2020's culture consumption
This year started like most with a bunch of theatre/comedy/concert tickets in hand, many of which are still tacked, unused, on our corkboard. It was a different kind of year...
Books
In 2018, I was disturbed to find that I'd only actually finished one (very short) book that year, so my 2019 new year's resolution was to finish the books I start. (Unless of course they were horrible.) In 2019, I finished 10. In 2020, I finished 27. Our 20 minutes' reading after dinner in autumn helped a lot. (I've just finished my first book of 2021!) Here's the breakdown:
- Six fiction, half of which were kids' books read to G. All of the adult fiction was language-related and relevant to the book I'm writing: The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine (recommended), Babel-17 by Samuel Delaney (made me feel like my brain is no longer agile enough for SF—too much world detail to keep track of), and Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (re-read because Flaubert is a big presence in the first chapter of my book. Was hoping for some biographical tidbits; got an epigram instead).
- Ten language-related non-fiction (mostly of the popular bent). The ones I recommend most:
- Gaston Dorren's Babel. Beautifully structured tour of the 20 most-spoken languages of the world.
- Gretchen McCulloch's Because Internet. Really insightful on the everyday details of internet communication.
- John Simpson's The Word Detective. Autobiography by the former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. Especially fun to read an autobiography in which I've met some of the 'characters'.
- Helen Sword's Stylish Academic Writing. Will be recommending it to postgrad students.
- Nine other non-fiction, three of which were by comedians. Particularly recommended:
- Ibram X Kendi's How to be an Anti-racist. I also read Reni Eddo-Lodge's Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race, which was useful on UK civil rights history, but far less mature/clear than Kendi's. The structure of Kendi's was masterful (as you can see, I'm always thinking about structure) and it's absolutely worth reading all the way to the heartbreaking end.
- Ammon Shea's The Phone Book. A history of that now-historical everyday item. Probably not for everyone, but I loved it.
- Two humorous poetry books, one for research (Stefin Merritt & Roz Chast's 101 Two-Letter Words) and one bought at the author's (Rob Auton) stand-up show last year.
Film
We managed to see eight in the cinemas in January and February. Then I saw another 36 the small screen—a tiny fraction of what Phil saw. A good number of those were re-watches as we introduced G to lots of things we thought she'd like. A good number of the rest were films for Linguists at the Movies, for which I live-tweet fortnightly(ish).
My picks of the year:
At the cinema
- Parasite
- JoJo Rabbit
- The Personal History of David Copperfield
Documentary (online)
- Won't You Be my Neighbor? About Mister Rogers. I absolutely bawled. I also saw the dramaticized Tom Hanks film about him. I bawled at that too, but I preferred the real Mister Rogers.
- Project Nim also devastating.
- The Social Dilemma the dramaticised bits are rubbish, but the interviews are really good.
I think the only non-documentary I saw on the small screen that I cared about enough to recommend was The Two Popes (Netflix). I enjoyed many that we re-watched, but the one I really recommend (re-)watching is Breaking Away.
Live comedy
We saw three shows live in Jan-Feb and paid for one online. I did not keep track of comedy specials I watched on tv/online, but I do recommend Hannah Gadsby's Douglas (Netflix) if you're looking for recommendations (we saw it live last year). Three of the four that we saw were people we've seen before, and in none of the cases did I think it was their best work, but if I had to pick a favourite, I'd say Kiri Pritchard-McLean's Empathy Pains.
Live theatre
Three shows in Jan-Feb. It is amazing how much we did on those two months. Clearly the best was A Monster Calls at the Chichester Festival Theatre. We were going to see two more shows there in the summer, alas.
Television
I don't keep track of all television, but do tend to record in my spreadsheet the ones I've binged. Lots of good stuff:
- The Queen's Gambit not a single disappointment in it
- Ghosts surely the best British sitcom in ages
- Schitt's Creek it took a while to find itself, but after it did, it was beautiful
- Parks & Recreation after the first (short) season, I was ready to quit it. So glad we didn't. Lesley Knope is my hero and I was so happy with how the series treated her.
- What we do in the shadows: making it Guillermo's season was genius
- Star Trek: Discovery still a bigger fan of the first two series, but the third is picking up
- Star Trek: Picard mostly for the nostalgia
- The Good Place ended pretty well
- BoJack Horseman I resisted it for a while, but loved it in the end
- The Umbrella Academy stylish and fun with some extremely watchable actors
- Man Like Mobeen and I also very much enjoyed Tez Ilyas's talk show-type thing in the summer
Also, something I watched on YouTube from years & years ago was Terry Jones's documentary on the number one. Really enjoyed it.