I was hoping to add another book to this list, but it seems I will not finish reading it before the year is out, and also it is too beautiful a book to hurry up the reading, so I will make that my first book of 2019. I made a films of 2018 list a couple of days ago, in case films are more your thing.
But back to books: 2018 was a year with a nice variety of readings, more varied than my books of 2017 list. Also, a lot longer: I read 29 books this year, which is 6 up from last year. Again, I didn't read a long classic novel (although they are still on the to-read list) and also I quit reading a couple of books that took me too long to get through. If I have little time to read, I want to spend that time with books I actually like.
So, my complete 2018 list:
1 Lincoln in the bardo
2 Uncommon type
3 The heart goes last
4 The English patient
5 The sense of an ending
6 The ocean at the end of the lane
7 De zeven wetten van de liefde
8 The blind assassin
9 Murder on the Orient Express
10 The ABC murders
11 The noise of time
12 Fahrenheit 541
13 The Penelopiad
14 The view from the cheap seats
15 The garden party
16 All Change
17 The Liar
18 A handful of dust
19 Seveneves
20 The Children Act
21 My purple scented novel
22 The diary of a bookseller
23 Far from the madding crowd
24 Call me by your name
25 The only story
26 Shades of Grey
27 Normal people
28 Het bestverkochte boek ooit
29 Pride & prejudice & mistletoe
So, four rereads: The ocean at the end of the lane, The Liar, The Children Act and Shades of Grey, all by some of my favourite male authors (Gaiman, Fry, McEwan and Fforde). Two Dutch books, which are both non-fiction. I started reading two Dutch novels, but put both of those down as they didn't engage me enough. Will have to try again next year.
I had a couple of book resolutions for 2017 and 2018; stop reading of I don't like the novel, fewer rereads, read more great new authors such as Margaret Atwood. Also, as I was short on these last year; read more Dutch novels, short stories, non-fiction, and more new female authors. Some of those worked out, some clearly didn't. Despite the 'rules' I was really hoping for new novels by Ian McEwan or David Mitchell, but not having those I read more by new discoveries such as Julian Barnes, Margaret Atwood of course, and my newest love; Sally Rooney. Also, I read four Man Booker prize winners this year (Lincoln in the bardo (2017), The sense of an ending (2011), The English patient (1992) and The blind assassin (2000)), which makes 2018 a year filled with some of the best novels ever written.
Anyway, let's look at some lists:
Best English novel
1 Normal people
2 The sense of an ending
3 The English patient
So many great novels this year! This list was hard to make, also because novels that I've read more recently seem to stick in the memory better than those I read in January or February. But I managed to bring it down to three novels. But the undisputed number one is Normal People by Sally Rooney. I haven't been this happy reading a novel in a very long time. The Sense of an Ending makes a close second, though. Julian Barnes was a 2018 find, and I actually read three of his novels this year. The Sense of an Ending was the first and by far the best. It is one of those deeply emotional, tragic without being dramatic, stories about someone finally realising how much they've been deceiving themselves all of their life. As I wrote in February; This is a novel you can pull out each year, read again, and still find new bits in it. I will leave it alone for a couple of years, and then time will tell whether that is true. The last novel on the best novel list is another Man Booker winner (Normal People was merely longlisted, which is a shame, although I am now reading the 2018 Man Booker winner Milkman and can see how that is even better than Normal People) and another novel I read in February. The English patient, an instant classic I'd somehow missed all this time. I was watching Bodyguard on Netflix yesterday and it got me thinking about The English patient, so much so that I had to rewind because I'd been reminiscing so much. That is what a good novel does to you; it sticks with you, and you remember it while watching or reading other great things.
Honourable mentions on this list go to The Blind Assassin and Call me by your name, which didn't make the list but are still great novels.
Best Dutch novel
Non-existent this year
Best classic
1 Fahrenheit 541
2 Far from the madding crowd
3 A handful of dust
As always, one can argue here when a novel counts as a 'classic'. Last year, the oldest novels I read were over 20 years old but didn't feel as classics because they were still so current. This year, I felt like putting The English patient here, only to find out that novel is actually from 1992. Strange, how some novels feel much older than they are, while others are exactly the opposite.
Anyway, the novels I put in are from 1953, 1874 and 1934. I could also have put the Agatha Christie novels I read, as they're also from the 1930s, but I liked these less. Fahrenheit 541 is the newest novel on the list and my biggest discovery of 2018. I still can't explain how I missed this novel up until actually reading it (because Neil Gaiman mentioned it in The view from the cheap seats) but there you are. Read this novel, if you haven't already. Far from the madding crowd is a Thomas Hardy novel, which makes it a classic in its own right, but also a book to be shunned if you studied English literature and wrestled through Jude the Obscure, as I did. But as it turns out, this is a far nicer read. A handful of dust is also one of those fallen-through novels; one of my friends actually wrote here thesis on Evelyn Waugh and I never bothered to read any of the novels in it, except for Brideshead revisited a couple of years ago. I liked that better, A handful of dust is a bit too cynical and nasty for my taste, but still a good read.
Best non-fiction
1 The view from the cheap seats
2 The diary of a bookseller
3 Het bestverkochte boek ooit
I'm not sure if The view from the cheap seats counts fully as non-fiction, as with Neil Gaiman you can never be sure, but it by far the best non-fiction I read this year. The diary of a bookseller follows the life of a bookseller in the biggest bookshop in Scotland, which was a revealing, if somewhat narcissistic, read. Het bestverkochte boek ooit is by De Correspondent, the Dutch non-news news website that is expanding into the USA to bring the news that is not the current, actual, hyped up news but the stories behind the news, the events slowly unfolding. This book is about our obsession with numbers and what they actually mean.
Best short-story collection
1 Uncommon type
2 The garden party
Not a lot of short-story collections this year, but more than in 2017, when there were none. Uncommon type was a big surprise this year; it turns out Tom Hanks can actually write a pretty decent story! The second short-story collection I read was by Katherine Mansfield. I read The Garden Party (the story from the title) for my English lit studies, when again it was one of those timeless stories that feel still current, even though it was written in 1922. The rest of the stories are nice reads, but not as memorable as Tom Hanks' book.
Best fantasy/scifi
1 Seveneves
2 The Penelopiad
Not a lot of fantasy or scifi to go around this year, and Shades of Grey counts as a reread, but these two deserve some kind of mention. Seveneves is a scifi novel that taught me more I ever thought to know about the ISS, living in space, space physics and building a new world. The Penelopiad is Margaret Atwood's interpretation of the Odyssee myth. This may not count as fantasy in the strictest sense of the word, but I do want to mention it because of her very human and real characters.
Best 'new' author
1 Sally Rooney
2 Julian Barnes
3 Michael Ondaatje
This list can hardly come as a surprise. Will read more of these authors whenever I can.
Most disappointing novel
1 All change
2 The heart goes last
3 The only story
This list always hurts. This year, it contains three of my favourite 'new' authors; Elizabeth Jane Howard, Margaret Atwood and Julian Barnes. I've said all I ever wanted to say on All change. The heart goes last was my most disappointing Atwood novel this year; compared to The Blind Assassin or The Handmaid's tale it feels rushed, with stock characters and a stock message. The same is true for The Only Story; Julian Barnes's newest novel. I had actually forgotten what it was about, but reading the blurb it all came back to me; the failed relationship of characters I didn't actually care about. Especially reading it directly following Call me by your name, which depicts a blossoming relationship in all its lovely longing, this novel made me thoroughly sad. I hope to pick up better novels by Atwood (Alias Grace is still waiting) and Barnes next year, as it hurts me to put authors I usually really love in this list.
Authors I read more than once:
- Margaret Atwood (3x)
- Julian Barnes (3x)
- Agatha Christie (2x)
- Neil Gaiman (2x)
- Ian McEwan (2x)
Monday 31 December 2018
Thursday 27 December 2018
Films of 2018
For a couple of years I've been writing a 'Books of...' post (the 2018 edition will be upcoming) but with the end of the year nearing and lots of other lists appearing in various media, I wondered why I wouldn't make a 'Films of ...' version as well. In an average year, I watch many more films than I read books, because films are shorter, cheaper, and watching a film is a shared experience. Because I have a membership card at the biggest cinema of my city, I can watch any film I want for a fixed price per month. Also, this cinema actually remembers all the films I watched there in an nifty app, thus giving me the below overview with just one click. I watched many more films than these, of course; arthouse films at the arthouse cinema, Netflix original films, films at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Hongerige Wolf festival, older films that found their way to my screen in some other way (in the past month alone I saw Twelve Angry Men from 1957 and Mary Poppins from 1964). But to include all would be impossible. So I will stick with the list my cinema provides me with; the new films I saw in 2018, excluding re-releases (I saw Grease on its 40 anniversary), Disney special weeks and the in-house pre-premieres.
These were:
1 Breathe
2 The Greatest Showman
3 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
4 Darkest Hour
5 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
6 Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding
7 The Maze Runner: Death Cure
8 Game Night
9 Every Day
10 Mary Magdalene
11 Ready Player One
12 Hostiles
13 Phantom Thread
14 Midnight Sun
15 Avengers: Inifinity War
16 De Matchmaker
17 Isle of Dogs
18 Deadpool 2
19 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
20 Love, Simon
21 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
22 Incedibles 2
23 Ocean's 8
24 Tag
25 Mission Impossible: Fallout
26 Adrift
27 On Chesil Beach
28 Blackkklansman
29 A Simple Favour
30 Venom
31 Juliet, Naked
32 A Star is Born
33 First Man
34 Bohemian Rhapsody
35 The Children Act
36 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
37 Robin Hood
38 The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
39 Ralph Breaks the Internet
40 Mary Poppins Returns
A pretty varied list, if I say so myself. Some Marvel, some arthouse, some YA, some action films. Some comedy, lots of drama, a couple of Dutch romcoms; my film habits are more diverse than my reading habits.
So, because one list is not enough, let's break this down into some neat little lists:
Best English film
1 On Chesil Beach
2 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
3 First Man
Right, so this is always the last list I write (even though it is the top one) because it is the most difficult. What do I put here? The films that moved me the most? The films that surprised me? The films that are beautifully made? In the end, I put the films that made the strongest impression, the films that I will remember some years into the future. On Chesil Beach is a film adaptation of one of my favourite Ian McEwan novels. It stars Saoirse Ronan, who is one of my favourite actresses. I cried my eyes out in the cinema; the story is heartbreaking to read, but to see it played out on the screen is somehow even more moving. Nothing much happens, it is set in one afternoon and evening, but whole lives can change in just that short amount of time. Not sure why it received lukewarm reviews, to me it was one of the highlights of the film year. The same is true for Three Billboards, although that is of course a wildly different film. This film is filled with raw emotion without becoming overly dramatic. Frances McDormand won a deserved Oscar; she plays a very strong woman, without being the perfect hero we we see in so many films. She makes impulsive, sometimes somewhat stupid, choices; she is human in her rage. With two strong female leads the third film may be somewhat of a surprise, but First Man also made an impression, not because of Ryan Gosling's performance as Neil Armstrong (although he was great as always) but because of the whole madness of actually sending people into space in metal boxes atop giant fuel tanks that almost shake apart on the start. Again, we have a dramatic story without overt drama. Also, Claire Foy fills the strong female role here. Three films to watch again.
Best Dutch film
I'd love to do a list here, but I only saw one proper Dutch film; De Matchmaker, which apart from the article you may be forgiven for thinking was actually an English film. It was pretty good, great actors make all the difference (even though some of them were type cast in the same role they've played for at least 5 years now, practice apparently makes perfect).
Best animation
1 Isle of Dogs
2 Ralph Breaks the Internet
3 Incredibles 2
No argument here; Isle of Dogs is hands down one of the best films of 2018. It is beautifully made, with lots of attention to detail, the story is moving and whacky at the same time, as are the characters the style reminded me of my earlier love of Kubo and the Two Strings and it just gives you an overall feeling of having seen a work of beauty. Ralph Breaks the Internet is a bit of an odd one, as I never actually saw Wreck-it Ralph, but it was fun and creative, with good characters and a nice (if somewhat predictable and long) plot. The only reason it wins from Incredibles 2 is that I can actually remember what happened in Ralph, whereas the Incredibles seem to have disappeared from my mind all together. I did see the original Incredibles film and liked that more than its sequel.
Best book adaptation
1 On Chesil Beach
2 Juliet, Naked
3 Adrift
In 2018 I was lucky enough to see film adaptations of several favourite novels come out; On Chesil Beach and The Children Act by Ian McEwan, and Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. The first is one of the best films I saw all year, the second sadly made the 'most disappointing' list. Juliet, Naked was a bit of a surprise: the novel translated to screen better than I'd expected. Adrift isn't just a film adaptation of a book, but a 'based on true events' film (Tami Oldham wrote a book about her experience of being adrift on sea for 41 days). This could have been a overly dramatic survival story, but the film is beautifully made, cutting away from the couple on their broken boat to how they met and the hours before the storm, thus giving a great tension build-up. Not a film I expected to like, but one I will remember for some time to come.
Best sequel
1 Mary Poppins Returns
2 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
3 Avengers: Inifinity War
Soooo many sequels this year. So, so many. Not all of them good, mind you. But the Mary Poppins sequel, which took 54 years to come about, was actually really great. I hadn't seen the original until about a week ago, so I am new to the fandom, but I loved the original and the sequel. Emily Blunt makes for a great Mary, it is amazing to see how many different roles she has already done. I felt the same happiness about the Jumanji sequel; it took a long time arriving, but it was really nicely done. I think this may be the first The Rock film I actually enjoyed. Also; Jack Black. Then there are lots of lesser souls in the sequel universe; Mission Impossible, Jurassic Park, The Maze Runner, but the Avengers film steals third place. I will not mention the Fantastic Beasts sequel here (see below).
Best Marvel
1 Avengers: Inifinity War
2 Deadpool 2
3 Venom
(I'm just putting Marvel adaptations here, not worrying whether they are actually part of the MCU. Also, no, I didn't see Black Panther or Ant-Man and the Wasp). It wasn't a great Marvel year, this year. Sure, Infinity War was pretty nice, but it is not a film in and of itself, the open ending drove me nuts. Also, too many characters crammed into one move. Deadpool and Venom were disappointments story-wise and character-wise. Maybe I should have gone to the Marvels I didn't see, which would make this sad list my own fault, but the overall feeling is just; meh.
Best young adult
1 Love, Simon
2 Every Day
3 Midnight Sun
Okay, so Yong Adult must be everybody's guilty pleasure, except for actual young adults, who think that there is finally a film that understands them. Love, Simon should be nobody's guilty pleasure, but a film you proudly proclaim loving. It is almost un-American in its realism (somewhat like Atypical), with of course the necessary dose of drama added. But the story is sweet and feelgood, the characters are believable and the message is great. (I should probably have gone to see Call me by your name as well, but I just read the book and couldn't stand destroying the image in my mind with the film adaptation.) Every Day and Midnight Sun are more stock 'nobody but you understands me' YA fare, but still nice enough to inculde on the list. The final Maze Runner film never stood a chance.
Most disappointing film
1 The Children Act
2 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
3 The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
This is a painful list. By definition, it only includes films I actually had high hopes for. I mean, when I visit Tag or Game Night I don't expect any great artistic revelations (although they were both better than expected). So my hopes were really high for The Children Act, especially as McEwan wrote the screenplay himself (as which On Chesil Beach, which is in the first list), but this was such a disappointment. Emma Thompson is acting her heart out, but the story is just so flat, the characters are flat, their development and thought process is non-existent and the main message or point is just completely lost. When I explained how the characters are in the novel to my baffled friend (who hadn't read the book) she exclaimed: why didn't they film that instead? My thoughts exactly. Second major disappointment is the Fantastic Beasts sequel; the first film was so lovingly made, centred around Newt and his beasts, and now we get an in-betweeny with way too many characters, no coherent plot to speak of, too many action scenes thrown together, no actual Grindelwald crimes (as promised by the title) and to make things worse; no beasts to speak of (also; as promised by the title). Eddie Redmayne is wasted on this film. The third film in this list is there because it was just a major disappointment overall. I love The Nutcracker, I will visit the ballet in a couple of days, but this film just had nothing to do with that story or anything else. There was no proper plot, no characters to relate to, just... nothing. The only good thing about it was Matthew Macfayden (to end this somewhat downer ending on a positive note).
These were:
1 Breathe
2 The Greatest Showman
3 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
4 Darkest Hour
5 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
6 Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding
7 The Maze Runner: Death Cure
8 Game Night
9 Every Day
10 Mary Magdalene
11 Ready Player One
12 Hostiles
13 Phantom Thread
14 Midnight Sun
15 Avengers: Inifinity War
16 De Matchmaker
17 Isle of Dogs
18 Deadpool 2
19 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
20 Love, Simon
21 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
22 Incedibles 2
23 Ocean's 8
24 Tag
25 Mission Impossible: Fallout
26 Adrift
27 On Chesil Beach
28 Blackkklansman
29 A Simple Favour
30 Venom
31 Juliet, Naked
32 A Star is Born
33 First Man
34 Bohemian Rhapsody
35 The Children Act
36 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
37 Robin Hood
38 The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
39 Ralph Breaks the Internet
40 Mary Poppins Returns
A pretty varied list, if I say so myself. Some Marvel, some arthouse, some YA, some action films. Some comedy, lots of drama, a couple of Dutch romcoms; my film habits are more diverse than my reading habits.
So, because one list is not enough, let's break this down into some neat little lists:
Best English film
1 On Chesil Beach
2 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
3 First Man
Right, so this is always the last list I write (even though it is the top one) because it is the most difficult. What do I put here? The films that moved me the most? The films that surprised me? The films that are beautifully made? In the end, I put the films that made the strongest impression, the films that I will remember some years into the future. On Chesil Beach is a film adaptation of one of my favourite Ian McEwan novels. It stars Saoirse Ronan, who is one of my favourite actresses. I cried my eyes out in the cinema; the story is heartbreaking to read, but to see it played out on the screen is somehow even more moving. Nothing much happens, it is set in one afternoon and evening, but whole lives can change in just that short amount of time. Not sure why it received lukewarm reviews, to me it was one of the highlights of the film year. The same is true for Three Billboards, although that is of course a wildly different film. This film is filled with raw emotion without becoming overly dramatic. Frances McDormand won a deserved Oscar; she plays a very strong woman, without being the perfect hero we we see in so many films. She makes impulsive, sometimes somewhat stupid, choices; she is human in her rage. With two strong female leads the third film may be somewhat of a surprise, but First Man also made an impression, not because of Ryan Gosling's performance as Neil Armstrong (although he was great as always) but because of the whole madness of actually sending people into space in metal boxes atop giant fuel tanks that almost shake apart on the start. Again, we have a dramatic story without overt drama. Also, Claire Foy fills the strong female role here. Three films to watch again.
Best Dutch film
I'd love to do a list here, but I only saw one proper Dutch film; De Matchmaker, which apart from the article you may be forgiven for thinking was actually an English film. It was pretty good, great actors make all the difference (even though some of them were type cast in the same role they've played for at least 5 years now, practice apparently makes perfect).
Best animation
1 Isle of Dogs
2 Ralph Breaks the Internet
3 Incredibles 2
No argument here; Isle of Dogs is hands down one of the best films of 2018. It is beautifully made, with lots of attention to detail, the story is moving and whacky at the same time, as are the characters the style reminded me of my earlier love of Kubo and the Two Strings and it just gives you an overall feeling of having seen a work of beauty. Ralph Breaks the Internet is a bit of an odd one, as I never actually saw Wreck-it Ralph, but it was fun and creative, with good characters and a nice (if somewhat predictable and long) plot. The only reason it wins from Incredibles 2 is that I can actually remember what happened in Ralph, whereas the Incredibles seem to have disappeared from my mind all together. I did see the original Incredibles film and liked that more than its sequel.
Best book adaptation
1 On Chesil Beach
2 Juliet, Naked
3 Adrift
In 2018 I was lucky enough to see film adaptations of several favourite novels come out; On Chesil Beach and The Children Act by Ian McEwan, and Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. The first is one of the best films I saw all year, the second sadly made the 'most disappointing' list. Juliet, Naked was a bit of a surprise: the novel translated to screen better than I'd expected. Adrift isn't just a film adaptation of a book, but a 'based on true events' film (Tami Oldham wrote a book about her experience of being adrift on sea for 41 days). This could have been a overly dramatic survival story, but the film is beautifully made, cutting away from the couple on their broken boat to how they met and the hours before the storm, thus giving a great tension build-up. Not a film I expected to like, but one I will remember for some time to come.
Best sequel
1 Mary Poppins Returns
2 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
3 Avengers: Inifinity War
Soooo many sequels this year. So, so many. Not all of them good, mind you. But the Mary Poppins sequel, which took 54 years to come about, was actually really great. I hadn't seen the original until about a week ago, so I am new to the fandom, but I loved the original and the sequel. Emily Blunt makes for a great Mary, it is amazing to see how many different roles she has already done. I felt the same happiness about the Jumanji sequel; it took a long time arriving, but it was really nicely done. I think this may be the first The Rock film I actually enjoyed. Also; Jack Black. Then there are lots of lesser souls in the sequel universe; Mission Impossible, Jurassic Park, The Maze Runner, but the Avengers film steals third place. I will not mention the Fantastic Beasts sequel here (see below).
Best Marvel
1 Avengers: Inifinity War
2 Deadpool 2
3 Venom
(I'm just putting Marvel adaptations here, not worrying whether they are actually part of the MCU. Also, no, I didn't see Black Panther or Ant-Man and the Wasp). It wasn't a great Marvel year, this year. Sure, Infinity War was pretty nice, but it is not a film in and of itself, the open ending drove me nuts. Also, too many characters crammed into one move. Deadpool and Venom were disappointments story-wise and character-wise. Maybe I should have gone to the Marvels I didn't see, which would make this sad list my own fault, but the overall feeling is just; meh.
Best young adult
1 Love, Simon
2 Every Day
3 Midnight Sun
Okay, so Yong Adult must be everybody's guilty pleasure, except for actual young adults, who think that there is finally a film that understands them. Love, Simon should be nobody's guilty pleasure, but a film you proudly proclaim loving. It is almost un-American in its realism (somewhat like Atypical), with of course the necessary dose of drama added. But the story is sweet and feelgood, the characters are believable and the message is great. (I should probably have gone to see Call me by your name as well, but I just read the book and couldn't stand destroying the image in my mind with the film adaptation.) Every Day and Midnight Sun are more stock 'nobody but you understands me' YA fare, but still nice enough to inculde on the list. The final Maze Runner film never stood a chance.
Most disappointing film
1 The Children Act
2 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
3 The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
This is a painful list. By definition, it only includes films I actually had high hopes for. I mean, when I visit Tag or Game Night I don't expect any great artistic revelations (although they were both better than expected). So my hopes were really high for The Children Act, especially as McEwan wrote the screenplay himself (as which On Chesil Beach, which is in the first list), but this was such a disappointment. Emma Thompson is acting her heart out, but the story is just so flat, the characters are flat, their development and thought process is non-existent and the main message or point is just completely lost. When I explained how the characters are in the novel to my baffled friend (who hadn't read the book) she exclaimed: why didn't they film that instead? My thoughts exactly. Second major disappointment is the Fantastic Beasts sequel; the first film was so lovingly made, centred around Newt and his beasts, and now we get an in-betweeny with way too many characters, no coherent plot to speak of, too many action scenes thrown together, no actual Grindelwald crimes (as promised by the title) and to make things worse; no beasts to speak of (also; as promised by the title). Eddie Redmayne is wasted on this film. The third film in this list is there because it was just a major disappointment overall. I love The Nutcracker, I will visit the ballet in a couple of days, but this film just had nothing to do with that story or anything else. There was no proper plot, no characters to relate to, just... nothing. The only good thing about it was Matthew Macfayden (to end this somewhat downer ending on a positive note).
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