A selection of the best things I experienced in 2020. By my counts, I have watched ~30 movies, wathed (at least some) of 15 shows, read 28 books, and have subscribed to 332 RSS feeds.

Best Movie

The Matrix

I can’t belive it took me so long to see the Matrix. This year I also enjoyed The Addam’s Family, Johnny Mnemonic, and Spirited Away.

Best Book

A Sand County Almanac

I read this classic after getting it for Christmas, and I really loved it. Unlike many others, my favorite parts of Walden are where he describes the mundane interactions with everything. Almanac reminded me a lot of this of course, and also the excellent essays of Wendell Berry. I also recommend Siddartha, All the Pretty Horses, and Does it Matter?.

Best Album

Rough Rowdy Waves - Bob Dylan

I consider this classic Dylan, and like most of his original work it is excellent. It also is strange, famously featuring a 17-minute song about the Kennedy assassination. I was less of a fan of his trilogy of standards, and I have been savoring all new Dylan since I became a fan back in 2012. His series Theme Time Radio is also recommended, where the hosts a radio show. I also recommend all of Simon and Garfunkel’s discography, and as always more Stan Rogers.

Best Recipe

18th-Century Ginger Cakes

This recipe was so good and fun. It creates a spicy and sweet cake using very few ingredients. I also would recommend this recipe for green gazpacho.

Best Software

TT-RSS

TT-RSS is ideal for how I want to use RSS feeds. It is not especially exciting in of itself. This year, I also made good use of wiki.js and I have become very proficient with vim.

Best Board Game

Village Green

Another late entry I received as a gift from my girlfriend, this game is a short and easy game. I like this kind of game a lot. My main criticism is sometimes the symbols are hard to read, but this does not greatly detract from things.

Best Video Game

Quadrilateral Cowboy

This game has such good world-building and story telling without any dialogue. The gameplay is good too. It offers the best cyberpunk experience there is in a game. Other games I enjoyed include the video game interpretation of Walden, The Talos Principle, Spelunky 2, and Hollow Knight.

Best TV Show

Taskmaster

This show is really fun, and most of the seasons are available for free on their YouTube channel. If you haven’t heard of it, Taskmaster is an excellent, hilarious British game show where comedians do stuff. I would certainly recommend it. I also enjoyed The Queen’s Gambit and Dr. Who (Matt Smith).

Best Blog

https://austinkleon.com

Austin’s blog is really excellent. Every week there are multiple posts on it that I am really interested in. They have inspired me to concrete action in a way that most weblogs do not.

Best Podcast

No Such Thing As a Fish

This is exactly the type of podcast I enjoy: funny people talking about interesting things. I have been binging episodes. I find this podcast a great way to relax, the topics are almost never something stressful. Some other podcasts I enjoy are Car Talk and Stuff You Should Know.

Best Comic

Transmetropolitan

There has been a theme of cyberpunk related stuff this year, and for anyone looking for an engaging cyberpunk graphic novel, I would recommend this one. I also started Saga, but I have not caught up completely yet.