BEST MOVIES

I watched a lot of movies this year because: Netflix.

What Maisie Knew: I showed this to my seven-year-old because she was complaining that her parents always ‘agree with each other’ (and not with her). So I showed her what the opposite looks like. A lot of parents wouldn’t show this film to their seven-year-old kid because there’s a bit of shouting and swearing, but actually the title lets you in on the nature of the film: The audience only sees the things six-year-old Maisie sees during the break up of her parents and, like her, we’re left to piece things together. It’s very well done. The seven-year-old loved it as much as I did and is showing no signs of disturbance.

Tomboy: I would watch this with an adolescent — she’d need to be old enough to read subtitles because this one is from France. There are a few transgender kids around our area and at some point I’ve tried to explain what that’s all about. In the meantime, I’ve noticed every second kids’ film involves a man dressing up as a woman as part of a comedic sequence, which shits me to tears. (Here’s looking at you, Paddington, 2015.)

We Are The Best: Similar to Tomboy, but featuring two punk rocking 13-year-old girls and their reluctant Christian sidekick, this is a nuanced film from Sweden which actually does bullying right. These aren’t kids’ films I’m talking about here, but I kept thinking how brilliant they would be for watching with adolescents — this one does an excellent job of ‘consent’, but, unexpectedly, in a non-sexual context. The adults as well as the adolescents are rounded and complex individuals.

Starlet: This is an odd-couple story about a 21-year-old and a woman in her 80s. Most ‘odd couple’ movies stink in my opinion, but not this one. The adult rating applies in this case. Netflix tells me it’s ‘gritty’ and ‘steamy’. I’d call it neither of those. ‘Sweet’ and ‘unexpected’ fit better.

BEST TV SERIES

Freaks and Geeks. Watched it twice. I was sooo unbelievably sad to learn that not enough people watched it when it was made and so season two was cancelled. On the other hand, I did find something online in which the creator let us in on what probably would have happened to the characters during the second season, and I didn’t really like where he was going so it’s probably just as well it ended where it did. It’s kind of like The Wonder Years but Wonder Years is very melancholic and does a good job of ‘othering’ female characters at every opportunity, whereas Freaks and Geeks co-stars a female and male lead as they make their way through high school in 1980. There are some very funny moments. You’ll feel you know these characters — you probably went to school with a Kim and a Daniel and a Neal. My favourite character is Lyndsay and Sam’s mother, which probably reflects upon the age at which I’m watching.

We also rewatched Breaking Bad this year — binge watched it this time instead of spacing it out waiting for the next season to get made — and although it was still enjoyable this time round despite knowing the outcome, I ended up having to agree with my friend who argues that the sexism surrounding audience response to Skyler and Marie is indeed partly the creator’s fault, due to the way their characters are written.

I was further disturbed while sitting in the doctor’s office and somehow getting into a conversation with a middle-aged man about Breaking Bad and other excellent TV series: He insisted the show would have been better had Walt shot his wife in the head in the first season. Why? Because she is annoying. Also, she slept with another man. (After she left her husband, I might point out.)

An average of two women were murdered by men each week this year in Australia, and I emerged from the doctor’s office blinking and feeling rather disturbed. I think that local just ruined Breaking Bad for me a little bit.

The Killing is an excellent crime series — I watched the American remake but haven’t seen the Danish original, which for all I know is even better. I know that Americans can sometimes stuff remakes right up (Kath and Kim) or change the feel a little (The Office), but judging The Killing as a standalone product, the American version is excellent. I have to say, though, I’m reaching my limit of stories about the murder of beautiful young women. The current crop of crime show writers seem to be ‘feministing’ their stories not by changing the main victims of their stories but by writing about female police officers.

BEST BOOKS

Goodreads tells me I read just over 20k pages this year, which is a few thousand fewer than last year because: Netflix. I managed this page count by giving up quickly on books I wasn’t enjoying and by listening to audiobooks while doing mind-numbing tasks. I’ll forever associate the Lonesome Dove series with those hours I was manually removing cape weed from the lawn paddock grass. Lonesome Dove is the first series I’ve ever read to completion, which is testament to its enjoyability. Lonesome Dove is an anti-western (like most Westerns written since the war), but to the writer’s horror, the audience who loved the first instalment largely interpreted it as a glamorisation of that brutal era. So Larry McMurtry felt the need to finish the job he started, and though he proclaimed to be utterly sick and tired of Westerns by the time he’d finished Comanche Moon, his subsequent novels make damn sure you’re not going to accidentally glamorise the Wild West.

I may be influenced by recency bias, since every new book becomes my latest favourite, but the most enjoyable fiction I read in 2015 was Alice Pung’s novel about a fictional Australian private girls’ school, Laurinda. It felt a bit like Chris Lilley’s Summer Heights High but a lot more nuanced. I am obviously drawn to stories about high school, though I’m pretty fussy, with a low tolerance for reliance upon featureless archetypes. I listened to the audiobook of Laurinda and it was narrated very well, which is unfortunately not the case for most audiobooks (especially those narrated male actors who give all female voices the same breathy, helpless voice).

I read some fascinating non-fiction:

Missoula by Jon Krakauer would have to be one of the most important books to come out recently, though I warn you it’s not in the least bit enjoyable. Whatever can be said of Missoula can no doubt be said of Australia when it comes to rape culture.

Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano, a transgender woman, is a thought-provoking insight into gender and sexism, and will have you pondering your ‘subconscious gender’, which probably lines up neatly with your perceived gender, though it may not.

Anatomy Of Story by John Truby is a book I accidentally came across while looking for a neighbouring book in the university library. I’ve read it cover-to-cover twice, and keep dipping in and out. I think this book may have ruined stories for me. Either that or I’ve gained a lot more pleasure out of them, because this book explains the architecture of story like no other. I warn you it’s not a light read. If I could change a few things about it I still would: There is no good reason to be using the masculine pronoun just because it makes for ‘good English’ (Richard Dawkins does the same thing, and makes the same disclaimer in his preface to The Blind Watchmaker), and I happen to be not the slightest bit interested in any of those old blokey Hollywood films which make up the case studies in Anatomy of Story. I’ve had to watch a few of them just to know what he’s talking about.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

I read about 20 novels to the seven-year-old and an uncounted number of picture books. Her favourite chapter book was — unexpectedly — Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes. As the one who read it aloud I wasn’t so taken, because the chapters are of an uncomfortably old-fashioned length, and the final chapter should really have been scrubbed altogether. Then again, I can see why my dog-loving kid loved it. It’s excellent… in hindsight. Though I much prefer Estes’ other big success: The Hundred Dresses, which had a big effect on me when my year six teacher read it to us back in the 80s.

In picture book world, Pig the Pug by Aaron Blabey has been a countrywide hit this year, which is a lot better than its sequel, in the same way that Z Is For Moose is a lot better than its sequel. It’s time publishers started being a bit more discerning about sequels to bestsellers — picture books are so difficult to get right that a sequel isn’t necessarily going to work, even if you lift a lot of the exact same verses, in which case I feel doubly ripped off.

If I never have to read another book about bums I’ll be happy, though those are the seven-year-old’s enduring favourites, which I now insist she read on her own. I did read her the first few chapters of The Day My Bum Went Psycho, which goes rapidly downhill despite my being impressed about how many dual audience jokes he manages to get in. Let’s just say I can see the appeal but aargh.

MOST EXCITING PURCHASE

One of my neighbours said that I missed my calling as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesperson after I waxed lyrical about the awesomeness of the stick Dyson vacuum cleaner. I was telling my mother-in-law about it last week, because she has stairs. She told me her neighbour had recently bought one and had already brought it over and shown her all of its wonderfulness, which saved me a bit of breath. I conclude that I should team up with my mother-in-law’s neighbour if I want to start a door-to-door vacuum cleaner sales business.

At the risk of boring you to tears, the best thing about the stick vacuum cleaner is that it only has 22 minutes’ charge. So when you pick it up, you know you’re only going to be vacuuming for 22 minutes. Moreover, if you do this every day, you can keep the entire house clean without ever having to drag out your big mother, which feels ridiculously unwieldy and pain-in-the-arse to plug in when you’ve become used to the stick. We have a big hairy indoor dog and a lot of red dust coming in the windows, so I am particularly grateful such appliances exist.

It’s especially good at getting rid of spider webs in high places.

BEST APPS

I’ll preface this with the shittiest app of the year: SBS On Demand, which simply doesn’t work. Next shittiest (possibly because you’re probably paying a subscription fee) is the Scribd app, which also fails to work a lot of the time, despite the fact that the subscription service itself is pretty good value. I cancelled our subscription because of their app.

All this to say how pleased I was to discover that both the Netflix app and Bolinda’s BorrowBox app work beautifully. BorrowBox resources can be accessed with an ACT library card. It’s great (along with the OverDrive app). I can’t see myself being short of audiobooks anytime soon. You have to go on a waiting list to borrow most of the stuff you want, but you can reserve up to 10 audiobooks and 10 ebooks, and the entire process is automated. This is the year I became a reader of ebooks, almost preferring, now, to read a book on my phone, one-handed and in semi-darkness.

For young kids, Toca Boca continue to put out interesting kids’ apps.

BEST SOFTWARE

For Mac only at this point: Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo. I don’t know all that much about how to work them yet, compared to all there is to know, but if these guys manage to keep going and expand, a lot of people will be giving their expensive Adobe CC subscriptions the boot. Especially recommended for Australians, who get to pay a heap more for boxed versions of Adobe products than Americans do. Yay us! Enough reason to switch to Mac if you’re a user of Adobe products.

For kids: Minecraft Story was a big hit in this house this year, mainly because we already have a Minecraft nut. Is that the future of books?

My Pomodoro timer has come in handy this year also, not because I have a problem sitting down to do stuff but because I have the opposite problem — getting too immersed in things and forgetting to take stretch breaks.