beginning of the year. (I was scheduled to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well. Tickets were rescheduled, and then cancelled. Can't say I was surprised
One day there will be widespread live theatre again. I'm sure.
Happy new year, and may we all survive to see it through to another one!
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