It always starts with books, these posts, the year, our day, everything. And there other things, television, music, and movies. Though not enough, never enough. There are never even enough books. But here we are anyway, taking a moment to share what there is, and what there was, with you, now, totally.
Books by handsome men with facial hair, bearded, and otherwise.
The Map of the System of Human Knowledge/James Tadd Adcox, This Isn't Who We Are/Barry Graham, Here is How is Happened/Spencer Dew, League of Somebody's/Samuel Sattin, The Cost of Living/Rob Roberge, Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children/Dave Newman, Gripped/Jason Donnelly, Sightings/B.J. Hollars, We the Animals/Justin Torres, Gigantic Failures/Mark Cronin
Movies we are happy we got to see during a year that we did better than last year, but still didn't see enough to satisfy our movie Jones.
Before Midnight, Mud, Fruitvale Station, World War Z, Gravity, Dallas Buyer's Club, 12 Years A Slave, The Immigrant, American Hustle, Frances Ha
Movies we are happy we got to see because our children wanted us to.
Catching Fire, Iron Man III
And those we still hope to see.
Her, Stories We Tell, Nebraska, The Wolf of Wall Street, Captain Phillips, Springbreakers
Books published by Curbside Splendor that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them.
MEATY/Samantha Irby, Zero Fade/Chris L. Terry, Tomorrowland/Joseph Bates
Books published by Artistically Declined Press that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them.
Border Run/Shya Scanlon and A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst/Hosho McCreesh
Books we had the pleasure to blurb and hope you have the pleasure to read.
Participants/Andrew Keating, Bad Kids from Good Schools/Michael Wayne Hampton, Why God Why/Matt Rowan, Commercial Fiction/Dave Housley, Blood a Cold Blue/James Claffey, sleep/David Tomaloff, The Last Great Halloween/Giano Cromley
Music, which we apparently listened to not much of this year, but we still listened to this.
Southeastern/Jason Isbell
Music, we got to listen to live, which was way more than last year, that we quite dug.
Ike Reilly/Schubas, Peekaboos/Empty Bottle, Killer Mike/Pitchfork
Books by Chicago author Pete Anderson, because well, it's the Pete Anderson.
Wheatyard
Television shows we kept on watching, and we watched a lot of television this year, that got in the way of reading, thinking, and sometimes sleeping, but ultimately made us very happy.
Game of Thrones, Justified, Girls, The Walking Dead, Happy Endings, Mad Men, The Killing
Television shows we consumed because our older son said it must be so.
LOST
Television shows we finally started watching and consumed whole.
Homeland, Breaking Bad
New television shows we happily consumed.
Orange is the New Black
Television shows from abroad that were not Downtown Abbey.
Top of the Lake, The Fall
Anthologies we gladly contributed to, and at times may have even edited.
Daddy Cool, Hairlit, Vol. 1, The 27th Mile, Multifesto: A Henri D' Mescan Reader (The Remix), Fried.Follow.Text., barcode
Collections, Short Story, and otherwise, by Chicagoans. And a novel.
The Temple of Air/Patricia Ann McNair, Decisions/Neil Kitterlin, Such Phantom/Rachel Hyman, The Blue Kind/Kathryn Born
Collections, Short Story, and otherwise, by non-Chicagoans. And a novel.
Shenanigans/Joseph Michael Owens, All the Roads That Lead From Home/Anne Leigh Parrish, Goodnight Nobody/Ethel Rohan, The Girlfriend Game/Nick Antosca, Understories/Tim Horvath, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe/Charles Yu
Memoir, or at least, Memoiresque, work.
Overthinking the Marathon/Ray Charbonneau, Crapalachia/Scott McClanahan
Books by handsome men without facial hair, bearded, and otherwise.
The Infects/Sean Beaudoin, Fight Song/Joshua Mohr, Bones Buried in the Dirt/David S. Atkinson, Watering Heavan/Peter Tieryas Liu, Whiskey Pike and Turbo Tan/Jeff Phillips, Last Call in the City of Bridges/Salvatore Pane, [SIC]/Davis Schneiderman, Sad Robot Stories/Mason Johnson, Transubstantiate/Richard Thomas
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, Moeses Soulright, James Claffey, Nathan Holic, Ryan Bradley, Steve Lafler, Lavinia Ludlow, Rob Funderburk, Greg Olear, William Walsh, J.A. Tyler, Ryan Singleton, John Barrios, Joseph G. Peterson, Tim Horvath, Cassandra Gillig, Michael Seidlinger, Adam Lawrence, Dave McNamara, Robert Martin, Mike Smolarek, Nik Korpon, Andrew Keating, Joseph Bates, Justin Lawrence Daugherty, Matty Byloos, Naomi Huffman, Brad Listi, Loren Kleinman, Michael Czyzniejewski, Myles and Noah Tanzer, Mel Bosworth, Benoit Lelievre, Emma Mae Brown, Tim Frederick, Todd Summar, Megan Stielstra, Hosho McCreesh, Kathryn Born, David S. Atkinson, Debbie Pritzker, Peter Schwartz, Jason Donnelly, Catherine Eves, BL Pawelek, James Yates, Brian Allen Carr, Seth Berg, James Goertel, Amber Sparks, Dan Coxon, Robert Vaughan, Jillian Lauren, Meg Tuite, Robert Duffer, Joseph Michael Owens, Carrie Lorig, Salvatore Pane, Sam Irby, Johnny Misfit, The Book Cellar, Michael Paige Glover, Jennifer Banash, City Lit Books, Judith Tanzer, Samuel Sattin, Kimberly Ann Southwick, Chris L. Terry, Ross McMeekin, Samuel Snoek-Brown, Mark Heineke, Mike Bushnell, Richard Thomas, Adam Tanzer, Patricia Ann McNair, xTx, James Tadd Adcox, Chris Oxley, Mellow Pages Library, Julia Borcherts, John Reed, NIU Press, Brian Gresko, Lori Hettler, Bill Hillmann, Don DeGrazia, Shawn Syms, Steve Karas, Cort Bledsoe, Barry Graham, Matt Micheli, Robyn Pennacchia, Jessi Lee Narducci, Matt Potter, Cari Luna, The Mooney's, Cyn Vargas, Russ Woods, Jeff Phillips, Steve Himmer, Sarah Lippman, Mikaela Shea Fowler, Giano Cromley, Zoe Zolbrod, Tom Williams, Joshua Mohr, Patrick Wensink, Mark Cronin, Davis Schneiderman, Ray Charbonneau, Gina Frangello, Rachel Hyman, Nick Ostdick, Scott McClanahan, Pete Anderson, the Tomaloff's, Paula Bomer, Wyl Vilacres, Brandon Will, the Knee-Jerk crew, J. Bradley, Jason Fisk, Pamela Erens
