Let’s start all over again by continuing my recap of 2019.

My #OneWord for 2019 was “regroup,” and for reasons discussed in my previous post, I can’t say I did. All things considered, maybe I should just recycle “regroup” for 2020.

There were some bright spots and distractions from the assorted dramas of last year. Here’s a recap of 2019 highlights to start 2020 here on the blog.

Movies

The ones that stuck with me most:

• Rocketman (musicals tend to embed themselves in my head, especially when I buy the soundtrack)
• Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and
• Knives Out (my favorite move of 2019, which I saw 3 times).
• In the “sequels & series” category, I didn’t hate how the Avengers story ended, and I was surprised by how much I was affected by the end of the Star Wars saga. (I shouldn’t have been. I saw the first one during its original theatrical release, when I was 13 years old. Star Wars is part of my generation’s cultural framework.)

Music

I decided that I only needed to subscribe to one music-streaming service. My existing iTunes library (R..I.P.) steered me to pick Apple Music over Spotify…and makes it way too easy to add new songs.

In old-song news, I saw a Beatle…and a surprise Beatles reunion.

Television

It was a year of catching up and binge-watching; In a high-stress year, TV was often the best way for me to take in stories–especially if they were funny. A few standouts among the shows I started (and finished) in 2019:

• The Good Place (I binged the first three seasons while recovering from my eye surgery, then re-watched them with Paul a few months later)
• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (and her equally marvelous outfits!)
• Veep (all seven seasons) – Its fictional political absurdity was oddly comforting in the midst of 2019’s actual political absurdity

Books

This was a book blog once, wasn’t it?

I finished 25 books in 2019 (including a couple started in late 2018) That’s a pretty low count by my book-blogger standards of previous years. (But it’s better than the 19 I had before I realized I hadn’t properly tagged six books!) However, considering all the TV I watched and all the podcasts I listened to (between audiobooks), I’m mostly OK with it. I’m glad to have the record of them all, but a few stood out from the rest:

Fiction

• Daisy Jones and The Six
• The Testaments
• Fleishman Is in Trouble

Nonfiction

• Bad Blood
• Furious Hours
• Becoming
• Heartland

More of my non-audio reading is ebooks these days. My vision is at a stage where being able to tweak font sizes makes my iPad screen easier on my eyes than paper pages. Also, since ebooks tend to be priced comparably with trade paper, I can read the hot new stuff while it’s still new. (It’s not like I see it before it’s new anymore–that’s the cost of a book blog going dormant.) That said, there are still plenty of physical books on my physical bookshelves–I am unwilling to declare I’m done with trade paperbacks for good.

I have taken down my “Book Review Policy” page, though. That phase of this blog’s life probably is done.

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