The Best Things I Read, Watched and Listened To This Year

Part III of the ACBNnual takes a look at the things I enjoyed most this year

Hello again, friends.

This week, I’m taking a journey back through the year that was at The Action Cookbook Newsletter—an effort I’m calling the ACBNnual.

On Monday, I shared some of the best things I ate in 2023, and followed that up yesterday with the best things I drank.

I’ve got consumption of a different sort on my mind today, though.

I want to talk about the best things I read, watched and listened to this year.

In this newsletter, I regularly share recommendations for books, music and more—things I’ve loved and I think you’ll love too. This is by no means an exhaustive review today, or even a focused one; it’s just some of the things that stuck with me the most.

And—once again—I want to hear from you.

Did you have a favorite book this year? A movie that you loved? A show that knocked the wind out of you? Perhaps you saw a really great concert or just got really deep into a podcast. Whatever it is, I want to know the media and art that grabbed you the most in the year that was.

Here’s just a few of my favorites.

I am never taking a cruise.

It’s not like I can really hide how aggressively Dad I am as a person these days, but telling you that one of my favorite books of the year was about an 18th-century shipwreck sure puts it front and center.

Nevertheless!

I absolutely loved The Wager: a Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

David Grann’s had a big year, what with the film adaptation of Killers of the Flower Moon, and this was a bestseller as well. It’s not like I’m telling you about some obscure title here, but the praise is well-deserved. Grann’s in-depth telling of the shipwreck, mutiny and rescue of the men on the HMS Wager in 1741 is an epic story worthy of the future film adaptation it’s sure to get.

Incompetence! Fatal hubris! Human misery!

I mean, what’s not to love?

A love letter to the little things

The Bear can be a stress-inducing viewing experience. It’s a show that realistically depicts life in a restaurant kitchen and what it’s like to deal with grief, depression and dysfunctional family drama.

It’s intense!

That said, there wasn’t a warmer bath to be had on television than Season 2, Episode 7 of The Bear, “Forks”.

In it, curmudgeonly cynic Richie—who’s spent the show’s run to date being the last person to get on board with pretty much anything—spends a week at a Michelin-starred restaurant learning the ropes. Dismissive at first, he gradually gains respect for the level of effort and precision that goes into making a great dining experience, and learns first-hand the joy there is to be had in serving others.

This episode just made me so happy.

Crime does pay. (We knew that, though.)

Probably the most purely fun thing I read this year was John Scalzi’s Starter Villain.

The book starts with a delightfully silly premise. A down-on-his-luck business reporter-turned-substitute-teacher gets surprising news when his estranged uncle dies: his uncle was a supervillain, and he’s been named sole heir to the criminal enterprise.

The only problem? His uncle made a lot of enemies, and now they all want to kill him.

It’s hard to deliver on a premise that appealing, but Scalzi does—keeping it quick and breezy while still working through the details with impressive depth. It’s a hoot.

It’s real to me, dangit!

I’ve watched a lot of streaming sports documentaries in recent years, and most of them are pretty dang mediocre. For every The Last Dance, there’s a couple dozen more without a story to tell or the right people to tell it.

Wrestlers isn’t one of those. It gets it right.

The seven-part Netflix documentary miniseries gives viewers a look inside the world of indie professional wrestling, following a make-or-break season at Ohio Valley Wrestling, a long-running but financially struggling operation right here in Louisville, Kentucky. It zooms in on a half-dozen of OVW’s would-be stars, along with their manager—former WWE wrestler Al Snow—and the two local money men who’ve taken over the operation and are now demanding results.

It’s a fun, unique subject matter, and director Greg Whiteley (Cheer, Last Chance U) does a great job turning it into a compelling story. I attended a press event before the show’s debut and interviewed a number of the wrestlers involved in the show, something I spun into a profile here on the ACBN.

Maybe it makes me a bad journalist (note: I am not a journalist), but I really found myself rooting for them to succeed—they all seemed like real, genuine people busting their asses in pursuit of a dream.

The book that made me laugh out loud the most and emotionally wrecked me

This book is two years old, but whatever.

*I* read it in 2023, and that’s what matters for this effort.

Tricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This sneaks up on you—it starts with a wildly funny portrayal of what it’s like to be Extremely Online, following its unnamed protagonist as she navigates The Portal—a stand-in for our present-day social media.

Then, family tragedy strikes, and the book takes a hard turn into a story of love and grief. It’s a startling, unpredictable and incredibly moving book.

The most lived-in show on TV

One of the most remarkable pieces of television of 2022 was Bridget Everett’s Somebody Somwhere, a show unlike pretty much anything that’s come before it.

The first season followed Everett’s Sam, a woman in her forties dealing with the death of her sister. She’s returned to her family home in Manhattan, Kansas, and she’s trying her best to find happiness and friendship. That’s not much of a description, but to try to frame it in terms of plot would be to do it a grave disservice.

It’s got some of the most realistic depictions of small-town Midwestern life, friendship, grace and love ever seen on television, and Season 2—which came out earlier this year—doesn’t miss a beat.

The joy of seeing a band you love exactly where they belong

Over The Rhine has been a big part of my life for a long time now.

I first started listening to them in the early aughts as a student at the University of Cincinnati, just a few miles up the road from the neighborhood where Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler got their start and their band’s name.

A half-decade later, I took the woman that I would one day marry to see “this band that I love” on our fourth or fifth date. A few years after that, a dear friend sang one of their songs during our wedding ceremony, and we had our first dance to another. I’ve seen them in small clubs, at a winery, fancy performing arts venues—all over the place. I’ve lost count.

This past weekend, we added a new mark to this timeline—seeing them play their final concert of the year at their spiritual home base, Cincinnati’s Memorial Hall, right in the heart of the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. This time, we had our two young children with us—their first ‘real’ concert-going experience.

It was a beautiful show, a truly restorative experience in the midst of a hectic December, and exactly what I needed at this moment in time. (I think the kids even enjoyed it!) Some artists end up feeling like old friends, and there’s nothing better than spending time with old friends at the holidays.

If you haven’t yet acceeded to my years of badgering you to listen to Over The Rhine, just give “Darlin’ (Christmas is Coming)” a listen:

The book I stayed up late to finish

If The Wager was laser-targeted non-fiction reading for Dads, then James Kestrel’s Five Decembers is the same for the fiction aisle.

It’s a big, sprawling historical fiction page-turner, one that finds its American protagonist stranded in wartime Japan at the outbreak of World War II, far from home and desperate to survive. It’s the perfect novel for sinking into a big leather chair and reading in front of a fire. Heck, I might read it again over Christmas.

Gosh, I haven’t mentioned much music yet.

Every Friday, all year round, I share new music that I like, but—short of Over The Rhine—I haven’t put any in my rundown today. That’s on purpose. I figured the best way to share the music I listened to the most in 2023 wasn’t to give you a list or a bunch of YouTube links—it was to make you a mix CD.

Maybe I can’t burn you a physical CD like I would have in 1999, but I can hold myself to the same limitations I worked under in those days—74 minutes max, and hopefully a cohesive emotional arc.

Most of the music is from 2023, some of it’s from 2022. Whatever, it’s my mix CD. Pop it in your car stereo and don’t worry too much about the technicalities.

Okay, that’s my rundown. What’s yours?

What art grabbed you in 2023?

What should the rest of us stream/download/check out from the library for the holidays? What’s an experience that stayed with you?

I’ll be back tomorrow with Part IV of The ACBNnual, where I’ll get around to talking about some of the best things I think I wrote this year.

—Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)