2017
What I Watched, What I Listened To, and What I Read
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MOVIES
Phantom Thread
Dunkirk
It Comes At Night
Good Time
The Shape of Water
The Blackcoat's Daughter
Get Out
Split
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
It
To see: Happy End, The Florida Project, Call Me By Your Name, A Ghost Story, The Square, Nocturama, Rat Film, Lucky, The Post
Films I Liked (A-/B+): The Killing of A Sacred Deer, Lady Bird, Raw, Logan, Wind River, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Gerald's Game, Brawl In Cell Block 99
Decent (B/B-): The Big Sick, The Beguiled, Logan Lucky, Blade Runner 2049, Creep 2, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, I Tonya
Middle of the road (C+/C/C-): The Discovery, Trainspotting 2, Alien: Covenant, Baby Driver, mother!, Cult of Chucky
What are you? : Kuso
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TV
If I had to list one piece of media over everything else as far as artistic impact goes, it would go to Twin Peaks: The Return. Conflicting with this feeling is the impact The Leftovers' final season had on me. Only that was more cumulative. Peaks, while having a superb third season, wasn't really what I'd hoped for for it's two seasons. Sure it spawned a cultural waterfall of coffee, pie and backwards talking midgets. But in retrospect it wasn't the Lynch I responded to the most. The one who would make a film based around the series a year after it's finale. The third season has more in common with that and, for good measure, the stream of consciousness of Inland Empire with the vignetted structure of Mulholland Dr.
Leftovers felt...personal.
Back in 2007, Ebert did a list of his favorite movies. He too was conflicted with the top 2. He was his brain chose No Country For Old Men and his heart chose Juno. This is how I feel about The Return and Leftovers' final season. My brain chooses The Return.
2017 saw the debuts of Mindhunter, The Deuce and Legion. Each showcasing strong writing with The Deuce being from the minds of The Wire (David Simon and George Pelacanos) and Legion coming from the mind of Fargo (Noah Hawley). Mindhunter filled by insatiable appetite for true crime this year and shows David Fincher at the top of his game.
While not quite shows with traditional 'seasons', miniseries like Big Little Lies was a show that had some solid writing and fantastic performances. Not as memorable direction which would have made it jump higher. Wormwood, like Twin Peaks saw one of our greatest documentary filmmakers, Errol Morris, get a long leash from NetFlix and allowed to make a 6 part docu series.
1. Twin Peaks: The Return
2. The Leftovers S3
3. Mindhunter S1
4. Better Call Saul S3
5. The Deuce S1
6. Wormwood
7. Legion S1
8. Stranger Things S2
9. Mystery Science Theater 3000 S11
10. Big Little Lies
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MUSIC
Father John Misty- Pure Comedy
Sun Kil Moon- Common As Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood
Chelsea Wolfe- Hiss Spun
Ulver- The Assassination of Julius Caesar
Steve Wilson- To the Bone
Favorite Soundtrack: Twin Peaks: The Return
Favorite Score: Phantom Thread by Johnny Greenwood
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BOOKS
FICTION
1. Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
2. It by Stephen King (re-read)
3. Underworld by Don DeLillo
4. Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter
5. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
6. Libra by Don DeLillo
7. My Struggle Vol. 2 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
8. Swan Song by Robert McCammon
9. The Complete Stories and Parables by Franz Kafka
10. The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
11. Fat City by Leonard Gardener
12. All the Pretty Horses/The Crossing/Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
13. Lincoln In the Bardo by George Saunders
14. The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector
15. The Long Home by William Gay
16. Matterhorn by Karl Matterhorn
17. A Christmas Memory/One Christmas/The Thanksgiving Guest by Truman Capote
18. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
19. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
20. 11/22/63 by Stephen King
2. It by Stephen King (re-read)
3. Underworld by Don DeLillo
4. Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter
5. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
6. Libra by Don DeLillo
7. My Struggle Vol. 2 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
8. Swan Song by Robert McCammon
9. The Complete Stories and Parables by Franz Kafka
10. The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
11. Fat City by Leonard Gardener
12. All the Pretty Horses/The Crossing/Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
13. Lincoln In the Bardo by George Saunders
14. The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector
15. The Long Home by William Gay
16. Matterhorn by Karl Matterhorn
17. A Christmas Memory/One Christmas/The Thanksgiving Guest by Truman Capote
18. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
19. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
20. 11/22/63 by Stephen King
NON FICTION
1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
2. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
3. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
4. Our Revolution by Bernie Sanders
3. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
4. Our Revolution by Bernie Sanders
5. Iceman: Confessions of A Contract Killer by Philip Carlo
JANUARY
11/22/63 by Stephen King
"...stupidity is one of two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances."
Not only did King craft his strongest work in over a decade, it also happened to be his best love story. (A)
A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben McIntyre
"The fatal conceit of most spies is to believe they are loved, in a relationship between equals, and not merely manipulated." (A)
FEBRUARY
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
"Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition."
My first Baldwin. Upon finishing it, he rocketed up toward my all time favorite authors. (A+)
The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato
The Latin American equivalent of Camus' The Stranger. (B+)
Lincoln In the Bardo by George Saunders
With the exception of Life: A User's Manual, the most original piece of fiction I read this year. A lot of expectation was heaped upon Saunders who, up to this point, only did short stories. Masterfully. This shows he is not just a great short story writer, he's a great writer. (A+)
MARCH
Notes On the Cinematographer by Robert Bresson
The deceptively simple book offers short bursts of wisdom of a filmmaker more concerned with the process than the destination.
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
"You might by poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to."
So much great literature is born from the plights of middle to lower class. Can a good book be created out of the upper middle class struggle? Franzen says yes and plunges us into a family dynamic that is as dysfunctional as Married With Children's Bundys. (B+)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
"He was well aware that of the two or three thousand times he made love (how many times had he made love in his life?) only two or three were really essential and unforgettable. The rest were mere echoes, imitations, repetitions, or reminisces." (A)
Our Revolution by Bernie Sanders
Reading this book post election lit a fire under me. Bernie was the candidate whose ideals I aligned with the most and whose politics remained as unchanged and fervent as when he got involved in Civil Rights in the 60's. This book is proof. (A)
APRIL
Underworld by Don DeLillo
Probably the most challenging book I read in 2017. Roberto Bolano once talked of the "great, imperfect, torrential works that blaze a work into the unknown...the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench."DeLillo is a writer who sees and hears America like no other. A Cold War narrative launches the dive into late 20th century America's anxieties and haunted past. It is great to watch this great master spar. (A+)
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Subversive insanity of the Bookonist order. Nobody writes about the end of the world like Vonnegut. (A+)
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
How does one even describe what happens in this book? There's loose dialogue between the explorer Marco Polo and the emperor Kublai Khan. Yet the descriptions of the places Marco Polo has visited combine the real with the imagined in a way that can't be described in words but only felt. (A+)
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
I'm a big fan of the movie and Grady Tripp ranks as one of the great characters in my mind. (B+)
MAY
Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste by John Waters
John Waters explains the crudeness of his work with such articulation and understated wit that you fall in love with him all over again. Eminently readable book from an endlessly subversive man. (B+)
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron
The current champion of weird fiction and cosmic horror. Combines hard boiled noir with textured dread. Recommended to fans of True Detective. (B+)
Favorite stories: Old Virginia, Shiva Open Your Eye, Procession of the Black Sloth, The Imago Sequence
The Complete Stories and Parables by Franz Kafka
The awful, the absurd, the grotesque, the endless mazes of bureaucracy. It's Kafkaesque. His stories induce a sense of claustrophobia and are as psychologically twisted as anything out there. (A+)
Favorite stories: The Metamorphasis, In the Penal Colony, The Hunger Artist, The Burrow
JUNE
Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
Changed the way I looked at book. Perec was part of the Oulipo movement. A group that helped redefine what is possible with the novel. Life: A User's Manual contains so many stories in its puzzle like structure. And every one of them is compelling. (A+)
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
"Innocence is a kind of insanity."
My first Greene and definitely not my last. It's a book that reminds us that the road to hell is paved with best intentions. (A-)
Fat City by Leonard Gardner
This book reeks of sweat, booze and boxing gloves. It's a Tom Waits song on full volume. (A+)
Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
Vivid and brutal. Desolate and unforgiving. Has just as much in common with the Old Testament than anything from Faulkner. (A-)
My Struggle Vol. 2 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
The second volume to an unprecedented intimate portrait of an artist. This time Karl lets us in on his love life and his publishing of his first couple books. (A+)
Libra by Don DeLillo
The JFK assassination is one of my biggest obsessions. As far as film goes, JFK satiated my hunger. Yet it only went so far until I yearned for more. John Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable turned out to be THE non fiction book to turn to for the subject and earlier this year, Stephen King's 11/22/63 took the event and combined it with a fictional narrative of time travel to a compulsively entertaining result. In Libra, DeLillo focuses on the man in the middle of it all: Lee Harvey Oswald. In doing so, he creates his most straight forward yet most thrilling piece of work. (A+)
JULY
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
What if the underground railroad was literally an underground railroad? Colson Whitehead takes this concept and sets us on a journey with Cora. (A+)
The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector
The closest anyone has gotten to reproducing the nightmares of Kafka without aping him entirely. I'm still deeply rattled to the core about the implications of this novel. (A+)
By Night In Chile by Roberto Bolano
Bolano has the ability to put the reader in a trance. The stream of consciousness structure for this novel just so happens to work perfectly for the story- a deathbed confession revolving around Opus Dei and Pinochet. (B)
The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
Trilobites changed me. It's that kind of story that changes you on a molecular level. Breece only published one work before he took his own life. For a man that surrenders everything with each of these twelve stories, I remain peaceable and sated when I read them. (A+)
AUGUST
Uzumaki by Junji Ito
Scariest book I read this year. Cemented in me that horror that is born out of a concept
Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter
The generation to generation story spoke to me like no other book this year.
SEPTEMBER
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
The best non fiction book I read all year.
Iceman: Confessions of A Contract Killer by Philip Carlo
After a book about the dawn of man, it never fails to fascinate how when reflected through a person like Richard Kuklinski, we still have our base animalistic instincts intact. Luckily, none of this are even close to the kind of true monster Kuklinski was. (A-)
OCTOBER
It by Stephen King
The Ruins by Scott Smith
Good reading material for whenever you decide to take a trip to Mexico. Scott Smith only wrote two books and both of them were turned into movies. From what I hear, the movie adaptation of The Ruins is (as is the case with many adaptations) nowhere near as good as the book. (A-)
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
Speaking of movie adaptations, this is one I'd actually like to see. The ending wasn't as good as everything that led up to it. Though the palpable sense of dread is all encompassing. (B+)
Off Season by Jack Ketchum
Green Room meets Cannibal Holocaust set in the backwoods of Maine. This one is vicious, unrelenting and unforgiving. (A+)
Hell House by Richard Matheson
NOVEMBER
Nightmare Alley by William Lindsey Graham
A cotton candy coated nightmare noir of carnies, tarot, and darkness. For those who like their noir black as a moonless night. (A)
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
THE book on the Vietnam War. While I like Things They Carried more, that book is more about the power of story through truth vs. fiction. Everything you came to that book for but missed: the role of race in the war, the cameraderie, the bureaucracy, this one fills in the blanks. (A+)
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
Once again, Robert McCammon has reduced me to a blubbering mess. First Boy's Life, now this. I am going to miss these characters and the journey McCammon took me on. (A+)
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
DECEMBER
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
Openly gasped at the greed, cheered for Tom White's conviction and let out several "oh my god!"'s throughout this story of greed, power and murder. What Grann has done here is take an event all but swept away by the sands of time and thoroughly excavated it with painstaking research and a narrative style that makes it as compelling as any fiction I've read this year. (A+)
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
Probably McCarthy at his most philosophical. Billy Parham ranks as my second favorite character in his work. Just ahead of Anton Chigurh and behind Judge Holden. (A+)
Angels by Denis Johnson
Johnson maps out the disenfranchisement of the soul in stark detail. Bleak, this one. (A-)
Red by Jack Ketchum
Ketchum gets introspective. He's best when he goes for the jugular so this one, while having a brisk pacing, lacks the bite of some of his other works. (B)
Cities On the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
I'm not one for book series. Which happen to dominate the sci fi and fantasy genres. But seeing two of my favorite characters cross paths enough to where a book is devoted to them is the best treat McCarthy can give and a stirring closing to his Border trilogy. (A)
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger
Junger juggles fascinating ideas about community and veterans returning home and the effects of solitude vs. how they felt as a unit in combat. (B-)
A Christmas Memory, One Christmas and The Thanksgiving Guest by Truman Capote
The first short story alone made me fall in love with Capote's description of memory. A classic that, like It's A Wonderful Life, will forever haunt me around this time of the year. (A+)
The Long Home by William Gay
I've found a new favorite author. His name is William Gay. The fact that this is his debut is nothing less than stunning. What a way to end the year. “While he slept the world spun on, changed, situations altered and grew more complex, left him more inadequate to deal with them.” (A+)
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