Review Of 2019 Pt. 8 - Skip To The End

Given that this review is in danger of running almost as long as the year itself, it’s time to bring things to a close and get on with the business of 2020-ing. Let’s just finish off with a couple more items to round it out.

Booky Stuff
If you want to write, you really need to read (as it all goes in and forms part of that composty mulch that will bubbl away in the background and occasionally throw stuff up) and this year I upped my book-based reading game (I’m all in favour of magazine and comic-based reading obviously but there’s nothing like a bit of longform printed word to fire up the synapses). This year, I made a conscious effort to branch out more from my default sci fi and fantasy setting in order to discover some different authors. It’s always a gamble, trying out authors that you’ve never read before, but this year really paid off. Of the 55 books I read, I enjoyed them all to some degree and there were only two other books that I abandoned as I just wasn’t feeling it.

Who do I recommend then? I particularly enjoyed Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, Rachel Cusk, Nina Stibbe, Samantha Irby and BS Johnson with NK Jemisin and Jeff Vandermeer keeping it sci fi and fantasy (hey, I said “branch out”, not “completely ignore”). I read books by 30 authors whose books I’d never read before with a split of 29 male authors, 14 female and 2 anthologies (bearing in mind that I read more than one book by some authors). What can we conclude from that?Who knows but I do love a good stat.

Music
I started listening to new music again this year. I was always an avid music listener (and still am) but somewhere around ten years ago, I stopped really finding new music to listen to. With the advent of music libraries and streaming services, it has weirdly made me focus solely on listening to curated playlists of stuff I know rather than seeking out new stuff. So this year, I made a bit of a conscious effort to just try and listen to new things (inspired in part by James Acaster’s book Perfect Sound Whatever in which he tries to listen to everything released in 2016). 

Much like with films and books, you start in the same way - you look for some best ofs / recommendations and work out from there. As a result, I have discovered King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, TWRP, Warmduscher, TEEN and by far my most listened to artist in 2019 Xenia Rubinos. It turns out that you can expand your music tastes at any time. (Plus Juice by Lizzo is a stone cold pop classic.)


So there you have it. A very much whistle stop tour to a year of pop culture experiences. The main takeaway from 2019 for me? Keep doing more of this as I’ve absolutely loved pretty much everything I’ve exposed myself to culture-wise in 2019.

Alright then, 2020, come on, let’s have it!