Ok, my friends. It’s time to share my annual list of pop culture wonders. Over the past year, I consumed 80+ books, 60+ TV shows, 40+ movies and many podcasts. These were my favorites.
(Note: Not all were released during the past 365 days.)
1. “Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop” by Hwang Bo-Reum
2. “Worst Case Scenario” by T.J. Newman
3. “Herding Cats” by Sarah Andersen
4. “You Like It Darker” by Stephen King
5. “Book of Doors” by Gareth Brown
6. “Target Zero” by Jack Mars
7. “Assassins Anonymous” by Rob Hart
8. “Lock In” by John Scalzi
9. “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt
10. “Out of Body” by Jeffrey Ford
(Honorable mentions: “The Tainted Cup” by Robert Jackson Bennett, “Leave No Trace” by A.J. Landau, “Split Second” by David Baldacci, “Stroke the Flame” by Elizabeth Briggs and “The City of Brass” by S.A. Chakraborty)
1. “The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore” by Evan Friss
2. “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder” by Salman Rushdie
3. “Notes From the Porch: Tiny True Stories to Make You Feel Better About the World” by Thomas Christopher Greene
4. “The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels” by Pamela Prickett
5. “Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime” by Val McDermid
6. “Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases” by Paul Holes
7. “Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World” by Christian Cooper
8. “I Will Find You: Solving Killer Cases from My Life Fighting Crime (Homicide Hunter)” by Joe Kenda
9. “All the Living and the Dead” by Hayley Campbell
10. “In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife” by Sebastian Junger
(Honorable mentions: “Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice” by David S. Tatel, “What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds” by Jennifer Ackerman, “The Salt Path” by Raynor Winn, “Other-Wordly: Words Both Strange and Lovely From Around the World” by Yee-Lum Mak and Kelsey Garrity-Riley and “The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading” by Dwight Garner)
Overall reading ratio: I read 26,238 pages. Books were split 58% fiction to 42% nonfiction and 36% female authors to 64% male authors.
1. The Great British Baking Show
2. Fall of the House of Usher
3. The Diplomat
4. Man on the Inside
5. Escape to the Country
6. The Repair Shop
7. Reluctant Traveler
8. Homicide Hunter: Joe Kenda
9. Cold Case Files
10. See No Evil
(Honorable mentions: Last Week With John Oliver, Reacher, Evil, Unforgotten, The Daily Show, Bodies, Ghosts, Elsbeth, Julia, Love Your Garden, Gardener’s World, Grand Designs, The Great British Baking Show: Holiday Edition, Manhunt, Grace, Agatha All Along, Shrinking, True Detective and Late Night Seth Meyers.)
1. The Lost King
2. Navalny
3. Rustin
4. Shirley
5. The Lost Letter
6. Oppenheimer
7. Steve!
8. Freud’s Last Session
9. Hitman
10. The Great Escape
(Honorable mentions: The Burial, The Midnight Sky, Idea of You, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, The Marvels, His Three Daughters, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Deadpool & Wolverine, Civil War and Leave the World Behind)
1. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe
2. Small Town Dicks
3. Break in the Case
4. Law & Order: Criminal Justice System
5. Detective
6. Cold Case Files
7. Criminal
8. Casefile
9. American Homicide
10. Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus
(Honorable mentions: Naked Lunch, BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine, Fail Better With David Duchovny, Sue Perkins: An Hour or So With…, Choice Words with Samantha Bee, Christmas Past and Clear + Vivid with Alan Alda)
