My Favorite Things: 2025

Media, the great distractor. Lord knows I need it. In keeping with tradition, here are my favorite things for the year.

Music

Apple Replay never tells the whole story. But between that and Last.fm, I get a pretty good picture of my listening habits. This was a very good year for new music.

LPs
These are the records I played most, sorted loosely in order of plays.

  • Hayley Williams - Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party [1]
  • Dijon - Baby [2]
  • Momma - Welcome To My Blue Sky
  • Audrey Hobert - Who’s The Clown [3]
  • The Starting Line - Eternal Youth [4]
  • Bon Iver - _SABLE, fABLE
  • Moving Mountains - Pruning of the Lower Limbs [5]
  • Feeder - Comfort In Sound (2025 Remaster) [6]
  • Punchline - Somewhere To Land [7]
  • Duncan Troast & Charlie Martin - music for 2 pianos [8]
  • The Beths - The Straight Line Was A Lie [9]
  • caroline - caroline 2
  • lots of hands - into a pretty room
  • Runaway Brother - Want You Need
  • Coheed and Cambria - The Father of Make Believe
  • Empty Heaven - Now I’m Laughing Again [10]
  • Daniel Caesar - Son of Spergy
  • Watchhouse - Rituals
  • Turnstile - Never Enough
  • The Dirty Nil - The Lash
  • HAIM - I quit
  • Lorde - Virgin
  • Samia - Bloodless

Honorable Mentions
I liked all of these records too, but didn’t spend as much time with them.

  • Derby - Slugger
  • Matt Maeson - A Quiet and Harmless Living
  • Cautious Clay - The Hours: Morning
  • Saturdays at your Place - these things happen
  • Earl Sweatshirt - Live Laugh Love
  • Kevin Abstract - Blush
  • Sam Fender - People Watching
  • William Wild - Touchy
  • Mae Martin - I’m A TV
  • Bambi - Anxious
  • Cheekface - Middle Spoon
  • NewDad - Altar
  • Chloe Moriondo - oyster
  • D Smoke - Wake Up Supa
  • Dominic Fike - Rocket
  • Dove Ellis - Blizzard
  • Pool Kids - Easier Said Than Done
  • Geese - Getting Killed [11]
  • Justin Bieber - SWAG [12]
  • Kevin Atwater - Achilles
  • Lucy Dacus - Forever Is A Feeling
  • Michigander - Michigander
  • Motion City Soundtrack - The Same Old Wasteful World
  • Olivia Dean - The Art of Loving [13]
  • Purity Ring - purity ring
  • Ruby Haunt - Blinking in the Wind
  • Shame - Cutthroat
  • Sleep Token - Even in Arcadia
  • Sydney Sprague - Peak Experience
  • Tamino - Every Dawn’s A Mountain [14]

EPs

  • Weatherbox - The Compass - EP [15]
  • Sunday 1994 - Devotion - EP [16]
  • Khatumu - free therapy EP
  • Liang Lawrence - It’s a Funny Thing EP
  • Moselle - Jackalope EP / Voice Memos of a Jackalope EP
  • Now, Now - 01 - EP
  • NXCRE & The Villains - FEAN IS WAR
  • Wishy - Planet Popstar EP

Podcasts

My podcast listening dropped more than ever this year. Between an uptick in audiobooks and caring significantly less about technology, it’s increasingly not my medium anymore. I skip a lot of episodes.

  • Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster [17]
  • Dear John Letters / Roderick on the Line [18]
  • This American Life [19]
  • Handsome [20]
  • Love + Radio / Secrets Hotline [21]
  • Heavyweight [22]
  • WTF With Marc Mason [23]
  • Lucy & Sam’s Perfect Brains [24]

Books

This is the year I finally got back into the habit of reading. It’s been very rewarding. My reads and reading goals are logged on Hardcover. I read or listened to 46 books. These are some of my favorites for the year.

  • Mistborn books 1 & 2 by Brandon Sanderson [25]
  • Exhalation by Ted Chiang 📚
  • James by Percival Everett 📚
  • Gary Thorn books 1 & 2 by Bob Mortimer [26]
  • The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones 📚
  • Mailman by Stephen Starring Grant 📚
  • The Devils - Joe Abercrombie 📚
  • Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir 📚
  • Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck [27]

Movies

92 newly released films and 216 older ones. That’s 115 less than the year before. The text thread completed a fourth year of the draft and I did two more challenges, 31 Days of Halloween and the Criterion Challenge.

With a membership to our local indie theater, we went to the movies more often. My Criterion Closet Picks account has continued to grow steadily and I’ve been slowly refining the process for populating it. Hopefully I’ll get it almost fully automated in 2026.

Full and more recently updated lists of features/docs and shorts as well as my yearly stats on Letterboxd.

Features

  1. Sentimental Value ★★★★½ [28]
  2. F1 ★★★★½ [29]
  3. Predator: Badlands ★★★★½ [30]
  4. Rental Family ★★★★ [31]
  5. Sinners ★★★★
  6. 28 Years Later ★★★★
  7. Wake Up Dead Man ★★★★
  8. Caught Stealing ★★★★
  9. The Ballad of Wallis Island ★★★★

Documentaries

  1. Secret Mall Apartment ★★★★½ [32]
  2. John Candy: I Like Me ★★★★
  3. Trainwreck: Poop Cruise ★★★

Specials

  1. Cameron Esposito: Four Pills
  2. Mike Birbiglia: The Good Life
  3. Guy Montgomery: 50,000,000 Guy Fans Can’t Be Wrong
  4. Tom Cashman: After the Fall
  5. Grandmaster-level baddie Sam Campbell being ‘somewhat’ foolish @ Bill Murray comedy club
  6. Kumail Nanjiani: Night Thoughts

Television

I canceled my Trakt subscription after their pricing train wreck in favor of Simkl.

Limited Series

  • Wayward (Netflix)

Serialized

  • Shoresy [33]
  • The Sandman (Netflix) [34]
  • Stranger Things (Netflix) [35]
  • Squid Games (Netflix) [36]
  • Mythic Quest (AppleTV) [37]
  • Very Important People (Dropout)
  • Game Changer (Dropout)
  • Make Some Noise (Dropout)
  • Smartypants (Dropout)
  • Taskmaster (UK/AU/NZ)
  • Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)
  • The Chair Company (HBO) [38]
  • Wednesday (Netflix) [39]
  • Alien Earth (FX)
  • Shōgun (FX)
  • The Bear (FX)
  • White Lotus (HBO)

Reality / Doc / Panel

  • Survivor (CBS) [40]
  • Last One Laughing (Prime) [41]
  • Building the Band (Netflix)
  • Tony Shaloub: Breaking Bread (CNN)
  • The Great British Bake Off (Netflix) [42]
  • Six Nations: Full Contact (Netflix)
  • Race for the Crown (Netflix)

Bed-time TV / Re-watches

  • King of the Hill (Hulu) [43]
  • Bob’s Burgers
  • Scrubs
  • Frasier
  • Monk

Games

I keep a running list of video games I've played here. You’ve seen the lists above. Who has the time?

  • Pokémon TCG Pocket (iOS)
  • Old School RuneScape (Mac) [44]

  1. Formerly known as EGO. Formerly known as HW3. When this dropped on her site as MP3s, I listened to this obsessively in a different order to what was released.

    Thanks to this, it didn’t end up in my Apple Replay despite being far and away my most played record for the year (sans bonus tracks). ↩︎

  2. God damn, what a follow-up. ↩︎

  3. I spent a few weeks obsessing over this record. Turns out my favorite bits of Gracie’s previous album were all Audrey. ↩︎

  4. Comeback record of a lifetime. It’s perfect. Their best work. ↩︎

  5. Whoa, they really captured a sound on this one. ↩︎

  6. Had sort of forgot about Feeder, but this remaster makes Comfort In Sound feel brand new. Good record! ↩︎

  7. Punchline’s best, bar none. ↩︎

  8. I saw Duncan playing keys for Hovvdy and the opening band last year. Immediately a fan. This makes for a great snowy day soundtrack. ↩︎

  9. The first of The Beths records that I didn’t enjoy more than the last one, but it’s a Beths record so I love it and got to see them for a 5th time in 2025. ↩︎

  10. Anthony put out an egregious amount of music this year, but I spent the most time with this record. ↩︎

  11. Will give this more time in 2026. ↩︎

  12. Just the Dijon / Mk.gee songs ↩︎

  13. Late to the game here. I heard “Man I Need” in a store and spent the duration trying to remember which of the female pop divas of the aughts sang the tune.

    That’s a timeless song and I look forward to spending more time with this record. ↩︎

  14. Man was anticipating this so hard and when it arrived I just never threw it on. ↩︎

  15. Weatherbox is church. ↩︎

  16. Fell in love with this before I knew that the singer was in a band I’d interviewed at SXSW years back. ↩︎

  17. I listened to 75 hours of these goof balls talking to celebrities about food they’d like to eat in a dream restaurant. ↩︎

  18. 2025 is the year I decided I’m listening to ROTL in spite of Merlin. Wild, considering my admiration of him is what brought me to John. But the balance of the show has dramatically changed. Thank goodness for DJL. ↩︎

  19. Still subscribed to their Life Partners subscription service. No ads, spectacular behind the scenes and retrospective content. Highly recommend.

    I got to record an episode of my podcast in the TAL studio in April. What beats that? ↩︎

  20. Mae has continued this without me, so it’s not really our road-trip show anymore. Idk if I’ll catch up now, but it’s such a funny program. ↩︎

  21. What happened to Secrets Hotline? ↩︎

  22. Welcome back! ↩︎

  23. RIP. You guys had one hell of a run. ↩︎

  24. Absurd comedy in small doses. ↩︎

  25. When I got back into reading this year, I was chasing an almost forgotten feeling of wanting to live inside the story I was reading. Not as a character, just as a reader of a great book.

    I was shocked when Mistborn delivered that as my first real book back in the practice. ↩︎

  26. Bob is one of my favorite living persons. Reading or listening to these in his voice is bliss. ↩︎

  27. Love Steinbeck. I’m planning to read more classics this year. ↩︎

  28. Joachim Trier and Renate Reinsve don’t reduce me to a puddle of tears challenge 2026. (No, please do) ↩︎

  29. Not quite Maverick, but nearly as fun. ↩︎

  30. During a year with a new Avatar movie and Sinners, somehow a Predator movie wea the best action flick in theaters. ↩︎

  31. This was a double-feature with Sentimental Value so I was already weakened for the emotional impact this had to deliver. ↩︎

  32. Got to catch a screening of this with my sister in Maine. What a neat artifact. ↩︎

  33. Has surpassed Letterkenny in many ways. ↩︎

  34. I’m actually really bummed this show is over. Idk what it is about the tone, but I loved it. ↩︎

  35. It’s over. Thank the Mindflayer, what a disappointing final two seasons. ↩︎

  36. Yea, baby. ↩︎

  37. It’s best days were well behind it. ↩︎

  38. Not at all what I expected. One of a kind. ↩︎

  39. They totally lost the charm this time around. ↩︎

  40. We had two pretty good seasons this year. I’m more anxious than excited about 50. ↩︎

  41. We watched the UK and Canadian variations. Big laughs! ↩︎

  42. Alison Hammond is a great addition to the show. ↩︎

  43. Watched straight through for the first time. RIP Johnny Hardwick ↩︎

  44. I got pulled into a Group Iron Man. I haven’t played as much as I’m sure they’d like. ↩︎

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Tags: My Favorite Things, 2025, music, tv, movies, video games, books, podcasts