1.  

    Just fourteen books this year. I can do better and I hope I do next year. Meantime, it's a seven-seven fiction-nonfiction split here and I'd be crazy not to use that symmetry for this brief tournament. Random match-ups within those division, one (random) bye on each side of the tree, let's do this, let's go.

    FICTION

    Where the Crawdads Sing vs. The Year of the Flood
    I'm lying if I'm pretending I remember a goddamn thing about Margaret Atwood's book (the second in a post-apocalyptic trilogy I started years ago and may never finish) and so almost by default I'll take Where the Crawdads Sing, a book I barely liked but at least largely recall. Oh boy, what a start!

    Station Eleven vs. The Yellow Wallpaper
    It's easily Station Eleven. The Yellow Wallpaper was fifteen pages long and including it as one of my "books read in 2021" was a logging lowpoint, honestly.

    The Intuitionist vs. I'm Thinking of Ending Things
    Another simple call. One of my favorite screenwriters (Charlie Kaufman) made I'm Thinking of Ending Things into one of my favorite movies in years just last year and by contrast The Intuitionist took me forever to finish and never really hit me right along the way, even for so much as a page or two.

    Dune (BYE)

    Where the Crawdads Sing vs. Station Eleven
    They're adapting Where the Crawdads Sing into a movie due out next year (or I guess this year now) and I'll probably see it and like it just fine. But there's nothing all that interesting about the story or the way it was told, honestly. Station Eleven on the other hand has just been adapted into one of my favorite miniseries in years and this is really a no-brainer.

    I'm Thinking of Ending Things vs. Dune
    Dune was just adapted into one of my favorite movies of 2021 and okay, okay, enough with this bit. The easy money here is on timeless classic Dune but I'm gonna go ahead and mix things up and credit I'm Thinking of Ending Things for its brevity and psychological twists. Genuinely have no idea how well it all works on the page (thanks to seeing the movie first) but I loved the mundane conversational passages here all the same. Dune was genuinely great and impressive and groundbreaking, but midcentury sci-fi only ages so well, you know?

    Station Eleven vs. I'm Thinking of Ending Things
    Yeah, hey, it's I'm Thinking of Ending Things. Liked both these books and didn't necessarily love either one of them, but I'll go with the inward-looking weird one over the post-apocalyptic "hey wow, small world!" coincidence-laden story. Endings matter!

    NONFICTION

    Albion's Seed vs. Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old
    So, one of my favorite nonfiction reads last year was American Nations. That book and its thesis owe a great deal to the earlier, larger, and more thorough Albion's Seed, but it's more of a useful reference book than an enjoyable or enlightening read on its own. Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old is the kind of book I usually hate - poorly resourced, written at a fifth grade level, inconsistent in its advice from time to time, arguably pseudo-scientific - and yet, following its advice, I'm now two for two at getting babies to sleep through the night consistently by the time they were, yeah, three months old or so. Maybe I got lucky, and maybe this book had nothing to do with it. I don't care. Entirely invaluable.

    Man's Search for Meaning vs. Virtue Hoarders
    Loved what Catherine Liu was getting at in Virtue Hoarders and could read plenty more critiques from the left of the modern Democratic Party (elitist, driven by identity politics, anti-working class) but this wasn't going to take out a Holocaust survivor's existential and astonishingly upbeat memoirs. Man's Search for Meaning takes it.

    The Verge vs. Expecting Better
    Maybe the biggest "Dad book vs. Mom book" showdown in the history of these little tournaments I've done. And I'm a dad, so you better believe Patrick Wyman bests Emily Oster here. The Verge wins!

    Lockdown in Hell World (BYE)

    Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old vs. Man's Search for Meaning
    We don't need to belabor this. Man's Search for Meaning.

    The Verge vs. Lockdown in Hell World
    Two books I liked for very different reasons written by two guys I follow on Twitter with very different writing styles. (They know one another and interact online. Here they are discussing, of all things, nu-metal: https://luke.substack.com/p/six-feet-from-the-edge). Luke O'Neill's got a gift for doom and gloom and existential dread, but I think his schtick was more my cup of tea when he was pointing out how frail and fragile and frayed American society was pre-pandemic. The grimness was dialed up to eleven here. Too much! Wyman's book - a brisk but detailed exploration of a very specific forty-year period of early modern European history - only tickled the narrative-seeking part of my brain a little bit, but it had the bigger and overall more posiive impact on me. The Verge.

    Man's Search for Meaning vs. The Verge
    I can convince myself this is a close one, and I can convince myself that on another day or in another year I'd go with Wyman's very solid book on how Europe left the medieval period as a cultural hinterlands with a very minor global footprint and, forty short years later, stood on the cusp of worldwide dominance. It's a fascinating period of time notable mainly for how quickly it all unfolded and how many things were happening in parallel to one another to really propel Europe to a centuries-long age of empires and colonization. All that said: Holocaust survivor writes a book on how to find meaning in suffering, that'll stick with you. Nothing else to it really. Man's Search for Meaning.

    CONCLUSION

    I'm Thinking of Ending Things vs. Man's Search for Meaning
    Without overthinking things, Man's Search for Meaning wins. These were two delightfully introspective books full of men thinking about their own thoughts and experiences, and what better year to get lost in your own head than 2021? It's that Holocaust trump card, really, that makes the difference here. I can only imagine what Frankl endured, and thanks to his accounts I can imagine it more vividly, and I'm just all the more impressed that this book exists and that half of it is more or less self-help adjacent.

    FINAL RANKINGS

    1. Man's Search For Meaning
    2. I'm Thinking of Ending Things
    3. Dune
    4. The Verge
    5. Virtue Hoarders
    6. Station Eleven
    7. Albion's Seed
    8. Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old
    9. Lockdown in Hell World
    10. Expecting Better
    11. Where the Crawdads Sings
    12. The Year of the Flood
    13. The Intuitionist
    14. The Yellow Wallpaper

    Glad to have done this again.
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  2. Staying at home had its perks. I read 31 books in 2020, more than double my 2019 output of 15 and more books overall than in any year since 2012. Bully for me! I also read more nonfiction than fiction for what I think is the first time ever. In fact, I'll go right ahead and split my field into two separate divisions this year - a fiction field and a nonfiction field. And I'll go ahead and further subdivide those divisions into... subdivisions. Let's jump on in and meet the books.

    American Fiction:
    Legacy
    Uncle Tom’s Cabin
    Little Women
    Before the Fall
    Summerland
    The Nickel Boys
    The Amber Spyglass

    Eastern Fiction:
    Omon Ra
    The Funeral Party
    The Death of Ivan Ilych
    Notes from the Underground
    The Three-Body Problem
    The Dark Forest
    Kafka on the Shore
     
    These fourteen books made for a nice and easy split; seven were originally published in America and the other seven came from Russia, China, and Japan. Both subgroups have novels over a hundred years old, less than twenty years old, and somewhere in between. The seventeen nonfiction books, on the other hand, did not lend themselves nicely to a clean cleave...

    Historical-Cultural Nonfiction:
    Prisoners of Geography
    American Nations
    The Lobster Coast
    A People’s History of the United States
    At Home
    The Storm Before the Storm
    The Only Plane in the Sky
    Vacationland
    Because Internet
     
    Political-Philosophical Nonfiction:
    Manufacturing Consent
    Hate Inc.
    Where We Go from Here
    The Populist’s Guide to 2020
    Yesterday’s Man
    Four Futures
    Against the Web
    The Prince

    This is the split I've landed on. Allow me to explain myself. Under the "historical-culture" I lumped everything that focused on history, which is to say, explaining events that happened. From the recent (9/11) to the ancient (the fall of Rome) and from the smallest of scales (comedian John Hodgman's memoirs) to the largest (800 pages of American history) to bizarre scale-and-topic-fluid collections of stories and trivia (Bill Bryson explains modern life, kind of, and also the history of homes and houses and yards, kind of), the books under "Historical-Cultural" each sort of discuss a thing that happened (or continues to happen) and then reflect occasionally on how it affects us today.

    The other group is "political-philosophical," which is the more forward-looking and agenda-based set of books. There's a very fine line here, and I'm not even sure I've nailed the distinction, but the books in this set are less about explaining and more about suggesting, if that makes sense. They make cases for and against different policies, morals, beliefs, and behaviors. That's not to say they don't touch on history or explain the current state of affairs - most do, to an extent - but broadly they are more concerned with winning the reader over to a certain political stance or point of view. That's why Machiavelli's The Prince is here despite being almost 500 years old - yes, the book itself is important to both our collective history and culture, but Machiavelli doesn't spend it explaining why the world is the way it is in the 16th century; he's making suggestions about how best to manage it going forward.
     
    The two toughest calls here were Manufacturing Consent and Hate, Inc. Both are extended critiques of the mainstream media, which sounds a lot like an explanation of history and culture at a glance. But each of these books carries an important undertone with it - that the reader, armed with this new knowledge of how the media operates, should be wary or at least aware, going forward, about the stories we're being told by the news and also the ones we aren't. That's at least a little agenda-driven and political in nature, right? Besides, this balances the subdivisions nicely.

    Okay, with introductions out of the way, I'll complete each half of this tournament separately and under a different set of rules. Is this insane? This is insane.

    The Fiction Bracket
    An overall winner and two runners-up will be selected from each subdivision. The four runners-up will face off against one another (one American and one Eastern per match-up) and those two winners will advance to a semi-final against the original two subdivision winners. If we've still got two American and two Eastern novels, we'll once again go with American vs. Eastern for each match up. If not.. we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

    The American Subdivision
    Let's start at the bottom. The Amber Spyglass and Summerland did almost nothing for me. Both were overlong YA books with deep mythologies I could barely get into, and I happily skimmed the second half (or more) of each. If forced to make a call between the two, I liked Summerland longer than I liked The Amber Spyglass. Legacy was a brief but deeply silly novella about a fictional American family whose politics I found laughably bad, but at least I enjoyed the book. Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys was a letdown after I really loved his Underground Railroad. So that already leaves us with the three books that will advance here. I liked all three! But the nod has to go to Little Women, believe it or not. Before the Fall was gripping and enjoyable right up until it ended abruptly and flatly, and Uncle Tom's Cabin was something I'm glad I read, but nothing I really enjoyed reading, if that makes sense.

    The Eastern Subdivision
    This one's much harder! The Funeral Party is the only one here that really fell more flat than not for me, and it's the easiest cut. Next, I've got to axe The Dark Forest for taking months and months and months to complete after I flew through The Three-Body Problem in a weekend. And the next one to go is Omon Ra, a book I liked well enough but knew I wasn't fully appreciating or understanding, it being a distinctly late-Soviet satire about a suicide mission to the moon. We're left now with four books I really appreciated, which sucks, because as they say, "one gotta go." Let me jump to the other end of things and go ahead and pick my winner. I'm giving that honor to Notes from the Underground for being a proto-existentialist novel. I'm still not sure if I even liked it, but it definitely fascinated me, what with the unreliable narrator rambling like a madman back in 1864. And from here I will take the coward's path out of things and note that I've already got a nineteenth century Russian novel moving on, so why not punt the other one and let through the Chinese hard sci-fi story and the Japanese work of magical surrealism. (To make it explicit: Death of Ivan Ilych is out, Three-Body Problem and Kafka on the Shore are moving on.)
     
    Anyway, here we go. Let's move on to the quarterfinals.
     
    Uncle Tom's Cabin beats The Three-Body Problem
    I thought this would come down to which book I enjoyed reading more, and admittedly that was The Three-Body Problem. But the historical relevance of Uncle Tom's Cabin and its role in sparking abolitionist fervor in the 1850s gives it just enough strength to overcome an occasionally confusing book about intergalactic travel and a hard physics problem.
     
    Kafka on the Shore beats Before the Fall
    This isn't the blowout it could have been. Before the Fall is the epitome to me of a good-not-great book, one that you enjoy reading and remember for years to come, but nothing you'd rave about or be unable to stop thinking about. That should be cannon fodder for a Murakami novel, but honestly? Kafka on the Shore just wasn't an excellent Murakami novel.

    And now we're at the fiction semifnals. As luck would have it, we do in fact have two American and two Eastern novels remaining. Let's pair them off and see what happens.

    Little Women beats Kafka on the Shore
    Yeah, I saw this coming. Little Women shocked me with how pleasant and delightful it was to read, even as one of the four titular characters succumbed to scarlet fever. Just a joy from start to finish. Kafka on the Shore has like 200 straight pages of a teen - a little man, if you will - just fucking his mom. Or at least a woman he thinks is his mom, and that's what makes him want to fuck her so much. Look, it's not the incest I judge - Oedipus Rex is a classic! - it's that while the guy's off fucking his maybe-mom, nothing else is happening, except that a brain-damaged man who can talk to cats is running away from police after he killed a man for killing cats. The whole thing was just weird, man. And weird is good! And I like Murakami, as evidenced by him winning two of these damn year-end book tournaments I've done over the years! But I'll take the wholesome New England girls learning how to live and laugh and love, thank you.

    Uncle Tom's Cabin beats Notes from the Underground
    Hmm. This one's an upset, and when I think back to which book I genuinely enjoyed reading more, I worry I've made the wrong call. I also hope I'm not putting too much emphasis on the historical importance of one little book when it came to building up abolitionist support for the end of slavery; anti-slavery sentiment had been around for hundreds of years and was already starting to pull the nation apart before it was even founded. But hey, fuck it. Uncle Tom's Cabin may or may not have played a big role in ending slavery, but I'm not sure what role Notes from the Underground played at all, in anything other than contributing a classic to the existential canon. Which isn't nothing! But yeah.

    And of course that brings us to the fiction final, and we already know how it's going to go.

    Little Women beats Uncle Tom's Cabin
    It happened in the subdivision and it's happening again now. Yes, somehow of the 14 novels I read this year it's Little Women walking away with the crown.

    Moving on...

    The Nonfiction Bracket
    I'm getting tired already, and the larger half has yet to come. Here's what I am going to do. I am going to advance four books each from each of my two subdivisions. From there they'll be seeded completely at random and we'll have a classic 8-4-2-1 tournament tree format to run with.
     
    The Historical-Cultural Subdivision
    From here I am taking: American Nations for so beautifully telling the story of how several distinct "brands" of American identity exist across mostly regional lines; The Only Plane in the Sky for being the gripping, horrifying, clarifying, and closure-providing account of 9/11 that I never knew I needed; A People's History of the United States for being such a necessary and thoroughly anti-American text I should have read years and years ago in my formative years; and At Home for being a delightful hodgepodge of fun facts and trivial histories. Each of the five books I'm not advancing to the next round was informative and enjoyable, but just didn't make the impact these four did, focusing as they did on some of my more curious niches like "the history of coastal Maine" and "Internet linguistics" and "the geological features that have shaped world history for millennia."
     
    The Political-Philosophical Subdivision
    This is without question the weaker of the two subgroups here, and half these books had outlived their shelflife by the middle of 2020. All the same, from here I'm taking: Manufacturing Consent, because although it was painfully dry and dense, its hypothesis that the American mainstream media functions as a propaganda outlet for those in power has never felt more relevant than it does today; Yesterday's Man, because even though Joe Biden won the Democratic Primary (and from there, the Presidency), this leftist critique of his career will always matter; Hate Inc., because even though Manufacturing Consent is already here, what can I say, this field is weak as hell; and The Prince, because if Uncle Tom's Cabin is over there making hay in the fiction subdivision based on its historical significance, then Machiavelli deserves an invite to the dance as well. The other four books felt half-baked or under-explored to me, which sucks because I'd consider myself a fan of at least three of their authors.
     
    Okay. Time to randomly seed this thing.

    Yesterday's Man beats At Home
    This is just a straightforward account of who Joe Biden is and what he's spent his career doing and protecting and killing and permitting. You'll never see this from the mainstream because it's a fairly damning (but not totally unsympathetic) critique from the left instead of insane accusations of socialism from the right. I dunno! We'll see how the presidency goes.
     
    The Only Plane in the Sky beats Manufacturing Consent
    I think Herman and Chomsky's book was the best one in the political-philosophical subdivision, but it couldn't compare to re-witnessing the events of 9/11 in order all over again.

    American Nations beats The Prince
    Real blowout here - a 300-page book I thoroughly read easily takes out the 80-page godfather of political science that I barely followed from time to time.

    A People's History of the United States beats Hate Inc.
    Taibbi himself wouldn't disagree, right?
     
    This brings us to the nonfiction semifinals, and let's dive right in.

    The Only Plane in the Sky beats Yesterday's Man
    Because a thousand first-hand accounts of America's most tragic day is more meaningful and relevant than finding fault with the President-Elect.

    American Nations beats A People's History of the United States
    Close one, nailbiter, two juggernauts. In the end I had to go with Woodard's recontextualization of American identity and how the battle over it has shaped the history of the United States. This isn't meant to take one damn thing away from Zinn's all time classic tome on the actual bad parts of the history of the United States. It's just that everything Zinn says, you can find on Wikipedia or elsewhere on the Internet; the value of Zinn's book isn't really that it tells any untold stories, it's that the whole volume taken together is a necessary counterpoint to the state-sanctioned patriotic propagandized version of American history we're all taught in public school from an early age. Woodard isn't the first guy to suggest that different settlement patterns and initial attitudes have led to such deep-seeded conflicts of interest between different pockets of American people, but he's boiled so many things down into such a concise and easy-to-follow thesis.

    And now, the nonfiction finals.

    The Only Plane in the Sky beats American Nations
    Another tough one! And hell, the finals should be. I devoured both of these books with rapt attention and I've thought about each of them many times since. But ultimately I'm going with the 9/11 book. Accounts and passages from that thing have hit me and stayed with me in ways the decades-old footage of planes hitting towers and towers collapsing never did.

    The Finals
    Totally apples and oranges at this point, and almost pointless, but for the sake of putting a bow on everything I'll go ahead and anoint The Only Plane in the Sky the grand champion of this silly old 2020 books contest.

    The Final Standings
    Only a fool would try to take the results of the preceding mishmash of match-ups and try to come up with a rank-ordered list of books. But I've come this far...

    1. The Only Plane in the Sky
    2. American Nations
    3. A People's History of the United States
    4. Little Women
    5. Manufacturing Consent
    6. Uncle Tom's Cabin
    7. Notes from the Underground
    8. Kafka on the Shore
    9. The Three-Body Problem
    10. The Death of Ivan Ilych
    11. Yesterday's Man
    12. At Home
    13. Prisoners of Geography 
    14. The Lobster Coast
    15. Before the Fall
    16. Omon Ra
    17. Because Internet
    18. The Nickel Boys
    19. Hate Inc.
    20. The Storm Before the Storm
    21. The Prince
    22. The Populist's Guide to 2020
    23. The Dark Forest
    24. Four Futures
    25. Vacationland
    26. The Funeral Party
    27. Legacy
    28. Against the Web
    29. Where We Go from Here
    30. Summerland
    31. The Amber Spyglass

    Thank you and so long!
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  3.  


    This business of ranking all the video games I played every year gets easier and easier. I beat 64 games in 2014 (thanks, grad school!) and it's all been downhill from there: 42 in '15, 25 in '16, 20 in '17, 13 in '18, 11 in '19, and now somehow just eight dadgum video games here in 2020, the year of never leaving your dadgum house. Last year I managed an entire 55-match-up round robin tournament for 11 games; to do the same for eight games would take 28 match-ups and, heaven help me, I'm going to do it!

    Final Fantasy VII Remake vs. Valkyria Chronicles 4
    Hahahahahahaha. So we're apparently kicking things off with, immediately, a match-up that will very likely decide the winner. No sense dragging it out - these were far and away the two games I dove all the way into this year, completing every possible side quest and mission, and more-than-just dabbling with postgame content and challenge battles. I'm very tempted to knock FF7 Remake for being, well, a remake, and also for some of its more eclectic and pace-busting decisions to the original story. On the other hand, I think the gameplay was just phenomenal, a perfect blend of real-time and turn-based JRPG combat that I'd be happy to fool around with for a decade or more to come. Valkyria Chronicles 4 on the other hand offered such a depth of strategy and variety in its many mission types and also told one of the most moving war stories I've ever encountered in any medium - just like its forebearer, the first Valkyria Chronicles. Ultimately though, I'll acknowledge that while I looked forward to both of these games and enjoyed my time with each of them, the idea that Square was able to remake and improve upon one of my absolute favorite games of all time is astonishing to me. It's Final Fantasy VII Remake and I cannot wait at all, all over again, for FF7 Remake Part 2.

    Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 vs. The Last of Us Part II
    So, speaking of remakes. Maybe no game left me feeling flatter this year than the THPS reboot two-pack. I bought that disc on release day and couldn't wait to relive some of my after school gaming sessions from the year 2000 or whenever. And then I spent a couple hours just collecting S-K-A-T-E and wall-riding schoolbells and such, constrained repeatedly by two-minute time limits that just felt so limiting and out of place in 2020. Who the hell bought this thing so they could re-unlock all the levels through this kind of tedium? Boo. The Last of Us Part II wins and we'll have more to say about it later, I'm sure.

    Battlefield V vs. Civilization VI: Gathering Storm
    By the time I got around to the second expansion DLC for Civilization VI, I won't lie - I was pretty burnt out on Civilization! This happens to me every few years, and then a new Civilization comes out and I fall all the way back into it for a considerable portion of a month and then burn myself out all over again. You get the picture. Battlefield V was a bit of a letdown as well, containing a handful of stand-alone WWII stories and missions that if anything seemed like smaller, scaled down versions of some of the WWI missions from Battlefield 1. If there's a common ground to compare these on, it's "war," broadly. And every time I went to war in Gathering Storm, the game turned into a complete slog for me. Blame my strategies, blame my Nintendo Switch, blame whatever you like - Battlefield V contained the brisker and more enjoyable people-killing experience.

    Among Us vs. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
    These are the only two games that I really did any online multiplaying in, so this battle really just comes down to the online experience. That's bad news for Animal Crossing, which had an attrociously red tape-laden process for just visiting friends' islands. I played that game for 40 hours and never had as much interactive fun with friends as I did playing Among Us in four.

    Civilization VI: Gathering Storm vs. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
    Both of these games involve meticulous planning and resource allocation. Whether you're building an empire or a fun little island, you've got to be savvy with what you're doing and know how to handle what's coming next. Both these games also unfold at a snail's pace, if you want them to. You can sit back and think and chill and consider what to do next. Ultimately I prefer a four-X god sim to the limited confines of making artwork out of an island. Put another way, each of these games is a total time sink, and I guess I just don't game in order to relax and create. Does this mean I'm more right-brained than left? 

    Among Us vs. Final Fantasy VII Remake
    Yeah no it's definitely the game I waited for and loved and remember fondly, and not the very polished smartphone app. FF7 Remake.

    The Last of Us Part II vs. Battlefield V
    Okay, here's the easy comparison. Each of these games made you play as two different characters on opposite sides of a blood-soaked conflict. But the narrative gut punch when you start playing as Abby in Last of Us Part II blew the Nazi missions of Battlefield V clean out of the water. I'm into Abby's story! I am not into the Nazis' story.

    Valkyria Chronicles 4 vs. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2
    Not all of these need lengthy write-ups. Valkyria Chronicles 4.

    Animal Crossing: New Horizons vs. The Last of Us Part II
    I wanted to do more in The Last of Us Part II, especially early on. Such a well-developed world, at least at first, just dying to be explored. For contrast, I was bored senseless by doing the same old things over and over and over again by the time I was done playing Animal Crossing. For leaving me wanting more, this one goes to Last of Us Part II.

    Battlefield V vs. Valkyria Chronicles 4
    One took place during World War II and the other took place during a heavily fictionalized dieselpunk version of World War II and had the better story, better characters, and substantially better gameplay. I'm talking of course about Valkyria Chronicles 4.

    Final Fantasy VII Remake vs. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2
    A tale of two remakes that couldn't have hit me more differently. FF7R blew me away even after a five-year hype period, and THPS1+2 got old for me after less than five hours.

    Among Us vs. Civilization VI: Gathering Storm
    With no easy vein for comparison between these two, I've got to give credit to the one I spent substantially more time playing. Gathering Storm wins.

    Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 vs. Battlefield V
    Interesting showdown here. Neither game felt particularly inspired, and I was done with both in about eight hours or so. But I'll opt for Battlefield V, which I already barely remember (but remember mildly fondly) over THPS1+2, which did nothing for me at all, and may have even soured my memory of two old games I thought I loved.

    The Last of Us: Part II vs. Among Us
    Weird thought - you could swap the names of these franchises and each game might actually make more sense! Anyway, Last of Us Part II's biggest strength was its brutally dark story, and Among Us has no story whatsoever, so there's no comparison to make along those lines. Instead, let's focus on the elements of suspense. In Among Us you're just doing a bunch of spacework in complete silence with the knowledge that any one of your fellow spaceguys could kill you at a moment's notice. In Last of Us II you're like twenty years deep into the zombie apocalypse and the threat barely even registers! Yeah, okay, no, I just tried to force Among Us into an upset win here but even along suspense-based lines, Last of Us Part II had those damn whistling Scars.

    Valkyria Chronicles 4 vs. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
    This was my first Animal Crossing game; it's a series I knew wasn't for me, but it came out just as the first pandemic lockdown wave was starting to hit, and the idea of fucking around with a "nothing happens, just relax and catch a fish and chill" game had once-in-an-adult-lifetime appeal to me at that exact moment in time. The shame of it all was that by purchasing AC:NH I effectively condemned Valkyria Chronicles 4 to "all done" status, even though I'd been absolutely loving that game's postgame content. Damn you, Animal Crossing!

    Civilization VI: Gathering Storm vs. Final Fantasy VII Remake
    Again, no need for embellishments on all of these. Final Fantasy VII Remake.

    Civilization VI: Gathering Storm vs. The Last of Us Part II
    Yeesh, Gathering Storm is getting just crushed all of a sudden. Last of Us II.

    Animal Crossing: New Horizons vs. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2
    I've been overly critical of Animal Crossing thus far; it's a polished, pretty, and perfectly pleasant game for children and babies.

    Among Us vs. Valkyria Chronicles 4
    God, Raz's arc alone in VC4 was worth the forty bucks and forty hours. Or however the time and money broke out.

    Final Fantasy VII Remake vs. Battlefield V
    I should use this space to point out that Final Fantasy VII Remake was not a perfect game - in fact, far from it! Certain sections were cumbersome and one-note and there were all kinds of weird design-by-committee artifacts, mostly in the spaces where the game creators tried to fill in "gaps" from the original. But imperfections and oddities add depth and character! The weird and sometimes baffling components of FF7R only made me love it more. It'll be a tough one to beat in this tournament, no question!

    Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 vs. Among Us
    Not sure what's compelling me to do it, but I've got a strong conviction telling me THPS1+2 wins this one. I guess I played it longer and did genuinely enjoy it for longer than I played Among Us this year.

    Civilization VI: Gathering Storm vs. Valkyria Chronicles 4
    Damn, two straight upsets! The only appropriate comparison to make between these two turn-based games is in the gameplay. Both reward forethought, good command of strategy (okay, maybe more appropriately it's "tactics" in Valkyria Chronicles 4), and just "out-thinking" AI opponents. Thing is, even on the more difficult settings, Valkyria Chronicles rarely felt truly challenging. That's not to say I passed every mission with flying colors - I had plenty of C's on my final report card - but Gathering Storm was genuinely challenging and difficult, and I think I lost more rounds of that game than I won.

    The Last of Us Part II vs. Final Fantasy VII Remake
    Good God, make it three straight. Last of Us II takes this one through the sheer force of its story. It had its cheesy moments and I'm not certain I loved the ending, but what a powerfully dark and depressing tale it wove! I loved, and have always loved, so many things about both Final Fantasy VII and its remake. But the story in Remake doesn't really work or stand alone all that well, and for that reason - and that reason alone - FF7R is taking an L here.

    Battlefield V vs. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
    This is a tough call with no obvious points of comparison made tougher by the fact that I'm tired and do not give a shit. My gut says Animal Crossing. Fine!

    Among Us vs. Battlefield V
    Again, I can't bring myself to care about this one. Can't give Battlefield two carefree L's in a row, though. Well, can. But shouldn't!

    Final Fantasy VII Remake vs. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
    FF7R came out like three weeks into lockdown and had it come out three weeks sooner I never would have played AC:NH at all.

    Civilization VI: Gathering Storm vs. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2
    Each of these games let me down a little bit, but in Gathering Storm's case it was because I'd already played like a hundred hours of Civilization VI and felt a bit burnt out; THPS1+2 was more of a letdown right out of the gate. Like I fired up that disc thinking, "oh hell yeah, Tony Hawk! This'll be a trip down memory lane!" and an hour later I was thinking "Jesus Christ, I don't care about collecting five VHS tapes in New York, why do I need to do it, I hate this, I just want to be Spider-Man pulling 1620s on the friggin' moon, the rest of Tony Hawk kinda sucks."

    The Last of Us Part II vs. Valkyria Chronicles 4
    At last, the final match-up. I think it's safe to say that these are two of my top three games on the year along with Final Fantasy VII Remake, and I think - not positive though! - that Final Fantasy VII Remake is going to win. So I will treat this like a battle for second place even though it very well may decide the winner, and I will follow my heart and say that Valkyria Chronicles 4 wins. That's not to take anything at all away from The Last of Us Part II, which was a fantastic game in its own right. Survival horror just isn't one of my favorite genres of video game, but the very narrow category of turn-based third-person shooter, on the other hand... hell yes, give me more of this please and thank you.

    Okay then. Let's see the final results. Are you excited? I, frankly, am absolutely not! I am dreading this. There are pits in my stomach. What if I've fucked this up? What if it's somehow like a six-way tie for second place? Eh, no sense belaboring it.

    The winner is... and we have a tie. Amazingly, both Final Fantasy VII Remake and The Last of Us Part II went 6-1. Now, most tiebreaking algorithms would say that Last of Us Part II pulls ahead here based on its head-to-head win over Final Fantasy VII Remake, but, come on. I have final say here, and I want to remind the room that I very nearly had Among Us beating Last of Us, which would have suk that game to 5-2 (and third place, behind Valkyria Chronicles 4). I'm going to make a commissioner's judgment call here and call it how I feel it. And so:

    1. Final Fantasy VII Remake (6-1)
    2. The Last of Us Part II (6-1)
    3. Valkyria Chronicles 4 (5-2)
    4. Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (4-3)
    5. Battlefield V (3-4)
    6. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2-5)
    7. Among Us (1-6)
    8. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 (1-6)

    Likewise, at the bottom of the standings I'm jumping Among Us over Tony Hawk despite the head-to-head result; had Among Us beaten Last of Us II, it would have jumped all the way above Animal Crossing with official tiebreakers. My gut says it belongs above Tony Hawk anyway. So be it!

    This was fun. We should do this again.

    1. Final Fantasy VII 
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  4. Oh wow, did I not even do one of these last year? Fuck. Faaahck. Whatever. I think I watched nine seasons of TV in 2020 that originally aired before 2020. This sets us up easily for three groups of three to start things off and then a single three-way to end things. I'll also pick a runner-up in each group for final ranking purposes. Let's get to it!

    Peep Show: Season 5
    Don't Fuck with Cats
    Neon Genesis Evangelion
    The easy winner here is Evangelion. I try, generally and on average, about one anime series per year. I've got like thirty years of the stuff to choose from and generally only hit up what comes with the strongest of recommendations, so they're rarely, you know, bad. But Neon Genesis Evangelion just blew me away. It started slow but really built its world, characters, and story with patience and precision, and by the end of it all I had been drawn completely and fully into everything about it. I can't recommend it strongly enough, and its themes of loneliness and apocalypse made it a strangely perfect watch in 2020. Peep Show was funny, breezy, and forgettable. Don't Fuck with Cats was one of those interminably long Netflix docuseries things that could have and should have been a ninety-minute movie instead.

    Dawson's Creek: Season 1
    Peep Show: Season 4
    Unbelievable
    It's barely a contest; Unbelievable was the story of a poignant story about a teenage rape victim, her initial confusion about what exaclty has happened to her, and her ongoing struggle to be taken seriously or believed. It runs all the way away from the rest of this group. From there, I give runner-up nods to the first season of Dawson's Creek, a patently ridiculous '90s teen drama I had too much stupid fun watching for the first time twenty years past its expiration date. Peep Show is, I mean, again, it's good. It's easy, it's fun to watch, and its seasons are short as hell. But don't ask me to differentiate the arcs of the three seasons I watched this year.

    The Knick: Season 1
    Peep Show: Season 3
    Like & Subscribe
    Not the strongest group, but the prestige-ish historical medical drama from Cinemax, The Knick, takes it. It's amazing how old and dated that show already feels. It aired from 2014 to 2015, after shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men had elevated the anti-hero hour-long format but before streaming took over and reminded us that brevity - you know, six episodes per season, not ten! - was good. Still, I liked the way The Knick leaned all the way into the contrasts between 1900 and modern times. The runner-up here is Peep Show, which I've already talked about twice without really saying anything, and in last place we've got Like & Subscribe, a very brief web series from a few years back about a bunch of (fictional, fake) young social media influencers living in a house together. It was very forgettable but funny enough, you know?

    Okay, we've got our three finalists chosen for both the best and worst yesteryear show of 2020. Let's work from the bottom to the top here.

    Don't Fuck with Cats
    Peep Show: Season 4
    Like & Subscribe
    Yeah, the show about bored people on the Internet using Facebook and Google Maps to track down a murderer wins - "wins" - the title of "Worst season of television that aired prior to 2020 that I watched in 2020." Either it is depressing beyond belief that regular-ass murder investigators couldn't solve a murder without the help of two armchair sleuths located across the country from one another, or the entire premise of the documentary is meaningless because said cops didn't need any help from Reddit. Also these people were angrier about a murdered cat than they were about a murdered person. What the hell? Meanwhile, the fourth season of Peep Show, culminating with Mark and Sophie (Olivia Coleman, ladies and gentlemen) getting married despite Mark spending the entire season trying to back out of his engagement, was probably the best season of Peep Show I watched last year; it wins this group outright. That leaves Like & Subscribe as the "yeah, sure, fuck it, whatever" middle man here. Guelegetza.

    And now for the three... middle-ists? Vying for the middle-est? Sure, let's.

    Peep Show: Season 5
    Dawson's Creek: Season 1
    Peep Show: Season 3
    Remember how I just said that of the three seasons of Peep Show I watched last year, Season 4 was my favorite? And do you remember how Dawson's Creek already defeated it in the first round? Yeah, so the only logicial conclusion here is that Dawson's Creek takes out the other two seasons of Peep Show. This feels wrong, but my hands are tied. Tied by myself, moments ago. What an asshole! I don't remember enough about the episodes of Season 3 of Peep Show vs. Season 5, but like virtually every other show I've ever seen, it had more left in the tank during Season 3 than it did by Season 5.

    That leaves us with the final three shows putting up their dukes to claim the honor of winning a tournament so distinctive that I forgot to do it last year entirely.

    Neon Genesis Evangelion
    Unbelievable
    The Knick: Season 1
    I'm bored and tired. Evangelion wins this in a landslide. I've probably spent more time this year thinking about that show (and to be fair, specifically about the alternate ending which technically wasn't even part of the show) than I have about everything else on this list combined. From there, it's Unbelievable over The Knick by a slim margin in a decision I might as well have made by coin flip.

    Lastly, for posterity, let's just rank these one through nine.
    1. Neon Genesis Evangelion
    2. Unbelievable
    3. The Knick: Season 1
    4. Dawson's Creek: Season 1
    5. Peep Show: Season 4
    6. Peep Show: Season 3
    7. Like & Subscribe
    8. Peep Show: Season 5
    9. Don't Fuck with Cats
    Sure, that looks good from here. Good night and so long!

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  5. Eleven games. What should we do here? A straight-up round robin, that's what! Eleven games means each one's got ten opponents. That's 110 matches, but we're double-counting. So it's only 55. Manageable! (Oh God no, what am I doing?) Yep... manageable.

    BioShock Infinite vs. Civilization VI: Rise and Fall
    BioShock Infinite was a minor disappointment relative to its predecessors, but Rise and Fall sometimes felt like a buggy waste of money. It's BioShock.

    God of War vs. Crash Bandicoot
    Arguably the state-of-the-art Triple A title from 2018 goes up against a game I'm not even sure was ever more than a goofy platformer given extra prominence because PlayStation needed something, anything, to stand up against Super Mario 64 as a 3D platformer. This is God of War in a borderline no contest.

    Gravity Rush vs. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
    Not gonna have it in me to do 55 write-ups so suffice it to say: although MGS3 is so clearly the superior game here, there's a weird match-up thing going on here where I'm taking Gravity Rush for whatever reason.

    Super Dungeon Bros. vs. Luigi's Mansion 3
    I'll be clear from the get-go - Super Dungeon Bros. is going 0-10 in this thing. It was straight shovelware. Luigi's Mansion 3.

    Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs. AI: The Somnium Files
    Gonna be interesting to see how AI manages against the field; it's a visual novel with very little gameplay, and like 90% of its pleasure (and playtime) comes from witnessing the story unfold. Of course, the ratio's not much lower in Metal Gear Solid 2, but my point is that I'll be curious to see if AI has better luck against games light on story or heavy on it.

    Luigi's Mansion 3 vs. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 
    It's Metal Gear Solid 2, but I don't like how hard I had to think about this one.

    Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs. Super Dungeon Bros.
    Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

    Crash Bandicoot vs. Gravity Rush
    The speed with which I chose Gravity Rush here does not bode well for Crash Bandicoot.

    Civilization VI: Rise and Fall vs. God of War
    No question here, it's God of War, and I can already tell that game's going to be tough to beat.

    Civilization VI vs. BioShock: Infinite
    These were the first two games I played this year, and I was just so much more invested in Civilization VI.

    God of War vs. Civilization VI
    Oh, God. Okay wow. This one may end up deciding the overall winner. (It may not!) I think... I think I've got to take God of War, and here's why. I loved both of these games and played the hell out of them. But at the end of God of War I distinctly felt like, "hey, cool, give me more God of War right now, please," whereas by the time I was done playing Civilization VI I was absolutely done with Civilization VI. Of course I put like seventy-five hours into it, but still. Yeah. Yeah I'm sticking with my guns on this one.

    Gravity Rush vs. Civilization VI: Rise and Fall
    Call it  amake-up call for that last one, but I'm going with Rise and Fall here.

    Super Dingeon Bros. vs. Crash Bandicoot
    You know the drill. Crash Bandicoot.

    Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
    Fun debate! There are a few things MGS3 did better than MGS2, but the absolute mindfuck that MGS2's story was - and still is, twenty years later - just frankly owns. It's Metal Gear Solid 2 and I'm all kinds of open to revisit this.

    AI: The Somnium Files vs. Luigi's Mansion 3
    Played these one after the other on the Switch in October and November, and I can't deny that I was more into AI than Luigi's Mansion.

    Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs. AI: The Somnium Files
    Still not sure if I'm falling into soe really bad pattern here, but call this a dual make-up call for the way the last two matches unfolded; I'm taking Metal Gear Solid 3.

    Crash Bandicoot vs. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
    No surprise here, it's MGS2.

    Civilization VI: Rise and Fall vs. Super Dungeon Bros.
    Yeah you know what? Fuck it. Super Dungeon Bros., why the hell not? Sorry for lying earlier.

    Civilization VI vs. Gravity Rush
    Nearly went double fuck it here, but nah. Civilization VI.

    BioShock Infinite vs. God of War
    It's God of War, but in a close and respectable match.

    Gravity Rush vs. BioShock Infinite
    Both of these games take place in floating sky cities. Isn't that something? Anyway, the depth and breadth of BioShock win the day, no question.

    Super Dungeon Bros. vs. Civilization VI
    Civilization VI.

    Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs. Civilization VI: Rise and Fall
    It's MGS2.

    AI: The Somnium Files vs. Crash Bandicoot
    Yeah, I got more joy out of the visual novel than I got out of the 20-year-old platformer. This shouldn't be surprising! AI.

    Luigi's Mansion 3 vs. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
    Two games whose strengths lay mostly in the boss fights. And MGS3 had the better designs and concepts there, no question.

    Crash Bandicoot vs. Luigi's Mansion 3
    Feels like both of these games desperately need a W here, and, with apologies to Crash, this one goes to Luigi's Mansion.

    Civilization VI: Rise and Fall vs. AI: The Somnium Files
    Tough one! Mostly just because these are such different games. The former's nothing but gameplay, the latter almost nothing but story. It's a true apples and oranges toss-up, but for whatever reason I'm feeling Rise and Fall here. God, these final standings are going to be ridiculous...

    Civilizatiion VI vs. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
    Gah, I could sense this one brewing, and it's another total toss-up that could very easily decide the ordering of the top three games or so. I can't stress enough how much of last January I dumped directly into Civilization VI compared to just fifteen hours or so on MGS2 last summer. But then, also, you roll with the all time classic when in doubt, right? I'm feeling MGS2 here for sure; that game needs a heat check!

    BioShock Infinite vs. Super Dungeon Bros.
    BioShock Infinite, of course.

    God of War vs. Gravity Rush
    I just zoned out staring at this one - we've got to be halfway home by now, right? - and in zoning out, I briefly had myself convinced that I was thinking very hard about this match-up. But I absolutely wasn't, and this is absolutely God of War by a mile.

    Super Dungeon Bros. vs. God of War
    Very possibly the first place finisher vs. the last place finisher. I dunno, it's TBD whether or not MGS2 has God of War beat or not. Those are feeling like the top two at this point, no? Have they played each other yet?

    Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs. BioShock Infinite
    Holy crap. Honestly? Give me BioShock Infinite, where the world felt more fully realized and the controls were cripser, tighter, and more enjoyable to play.

    AI: The Somnium Files vs. Civilization VI
    I have deja vu, which must mean AI just took on Rise and Fall. Did AI win that one? It should have. But Civilization VI should win this one.

    Luigi's Mansion 3 vs. Civilization VI: Rise and Fall
    Two Nintendo Switch games enter, one leaves; it's Luigi's Mansion 3.

    Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs. Crash Bandicoot
    Poor Crash. He almost had this one! But in the end MGS3 prevails.

    Civilization VI: Rise and Fall vs. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
    I mean I swear we've done this one. I swear. Either way, MGS3.

    Civilization VI vs. Luigi's Mansion 3
    It's Civ VI and I am sure we are almost done here.

    BioShock Infinite vs. AI: The Somnium Files
    Kind of a late resurgence for BioShock Infinite here. It won't be enough to win, but, fourth place is a lot nicer than eighth.

    God of War vs. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
    It's God of War in a surprising cakewalk. That's gotta seal this tournament for God of War.

    Gravity Rush vs. Super Dungeon Bros.
    Yep. Gravity Rush.

    Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs. Gravity Rush
    MGS2 in a slaughter.

    AI: The Somnium Files vs. God of War
    Ha! I'll go ahead and straight troll myself, sure. AI had the more interesting story. No one's going undefeated! (Apologies if God of War already has a loss I'm forgetting about. I know I could just scroll up, but, what's the fun in that?)

    Luigi's Mansion 3 vs. BioShock Infinite
    It's Luigi's Mansion 3 even if I'm at a loss for why. The structure, maybe? Let's go with the structure.

    Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs. Civilization VI
    It's Civ VI pretty comfortably.

    Crash Bandicoot vs. Civilization VI: Rise and Fall
    Crash needs this, man. And it's not like Rise and Fall deserves it.

    Civilization VI vs. Crash Bandicoot
    How many times are Civ VI and its expansion-sequel going to face the same team in back to back rounds?

    BioShock Infinite vs. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
    Somebody better stop BioShock because it is on absolute fire.

    God of War vs. Luigi's Mansion 3
    Literally falling asleep on the couch here. Let's wrap things up, God of War.

    Gravity Rush vs. AI: The Somnium Files
    I've got to think about this one. (Why do I always need to think about AI?) The common link I'm sensing between these two has to do with the art style and the weird dreamscapes. Gravity Rush did those better.

    Super Dungeon Bros. vs. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
    Hmm. Oh right, it's MGS2.

    AI: The Somnium Files vs. Super Dungeon Bros.
    Oddly tempted to give this one the upset, but no! AI.

    Luigi's Mansion 3 vs. Gravity Rush
    A close one, a good one. It's Luigi's Mansion 3, though.

    Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs. God of War
    Yep. God of War.

    Crash Bandicoot vs. BioShock Ultimate
    Yep. BioShock.

    Civilization VI: Rise and Fall vs. Civilization VI
    Absolutely can't deny it: Rise and Fall expands upon, improves upon, just flat out makes Civ IV a better game!

    Holy shit, that took forever! Now let's tally those results.

    1. God of War (9-1)
    2. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (8-2)
    3. Civilization VI (7-3)
    4. BioShock Infinite (7-3)
    5. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (5-5)
    6. Luigi's Mansion 3 (5-5)
    7. Gravity Rush (4-6)
    8. AI: The Somnium Files (4-6)
    9. Civilization VI: Rise and Fall (3-7)
    10. Crash Bandicoot (2-8)
    11. Super Dungeon Bros (1-9)

    Yeah, all this tracks. Weirdly, maybe my biggest regret is letting Gravity Rush beat AI; everything else seems broadly correct.

    Okay, we're done here! Congratulations to God of War
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  6. I've got less and less time and appetite to do these things every year. Could this be my last go-round?

    Let's get just real stupid out of boredom and mix things up entirely. I read 15 books in 2019 and we can split those into three groups of 5. Each book will square off round robin-style against the four other books in its group and then I'll send the top eight by record into a single-elimination tournament for the big prize.

    Here we go!

    GROUP A
    Stranger in a Strange Land
    The Socialist Manifesto
    The Association of Small Bombs
    Freedom
    Voices from Chernobyl

    Alright, so Voices from Chernobyl sweeps this group and ends up at 4-0. The Socialist Manifesto does the opposite and bottoms out, 0-4. The other three books all go 1-1 against each other (2-2 in total), leaving us hilariously incapable of determining much right now.

    For what it's worth, it's Freedom over The Association of Small Bombs because both books were about, very broadly, "the human experience," but Freedom went deeper and longer. And it's The Association of Small Bombs over Stranger in a Strange Land because I'll take the mostly contemporary story about terrorism over the dated science fiction from 1960. And then it's Stranger in a Strange Land over Freedom because the former's a legitimate classic and the latter very clearly reads like a guy who thinks he's writing the new American classic. I stand by all three of these decisions!


    GROUP B
    My Brilliant Friend
    The Lovely Bones
    Anna Karenina
    Cribsheet
    Kids These Days

    This one's much more straightforward. Russian juggernaut Anna Karenina sweeps the group 4-0. Cribsheet, an easy-to-read and easy-to-follow guide on how to raise a baby, sweeps the rest to go 3-1. It just barely beats out Kids These Days, another nonfiction book, which goes 2-2. That one had a fascinating and timely premise - millennials were raised as investments rather than people by their boomer parents, basically - but it ran out of steam as it chugged along. The stunning upset here is that My Brilliant Friend doesn't advance, compiling just a 1-3 record. So it goes! Tough group, maybe? I bet it comes in second place in the last group, but, sorry! And then very easily taking last place here with an 0-4 showing is The Lovely Bones, a book I finished a week or two ago and remember virtually nothing about beyond "told by a rape-and-murder victim, from heaven."

    GROUP C
    Room
    Capitalist Realism
    The Orphan Master's Son
    City of Thieves
    When Breath Becomes Air

    What a brutal group!

    The Orphan Master's Son sweeps, giving us a third 4-0 book. City of Thieves sweeps what's left to go 3-1. And then the other three all go 1-1 against each other (1-3 in total).

    Again, just for what it's worth: When Breath Becomes Air beats Room because both were tear-jerkers, but When Breath Becomes Air was a real dying man's beautifully written tragic story whereas Room was both fictional and told from the point of view of a five-year-old. Room beats Capitalist Realism because it was far and away a more entertaining read. And Capitalist Realism beats When Breath Becomes Air because it's about a far bigger problem than death (late capitalism). All about the match-ups, really.

    So after group play we've got ourselves a bit of a pickle, as five books are 3-1 or better but an additional four are 2-2. We can only take eight with us to the big dance! I hate to do this, but I guess I'll head to Goodreads and look at the ratings I gave each book for tiebreaking purposes

    1. The Orphan Master's Son (4-0, 5 stars, group average 4.2 stars)
    2. Anna Karenina (4-0, 5 stars, group average 3.8 stars)
    3. Voices from Chernobyl (4-0, 4 stars)
    4. City of Thieves (3-1, 4 stars)
    5. Cribsheet (3-1, 3 stars)
    6. Kids These Days (2-2, 4 stars, group average 3.8 stars)
    7. Stranger in a Strange Land (2-2, 4 stars, group average 3.4 stars)
    8. Freedom (2-2, 3 stars, head-to-head win over The Association of Small Bombs)
    9. The Association of Small Bombs (2-2, 3 stars, head-to-head loss to Freedom)
    10 (tied). Room (1-3, 4 stars, group average 4.2 stars)
    10 (tied). Capitalist Realism (1-3, 4 stars, group average 4.2 stars)
    10 (tied). When Breath Becomes Air (1-3, 4 stars, group average 4.2 stars)
    13. My Brilliant Friend (1-3, 4 stars, group average 3.8 stars)

    14. The Lovely Bones (0-4, 3 stars, group average 3.8 stars)
    15. The Socialist Manifesto (0-4, 3 stars, group average 3.8 stars)


    Tempted as I am to resolve that three-way tie at #10, we really don't need to, and we've got our eight tourney contenders, seeds and all. Let's get on with it - seven more head-to-head match-ups will provide us with our winner.

    1. The Orphan Master's Son vs. 8. Freedom
    It's The Orphan Master's Son. Again, Freedom felt an awful lot like Jonathan Franzen's take on writing the great American novel for Generation X. The Orphan Master's Son just felt like a great novel, and it took place in North Korea, kind of inarguably a far more interesting country!

    2. Anna Karenina vs. 7. Stranger in a Strange Land
    No doubt about it, it's Anna Karenina. That thing's a thousand pages long, 150 years old, and written by and for the Russian nobility; it has absolutely no business holding up this well in 2019 for a modern American man. And yet, from the pleasures of mowing your lawn to the distinct resentment you can feel toward someone enjoying himself while you're angry as hell, Tolstoy nails all kinds of distinct minutiae here. It's really something incredible. Stranger in a Strange Land reads in 2019 like an interestingly prescient harbinger of 1960s peacenik and hippy culture. You know, worth the visit if you've got the time, but very much already releavant only for a bygone era.

    3. Voices from Chernobyl vs. 6. Kids These Days
    This feels closer than it should; it's Voices from Chernobyl by a mile, but why am I tempted to give this to Kids These Days? Probably because that book has all kinds of intelligent things to say, claims to make, arguments to back up; Voices from Chernobyl isn't throwing any statistics or patterns at you, just sob stories and devastating accounts of what it's like to survive a nuclear disaster. Which is so much more haunting and effective and moving than "this is why thirtysomethings are way poorer than their parents were thirty years ago."

    4. City of Thieves vs. 5. Cribsheet
    Fuck it - straight chalk! Let's take City of Thieves. It may have been a little straightforward and formulaic, but six months later I remember its characters and its beats very well, which is no small thing. Cribsheet will have to be content playing spoiler and keeping My Brilliant Friend out of the tournament entirely.

    Time for the semifinals! Before we get going, I want to point out that three of our final four books are set in Russia or the Soviet Union, and the fourth is set in North Korea. What a strange year...

    1. The Orphan Master's Son vs. 4. City of Thieves
    I was hoping we'd see Anna Karenina take on City of Thieves at some point here. The former involves Russian nobility vacationing in Germany and the latter, set just 70 years later, involves German Nazis invading Soviet Russia. What a twist! Both are even largely set in the same city. Alas, the buck stops here for City of Thieves, a fun and memorable but ultimately incredibly straightforward story about a boy who becomes a man amid the Siege of Leningrad. Instead, it's The Orphan Master's Son that will move on, largely based on the depth and beauty of its explorations of identity and sacrifice and dutiful marriage.

    2. Anna Karenina vs. 3. Voices from Chernobyl
    I won't belabor it. It's Anna Karenina.

    What a boring tournament! So we've got the lone two five-star books duking it out in the finals. Kind of predictable, no? Did this whole tournament exist solely to watch My Brilliant Friend take an embarrassing series of Ls? Anyway...

    1. The Orphan Master's Son vs. 2. Anna Karenina
    Yeah, I'm sticking with the timeless classic and awarding Best of 2019 to Anna Karenina. Sounds like I've got to read War And Peace one day after all. Fuck!

    Okay thank you and goodbye now.
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  7. It's time for the worst and shittiest of my annual tournaments, the one where I line up a bunch of pre-2018 shows that I only finally saw in 2018 and let them loose on one another. My TV viewing was down, down, down in 2018, which is an awesome thing overall, but it also means the group of prior-to-2018 TV seasons I checked out were an eclectic mix of what-the-fuck, to say the least. They're also more than a little, ick, porn-y.

    Just nine seasons this year. What I'll do is randomly break them into three groups of three. Within each group of three I'll declare a winner and a loser. Then in the second round I'll have all three winners face off, all three losers face off, and the three remaining middle guys face off; each of these three groups will also get a winner and a loser. This will leave us with a rank-ordered set of nine shows, and I'll tweak accordingly before calling it a day. Sound cool? Cool.

    Submission: Season 1
    Prison School: Season 1
    One Day at a Time: Season 1
    So, about that "porn-y" comment. The first show here, Submission, was basically a softcore porn series on Showtime. I had no idea that's what it was when I started watching it, but frankly I probably should have. I don't need to justify this - really, I shouldn't try - but here's what happened. We got a Roku last Christmas and after setting it up upstairs I logged into our Showtime account and wanted to throw on something dumb while I folded laundry. As such, well, here's a six-episode series made by someone who was unhappy about the way BDSM relationships were portrayed in the Fifty Shades books and movies. What I witnessed was half an hour of just the shittiest acting, shittiest production values, montage cutting straight out of the late '90s, just seriously one of the worst shows I had ever seen in my life. (No, it did not take me three hours to fold my laundry! I have no defense for why I finished this, beyond a helpless intrigue about the shitty acting and the horrible production value.) Moving on - oh great, it's another porn-y show, the aptly named Prison School, an anime series about four high school dudes who get sentenced to, like, hard labor, at an all girls' school. Take every "Japan is a horny fucking culture" stereotype in your head, make a show out of that, and it's Prison School. Here's the thing, though. I... I actually really enjoyed Prison School. The plot moved quickly and the extremely teenage sense of humor made for some scenes and gags I was legitimately laughing at. And then there's One Day at a Time, the heartfelt multi-camera sitcom on Netflix about a Cuban family, whihc wasn't porn-y at all, and as such wins this group easily.

    Ascension: Season 1
    Prison School (Live Action): Season 1
    Borders: Season 1
    Ascension was a miniseries about a hundred-year trip through space. It was mediocre and it ended on a cliffhanger that will never get resolved. Prison School was - oh, fuck. Look. I said I liked the anime, okay? I found it on Hulu randomly and gave it a try and stuck with it. Then when I searched the internet to see if there was a second season, you know what I found? That there was a live action adaptation of the anime. So I gave it a go, too. I'm sorry! It was a slow summer. But what wins this gorup is Vox's YouTube series Borders, a documentary where the host goes to six different countries to explore different kinds of borders and the artificial ways we separate and isolate ourselves into national identities. I'm a real map nerd so this was right up my alley.

    BrainDead: Season 1
    Imposters: Season 1
    The Civil War: Season 1
    In the last group, I've got a political satire from the summer of 2016 - kind of just before actual politics got way weirder and shittier than satire, a weird relic of a specific moment in time - and then also a show about a conwoman who assumes multiple identities in order to marry people and make off with all their money in short order (so, basically Heartbreakers?) and then lastly it's good old Ken Burns's famous docuseries about the Civil War. This is by far the strongest group, and if I stopped to think about it whatsoever I could easily justify changing the results here, so let's move on before I can do that.

    Time now to let losers play losers and winners play winners and see who wins this silly little game.

    Submission: Season 1
    Ascension: Season 1
    Imposters: Season 1
    Completely straightforward. Submission was just the worst of the worst, and Imposters would not have lost in any other group.

    Prison School: Season 1
    Prison School (Live Action): Season 1
    The Civil War: Season 1
    Ken Burns's documentary dunks on the other two, but this is an interesting group if only because it forces me to finally answer whether I preferred the live action or anime version of the, uh, Japanese horny schoolboy show. A quick look at my posts for each of them reiterates that I definitely liked the anime better, for whatever it's worth. Apparently I didn't even watch the live action show in its entirety, but just zipped around the episodes watching different scenes to see how it compared. Okay then! I'll take my word for it!

    One Day at a Time: Season 1
    Borders: Season 1
    BrainDead: Season 1
    Yeah, just give the title to One Day at a Time, a warm and funny and heartfelt sitcom. BrainDead takes the silver - it was entirely its own thing, a super weird show by CBS standards even if it's an overall unremarkable one. That leaves Borders on the outside looking in, which, hey, fine, whatever, it's a YouTube documentary. 

    Great. Now let's rank these nine shows based on their head-to-head performances and get the fuck out of here.

    1. One Day at a Time: Season 1
    2. BrainDead: Season 1
    3. The Civil War: Season 1
    4. Borders: Season 1
    5. Imposters: Season 1
    6. Prison School: Season 1
    7. Prison School (Live Action): Season 1
    8. Ascension: Season 1
    9. Submission: Season 1

    Cool. Bye!
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  8. I learned nothing - nothing! - from my experience a few days ago, and as such, I'm off to Challonge for another blind-draw double elimination tournament to find out the best book(s) I read in 2018. here I go!


    God, this is dumb. Can you even read the bracket above? If you click on it, does it zoom in?

    In a showdown between epic-length monster stories, I've got The Terror edging out It as my best read of 2018. The Terror had been on my radar - my bookshelf, specifically - for years. I had previously tried to read it a few years back but didn't make it past fifty pages or so. The 750-page length was just too daunting, especially when combined with a veritable sea of British seamen to keep track of, and it did itself no favors in the early going by opening in media res. Of course, this past March or April or so, AMC adapted it into a miniseries, and I was just all in on that miniseries, and read the book immediately and enthusiastically once I had some faces to place against the dozen or so names. The book had its fair share of issues, and so did the miniseries, but interestingly the book and miniseries' issues almost complemented one another. They diverged somewhat significantly toward their endings, but then, the real Franklin Expedition, on which the book is based, ended in unfathomably terrible ways anyway - so for the book and its adaptation to differ, I mean, that only enhances the mystery aspect, right?

    Moving on, I've had my issues with Stephen King in the past, but I was a big fan of It, another book that I'd recently seen a screen adaptation of. (Hmm...) Not every part of the story worked for me, but I was impressed by King's unwavering attention to detail when it came to building up the history and lore of a made up town in Maine and all the fucked up shit that's happened there through the ages. Not a perfect book, but I'll be lenient when you clock in at over a thousand pages; you can take some risks that don't quite work and the bulk of what's there can still be excellent. So we're gonna move on before I talk about the tween orgy.

    There are two titles in the tournament whose only losses came against It and The Terror so let's go ahead and decide whether to award "bronze" to Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World or Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad. Both could probably fall under the very bad umbrella term "magical realism" but they're really both pretty dark. The Murakami book, I mean, Murakami's gonna Murakami. I've loved Murakami's stuff in the past, and his books won my year-end tournaments on this very blog in 2015 and 2016. But call it a high bar or something, I just wasn't all that into Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. What he's attempting there is very cool, very indescribable (two stories, told in parallel, completely distinct but sort of tonally linked, that eventually converge but then end all the more ambiguously for it.) So my vote here goes to The Underground Railroad, a gruesome-as-hell Gulliver's Travels-Odyssey combo of sorts featuring a runaway slave slowly making her way north through the antebellum American South on an actual and literal underground railroad. It's a much simpler premise than whatever Murakami's doing, but sometimes less is more - the horrors of slavery (and its modern day echoes) don't need to be hidden by ambiguity!

    Little Fires Everywhere was a great little read, a story about two families in an Ohio suburb in the late '90s that made some great hay out of the subtle differences between the upper middle class and the working middle class in America, and between nuclear families and, shall we say, "non-traditional" ones. I loved it, and I'll give it my fourth place finish on the year, bumping Murakami to fifth. (What a shame that Christine Ng's previous novel, Everything I Never Told You, did virtually nothing for me.)

    I read thirty books this year and there's no way I'm devoting little blurbs to each of them, but let me call out a few more, rapidfire style.

    I love Ron Currie, so even though The One-Eyed Man was easily his weakest effort yet in my opinion, it was still a great, fun read.

    I'm glad I read Fitzgerald's last book (excluding the incomplete one they published posthumously) Tender Is the Night - it doesn't come close to Gatsby, but it's such a fitting finale for the youth-and-nostalgia-obsessed Jazz Age legend.

    Lincoln in the Bardo was such an interesting read in large part because its format was just completely surreal. It alternates taking place between an afterlife plane and the White House, in the immediate aftermath of Lincoln's son dying in the middle of the Civil War, and all the characters in it are these cartoonish ghosts in denial over their own deaths. It was poignant as hell, but the format made it so hard to get through. I'm torn on this one!

    Annihilation was my favorite movie of the year. The movie was nothing like the book. I still liked the book - a lot, really - but they're almost completely different entities. (Annihilation's sequel, Authority, sucked ass.)

    What else, what else. The Chapo book was a lot of fun, but I'm a huge fan of their very specific dirtbag left political humor. The Hate U Give was fine but seems wildly overrated by the masses over at Goodreads, which makes a lot of sense frankly. Journey was trivial but fun, a sort of very small version of The Terror (both of them being about foolhardy Englishmen trying to brave the Canadian Arctic in the 1800s in vainglory) - okay yeah, extremely similar.

    My lowest ratings of the year went to two books I didn't even hate - Crazy Rich Asians and The Wondering Years. The former was somehow sold to me as being this culturally rich look at Singapore and China, but it was straight-up wealth porn - my mistake! (The movie was fun. Wealth porn works better on screen.) And the latter was a simple little paperback collection of memoirs and musings from a guy whose podcast I occasionally listen to - not a bad book at all, and certainly not as boring or frustrating as so many others I read this year. Just, I dunno, kinda empty.

    Like I said, I'm not writing all of these up! There are just too many! Here's my list, which devolves into a shitshow somewhere in the middle because I'm incapable of elevating "just fine" books I enjoyed reading over certain classics that I found more boring and tedious. This is on me.

    1. The Terror
    2. It
    3. The Underground Railroad
    4. Little Fires Everywhere
    5. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
    6. The One-Eyed Man
    7. Lincoln in the Bardo
    8. Annihilation
    9. Tender Is the Night
    10. The Chapo Guide to Revolution
    11. The Hate U Give
    12. Olive Kitteridge
    13. Cannery Row
    14. The Double
    15. The Trial
    16. Oliver Twist
    17. Journey
    18. Veins
    19. Everything I Never Told You
    20. Artemis
    21. Mrs. Fletcher
    22. Nausea
    23. Into the Wild
    24. The Grownup
    25. The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
    26. The Island
    27. Hunger
    28. Authority
    29. Crazy Rich Asians
    30. The Wondering Years

    All in all, this was a great year in books for me. I want to stress that even in the mid-twenties on this list there are a lot of books I enjoyed just fine.
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  9. I don't have time for this anymore - can you tell? I only played 13 video games this year, an all time low. In my defense, some of the games I did beat this year were absolute time sinks - a 40-hour ordeal here, an 80-hour JRPG there, 50 or 60 friggin' hours of Super Smash Bros. for whatever reason - and as such, this year's tournament is light on fluff and loaded with legitimate titles. Cool, let's do something different then and go double-elimination style. And let's also use Challonge to do the randomized seeding for us. And let's go ahead and skip all the dumb write ups and just talk about some games when we're done.



    Haha, holy shit! This is why people seed brackets.

    First and foremost, congratulations to South Park: The Fractured But Whole for winning this very silly and very truncated 2018 tournament. It's the best game I played all year, an improvement on its predecessor in every way and a very complete game that balanced the monotony of a long JRPG with all kinds of humor. The story kind of crashed and burned hard at the end of that game, but honestly, that's the rule rather than the exception when it comes to JRPGs.

    Super Mario Odyssey was a close second and frankly probably deserved to win this, and would have won this had I had more time to really dive in and explore its endgame content. Alas, I don't have that luxury, and after devoting 35 hours to acquiring every friggin' power moon I could find before showing down with big bad Bowser on the moon at the end of the game or whatever happened (sorry, it's been almost a full year) I only briefly dabbled with the newly open and extremely challenging "second half" of the game. If we could freeze time, and if I could just enter some kind of nether-space at, say, 7pm on a Tuesday, and play that game for any amount of time I wanted, and then return from said nether-space at 7pm on a Tuesday, then holy shit would I play the everloving hell out of Super Mario Odyssey more than any other game on this list without getting bored. (Maybe frustrated, but never bored!) Alas, that's just a fantasy - who has time these days?

    Now, these two very good games ended up in the finals thanks to the double elimination format, but as you can see they also met up in the very first round, right in the midst of an absolute bracket section of death or whatever you want to call it. No game got a rawer deal than Battlefield 1, which took an L to an extremely long JRPG and then had to square off against Odyssey immediately afterward. Challonge awards it sole posession of 13th place, but that's bullshit. Had I done a triple elimination tournament, Battlefield 1 would have made some real hay out of, like, the entire bottom half of the winners bracket - get the fuck outta here, Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China and The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit - but let's not go crying too hard over a sorta-buggy World War I FPS that I beat in a couple of days, I guess.

    What else? Oh yeah, Octopath Traveler lost to the eventual champion and runner-up, and it makes a strong case for the overall bronze medal. Plenty has been said over what a long and repetitive and slow game that was, and what a waste it was to have eight fleshed out characters but never let their stories intersect in a meaningful way at all. Still, what an easy 80 hours of gaming that was. Dungeon-crawling and grinding in front of 8-hour Netflix series after 8-hour Netflix series? Yeah, I did that all summer long, baby. The game more or less accomplished what it set out to do, which was be an endlessly playable tribute to 16-bit games of yesteryear.

    A Way Out was a disappointing follow-up to Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, but I still enjoyed playing it with Keith over Xbox Live for a couple nights. The story and characters were fine, but the ending left a lot to be desired, especially after Brothers was pitch perfect.

    Oh yeah, Smash. Let's talk about Smash. Ultimate is arguably the best game in the franchise to date, a few online play issues notwithstanding, and I love it in spite of myself. There are a myriad of one-player modes that are just addicting as hell and the pick-up-and-play nature of the Switch, along with the quick speed of some of those battles (talking like, twenty or thirty seconds for most of them) made for a great time this past month. That said, I decided long ago that these tournaments were only supposed to take into account the single-player (or co-op campaign) aspects of video games. Is that bullshit? Probably, but how else can you compare couch party games to adventure games and RPGs? Still, Ultimate has a great one-player mode - an RPG of sorts, really - that makes for the best single-player Smash experience to date.

    Beautiful Katamari was fun as hell and dumb as hell and short as hell. Impossible to hate it, but what a non-game! (Hey, we all need 4-hour quickies.)

    God of War: Ascension was completely forgettable, to the point where I literally can't remember a single thing about it. I remember playing it in order to beat it before I got into the new and extremely hyped God of War game - except then I never played the new one at all. There's always next year...

    Mario Tennis Aces was a game I bought in order to have an easy multiplayer game on the Switch. Library building - nothing more. It did what it had to and, yeah, also nothing more.

    Shit, that's nine games already. Do I really need to comment on the other four? Grim Fandango was impossible without a walkthrough, which I'm sure made it a real charming game once upon a time for like, Gen X PC gamers. The Professor Layton game I played was like every one I've ever played, which is to say entirely forgettable but enjoyable enough in the moment. Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China was fun at first but got old and stale in a hurry. And then Captain Spirit scratched a very specific Life Is Strange itch, but was nothing to write home about on its own.

    Cool, let's finalize a ranked list and call it a day!

    1. South Park: The Fractured But Whole
    2. Super Mario Odyssey
    3. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
    4. Octopath Traveler
    5. Battlefield 1
    6. A Way Out
    7. God of War: Ascension
    8. The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit
    9. Beautiful Katamari
    10. Mario Tennis Aces
    11. Grim Fandango
    12. Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask
    13. Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China

    Thanks for reading!
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  10. So last year, I turned my ranked list of TV into an opportunity to cut a lot of fat from my TV viewing plate. I watched eighty shows that year. Fifteen of those ended in 2016, and I pledged to cut 16 more. How did I do? Well, four of my pledged cuts didn't air in 2017, and I successfully cut 11 of the 12 remaining shows while additionally cutting two more. Cool, right? Wrong! Because despite cutting 13 shows, and despite another 23 not returning in 2017, I somehow added a net 28 shows in 2017. Considering I cut 36 shows, that means I added 64 shows in 2017, which amounts to more than half of my total, and almost two thirds. Granted, some of these were returning shows that had merely been on hiatus in 2016, but still - holy shit - I cut or otherwise lost almost half of the TV I watched in 2016 and still ended up watching even more shows in 2017.

    I have to do better! If I want to have any prayer of keeping my TV list under 100 shows long this year, I've got to cut or otherwise lose like, 60 or 70 shows. I can't do it! It's just too many! But I can cut a whole lot more than 15 or 16. Let's sharpen the knives and go to town!

    Alright, so here's my ranked list of television in 2017. Shows with a line through them are projected losses in 2018 with rationales in parenthetical citations. My assumption in the absence of any additional information is that any show without a confirmed renewal will not air in 2018 and any show with a confirmed upcoming season will air in 2018. This isn't a perfect assumption - there's, like, no way that Curb Your Enthusiasm comes back in 2018 even if that hasn't been confirmed yet - but hopefully it all balances out. Plus, I'm here for the cuts, man.
    1. Master of None (status TBD)
    2. Patriot
    3. Nirvanna the Band the Show
    4. Better Call Saul
    5. The Leftovers (finished)
    6. BoJack Horseman
    7. The Vietnam War (limited series)
    8. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
    9. Big Little Lies (returns in 2019)
    10. Black Mirror (status TBD)
    11. Planet Earth (limited series)
    12. The Deuce
    13. The Handmaid's Tale
    14. The Good Place
    15. Game of Thrones (returns in 2019)
    16. One Mississippi (status TBD)
    17. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
    18. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
    19. Better Things
    20. Rick and Morty (status TBD)
    21. Brooklyn Nine-Nine
    22. Mindhunter
    23. Search Party (status TBD)
    24. Sneaky Pete
    25. The Crown
    26. Lady Dynamite (status TBD)
    27. Mr. Robot
    28. The Americans
    29. Steven Universe
    30. Veep
    31. Top of the Lake  (status TBD)
    32. Twin Peaks (status TBD)
    33. The Detour
    34. Orange Is the New Black
    35. Jane the Virgin
    36. Review (finished)
    37. Dear White People
    38. Silicon Valley
    39. Transparent
    40. Nathan For You (status TBD)
    41. Ozark
    42. Curb Your Enthusiasm
    43. Wet Hot American Summer (status TBD)
    44. GLOW
    45. Fargo (returning in 2019)
    46. American Vandal
    47. New Girl
    48. Girls (finished)
    49. Superstore
    50. Crashing
    51. The Young Pope (limited series)
    52. Godless (limited series)
    53. The Bold Type (CUT!)
    54. You're the Worst
    55. Claws
    56. Big Mouth
    57. Insecure (CUT!)
    58. Stranger Things
    59. Girlboss (finished)
    60. Man Seeking Woman (finished)
    61. Love
    62. Room 104 (CUT!)
    63. Bob’s Burgers
    64. Vice Principals (finished)
    65. Gunpowder (limited series)
    66. South Park
    67. Channel Zero (CUT!)
    68. Chewing Gum (finished)
    69. Alias Grace (limited series)
    70. Last Week Tonight
    71. Legion (CUT!)
    72. Easy (CUT!)
    73. Baskets
    74. Catastrophe
    75. This Is Us (CUT!)
    76. HarmonQuest (status TBD)
    77. My Brother, My Brother, and Me (status TBD)
    78. Runaways (CUT!)
    79. Broad City
    80. Santa Clarita Diet
    81. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (CUT!)
    82. Archer
    83. Comrade Detective (CUT!)
    84. Victoria
    85. Dynasty (CUT!)
    86. Great News (CUT!)
    87. Missions (CUT!)
    88. 13 Reasons Why
    89. Wrecked
    90. The Affair
    91. Brockmire (CUT!)
    92. Castlevania (CUT!)
    93. Adam Ruins Everything (status TBD)
    94. Snowfall (CUT!)
    95. Neo Yokio (status TBD)
    96. Humans (CUT!)
    97. I Love Dick (status TBD)
    98. Schitt's Creek (CUT!)
    99. Workaholics (finished)
    100. Taboo (CUT!)
    101. Big Brother (CUT!)
    102. Sherlock (status TBD)
    103. Knightfall (CUT!)
    104. Powerless (finished)
    105. The Guest Book (CUT!)
    106. Martha & Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party (CUT!)
    107. Fuller House (CUT!)
    108. Final Fantasy XIV: Dad of Light (limited series)
    By my count, that's 59 shows that won't be back in 2018 and just 49 shows that will. Cool. I'm all about that. But on the other, I added back 64 shows last year; that's what I've got to cut down on!
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