#endofyearlists

[soliti]

SOLITI 2023: THE END OF YEAR LISTS

Paltsa-Kai Salama (Pink Chameleons, Black Lizard)

This has been A good music year. I have heard so much inspiring music/albums. Here’s some good stuff/songs/albums I’ve been into this year

Barrio Colette: Filles Garçons  – Super great new french (?) garage pop song!

Mothers Of Invention: We Are Only In it For The Money – Great tunes and vibe. There’s also a cool version of this with digital drums overdubbed in THE 80s (album was released originally in 1968).

Captain Beefheart: Safe As Milk – Raw and gritty garage blues.

Bill Frisell: Disfarmer – Beautiful instrumental country music.

Phish: Clifford Ball 1996 live album- Funny, musical and inspiring.

Wallice: Off The Rails EP – Strokes/Weezer melodies done by young LA singer.

Hound Dog Taylor And The Houserockers – Raw! Just raw and great.

Michael Nesmith: Magnetic South – Mama Nantucket is an amazing song and whole album is great.

[abigailzimmer]

Favorite Reads of 2023

As a reader, I think of myself as slow to turn toward fiction, but this year started off with stunning story after stunning story, thanks to writers like Emily St. John Mandel, Rivka Galchen, Amal El-Mohtar, and Max Gladstone. Miriam Toews' Fight Night made me weep on a train from Edinburgh to Glasgow; Josephine Tey's mysteries made me chuckle from Glasgow to Edinburgh. I wandered slowly but steadily with Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell throughout the year and I read Timothy Moore's short stories in one sitting and then started them over the next week. Grateful for these writers who move me in so many ways, and of course I have some poetry and nonfiction favorites!

1. Timothy Moore's exciting debut short story collection, I Will Teach You Retribution, is perfection. Its humor and absurdism and poignancy remind me a bit of George Saunders (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline), a bit of Aoka Matsuda (Where the Wild Ladies Are), and excitingly and obviously of Tim. If you aren't moved by the plight of a people-eating giant's quest for justice against himself, or a side character/ex-lover's desire to have her own transformative character arc, or a girl's use of social media to be popular, even though dead—or at least by the empathetic way Tim writes these characters and the wonderful crafting of his sentences—your heart may have stopped. An unexpected love-at-first-paragraph. Ten out of ten best use of exclamation points.

2. In Scared Violent Like Horses, John McCarthy writes about childhood in rural Illinois, absent parents, fistfights with friends, and flyover states, but mostly he writes of people in a way that sees their empathy and value. I read this while feeling a little lost and heartsick, and these poems wrapped around me and reminded me of what I love best. This is not to say that I saw my journey reflected back at me, but that lyric can offer the comfort of a song, that poetry lets you sit in a space of experience not answers, and that you can endure so much hardship and still emerge with tenderness. John’s writing is thoughtful and vivid, graceful and grace-giving. “But I’m not sure why we would expect dreams to make sense, when our waking lives so often fail to observe narrative convention,” he writes. And later: “No place is sad if you stay long enough.”

3. How to Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is an abundantly written book, composed of letters between Red and Blue, two agents on opposite sides of a time war, one side more organic and one more tech-driven. It’s surprising and inventive in its world building and sweet on the act of letter writing. A love story that gushes to the beloved, overflowing without feeling cheesy. I read this on a beach in Mexico, against the bluest backdrop with the reddest sunrises.

“I want to tell you something about myself. Something true, or nothing at all.”

4. Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility was satisfying and unexpected, even up to the last line. As in her other books, she weaves together stories of multiple characters, gently nudging them more and more into each other’s orbits as the book draws to a close. This book feels higher stakes or maybe has more imaginary elements than The Glass Hotel, which I thought was nice but forgettable—I prefer the bigger “what ifs” in my fiction. But her writing always feels like a gliding, with these lovely details that linger. Here, there's an untouched forest in Canada and a shabby moon colony with a river reflecting the darkness of space. A writer of post-apocalyptic fiction, now a mother and turned off her own ideas. (It’s interesting to hear from an author who wrote a wildly successful novel about a global pandemic, then lived through one, and wrote a second pandemic-related novel in which much happens very differently.) The question of simulation a backdrop, the difference between knowing something in the abstract and the experience of it, how we come to the knowledge we have and the gestures we know we must make. All of it so well done and a pleasure to read.

5. The overarching frame of On Dreams by Maureen Thorson is the author's diagnosis of a rare eye disease that causes blind spots and some of Aristotle's absurd theories, such as how a mirror turns red when a menstruating woman looks into it. From there, in essays composed of short, aphoristic lines, Thorson explores what is reality and truth, how we know what we know, the illusion we have of control, and why we turn to writing and narrative. It's funny and smart, weaving in notes from her broad reading, and poignant in the leaps and turns it takes from line to line.

6. Border Vista by Anni Liu is composed of these lovely memory poems—atmospheric. She writes about emigrating to the US while young and being separated from her dad and grandparents with uncertain status, about relationships and home and dreaming in her nonnative language. The poems read almost memoir-like, back to back. The settings simple: a walk in the woods or market, hearing a piece of news or sitting in a movie theater, with some startling insight dropped upon the reader, the reader unaware even that she was building toward something. The lines below have echoed in my head the whole year, naming a longing so ingrained I didn't even know it was there:

“Crossing a deer-shaped patch of earth, I come back to the edge of an ancient sadness of being just one thing”

7. I really enjoyed diving into the oeuvre of Josephine Tey this year, and in particular I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like her Daughter of Time, a unique take on both the histories and mysteries genres. Her Inspector Grant, laid up in a hospital and bored, takes on an academic investigation of the slander against Richard III, infamous for killing his two nephews—the Princes in the Tower—to remove any rivals to the throne. Despite the fact that Grant is initially driven into this mystery because Richard’s face just "looks" more like a judge’s than a criminal’s (classic Tey ridiculousness), Tey makes a compelling case for his innocence. Grant and his “looker-upper” (researcher) friend take a policeman’s approach to the unresolved mystery, looking at the whereabouts and motivations of the people involved instead of what they say, and keeping an eye out for any breaks in the patterns that suggest foul play. For a book whose main action is two men talking about historical accounts, it’s surprisingly gripping and convincing (although my own knowledge of British history is spottier than a spotted dick pudding!).

"Give me research. After all, the truth of anything at all doesn't lie in someone's account of it. It lies in all the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper. The sale of a house. The price of a ring."

8. When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen is a book that “wants to believe it’s always possible / to love bigger & madder” and a poet whose “job is to trick adults / into knowing they have / hearts.” There's so much unbounded joy in these poems, even when writing of the sadness of having sadness or of the painful rejection by his mom for being gay or by fellow Americans for being Chinese. He writes rooted in a strong sense of self, which means his poems overflow with brightness, humor, and triumph.

Some possibilities:

“I want to be the Anti-Sisyphus, in love / with repetition, in love, in love. Foolish repetition, / wise repetition. I want more hours. I want insomnia, I want / to replace the clock tick with tambourines.”

“I am … an elegy that has felt light, the early morning light falling / on your lovely someone’s / lovable bare feet as he walks across the wood floor to sit by the window”

“Let’s put our briefcases on our heads, in the sudden rain, // & continue meeting as if we’ve just been given our names.”

9. Serendipitously, I read Rivka Galchen’s Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch just after reading Maria Popova’s marvelous storytelling about Johannes Kepler’s defense of his mother’s witch trial in Figuring. It’s a fascinating story in that Kepler felt responsible for fueling the accusations against her due to an allegorical sci-fi story he wrote about moon people holding onto outdated beliefs despite evidence otherwise, and—small detail—the narrator got to the moon thanks to his magical mother. Kepler eventually cleared his mother’s name of charges and spent years annotating his own manuscript so that no one could misunderstand his intentions again.

Rivka’s book is a fictional telling more focused on the accused, Katherine Kepler, and reminded me of the narrative style of Miriam Toews' Woman Talking with a literate third party roped in to make a record and with the reader being told about the events conversationally vs. reading them. Around the same time, I watched the movie The Wonder (which has some tough tw content but was excellently done) which also resonates in theme, about the stories we believe and shape our lives around, and how the efficacy of religion and science is all wrapped up in story.

This was an excellent story based on fascinating history, and Rivka’s writing is both dryly funny (“A hummingbird once rested near my shoulder. It was a very ill omen. For one who isn't a flower.”) and thoughtful (“I had to say what was in my heart, which is knowledge.”).

10. I really enjoyed This Party's Dead, in which British journalist Erica Buist, to cope with her grief at the loss of her father-in-law-to-be, travels to seven death festivals around the world to learn how people in other cultures grieve.

“Whenever anyone suggests the dead are in attendance, gifts and sugar always seems to follow.”

The journey's question broadens from "how do we grapple with the reality of mortality" to the more meaningful exploration of "in what ways do we continue to have a relationship with 'our dead'"? Because we do have one, even if our culture doesn't know what to do with that relationship or provide us with outlets for remembering in community. (There's a lovely line in which someone refers to their ancestors as "my" dead.)

Some of the festivals she visits involve meals in graveyards, others take place when it's time to bury a body--sometimes months or even years after a death, and others involve exhuming bodies so that living family members can rewrap them or visit quite literally with their bones before reburying. As part of a western tradition that sees very little of and so fears dead bodies, Erica asks celebrants how they feel about the corpse of their loved one. She often assumes incorrectly a reason why something is done (perfume over the body not to hide the smell of decay for us but to show the loved one they are still cared for) and observes: “Time and again, I see fear [as a cause for a ritual] where there is only love.”

It's a moving book, written with humor and openness, and I'm very drawn to the rituals of communally remembering our dead. I wish we had something like this beyond a funeral to help us transition from having a living loved one to a dead loved one: a reason to come together often with food and sharing and to invite our dead back home, even if for a little while.

As one festival celebrant tells her, “We think about dead people all the time. We pray for all the ancestors, even the ones we don’t remember; we have a huge celebration for them every six months. They’re not lost.”

(Book buddies: Mexico's beaches and Scotland's train views.)

[crunchity]

12 24 Songs of 2024

Another end of year list and another great year for music. So great I have decide to double my usual count from 12 to 24 (it is 2024 after all).

I was fortunate to be able to see 10 of the bands listed live this year - I hope 2025 is as good a gigging year.

Previous year lists: 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015

Anyway here we go (there is a Spotify playlist at the bottom) my favourite 24 songs released this year:

King Hannah: Big Swimmer

Waxahatchee (ft MJ Lenderman): Right Back to It

Bonny Light Horseman: I Wanna Be Where You Are

Sam Evian: Rollin' In

English Teacher: Sideboob

Alan Sparlawk: Not the 1

MJ Lenderman: Wristwatch

Ex-Easter Island Head: Norther

Cassandra Jenkins: Clams Casino

Rosali: Hills on Fire

The Cure: Alone

Bon Iver: SPEYSIDE

Merce Lemon: Foolish and Fast

Tucker Zimmerman, Big Thief: The Idiot's Maze

Hannah Frances: Bromwyn

Clairo: Sexy to Someone

Wild Pink: St Catherine Street

Soccer Mommy: Driver

Dummy: Sudden Flutes

Tapir!: Nail in a Wooden Truck

Allegra Kreiger: Came

Jessica Pratt: World on a string

Jane Weaver: Love in Constant Spetacle

Adrianne Lenker: Sadness as a Gift

[thzmttkk]

FAVOURITES 2020

Long list of this years favourites. Spotify playlist via this link here. Buy Music Club link for albums here. Special mention to Sferic, Experiences Ltd, Youth, Motion Ward, West Mineral, and XPQ? who pushed nothing but cool stuff this year. Same for an unstoppable flow of spaced out mixes by Perila, Pontiac Streator, Special Guest DJ, Ben Bondy, Exael, Aeriform, J, JS, mdo etc. Too many to list them all really.  Most listened albums (a-z) buymusic.club link Actress - 88 ( Self Released ) ASC - Isolated Systems ( Samurai Music ) Civilistjävel! - Generalstrejk ( Low Company ) CS + Kreme - Snoopy ( The Trilogy Tapes ) DJ Python - Mas Amable ( Incienso ) DVS1 - Beta Sensory Motor Rhythm ( Axis ) Israel Vines - And Now We Know Nothing ( Interdimensional Transmissions ) Jake Muir - The Hum Of Your Veiled Voice ( Sferic ) K-Lone - Cape Cira ( Wisdom Teeth ) Koraal - La Casa del Volcán ( Nous’klaer Audio ) LF58 - Alterazione ( Astral Industries ) Move D & Benjamin Brunn - Let's Call It A Day ( Smallville ) Perko - City Rings ( Numbers ) Piezo - Perdu ( Hundebiss ) Pontiac Streator - Triz ( Motion Ward ) Regis - Hidden In This Is The Light That You Miss ( Downwards ) Romeo Poerier - Hotel Nota ( Sferic ) Sockethead - Harj-o-Marj ( Youth ) Soft Boi - So Nice ( Climate Of Fear ) Terrence Dixon - From The Far Future Pt. 3 ( Tresor ) Tolouse Low Trax - Jumping Dead Leafs ( Bureau B ) Ulla - Tumbling Towards A Wall ( Experiences Ltd. ) URA - Blue ( NAFF ) Favourite mixes (a-z) Agonis - INVEINS \ Podcast \ 061 link Bake with Lewis Lowe (Redstone Press) - 30 November 2020 link Bake with Wonja - 28 September 2020 link dBridge - Essential Mix 2020-02-01 link Dino Sabatini - Global Vibe Radio 227 link Erika - vurt podcast 23 link F-on - Alpenglühen #54 link Forest Drive West - Bleep Mix #131 link Garçon - Dekmantel Podcast 284 link Garçon - MNMT 277 link GiGi FM Presents Azu Tiwaline NTS 11/11/20 link Jane Fitz - isolatedmix 97 We Fall Into The Sun link Joe Ellis - Phonons Podcast 065 link Jon K - Cav Empt /// TTT TOKYO Tape link Joy Orbison - wooly window sessions part wun - UKG 4/4 +++ link Karl Meier - The Bunker Podcast 211 link Konduku - The Memoir — Page 46 link Lcp - Blowing Up The Workshop 111 ◆ re:st link Lemna - MNMT Recordings: Lemna (live) — Contact Tokyo link mad miran - a message of manifestation, from the music room link mad miran - clone records x radio radio x ade link mdo - Knekelhuis 63 link Milo Bragg - Campfire Stories 79 (A New Dawn) link Milo Bragg - Club Rooted #1 link Nadia Khan - RA.710 Nadia Khan link Objekt - Essential Mix 2020-06-06 link Patrick Russell - IT.podcast.s09e01: No Way Back Streaming link Patrick Russell - Patterns of Perception 76 link Pessimist And That w/ DJ Python - Noods Radio - EPISODE 9 link Spekki Webu - RA.714 link Toki Fuko - Oslated Mix Episode 205 - Toki Fuko link upsammy - Bleep Mix #122 link Vlada - RA.742 link Woody92 - Patterns of Perception 68 link

Favourite tracks longlist (a-z) playlist Al Wootton - Snake Dance ( Livity Sound ) Andria - Komina ( Phase Group ) Archivist - Cinder Cone (Patrick Russel Remix) ( Second Nature ) Artefakt - Delphic ( Delsin Records ) ASC - Lost to the Void ( Samurai Music ) ASC - Orchid ( Samurai Music ) Azu Tiwaline - Terremer ( Livity Sound ) Batu - SYX ( Timedance ) Ben Bondy - Bodi ( Experiences Ltd. ) Ben Bondy - Lith ( Experiences Ltd. ) Black Merlin - MIEA ( Bitta ) Blâme - Bells ( [Re]Sources ) Blazer SoundSystem - Heavens Gate ( Youth ) BNJMN, rRoxymore - Atoms Speak - rRoxymore Remix ( Delsin Records ) Cio D’Or - Celestial ( Semantica ) Civilistjävel! - Generalstrejk ( Low Company ) Clarity - Taking Effect ( UVB76 ) CS + Kreme - Slug ( The Trilogy Tapes ) CS + Kreme - Blue Flu ( The Trilogy Tapes ) CUB - Dream Logic ( Osiris Music ) D.K. - The Three Realms ( Good Morning Tapes ) DB1 - Point Three ( Nullpunkt ) DJ Python - Alejandro ( Incienso ) DJ Python - oooophi ( Incienso ) DJ Python, LA Warman - ADMSDP ( Incienso ) Don't DJ, Harmonious Thelonious - Hambi ( Midnight Shift ) Donato Dozzy - Mai ( Samurai Music ) DVS1 - Drifting ( Axis ) DVS1 - The Five Aggregates ( Axis ) DYL, DB1 - ECOU #2 ( re:st ) DYL, DB1 - ECOU #12 ( re:st ) E-Unity - Not for Me ( TemeT Music ) Eszaid - The Most Sacred Syllable ( Good Morning Tapes ) Felix K - Deconstructor ( Nullpunkt ) Feral - Crossing ( Hypnus ) Flora Yin-Wong - Aurochs ( Modern Love ) Forest Drive West - Terminus ( R&S ) Forest Drive West - Hidden Past ( Mantis ) Franck Vigroux - Styx ( Raster ) Gavsborg - Making Love To Volca ( Equiknoxx Music ) Gavsborg, Shanique Marie - Earth & Clan ( Equiknoxx Music ) Grimescapes - Emergence ( Youth ) Haedong Seoungguk, D.K. - Daegeum Dosa (D.K. Huru Mix) ( Total Unity ) Henzo - Not Like That, Not Like You ( Worldwide Unlimited ) Higher Intelligence Agency - Sound Matter ( Headphone ) INTe*ra - Aqueduct B1 ( Acting Press ) Israel Vines - Tri Polar ( Interdimensional Transmissions ) Israel Vines - Path Correction ( Interdimensional Transmissions ) Jabu, Daniela Dyson - Slow Down ( Do You Have Peace? ) Jake Muir - Resevoir Of Memory ( Sferic ) Jake Muir - Fleeting Touches ( Sferic ) K-Lone - In The Pines ( Wisdom Teeth ) K-Lone - Bluefin ( Wisdom Teeth ) K-Lone - Honey ( Wisdom Teeth ) Karenn - On Request ( Voam ) KGIV - Blue Octavo ( Eye Teeth ) Konduku - Fallout ( IDO ) Konduku - Cipres ( Mantis ) Konduku - Şeker ( Disk ) Koraal - La Casa del Volcán 7 ( Nous’klaer Audio ) Koraal - La Casa del Volcán 9 ( Nous’klaer Audio ) Kӣr - Topot ( Disk ) Lack - RRRush ( Livity Sound ) Laksa - Fire Kit ( Hessle Audio ) Last Life - Escape ( Samurai Music ) LF58 - Metamorfosi ( Astral Industries ) Ligovskoï - Emeyo ( IDO ) Lo Kindre - Grey Skies (i) ( Phase Group ) LOG - LOG 4 ( Experiences Ltd. ) Low Budget Aliens - HOME SICK! ( XPQ? ) Lurka - Rhythm Hi-Tek ( Timedance ) Lurka - Clean ( Don’t Be Afraid ) Maayan Nidam - Untitled B2 ( Hellium ) Marco Shuttle - Ritmo Elegante ( Spazio Disponibile ) Meetsysteem - Je Wist Het Al ( Nous’klaer Audio ) Mike Parker - The Melting Mask ( Spazio Disponibile ) Monolake - Beirut ( Morphine ) Monolake - Espace Fourier ( Monolake ) Move D, Benjamin Brunn - C-Sick ( Smallville ) Nathan Melja, Pariah - Synesthesia - Pariah Remix ( Kalahari Oyster Cult ) natural/electronic.system. - Scirocco ( Tikita ) natural/electronic.system. - Marea ( Mantis ) NRLSD - Marching Band ( Man Band ) øjeRum - Prelude To The Immortality Of Nothing ( Opal Tapes ) OL - Block24 ( ГОСТ ИНСТРУМЕНТ ) Pan Sonic, Muslimgauze - Muslimgauze - Remix 2 ( Sahko ) Pearson Sound - Alien Mode ( Hessle Audio ) Perko - Stutter ( Numbers ) Perko - Pippin ( Numbers ) Pessimist - Love In The Jungle ( Ilian Tape ) Piezo - Blue Light Mama Magic ( Hundebiss ) Piezo - Amore Tossi ( Hundebiss ) Pontiac Streator - Triz Cohors Pt. 3 ( Motion Ward ) Pontiac Streator - Stuck In A Cave ( Motion Ward ) Primal Code - Elixir ( Hypnus ) RDS - Aro ( De Lichting ) Regis - The Sun Rose Pure ( Downwards ) Regis - Everything is Ahead of Us ( Downwards ) Regis - Eros in Tangiers ( Downwards ) Relapse - Two Worlds Colliding … ( Pinecone Moonshine ) Robin Stewart - Not Buoyant ( The Trilogy Tapes ) Roméo Poirier - Le bématiste ( Sferic ) Roméo Poirier - Du rocher ( Sferic ) Shed - Try ( Tectonic ) Significant Other - Little Blue Pills ( Oscilla Sound ) Simo Cell, Abdullah Miniawy - Caged in Aly's Body ( BFDM ) Skee Mask - Zzodiac ( Ilian Tape ) Sockethead - Love Loss Missing Yearning ( Youth ) Sockethead - In Search Of Truth ( Youth ) Sockethead - Jahiliyyah ( Youth ) Soft Boi - Something to Say ( Climate Of Fear ) Soft Boi - Guestlist ( Climate Of Fear ) Stave, Grebenstein - Rack 4 ( Standards & Practices ) Surgeon - The Golden Sea ( Ilian Tape ) SW. - theMARTIANswing ( Avenue 66 ) Tammo Hesselink - Ballet Mécanique ( Nous’klaer Audio ) Terrence Dixon - Unconditional Love ( Tresor ) Terrence Dixon - Program Weight ( Tresor ) Terrence Dixon - Earth Station ( Tresor ) The Untouchables - Pon A Dread ( Rupture London ) Tolouse Low Trax - Dawn Is Temporal ( Bureau B ) Tolouse Low Trax - Inverted Sea ( Bureau B ) Tolouse Low Trax - Berrytone Souvenier ( Bureau B ) Toma Kami - Gymnase Chaos ( Man Band ) Two Shell - Fracture ( Mainframe Audio ) Ulla - Leaves and Wish ( Experiences Ltd. ) Ulla - Feeling Remembering ( Experiences Ltd. ) Ulla - Soak ( Experiences Ltd. ) upsammy - Send-Zen ( Dekmantel ) URA - Dirge ( NAFF ) URA - Shojin ( NAFF ) Varuna - Ratu ( Mantis ) VC-118A - Plonk ( Delsin Records ) Via Maris - Lapse ( Timedance ) Wang Inc. - Gommone ( Random Numbers ) Waon-P - BRF dante2infelno - donfellianoeverythingmix ( The Trilogy Tapes ) Web - Ancient Wind ( Acido ) Yogg, Pharaoh, CUB - The Neverending Gever (CUB Version) ( Parallax ) YPY - Garando ( Acido )

[helixcb]

Top 3 Social Distancing Lines of 2020!!! 1. Marquess Road, Islington 📐 2. King Henry’s Walk, Hackney 🐾🐾 3. Red Post Hill, Dulwich ➡️👣⬅️ #socialdistancing #endofyearlist #toplists2020 https://www.instagram.com/p/CJMYZHRnyZr/?igshid=iv7ykztvse72

[thecompanykc]

Calling it. @toolmusic @cchelseawwolfe @blackwaterholylight @kinggizzard @monolordofficial @lingua_ignota @fullofhell @russiancircles @lumeband @rezzzn #top9of2019 #bestalbums #list #favoritealbums #endofyearlist #fearinoculum (at The Company) https://www.instagram.com/p/B5dhZLqJioL/?igshid=1qp221lrzzwl6

[g-castel]

R&B's Best Albums of 2020

Greg's R&B's Best Albums of 2020 – #endofyearlists #rnb #2020music #musiccritic

PARTYNEXTDOOR | PARTYMOBILE Kiana Lede | KIKI dvsn | A Muse in Her Feelings Summer Walker | Over It Kehlani | It Was Good Until It Wasn’t Teyana Taylor | The Album Jhene Aiko | Chilombo Chloe x Halle | Ungodly Hour Lianne La Havas | Lianne La Havas Brent Faiyaz | F*ck the World Brandy | B7 Kaash Paige | Teenage Fever Ty Dolla $ign | Featuring Ty Dolla $ign Bryson Tiller |…

[vinniedangerous]

New episode of The #1430Podcast out now on YouTube (link in bio)

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#comment #endofyear #bestof2022 #endofyearlists #besthiphopoftheyear #jid #kendricklamar #freddiegibbs #blackthought #westsideboogie #absoul #denzelcurry #nas #pushat #smino

[at-panic-station]

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Top 10 favorite songs of 2019 • • • • • • • #nickcaveandthebadseeds #thesoftcavalry #theraconteurs #thenational #rammstein #karenoanddangermouse #kareno #dangermouse #sleaterkinney #fidlar #angelolsen #samsmith #music #music2019 #2019 #endofyearlist #musiclist https://www.instagram.com/p/B6G53C4hqci/?igshid=1tuy8203r43ye

[giftedkids]

Best Books We Read in 2018

Best Books the Questing Child Read in 2018 #bookreviews #endofyearlist #picturebooks #yalit

Not all of these titles were published in 2018 (some were), but we found them and loved them all the same. Here are our favorite books this year:

Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day by Clemency Burton-Hill

Although this is not a young adult or picture book, it still tops the list. This beautiful day-by-day investigation into the subtle brilliance of classical music is a must-have for…

[outreachnerd]

"Lost Beloveds - Part 1" There’s no need to rehash what a dumpster fire many consider 2016 to be, with (sometimes beloved) celebrity deaths leading the charge. Many of those who passed left us a legacy of books, others tackled their personal demons, and still more gave us laugh-laden memoirs. What better way to honor their memory than by reading the stories they personally penned? This will be in two parts because 2016 cannot contain its own misery. Read the whole list @dwarfandgiant @lastbookstorela http://dwarfandgiant.com/lost-beloveds-part-one/ Graphic by @heatherwhooo #davidbowie #carriefisher #patconroy #watershipdown #nobelprize #fetochemistry #celebritydeaths #goodbye2016 #happynewyear #endofyearlists #historybooks #memoirs #recipes #celebrity #booklovers #usedbooks #golfbooks #holocaust #journalism #vietnam

[rockinchicagomag]

Geoff Teach’s Top 15 of 2016

15) Caecus - "The Funeral Garden" 14) Third Ion - "Biolith" 13) Freya - "Grim" 12) Mistur - "In Memoriam" 11) Predatory Light - "Predatory Light" 10) Vale of Pnath - "II" 9) Desaster - "The Oath of an Iron Ritual" 8.) Destroying The Devoid - "Paramnesiac" 7) Vukari - "Divination” 6) Obscura - "Akroasis" 5) The Zenith Passage - "Solipsist" 4) Vindland - "Hanter Savet" 3) Holy Grail - "Times of Pride and Peril" 2) Virvum - "Illuminance" 1) Fallujah - "Dreamless"

[abigailzimmer]

Favorite Reads of 2021

I read more books this year than I ever have since I started documenting my reading in 2009. The continued ups and downs of the pandemic made books a grateful escape, but having read so much—and a lot of it “reading lite”—there’s much that blurs together and fades quickly. However, I was excited to come across Katherine Addison and Nghi Vo, whose stories thrilled me to my toes. I read Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie in January and his images have haunted me throughout the year. I read very few poetry books in 2021, and yet they’re the words that most take up residence in my mind and heart. And The Hidden Life of Trees kept me company on my frequent walks among the trees of my neighborhood. Here are a few more books that clung to my restless mind this year:

1. The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben portrays trees so personably, talking in terms of how they parent and educate, passing on knowledge or learning from a summer of drought. How beeches are somewhat the bullies of the forest as they grow around and through the crowns of other trees. How trees that are sleep deprived—either nightly or seasonally—don't live long. How the roots of a particular old quaking aspen have sprouted thousands of offshoots in its time. How trees are social, communicating threats to each other via scents and taking care of their wounded by sharing nutrients via their roots. How walking under some stands of trees can lower your blood pressure and increase lung capacity. How tree species migrated south and then back north after the Ice Age. How trees with year round red leaves are rather inefficient and would have died out had humans not thought them so pretty and continued cultivating them. How the whole life cycle of a tree's life is important to a forest, which we often don't allow for, and other fascinating facts that makes this book such a pleasure to spend time with.

2. Hotel Almighty is such an exquisite book that immediately upon finishing I went and ordered three more copies to gift to friends! Sarah J. Sloat erasures and adds collage to pages from Stephen King's Misery. Each page is rendered so differently. I gasped aloud several times. There are surprising and beautiful lines such as “lay back in the urgency of work” and "burning seemed the proper thing, like research for a great drama." This book is a pleasure.

3. In Nghi Vo’s novella When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, a story collector is trapped by three tiger sisters and must wait through the night for help to come, so the story collector tells the sisters a folk story of a tiger and scholar. However, the tigers have the same tale in their folklore, and frequently interrupt to tell it from their perspective. It's a beautiful questioning of who gets to tell a story and how the story is shaped by who’s telling it. Doesn’t hurt that that the folktale also centers a poem, which I will always cheer on.

4. A lot of poetry books are quiet with a kind of quiet that works its way in, slows you, attunes you, shifts you, and I like that kind of poetry, I do. But then there's Homie by Danez Smith, which is loud and spilling off the page and calling to you from across the street and even while there are a lot of heavy topics that they address—of losing a friend to suicide, of not being able to come out fully to their family, of trying to survive and thrive in a white supremacist and straight world—at its core, it is a book of joy that revels in and reveres friendship, and god, I love friendship and I love people writing about their friends and I love when love feels loose and uncontainable and the largest part of the sky and I think this book might bring you joy, too. "a thousand years of daughters, then me. what else could I have learned to be?"

5. I was surprised at how compelling I found Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, which has a premise I glossed over and not much plot to speak of. But I couldn’t put it down! A forgotten half goblin/half elf in the middle of nowhere suddenly finds himself in line for the throne and moves to the elven court to begin his rule. It’s not as high fantasy as it sounds as it’s more about the intricacies and politics of being at a royal court than in a fantastical land. And it’s not even as Games of Thrones-ish as it sounds because the new king, Maia, whose journey we follow, is so earnest in his desire to rule kindly and give respect to those who serve him—to the continued astonishment of those around him. He’s good, but with all the relatable insecurities about managing others while being true to oneself. There are several attempts to dethrone Maia, yet there isn’t a strong plot driving the book. It’s mostly about Maia learning the ropes in an oppressive/traditional society while trying to change it and tenuously building friendships even though he’s repeatedly told that kings can’t be friends with those below him—meaning anyone. Ugh. You just want him to find a friend!

6. Meghan Privitello’s Notes on the End of the World doesn't look like any specific apocalypse. At the end of the world time crumbles, carnivals never leave town, earthquakes hit, animals are where they don't belong, and "every barn has become a church / to worship storms in." But each day's note captures some moment of bravery or loneliness, regret or determination or sanity that speaks to even small world-falling-apart experiences. Privitello asks: "with minutes until disaster / what do you gather? How do you / navigate your own useless fear?” And later: “Somehow we’ve all been given the same fate, / which means our lives are ordinary.”

7. By Bus by Erica Van Horn is a little travelogue documenting the conversations you don't want to hear as the author commutes by bus through the small towns of Ireland. So much happens on a bus: shoes are polished and a woman looks for a husband and a mother is forgotten in the last town. A near disaster with a red Ford Fiesta creates an unexpected kinship among the passengers, and tourists on one side of the bus take pictures of sheep while the other side focuses on a castle. There are lots of missed connections and lateness (never earliness) and scathing criticism for passengers who don't say thank you when they leave. It's a very charming book about people being people that almost (almost!) has me thinking fondly of my daily train commute before the pandemic. 

8. Witch Wife by Kiki Petrosino is so playful and witchy! I feel in awe of the energy in Kiki’s poems, her unapologetic way of writing and being herself, the human mix of everything good, messy, and hard. And it’s clear that she takes pleasure in words—through her forms such as sestinas and villanelles as well her prose and other pieces—a pleasure so swiftly passed on to the reader.

9. Night Talks by Elisabeth Rynell, translated from Swedish by Rika Lesser, is a raw expression of grief / a long poem and lament written upon the sudden death of Rynell’s husband. It’s beautiful and hard. Most of it is poetry, but she bookends it with a moving interview with her sleepless self at night and with stills of memories. // I began reading poetry when in need of words I couldn’t find myself, and I am always grateful for those who commit to paper their thoughts in the midst of pain. It makes some books strange to recommend, but they are there for when you need them.

10. The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu is a beautiful collection of short stories that take place in China, Japan, the US, beneath the Atlantic Ocean, outer space, the past, and the future. My favorite story is one in which people's souls are born with them as objects—a salt shaker, ice cube, pack of cigarettes—and they must learn to live without using them up. Another story imagines the ways different alien species make "books"—some record of thoughts that can be passed to the next generation. In another story, a woman survives by accepting change again and again until ultimately she is transformed into light. There are heavy-sad moments as well as sweet-sad, and often a theme of something to be sacrificed. Ken Liu's premises are smart and inventive, and like any good sci-fi, tell us a tale of our humanity.

[therevue]

Here is PART II of our Top 20 EPs of 2015. We are happy to share with you some of our favorites we spun throughout the year. Our final 10 includes: Kaptan - "Sprinter" Max Frost - "Intoxication" Mexico City Blondes - "Mexico City Blondes" Misun - "Feel Better" Ofelia K - "Plastic Flower" Oh Pep! - "The Living" Sharon Van Etten - "I Don't Want To Let You Down" Søren Juul - "Søren Juul" Wardance - "Wardance" Weyes Blood - "Cardamom Times" #TOPEPsof2015 #endofyearlists #therevue #bestindiemusicof2015 #bestalbums #bestof2015 Read and listen here: http://therevue.ca/?p=25884

[playboyredhead]

Says it all really 🍑 #bestselfiesof2015 #endofyearlists #marksandspencers #knickers

[thelastmixedtape]

TLMT's making some lists. The long process begins... #EndOfYearLists #BestAlbum #BestEP #BestSong (at Rathmines Road Lower)