An Inexact List of 2023 Favorites

“Oh, I’ll put together my 2023 list once the new year rolls around,” I said. “Oh, I don’t need to prep for any of this, it’ll be easy,” I said.

Friends, turns out when you essentially double the number of Things What You Did from one year to the next, it becomes a lot harder to make any decisions when it comes to even vaguely ranking things. Whoops my bad.

Anyhow. Here are my favorite books and movies that I enjoyed in 2023. Movies are separated into “new releases” and “old stuff I’d never seen before”. Everything is in alphabetical order because I hate having to actually numerically rank things.

Enjoy.

Books

• Hell Bent, Leigh Bardugo — Dark Academia (ugh don’t get me started on the absolute made up genre here) heads to the underworld. While I had some problems with this book — Bardugo continually stuffs just One Too Many Things in each of her books, and sometimes struggles with nailing the endings — it was an excellent follow-up to the cliffhanger of Ninth House. The world gets a little bit more broad than the first book, as Alex Stern’s problems spin out beyond the world of Yale, and beyond the world as we know it. There’s a really great found family aspect to this book, and we also get to understand a bit more of the families of origins of our leads. This was a much quicker read for me than Ninth House, largely because of the major world building has been done already and we can dive right in. Bardugo has another unrelated adult fantasy novel coming out this spring, and there’s no date yet for the next book in this series, so I have the feeling we’ll be waiting a while to find out what happens next to Alex, our Gentleman Demon, and the rest of the crew here.

• Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield — Contemporary queer sci-fi/horror. A solid reason for why I don’t put this list out until the new year, as I didn’t finish this one until mid-December. A moody, atmospheric debut from Armfield that unravels clearly but slowly. She doesn’t answer all of the questions raised in the book but also, do you really need them answered? Just go along for the ride. Very excited to see what she follows this up with.

• She Who Became the Sun, Shelley Parker-Chan — Alternative historical universe with a bit of magic and a lot of big thoughts about gender, set in 1300s China. Just an absolutely astounding accomplishment of a book. This is a dense book and I feel like I should re-read it before I get around to reading the sequel, but this blew me away. It’s a bit of a slow starter, in that it took me a few cracks at the beginning to really latch on and dive in, but once I did, I was hooked. Parker-Chan has created such a vibrant world full of flawed, dangerous, terrible (affectionate) characters. I love a good anti-hero and those exist in great numbers here. The plotting and political machinations here are perfection and I cannot wait to see how things shake out in the sequel.

• Starter Villain, John Scalzi — Humorous action/sci-fi-ish novel that probably won’t hold up that well in the future but tells such a funny current story. I devoured this in a couple of days tops and still laugh thinking about some of the jokes. This book hit right when I was in kind of a slump and I laughed so hard at it. It’s not as serious or weighty or thought provoking as my other favorites from the year of reading, but it is good, light-hearted entertainment and also features unionizing sea creatures (yes) so, like, I can’t not enjoy that.

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin — Contemporary fiction following the intertwined lives of several friends. This is an excellent story about grief, resiliency, intimacy, communication. Everyone in here is such a mess and damn if I don’t love mess, you know? The book takes some risks that don’t quite pan out as well as they should (the whole arc that takes place inside a video game) but I have a lot of respect for any book like this that isn’t afraid to take chances.

Honorable Mention

• A Certain Hunger, Chelsea G. Summers — Contemporary horror. Delightfully and shamelessly grisly. I support women’s wrongs, etc. etc. etc.

• Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, Kate Beaton —A moving autobiographical graphic novel. The book is about the devastation of capitalism, industry, the environment, misogyny, and it is not always easy to read, but the simple way that Beaton tells her story is captivating.

• Fire Season, KD Casey—Queer romance, slow burn, lots of pining, and feelings. I read most of this in one sitting because I needed to know how Reid and Charlie were going to get their happily ever after. A great look at two professionals at different stages of their careers, and how exactly they make that work.

• One True Outcome, KD Casey — Queer romance, novella length so very easy to get through quickly, pining, feelings, the usual. I am always a sucker for any story arc that touches on your body ageing out of a career that very much depends on your body not ageing (in this case, baseball), and Mack has to deal with that while having to deal with an enthusiastic rookie who, when growing up, idolized Mack as a player.

• Scythe, Neal Shusterman —YA dystopia. I finished the other two books in this trilogy recently and while neither of them lived up to the potential set by Scythe, that doesn’t knock it down any pegs in my estimation. Introduces an intriguing worldbuilding concept of a world without natural human death, so specially chosen scythes have to occasionally cull the herd, as it were. Everything about it was unlike any other YA dystopian book I’d read before, and the political intrigue, machinations, and plot twists were very well done and fascinating to see play out.

Movies

This was hard, y’all. I watched 102 movies in 2023, not including repeats within the year; around 35% were movies that were released in 2023. And still, narrowing down that 35% to a top five was, honestly, agonizing. Also, watching all of the John Wicks and Missions: Impossible really messed up any attempt at meaningful stats in terms of actors, directors, or genre on my Letterboxd roundup.

Favorites: New Releases

• Joyland — An absolutely beautiful, crushing film from Pakistan, runs the gamut of emotions as it looks at the life of Haider and his extended family. Joyland is at its core a look at how the patriarchy and homophobia hurt us all. No character is untouched or unbroken by the expectations that society puts on them, and the weight of those expectations is absolutely crushing. You’ll experience the full gamut of emotions in this one.

• Killers of the Flower Moon — A lengthy, but necessary movie. The ideal version of this movie tells the events from the perspective of the Osage, but unfortunately we still don’t live in a world where some studio is going to hand an unknown Osage filmmaker $200 million like they did for Scorsese. Lily Gladstone is phenomenal and I can’t wait to see what doors this opens for her. The evil and cruelty on display here are practically unbelievable except for the fact that this really happened. Recommended reading: “Sins of Omission: an unforgettable history lesson with Killers of the Flower Moon author David Grann”, on the work that Grann did with the Osage to build relationships and accurately represent their story while writing the book that the movie was based on.

• May December — I don’t know that going into this movie, I expected it to wind up on this list, but it’s another horror movie masquerading as a kind of campy drama, and all three leads are so excellent at peeling back the layers of their characters over the course of the film. No one is exactly as they seem and in some cases, the revelations don’t come until the closing minutes of the film. One hundred thousand ranking bonus points for exactly how impressive Charles Melton was at portraying someone so trapped in his own life and his own body.

• Oppenheimer — I ended up watching this movie three times over the course of the year (once alone when it came out, once later with a friend who wanted to see it, and then my dad decided he wanted to watch it when my parents visited for Christmas) and every time, something new stood out to me. On the most recent watch, the ending was what stuck with me the most: Oppenheimer’s vision of a war-plagued universe, all because of the invention he helmed. A remarkable movie and an award-worthy achievement from Cillian Murphy for his portrayal of a deeply haunted man.

• Poor Things — This is one that I keep going back and forth on including, and I’m not sure if my enjoyment of this will hold up a year from now. I could see myself coming back to this list in the future and thinking that this one doesn’t belong. But I keep thinking about the visuals of it, the fearlessness to be funny and gross and weird. My secret is that I honestly don’t love Emma Stone that much as an actor in general but she was so captivating in this. I respect a film that isn’t afraid to just be fucking weird and Poor Things was absolutely up to that challenge.

New Releases: Honorable Mention

• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves — A D&D movie made for D&D fans, without being too insular to keep newbies away. The Jarnathan bit is still one of the funniest things I’ve seen.

• Infinity Pool — Delightfully disgusting and unhinged. Maybe it takes itself too seriously — “rich people sure do be wild” isn’t exactly a new message — but I couldn’t look away.

• Nimona — A very sweet adaptation of a beloved web comic/graphic novel that nearly didn’t see the light of day due to studio shenanigans. Unapologetically queer, charming animation style, and a refreshing change of pace for animation.

• Of An Age — A coming of age story about a Serbian boy in Australia who has a whirlwind 24 hours of self-discovery. A look at what it feels like to really, truly be seen by someone who’s already faced the same hurdles you’re looking at now.

• The Starling Girl — This is as much a horror story as it is a drama about evangelical/fundamentalist culture. Eliza Scanlen and Lewis Pullman are excellent as the leads. Scanlen’s Jem is someone you desperately want to see escape the insular world that’s clouded her judgement and understanding; Pullman’s Owen is terrifyingly charismatic. Would love to see the divide on ratings of this movie between people who have and have not spent any time around the evangelical church.

Favorites: Older Stuff I’m Only Seeing Now, What Of It, Leave Me Alone

• Edge of Tomorrow — The most remarkable thing about this movie, other than Emily Blunt’s biceps, is that it’s finally a film in which Tom Cruise plays a character who’s just shit at his job. An absolutely underrated action movie.

• John Wick (series) — I’m cheating a bit and bundling John Wick 4 here. I sat down and watched the whole series pretty much back-to-back and they’re the best kinds of action movies: mindless enough if you’re just there for the shooting and fighting, but with a wider world there for the taking if you want to spend time thinking about the universe’s lore.

• Into the Spider-Verse (series) — Cheating again on this one, but deserves a spot on here for the animation style alone, let alone any other aspects.

• Mission: Impossible — Fallout — I also watched all of the Missions: Impossible in prep for Dead Reckoning (which was just okay and which I won’t fully judge until we get the context of DR: Part 2) and Fallout was by far my favorite installment. Your typical M:I movie with explosions, fighting, double crosses, plot twists, and Tom Cruise running like a weirdo, but does a lot to both advance the overall narrative of the series and to deepen your understanding of Ethan Hunt as a character.

• Phantom Thread — It’s good that I didn’t see this when it came out because I just would not have been prepared to be so delighted by these two deliciously toxic characters. Visually beautiful with its focus on costuming, and Vicky Krieps and Daniel Day-Lewis are perfectly matched as two real weirdos.

Oh The Places I Went

Look, Google tracking everything we do is garbage and scary and etc. but it did give me this handy little map of the places I went to in 2023:

I don’t believe that I hit any new states this year (I’m getting down to the last handful of states I need to check off all 50 and they’re all — no offense, Dakotas — the weird/hard to get to ones) but did get to return to some old favorites and spent some time exploring new places.

I particularly enjoyed having time to spend in Nashville — I’ve been there many times before but have always been a bit indifferent to it. In my visits this time around, I got to spend a little more time just doing normal people things. Find a cute book store, eat a good pizza, pet some cats, figure out the neighborhood where all the cool kids hang out, spend some money to stimulate the economy or whatever. I feel a lot more positive about Nashville now that I’ve experienced more than just the downtown area.

29 of those little blobs or thereabouts are for Mountain Goats shows. I will not apologize for being me.

The agenda for 2024 includes a trip to Unspecified Spots in Europe, and maybe potentially knocking off some of those remaining states in the northeast.

Temporary Cat Friends

I welcomed 11 perfect temporary cat friends into my home over the course of the year. Here they are. I love all of them. Jackson and Petra are both still available as of the day of this posting. If you want some perfect friends, head over to One Tail at a Time to apply or get in touch with me and I can tell you more.

What’s Next?

New for 2024, I’m introducing a way for you to help support me in all of my dumb endeavors. I’ve opened a ko-fi page where you can either throw a random couple of bucks my way when the mood so strikes you, or you can join as a monthly supporter for $1, $2, or $5 a month.

$1/month is the “I like you and would like to throw you the change I found under the passenger seat in my car” level. There aren’t really special perks except for the squishy feeling you get in your heart for supporting a friend.

For $2/month, you get to suggest to me one book, movie, TV show, album, or, you know, whatever, that I should look into for the next month.

For $5/month, you get to suggest two pieces of media.

Each supporter level gets a shout out in this monthly newsletter, so if you have a project you want to promote, side hustle you’re looking for eyes on, a meme you want to inflict on others, etc., you’ll get a chance to do that here.

Even if you can’t/don’t want to support financially, I appreciate you being here. This has been a really fun year for me of intentionally engaging with media way more than I have in past years, and I’m looking forward to what shenanigans I get myself into in 2024.

What About You?

Sound off! Did you have a favorite book? Movie? Play? Vacation? Dessert? Dog? I want to hear what you’re enjoying!

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