Where The Wild Things Are - These Things We Loved (and Lost) in 2012 Will Change Your Life.

It always starts with books and we suppose it always will. But we did more than read this year, not much mind you, but there was more, movies, and music, and television, and podcasts, and we thought we would take a moment to share some of that with you yes. 

Books we intended to finish or start in 2012 and then actually did. 

B-Sides and Broken Hearts/Caryn Rose, Solace in So Many Words/Ellen Wade Beals, Volt/Alan Heathcock, Half a Life/Darrin Strauss, Three Ways of the Saw/Matt Mullins

And those we did not. But here's looking to 2013.

Nothing/Blake Butler, American Masculine/Shann Ray, Pulphead/John Jeremiah Sullivan, Out of Touch/Brandon Tietz       

Memoirs and essay collections, any and all of which we need to read more of in 2013.

Legs Get Led Astray/Chloe Caldwell, Famous Drownings in Literary History/Kevin Haworth, Hack/Dmitry Samarov

Television shows starring Elizabeth Mitchell we started watching because our older son asked us to, but did nothing to change our lives.

Revolution

Television shows we started watching starring Elizabeth Mitchell because we needed something to watch with our older son when Revolution ended that have in fact changed our lives.

LOST

Books published by CCLaP that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them.

solo down/Lauryn Allison, Get Up Tim/Sally Weigel, Have You Seen Me/Katherine Scott Nelson 

Books published by Curbside Splendor that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them. 

May We Shed These Human Bodies/Amber Sparks, Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions/Michael Czyzniejewski 

Books published by Artistically Declined that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them.   

AYITI/Roxane Gay and Temporary Yes/Kat Dixon

Podcasts we still love much and listen to compulsively.

Other People with Brad Listi

Podcasts we love slightly less than we once did, but still listen to compulsively.

WTF with Marc Maron

Podcasts we have rediscovered.

This American Life (not technically a podcast we know)

Podcasts we discovered anew.

Slate's Culture Gabfest and WordPlaySound

Books by Chicago writers we quite enjoyed not named Joe Meno.

The Cradle/Patrick Somerville, Inside The Whale/Joseph G. Peterson, How To Hold A Woman/Billy Lombardo, Herself When She's Missing/Sarah Terez Rosenblum

Books by Chicago writers we quite enjoyed named Joe Meno.

Office Girl and The Boy Detective Fails

Television shows that got in the way of reading, thinking, and sometimes sleeping, but ultimately made us very happy.

Game of Thrones, Louis, Justified, Girls, The Walking Dead, Happy Endings, Mad Men, Modern Family

Music, of which we apparently listened to not much of this year, but we still listened to these.

Cancer 4 Cure/El-P and R.A.P Music/Killer Mike   

Movies that are funny and action-packed, but quite possibly racist, and regardless are too goofball to be anything remotely as interesting as Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs.

Django Unchained

Movies we are happy we got out to see during a year that we didn't get out enough to see movies.

Flight, Argo, Lincoln, Moonrise Kingdom, The Queen of Versailles, Silver Linings Playbook

And those we still hope to see.

Zero Dark Thirty, Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Sessions, The Master

Books that involved cease and desist orders, which apparently can be quite good for sales.

Broken Piano for President/Patrick Wensink

Books that didn't.

Tongue Party/Sarah Rose Etter and Nine Months/Paula Bomer  
 
Books by handsome men with facial hair, bearded, and otherwise.

Hank & Jules and Salt Creek Anthology/Jason Fisk, Gospel Hollow/Jesse Jordan, Short Bus/Brian Carr, A Cloth House/Joseph Riipi, Americas/Jason Lee Norman, Every Laundromat in The World/Mel Bosworth (who is coming to dominate this category)

Books by handsome man sorely lacking in facial hair.

Code for Failure/Ryan W. Bradley and Damnation of Memory/Mark R. Brand 

During a year filled with way too much loss, three voices we lost that might not compare to those others in terms of senselessness, but were still silenced too soon for us. 

Adam Yauch, Ray Bradbury, Maurice Sendak

And most finally, there are many, many people to thank for this most rocking of years, and we are most definitely overlooking some, a lot maybe, and we apologize for that, here, now, but there you go.

Lauryn Allison, Mason Johnson, Matt Rowan, Jacob Knabb, Dave Housley, Jason Behrends, Leah Tallon, Anna March, Victor David Giron, Jason Pettus, Frank Hinton, Moeses Soulright, James Claffey, Nathan Holic, Ryan Bradley, Steve Lafler, Lavinia Ludlow, Alex Pruteanu, Rob Funderburk, Greg Olear, Janey Smith, William Walsh, J.A. Tyler, Carly Oishi, Ryan Singleton, John Barrios, Joseph G. Peterson, Michael Seidlinger, Adam Lawrence, Dave McNamara, Mike Smolarek, Nik Korpon, Andrew Keating, Dave K., Lindsay Hunter, Matty Byloos, Brad List, Michael Czyzniejewski, David Masciotra, Mel Bosworth, Brenda Brown Browne, Benoit Lelievre, Tim Frederick, Hosho McCreesh, Peter Schwartz, Jason Donnelly, BL Pawelek, Brian Carr, James Goertel, Amber Sparks, Robert Vaughan, Meg Tuite, Meghan Lamb, Robert Duffer, Johnny Misfit, Michael Paige Glover, Chris Terry, Ross McMeekin, Samuel Snoek-Brown, Mike Bushnell, Maggie Richie, Jesus Angel Garcia, Richard Thomas, Patricia Ann McNair, xTx, James Tadd Adcox, Julia Borcherts, John Reed, Lori Hettler, Cort Bledsoe, Barry Graham, Melinda McIntire, Robyn Pennacchia, Russ Woods, Jeff Phillips, Steve Himmer, Tom Williams, Patrick Wensink, Davis Schneiderman, Pete Goutis, Ray Charbonneau, Laura Szumowski, Gina Frangello, Nick Ostdick, Scott McClanahan, Pete Anderson, the Tomaloff's, Paula Bomer, Wyl Vilacres, Caleb J. Ross, Brandon Will, J. Bradley, Jason Fisk, the Knee-Jerk crew