I don’t know if anybody actually cares about other people’s annual reflections, but we all certainly like to write them up. Personally, I completed quite a bit with respect to my job, our podcast, my new LLC, and lots more. I doubt many of you care too much about that, though. I thought in this post I would present some of the best culture I experienced this year — three sets of five, for video games, books, and albums that I enjoyed the most.

In previous years I would talk about TV and movies, and while I did okay keeping up with those media this year, I don’t think I did a good *enough* job to talk about my five favorites. I missed too many items that people I respect told me were among their favorites. Anyways! Here are fifteen things (in random order) which I liked a lot:

Video Games

I play a lot of video games; this is a fact about myself which only recently have I been willing to admit very publicly. It shouldn’t be embarrassing for people to admit their weird hobbies, and anyways, video games aren’t that weird! The industry is five times as large as the film industry! There are a lot of amazing games and here are five of my favorites released this year.

	UFO 50 is incredible. It’s the product of nearly a decade of work from the innovative designer Daniel Wu and a team of his friends. There are 50 different games included, which all have visual design sensibilities from the 1980s. UFO 50 purports to be a compendium of games published by the company UFO Soft, but no such company exists in reality. All of the games offer significantly more depth than they appear at first glance. It’s an incredibly fun experience to learn a game’s mechanics, master them, and then complete the games. This one is a real winner for anybody born between 10 years before me up to 5 years after me. (I was born in 1986).
	The first video game system I ever owned was a Nintendo 64, and the first game I played on that system was Super Mario 64. I love a 3D platformer, and Sony published a very good one in Astro Bot. Despite the fact that the Playstation 5 is several years old at this point, Astro Bot is maybe the first game that fully takes advantage of it’s unique specs – haptic feedback, quick loads from the SSD, insane amounts of interactable objects in the frame, and other factors come together for a really enjoyable game. In addition, the hero is extremely cute – my daughter, who has not shown much interest in games until Astro Bot, asks to watch this game all the time now.
	Video games offer the ability to experience an interactive story, making them different from books or film. No company does a better job of using the unique attributes of video games to tell a story quite like From Software, and Elden Ring is their best game yet. The game’s expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, doesn’t differ significantly from the base game, but it expands the story and provides more of the experience I loved so much a few years ago. A caveat: I actually didn’t beat this game. I quit at the final boss. From Software games are notoriously difficult, but I have been able to beat almost all of them, but the end of this game is insanely difficult. Maybe someday I will try again.
	Animal Well is just like Elden Ring in its storytelling sensibilities – obtuse, secretive, and deeply intriguing. Animal Well has layers and layers of substance, and besides the story, the gameplay is innovative. This is a “Metroidvania” style game (meaning that there are no separate levels or boards, but certain areas are locked off until the player makes progression), but it defies the traditional progression scheme by introducing interesting tools and assets which the player has to mostly figure out on their own. I had a great time figuring this one out, and I know I only scratched the surface of it.
	Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is similar to Animal Well in that it is a 2D “Metroidvania” style of game. While Prince of Persia doesn’t have the innovation of Animal Well, it makes up for that in polish. This game presented difficult combat challenges, interesting puzzles, and a fully realized and genuine story.

Books

As a kid, I loved to read. Like many, when I was forced to read thousands and thousands of pages for college and grad school, the idea of reading for pleasure did not make any sense. I spent about a decade not reading any books at all, but during the pandemic, I realized that books never stopped being great and started reading again in earnest. I don’t typically read a lot of books in the same year that they are published, so here are five books I read this year (as opposed to books written this year) which I liked a lot.

	The Power Broker – Robert A. Caro. I think it’s a rule that if one reads this book, one can brag about it for at least a few months. I tackled this 1200 page epic biography over the summer, so while the bragging rights window may have closed, this is my blog and you are reading it, so the bragging will continue. This book is amazing. Caro is a spectacular writer and manages to avoid being boring at all throughout a massive tome about an unelected bureaucrat. Anyone who cares about transit, New York, American politics in the 20th century, or the art of the biography should not be intimidated and should find a way to dive into this book.
	Fairy Tale – Stephen King. Until this year, I had never read a Stephen King book. I realized that this fall and decided upon a friend’s recommendation to check out this book. King is an author about whom nearly everyone has an opinion, and actually diving into his writing gave me an actual understanding of the traits that I have often heard discussed. The plot of this book is fun, scary, and wild, but my favorite part of this book is the main character, who is deeply realized and provides a stabilizing force while the story and themes start moving around wildly. It turns out that Stephen King is really good at writing! Who knew?!
	Mirrored Heavens – Rebecca Roanhorse. Rebecca Roanhorse is an extremely gifted writer who has provided a gust of fresh air into the fantasy genre. One would think that “fantasy” would lend itself to all sorts of interesting creativity, but for whatever reason “white farm boys on an adventure” (a quote from her) is what we mostly get to read. Mirrored Heavens is the final book of her “Black Sun” trilogy – the first book was transcendent, but I did not care very much for the second entry. However, this third book manages to pull everything together very effectively and concludes an epic story. I hope she and others write more like this.
	Starling House – Alix Harrow. This is a haunted house story set in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Ms. Harrow went to Berea College and taught at Eastern Kentucky University before becoming a full time writer. Writing a horror novel set in western Kentucky needs to be done carefully, and this book does what good horror stories should: reveals awful truths which are addressed by the hidden beauty lying around where it is least expected.
	The Age of Acrimony – Jon Grinspan. I heard about this book in a Politico article which said it was becoming a fast favorite in Washington DC because of how it explains the era of post-Civil War America as distinctly similar to our current era. While I think it’s not an exact match, this is a deeply interesting era about which I knew too little. This book is approachable and easy to read, and a good way to show my appreciation for this book is that I picked up a few books from the bibliography for further reading (I am currently working my way through The Shame of the Cities, a 1904 book about urban corruption).

Albums

I do my best to meet all music as it comes to me: I listen to find what the musician is trying to communicate without pretense or expectations. In doing this, I find that I am able to appreciate a wide variety of music written by all kinds of different people. The music I like the best skews towards unique sounds from artists who eschew anything simple. This year’s list of my favorites has a lot of folks who are doing things I find really interesting, even if very little of this music sounds similar.

	GNX – Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick won 2024 bigger than anyone else. If his year had stopped at Not Like Us, he still would have been the year’s biggest winner – but then he went and shadow dropped one of the best albums of the year. Kendrick albums are events. I mark time with them. Each one has a sound that is nearly peerless with lyrics that somehow manage to be deeply personal and universally understood. His words are relevant to all of us yet pour out his own individual soul.
	Flight b741 – King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. The best time I have listening to music is when I hear something unlike anything I have heard before. Gizzard does this on nearly every album. They are extremely prolific: they have released nine (full) albums in the last 3 years. They defy genre: they released a metal album in the same year as a country album. This specific album is both much the same as the music they have released in the past and also devastatingly unique.
	Atavista – Childish Gambino. This is a bit of a cheat, since this album mostly came out in 2020. However, it was completed this year alongside another new album (Bando Stone and the New World – a good album, but not as good as Atavista). Just like King Gizzard, Donald Glover manages to make something unique and interesting every time he sets out. Nothing he writes ever feels derivative. When he incorporates his influences, he iterates, adds, and improves. It’s a bit of a theme on this list that the music I liked the most felt at once universal and deeply personal. This project certainly feels that way.
	All Born Screaming – St. Vincent. If someone pointed a gun at me and said “you have five seconds to name your favorite musician” I would probably blurt out “St. Vincent.” Even though each of her albums stands alone as an achievement, she is constantly evolving. On this project she quit working with Jack Antonoff (one of my favorite producers) and made something different but still true to her catalog and also deeply meaningful.
	Cowboy Carter – Beyonce. Beyonce is an extremely talented musician who curates her identity extremely closely. This typically annoys me, and I have thought her previous work to be overrated (don’t kill me). This project, though, was Beyonce at her absolutely best – crashing into country music in the loudest and most bombastic way possible, bringing with her all the Black women who have been doing that work before her. It’s the best album of the year because of how it sounds, but also because of what it did.