In the run of pre-Christmas activities—both expected and unexpected—Amy and I decided to pause our series on the most spiritually significant films of all time. There just wasn’t enough time to watch multiple movies and to do the requisite amount of homework. But fear not! We will return early in 2024 with #11 on our unfolding list.
Nevertheless, we did not want to end the calendar year without a podcast. Thus we managed to carve out time for an impromptu retrospective on the year 2023—the highlights and the lowlights, the events, issues, and persons that stirred us and, alas, the ones that worried us. Topics include “Miss Fancy,” the creative process, my new novel Man of Pain, “border issues,” Elon Musk, social media, and the looming 2024 presidential election. Of course, we also had to touch on the best movies, music, and books of the year.
With regard to the latter, I’ve decided to add some supplementary material. Amy and I didn’t present formal rankings during our discussion, but I’m going to provide a few of my own here. Maybe Amy will add her own yearend lists in the comments when she gets back from New York City—or maybe not. Or perhaps you will add your 2023 favorites in the comments—or maybe not. But for what it’s worth…
My Top 5 Albums of 2023
søn of dad by Stephen Wilson, Jr.
Weathervanes by Jason Isbell
Cousins by Wilco
Zach Bryan by Zach Bryan
Memento Mori by Depeche Mode
My Top 25 Songs of 2023
Rather than compile a numerical catalog, I created a Spotify playlist in no particular order:
These aren’t necessarily my favorite 25 songs of 2023. If I were to take that approach, I would include more than one song by, say, Jason Isbell. But this list contains 25 songs by 25 different artists, and I think it gives a fair sense of what I’ve been listening to this year. By the way, I took the playlist’s cover image in Jupiter, Florida this past October—a serendipitous moment.
My Top 5 Movies of 2023
Oppenheimer (dir. Christopher Nolan)
The Holdovers (dir. Alexander Payne)
Barbie (dir. Greta Gerwig)
The Killer (dir. David Fincher)
My Top 5 TV and Streaming Shows of 2023
The Last of Us: Season 1
Slow Horses: Season 3
The Bear: Season 2
The Fall of the House of Usher: Limited Series
As always, links to Just FYI Pod are found below. Please listen, like, subscribe, and rate!
Looking forward to the Spotify playlist. And, I’m so glad LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND was not in your top movies.
This is a really interesting discussion. Considering our cultural moment, I think that Alvin Toffler’s book, “Future Shock,” and Orwell’s “1984,” are more relevant now than ever. The constant 24/7 barrage of news and social media are overwhelming. We gave up TV and social media long ago. We’re breathing better as a result. With the news media, we found that when we invited them into our living room, they would throw up on the carpet…not a delicate way to express it, I suppose. I believe that Alexander Solzhenitsyn had something to say about information overload. I’m looking forward to reading your book.