As with prior years, in 2018 I kept track of all the books, games, movies, and shows I enjoyed throughout the year, and here are my favorites. Like with last year, I’m not ranking the books; those are listed alphabetically. The other mediums are ranked, but regardless of where these items fall on this list, I wholeheartedly recommend each item on here. Also as before, these are things I read/watched/played IN 2018, not necessarily things that were published in that year.
Poetry
Eloisa Amezcua, From the Inside Quietly
Jaswinder Bolina, Phantom Camera
Traci Brimhall, Saudade
Jos Charles, Safe Space
Leila Chatti, Tunsiya/Amrikiya
Kelly Forsythe, Perennial
Meg Freitag, Edith
David Kirby, Get Up, Please
Carly Joy Miller, Ceremonial
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Oceanic
Emilia Phillips, Empty Clip
Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey
Anthology: Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence (Eds. Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague, and Dean Rader)
Fiction
Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor, It Devours!
Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Sequoia Nagamatsu, Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone
Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being
Jessmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad
Graphic Novels
Clint McElroy, Carey Pietsch, and the McElroy brothers: The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins
Liz Suburbia, Sacred Heart
Nonfiction
Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
Dave Cullen, Columbine
Louise Glück, American Originality
Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Chelsea Hodson, Tonight I’m Someone Else
Katy Tur, Unbelievable
Games
- God of War
- Celeste
- Dead Cells
- The Last of Us
- Horizon Zero Dawn
- Pyre
- Nier: Automata
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Florence
- The Stanley Parable
Television
- Fargo (season 3)
- The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (season 2)
- Better Call Saul (season 3)
- Bojack Horseman (season 5)
- The Good Place (season 2)
- Glow (season 2)
- Black Mirror (season 4)
Movies
- Eighth Grade
- Baby Driver
- Sorry to Bother You
- Lady Bird
- Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
- Coco
- Ready Player One
- A Quiet Place
- I, Tonya
Brandon Amico 