A List of My Favorite End of Year Lists

Besides thinking back on my year, deciding on my favorites, I love the end of the year because I get to read other peoples’ end-of-year lists. It’s almost like a compulsion.  Sometimes, I read lists of lists, which is so meta that even Reddit laughs in my face as I fall down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. So here you have it then, the results of my insanity– a small annotated list of my favorite lists, in no particular order.

The first place I go for recommendations is always Maria Popova, the author of the long-running and quite popular site Brain Pickings. She is a supernatural brainiac whose writing I love and whose taste I trust implicitly. Here are her “Favorite Books of 2020,” which we could just as easily rename “Heather’s Reading List for 2021.”

Can you guess another person whose taste I trust implicitly? You may be surprised, but it’s former President Barack Obama. He’s been putting out his “favorites” lists since his time in the Oval Office, and every year I enjoy seeing what he enjoyed and found necessary to read, see and listen to. His reading list is full of books I want to read, and any list of songs that starts off with “Savage Remix” is surely going to be a list I want to make a playlist from. How can you not love Megan Thee Stallion AND Beyoncé?

Pitchfork’s “35 Best Rock Albums of 2020” features 3 of my fave albums: Haim, “Women in Music Pt. III,”  Phoebe Bridgers, “Punisher,”  and Tame Impala, “The Slow Rush.” So you know someone has good taste… don’t know if it’s me or Pitchfork, but it’s one of us lol.

I am showing my age and my nerdiness here, but I love the NPR music peeps, and I regularly check out their best-of’s, whether it be in podcast or list form. Here is NPR’s 50 Best Albums for 2020 (also see 100 best songs if you’re in the mood)

While I’m repping NPR, let me mention Maureen Corrigan from the podcast Fresh Air and her list of “Books that Will Connect You in a Socially Distant Year.” Her list is an argument that the best books can pull you out of your own solitude and connect you to characters in books in a meaningful and fulfilling way.

Ok, ok, just one more NPR list here. I’ve sort of fallen off my podcast listening this year. So, I haven’t been following “Pop Culture Happy Hour” as closely as I used to. But I still love the gang, led by Linda Holmes. She’s made a list of “50 Wonderful Things from 2020” at her blog.

About half way through this miserable pandemic, we were gifted with a meme. I’ve made a sample for us above with 2 images I’d saved in my phone from NYE last year and NYE this year. Does it elucidate anything about my journey in 2020? I’m not sure–but for certain I wasn’t at work in 2019 NYE and I was in 2020. But both are festive in some ways? This list from Fast Company discusses the varied uses of the meme, one of my favorites of 2020: how it started vs. how it’s going (or how it ended)..

Now let’s talk poetry. I’m going to give you more links for poetry than for other topics individually–for a few reasons. First, lists of best poetry are often short. What can you do with a list of two books? Oh wait, that was MY list that had two poetry books… Oops, moving on. Second, the judgement of poetry can be highly subjective–so a lot of variety is your best bet if you want some recommendations for books to try. And three, poetry books are short, for the most part well under a hundred pages, so you can read more of them! 

This first list is from a list I found from a list of lists (ha!) for Hyperallergenic’s “Best Poetry Books of 2020” (see link below). Next, we have the revered New York Times (see link below), who does tend toward the more academic side with it’s poetry judgement, and the Guardian who has high standards and always recommends both some established and new poets. The last list for poetry come from GoodReads Readers Choice, where thousands upon thousands voted and the poetry nominees and winner represent an interesting mix of old school, with Margaret Atwood ultimately taking the prize, and long-established authors such as Naomi Shihab Nye Barbara Kingsolver among the nominees. But there are also those I’d call the Instagram (or is it Tumblr?) poets–Nikita Gill, Rupi Kaur, Amanda Lovelace. They are absolutely adored for the simple emotional punches of their poems and how well they connect with readers. The list also has a ton of black and brown authors representing their cultural perspectives, such as Natalie Diaz and Danez Smith. These are some great books!

The luxury beauty brand Lord Jones gifted our ICU nurses with samples from their CBD skincare line–and their wonderful balm has converted me into a believer of the power of CBD to relieve the aches and pains of nursing’s 12 hour shift strain & exhaust. Allure’s Best of Beauty 2020 contains another CBD balm, this time from coconut oil beauty product maven Kopari. If I can ever find it in stock, I’ll try it and compare to Lord Jones! In the meantime, I just put on some CBD balm to my knees and left shoulder because I’m about to head in for my third shift in a row and I’m sore just thinking about it… Check out the rest of Allure’s Best of 2020 for always great recommendations on beauty, skin and hair care.

For those of you who might have lost track of time during this year that seems to have both lasted forever AND flown by, here’s a list from Mashable of “58 things you probably forgot happened in 2020,” like the J.Lo & Shakira Superbowl Halftime or our practically biblical insect activity–murder hornets & actual locust plagues.

And now we come to the end. Let’s end on a high note with a list of “All the good things that have happened in 2020 from Shondaland.” There are some repeats but also the gems like the viral video that sent Fleetwood Mac to the top of the charts (again)… We have to pinky swear to always remember that Fleetwood Mac was defining music in 2020! 

What a weird year. And now it’s over… Phew.