Books
24 books total (two more than 2017), 13 non-fiction, 11 fiction. Mostly non-fiction the first half of the year, fiction the second half. The non-fiction mostly fell into two broad categories: 20th Century military-political history, and wildlife biology stuff. Jack McCallum's Dream Team, Brian Michael Bendis' Words for Pictures, and Nicholas Shakespeare's In Tasmania would be the three exceptions. In the fiction section, it's a mix of sci-fi/fantasy, the murder mystery/thriller stuff, and then a few random highly regarded works.
Of the non-fiction, the three I enjoyed most would have been Dream Team, Biogeography and Ecology in Tasmania, and John Patrick Bell's Crisis in Costa Rica: The 1948 Revolution. Although that last one still suffers because I feel like the perspective was slanted. Unsurprisingly, those were all books I deliberately sought out, rather than ones I was loaned because my dad thought might interest me or that I bought for cheap on a whim. David Mech's The Wolf was pretty good as well.
Least favorite would be Walter J. Boyne's The Influence of Air Power on History, simply because I'd read so much of what was being said before, by Boyne and others.
On the fiction side, I think the favorite would have to be Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's not a very long story, but I enjoy his writing style so much. I don't even know what the runner-up would be. Maybe Eugene Zamiatin's We. Most of the fiction selections were things I grabbed on a whim or out of desperation. I read The Fear Agent literally because I wanted something to read at lunch one day and it was the cheapest moderately interesting book I could find. I read No Shred of Evidence because my flight was delayed over 12 hours.
Least favorite would probably be one of the two I just mentioned. I kind of want to give it to Gravity's Rainbow, for how ultimately maddening and pointless it all felt. But there were places in there I thought Pynchon wrote very well, and I can almost appreciate the sheer amount of crap he threw at a wall. What's more frustrating to read; the book that does a competent job of being by the numbers and serving as the next step of a series, so you can read it easily, but it has no spark? Or the one that seems like it's trying really hard to be something but is slog to get through? I know which one pissed me off more, but it's also the one that's going to stick in my memory the longest.
Movies
72 movies, at least that's how many were reviewed. So much crap off Netflix, although not as many horror movies this year. That's probably for the best. Four or five of the big superhero movies, some Oscar bait stuff, a few international films. Looking over the reviews, I can see when the heat of summer started forcing me inside more, because the rate at which I watched movies I disliked goes up abruptly. Although most movies fall into that broad category of being OK, but not mind-blowing, or good for what they were trying to be, or bad but not horrible crap.
As far as movies I enjoyed, Deadpool 2 is at the top of that list. Black Panther is a better movie, but I still enjoyed Deadpool 2 more. Get Out would be up there, that movie creeped me out and had me on the edge of my seat. John Wick: Chapter 2. Throw Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro in there. Beautiful movie, funny at times, a fun adventure/heist film and the back-and-forth and fakeouts don't frustrate me the way they do sometimes. The Aerial was an interesting movie, and I enjoyed some of the visuals, but I wouldn't put it up there with the others in terms of how much I enjoyed it. As Above, So Below and The Ritual were solid horror films. I enjoyed The Endless a lot, for some of the ideas behind the threat and how people react, and the way people view the unknown. Bullet Head wasn't doing anything novel, but it had a solid core idea, and it did it well, mixing a suspense aspect with that trope of crime movies where the criminals exchange stories about old jobs that went wrong (even if the happy ending did feel tacked on and out of place). 26 Years dragged some near the end, but I thought it was pretty good. I completely missed that In Order of Disappearance was supposed to be a dark comedy when watching it, but it works whether you recognize that or not, which is a point in its favor.
If we're picking a Top 4 (I couldn't decide who'd be 5th), DP 2, Lupin, John Wick: Ch. 2, Get Out, not necessarily in that order.
Least favorite movie is Slack Bay. It took me three tries to finish it, and I regret being so determined. It was trying to be funny, and it failed. Badly. Scarecrows was dumb, and Black Road was so boring I barely paid attention, but I feel like the bar they were trying to clear was so low, it's hardly surprising. Baskin was not my cup of tea, but at least I had enough sense to abandon ship partway through. The Similars would have been fine as a Twilight Zone episode, but was badly stretched as a 90 minute film. Kodachrome just pissed me off with this idea that Jason Sudekis should forgive his father for decades of being a complete shit because now he's dying. While his father is still being a complete shit. War on Everyone felt like it was trying too hard to be edgy, and was just crap instead. A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, I don't know what they were shooting for there. The way guys internalize their toxic attitudes towards women into their own fantasies? That scene where everyone is watching Charles interact with a puppet version of himself with dead eyes was telling, and would have been funny if I didn't feel so sad for everyone involved.
Slack Bay is #1 with a bullet, and then Charles Swan III. At least be funny with the stupidity.
Video Games
It's probably not worth having this category this year. It's FallOut: New Vegas, Fable 2, and Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I thought I had played Shadow of Mordor into February, but I posted the review January 4th, so probably not.
Out of those three, New Vegas, easily. MvC2 is a fighting game with a 3 vs. 3 style I don't entirely love. Fable 2 has so much stuff in it that doesn't interest me in the slightest, so all that feels like wasted space. Fable 2's combat is much more enjoyable than New Vegas, but in both cases I'm playing to explore, and the post-apocalyptic setting of New Vegas interests me a lot more than Fable 2's medieval fantasy. I really enjoyed that New Vegas let me talk my way out of and around having to fight at all on several occasions.
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