One thing I appreciate about End-of-Year season is that the imposition of somewhat arbitrary temporal boundaries allows me to take a specific perspective on things. What I got done, what happened to me, it’s all a bit too overwhelming to contemplate in its entirety re my several decades of consciousness. A 365-day stretch that begins with a 1 and ends with a 31, that’s, if not bite-sized in the grand scheme of things, a bit more manageable. Also, awards eligibility posts are a bit of a (contested) tradition in SpecFic despite the ubiquity of For Your Consideration mail in my virtual and IRL mailboxes, so for those trying to keep track of what I put out into the world, hopefully this is helpful.
What I published:
Goliath - Novel (Jan. 2022)
A Righteous Man - Novelette (Feb. 2022)
God and Horses at the Pre-Apocalypse - Essay (Jun. 2022)
The Binding of Isaac - Short Story (Jul. 2022)
Captain America: Symbol of Truth #1-8 - Comic (2022)
Much of what I read was bound up in professional obligation (research, judging, reviews, etc.), but some of what I read that I enjoyed profoundly:
Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers - James Andrew Miller
The Committed - Viet Thanh Nguyen
Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power - Steve Coll
Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment - Yanis Varoufakis
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton
Welcome to Lagos - Chibundu Onuzo
The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy
Milk Blood Heat - Dantiel W. Moniz
Babel - R.F. Kuang
(N.B.: A bunch of these were published prior, some far prior, to 2022.)
I wish I could remember all the movies and TV I consumed this year, but some of what sticks with me still:
Severance, S1 (TV)
Attack on Titan, S4 Pt 2 (TV)
RRR (Film)
Tár (Film)
Tokyo Vice, S1 (TV)
Thief (Film)
Industry, S2 (TV)
Abbott Elementary, S2 (TV)
Ozark, S4 (TV)
Andor, S1 (TV)
Atlanta, S4 (TV)
Snabba Cash, S2 (TV)
(N.B.: Thief was originally released in 1981.)
And some games I really, really enjoyed playing/am still playing:
Sifu
Elden Ring
Horizon Forbidden West
God of War: Ragnarok
Though much of the music I listened to was in playlist form, some albums that stay with me still:
True Power - I Prevail
Scoring the End of the World - Motionless In White
It’s Almost Dry - Pusha T
In Stasis - Monuments
Pawns & Kings - Alter Bridge
Rakshak - Bloodywood
Comalies XX - Lacuna Coil
This is a bit of an exercise in microcosm, given all the things that impacted me, but I like seeing other peoples’ lists and it seems a bit selfish not to offer my own. This is by no means a “Best Of,” nor is it some unranked “Top 10, 12, 15”-type entry in the barbershop conversation of superlatives. Those are always fun to read, but I’m not trying to climb onto any disk horse. Instead, I’m chasing that warm surprise that comes whenever a streaming platform I frequent tells me this is what I listened to most over the course of the year, a stock-taking in a sense. Corralling the immensity of art experience into something legible, not to provoke any change in behavior necessarily, nor to castigate nor shame nor give me impetus for over-pride, but to say rather, with a bit of kindness maybe, “here, stand like this and put on your glasses, so you can get a better angle on how you were made different over the course of this arbitrarily bounded temporal space.”
Anyway, I wish you all a wonderful, restorative, emotionally and psychically expansive end of 2022. Let’s circle back at the top of the New Year.
Currently reading: They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us - Hanif Abdurraqib
Currently listening: I’m Good - Anfa Rose