I write this with the caveat that I have not been the “culture vulture”/consumer of pop culture that I usually am due to a whole host of factors that I may or may not share at a later date. [This year did, in fact, suck] This was also a hard year for me with many challenges so I didn’t go out much either. That is why I am not doing top 10 lists. This is a long-winded paragraph to say I didn’t get out much in 2019. Also, I don’t feel like expending the mental energy to rank anything although most of these do have a definite “number one.”
Another caveat, I live in Arkansas and apparently Parasite came to Arkansas for one week only. This movie was in the state for one week only and I didn’t get any notice until the last day. I had a work conflict for said last day. Now it is gone. GONE. I keep telling people that Arkansas is not ass-backward and then something like this happens. Bless their hearts.
MOVIES
- Booksmart
- Little Women
Booksmart will be a cult classic. It didn’t get the numbers in the theater it deserved but I predict people will find it on streaming services soon.
BOOKS
- Becoming by Michelle Obama
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Philipps
This is the year I, to my embarrassment, finally got around to reading Donna Tartt’s The Secret History so I am adding it to this list.
MUSIC
At my house, 2019 was the Billie Eilish and Lizzo show. Both of these women are ridiculously talented and I adored numerous songs on each of these ladies’ respective albums. Also, due to Spotify and satellite radio, I didn’t listen to that much new music.
- All of Lizzo
- All of Billie Eilish
- Ready to Let Go by Cage the Elephant
- Lover by Taylor Swift
- Uptown Road by Lil Nas
TV
- Fleabag
- Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
- Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
- John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch
- Barry
- This is Us
- Russian Doll
- Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt
- Dickinson
- Mindhunter
This was a year of great television but 2019 was the year of the Fleabag. It is on everyone’s list and I am not sure I could say anything that hasn’t been said somewhere else. It is simply a masterpiece.
This was also a personally heavy year so I didn’t seek out dramas. So yeah, I’ll watch the good dramas of 2019 later.
shows where the issues regarding Salander are resolved in an over the top mystery thriller fashion but resolved just the same. 
, 
, and 
. These are the books of which the HBO TV show “TRUE BLOOD” are based. Frankly, I can’t believe someone based a television series off of these books. I can’t believe the author has managed to write ten books based on these characters. The books are merely okay and the first one is pretty gosh darn bad. If I hadn’t heard from multiple sources that they get better, I would have stopped after the first one. I think the author uses the vampire, werewolf, and other mystical creatures as a crutch to avoid character development. Or something. Oh and the descriptions of the clothes bother me. Make the girl fugly why don’t you? ugh. They are mindless and they are entertaining enough that I finished them.
is a nonfiction. This book caught my eye because I met a person and it was the stereotypical, “It was like I had known Bucky Chucky my whole life.” It freaked my shit out, actually. I remembered some of the phenomena listed in my social psychology classes from college. The book itself, however, is written in a much less academic style— similar to Blink by Gladwell.
I like writing and someone recommended this book to me. It was actually recommended by a journaler but the author herself is a poet. It has a lot of writing exercises designed to loosen up and let your writing flow. Some people even call it their “writing practice.” It was a very touchy feely new age type of aesthetic so unless you are into that sort of thing, you might not like it. 
This was written by the same author that wrote the Sookie Stackhouse books but I liked it a lot better. I liked the characters better. I liked the plot better. It’s about a twenty something woman whose parents were drug addicts. She got hit by lightning as a teenager and now she can “read the bones of the dead.” This means when she walks across a grave, she will know who the person buried below is and how they died and a myriad of other facts related to the person. Of course, there is a plot of a mysterious death that causes an uproar and shenanigans including two attempts at shooting the “dead reader” herself. Oh and she’s in love and has a relationship with her stepbrother. KINKY MS. HARRIS. KINKY!
I found this in the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble and took it for a spin. This is the memoir of a woman from the age of 10 to her 30s. Over the years, she becomes bulimic and then her behavior over time slides over into anorexia. Then she relapses on the bulimia. LAther, Rinse, repeat. She talks about her parent’s crazy relationship growing up and all sorts of other possible causes for her condition but it’s more of a stark, no excuses, reminiscing of her sordid past. It was so sordid and scarring that in the afterword, the author mentioned that she relapsed back into anorexia after writing the book. Yeah it’s a downer.
This is mainly a career type book. You buy it to get access to this online personality quiz and then use the book to examine the results. It was helpful but NOT THAT HELPFUL! So there. boo yaa
. It’s a Sesame Street book and it’s the story of Grover who hears that there is a Monster at the end of this book. He is scared. He tries to get us to stop turning the pages by setting up barriers such as ropes and bricks. He’s all scared and freaked out. In the end . . . . well I won’t tell you the end. read it yourself.
. It’s a Japanese Children’s book about… well you guessed it: Farts. It’s educational and amusing. I mean how can you now laugh at farts. Farts are funny.
out of the local library along with some other books.