Favorite Movies and TV Shows from the Year AND What You’ve Learned This Year

I’m not sure how this pertains to “December Journaling If You Feel Like You Haven’t Achieved Much This Year,” but maybe this one is the proof that I actually did not. Here is 19: Favorite Movies and TV Shows from the Year.

It’s hard to remember. There is so much TV and we watch too much of it. I don’t think we went to the movies once this year, but of course, there were movies on streaming. We need to cut our streaming services, that would be something.

I enjoyed The Righteous Gemstones a lot. That is my favorite TV show now, I think. The language is bad but the humor gets me every time. It is perfect humor for me, great writing, great visuals. I’m going to miss that show. I think I have watched it seven times (I kept watching it with other people!) I’m actually streaming a playlist of Righteous Gemstones songs on Spotify right now.

We also watched Severance, and that was also really good. I love stuff like that, where there’s weird things and secrets yet to be uncovered. I hope they finish everything and tie up the loose ends, unlike Lost, which did NOT explain a lot of things and that was frustrating!

I know I watched more things, and I know I enjoyed lots of things. But I don’t want to write them down because I don’t want to upset any friends who lean to the right or the left more than I do. I like political things. I like to study what other people are thinking, saying, and doing. I do not like biased news. It’s hard to find anything that isn’t biased. I used to be so insulted when people would talk ill of the news media, and I would remind them that I was the editor of a newspaper, and they would say, oh, I don’t mean you, I mean real news, and that was also insulting.

Anyway, interesting that I feel no compunction to not talk about our medical, financial, or employment situations…but I do draw the line at political. That’s going to stay on my livejournal and in my own head, thank you very much.

Oh yeah, I hit publish but now I’m editing because I forgot I was going to try to do more than one on here.

20: What You’ve Learned This Year

I learned that I should look at these calendars with more of a critical eye before I dive right in.

I think we learned Belinda had MCAS this year, and later we learned that I do too.

I’m still learning the rest, I think. Right now I’m learning how to adjust to big life changes, like three children moving out in the same year and a new one moving in who has all her own idiosyncrasies instead of something I’ve worked to curate all of her life. I’m glad the things are always changing and not being boring…but I do yearn for the days when it was just little old Garvie Fam Five. Sigh.

Favorite Thing You’ve Read This Year

Well, it is the 28th. We have left DC and had Christmas and it’s almost New Year’s. I’ll make another post with the last day at DC in it. I don’t think there will be much. Also, I’ve probably forgotten some, 10 days later. I’m glad it was only 10 days. It felt like more.

So. “December Journaling if You Feel LIke You Haven’t Achieved Much This Year.”
Day 18: Favorite Thing You’ve Read This Year.

It’s funny that I didn’t do this, because I was looking forward to this one. I guess everything was just so busy there for a while, and I was also having difficulty charging my laptop (I think the plug brick/base thing was not working right. This year I read more than I have in a while. It was hard, not gonna lie. I did it because I am in my friend Evelyn’s book club and even though I missed several of the last few meetings, I still kept up with reading the books. Even if sometimes I finished after the meeting. I’m hoping to do better this year.

Sometimes I also got other books I’d heard about while I was at the library, or I grabbed them when I saw them. I also got recommendations from Belinda. I went to quite a few libraries this year. I also still have a book that needs to go back to the Oklahoma City Library, boo.

According to my Goodreads, I had a goal to finish 20 books in 2025, and I read 35 books! I got confetti when I went to the site just now! Those books were: Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson; Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell; As Good as Dead by Holly Jackson; The Fall to the Climb: A Mother’s Account of Grief, Faith, and Healing by Chrissy L Whitten; Do You Hear What I Hear by Helen Dunlap Newton; When Stars Come Out by Scarlett St. Clair; The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton; Bird by Bird by Anna Lamont; Maggie: Trapped in the School for the Feeble Minded by Dr. Lynn Phillips; Seven Days in June by Tia Williams; One Two Three by Laurie Frankel; The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins; Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins; Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday; The Martain by Andy Weir; Never Saw you Coming by Erin Hahn; Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt; Letters from the Dust Bowl by Caroline Henderson; The First to Die at the End by Adam Silvera; All Better Now by Neal Shusterman; The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick; Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan; The Survivor Wants to Die at the End by Adam Silvera; Orbital by Samantha Harvey; A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf; The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah; The Incredible Kindness of Paper by Evelyn Skye; Where She Went by Gayle Forman; The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley; Shattered Showers: Stories by Rainbow Rowell; Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties; One Year Ago in Spain by Evelyn Skye; The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman; and Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.

I also read If I Stay by Gayle Forman and Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, but I guess rereads don’t count for your Goodreads totals. And I read the Bible but I didn’t read it all this year.

I don’t think I’m going to pick a favorite. All these books were my favorites.