but wait! there's more!

Best Of lists are fun! Especially when you write one and then you are plagued by insomnia and spend the loneliest hours of the night coming up with things you should have included in the first place!

Best audiobook that made a completely unreadable book totally amazing: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation by M.T. Anderson; read by Peter Francis James. This is a historical epic about slavery and the American Revolution. There is no good reason why I should enjoy this book, and yet, I absolutely did. The reader is frigging unbelievable and the story is so twisted and weird. It's one of those audiobooks that make you drive around the block an extra time or two so you can keep listening.

Best celebrity memoir: Moon River and Me by Andy Williams. Laugh if you want, but this book is fascinating. Therapeutic LSD experiences, Christmas specials, and criminal exes.

Best Flight of the Conchords song: Hurt Feelings.



Best film set decoration/confirmation that suburbs=beautiful death: Revolutionary Road.

Best meal: The tuna platter at Casa Domenico.

Most dangerous drinks menu: Atomica. (bottles of prosecco, you are the key to my spiritual depantsing.)

Best breakfast: Star Diner. Although the waitress dressed as Michael Jackson on Halloween was somewhat off-putting.

Best essayist: Zadie Smith. My fondest wish is to be half as smart and sassy. She gives intellectualism a good name and makes me feel so much better about watching bad movies. And I'm pretty sure that distillation of her writing is completely insulting, but whatever. I'm high on advent calendar chocolate and regret.

Best movie trailer: Where the Wild Things Are. I probably watched this five times the first day it surfaced online. It gave me goosebumps. It made me teary and anxious and nostalgic. Jen pointed out that this is also the best use of a pop song (Wake Up, by the Arcade Fire) in a movie trailer this year, and I'd go one further and wager that it might just be the best trailer of ALL TIME. It was so good that it made me nervous about whether the movie would live up to it. I never did see the movie.



Happy New Year.