Best of 2000–2019, Not from 2000–2019

Happy New Vicennial! Rather than a boring round-up of things I've enjoyed in the past year, or even the last decade, here's a thoroughly tedious chronology of My Best TV, Films, Books, Music and Other Stuff That I Happened to Experience During Each of the Last 20 Years.

These are the cultural highlights that were most important to me At the Time (Aged 14–34), plus retrospective overall favourites by category and the Overall Best Thing of the 21st Century.

Importantly, many best things of the year Weren't Actually Released in That Year, because there are loads of other years to catch up on and I'm not some zeitgeisty freak. No, I'm clearly normal.

Based on Memory, Research, Guesswork and Existential Anguish. Selections from my old 2014–18 round-ups revised when I somehow remembered things more clearly years later.

Update: Replaced by expanded, ongoing, more historically accurate edition.

Ranking Father Ted

Revered by other comedy snobs, and obviously funny, I've never got on all that well with the ecclesiastical classic, finding it a bit cynically contrived and considering Big Train to be peak Linehan/Mathews.

I enjoyed its flights of fancy, but it's not something I've made an effort to seek out since I was a teenager who'd watch any comedy that came on, whether it was on my bedroom portable or a bus full of schoolkids on their way to Germany, hearing that theme tune over and over.

Still, it's something to watch and tediously compare. Here are a non-fan's Top Twenty-five Teds.

Alrightreads: Dinosaurs

Jurassic Park's still the best.


Jules Verne, A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Voyage au centre de la Terre, a.k.a. A Journey to the Interior of the Earth)

1864 / Audiobook / 183 pages / France

****

I'd listened to a radio drama and seen the Willy Fogg adaptation, but glad I finally got around to this certified adventure classic. Verne's enthusiasm for elementary science and travel is infectious, before they head underground and things get enjoyably silly.

Various, The Science Fictional Dinosaur

1950-82 (collected 1982) / Audiobook / pages / USA/UK

***

Obscure picks from some big-name authors, most of these scientific dragon tales take a more serious and speculative approach than your Edgar Rice Burroughses, but some of them are still pretty dumb.

Faves: Frederick D. Gottfried's 'Hermes to the Ages,' Robert Silverberg's 'Our Lady of the Sauropods.'

Worsties: Robert F. Young's 'When Time Was New,' Isaac Asimov's 'Day of the Hunters.'


Michael Swanwick, Bones of the Earth

2002 / Audiobook / 335 pages / USA

***

This self-consciously post-JP prehistoric sci-fi takes the time-honoured time travel approach, overcomplicated with mysterious aliens and relationship angst at the expense of thrills or wonder.

Ricardo Delgado, Age of Reptiles Omnibus, Vol. 1

1993-2011 (collected 2011) / Ecomics / 398 pages / USA

***

I would've got more out of Delgado's silent film storyboards if I'd read looked at them at the time, at the height of Jurassic Park-fuelled Dinomania. I liked his scenic vistas the best, ominously pitting the pitiable reptiles against the indifferent forces of nature. The anthropomorphised action sequences were less enthralling.

Nick Attfield, Dinosaur Jr.'s You're Living All Over Me

2011 / Ebook / 160 pages / UK

***

I wasn't aware of these proto-grunge kids before, so this was an insightful and entertaining textual documentary to catch. Our chronicler takes an appropriately dismissive tone for the self-described "lazy" band, until he slips up and admits that it's a "great album" towards the end. I think that's going a bit far.

Alrightreads: Aminals

Watership Down's still the best.

Jack London, The Call of the Wild

1903 / Audiobook / 232 pages / USA

****

I didn't dwell on what brutal messages the author might have been imparting; just enjoyed the fusion between harsh realism and sentimental myth-making and a pragmatic brevity that more novels should embrace.

Clifford D. Simak, City

1944-51 (collected 1952) / Audiobook / 224 pages / USA

****

It takes a few tales before this chronicle of humanity's downfall and the rise of the mutant animals starts to come together, but it all adds up to a more compelling whole than most fix-up novels achieve. Simak's less convinced of the indomitable human spirit than many sci-fi writers, and while his fantastical transhuman solution might not seem particularly helpful, you can stretch some real-life analogies out of it, if that's your bag.

Colin Dann, The Animals of Farthing Wood

1979 / Ebook / 302 pages / UK

****

It was unlikely that reading the original children's novel as an adult was going to be as affecting as the classic cartoon was back in the '90s, but the adaptation turned out to be largely faithful. One improvement was gender-swapping some of the relentlessly male characters for a bit of balance, I don't know what Colin had against girls.

Jim Fusilli, The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds

2005 / Audiobook / 121 pages / USA

****

An album so universally revered that even I like it, this song-by-song analysis from a veteran music journalist is passionate, astute and interesting. Many lesser writers in this series tend to fall down at that third part.

Bryan Talbot, Grandville Mon Amour

2006 / Ecomics / 104 pages / UK

***

Another decent tale of corruption and betrayal set in a steampunk alternative history where most folk happen to have the head of an animal. It's been so long since I read the first one that I can't really remember how it compared. I think that one was funnier.

Ranking the Red Dwarf films

Doug Naylor never got to make Red Dwarf: The Movie, settling for a forthcoming feature-length special and some dubious multi-parters instead. This isn't about those.

Instead, here are 10 films (or films-of-the-TV-series) that are either confirmed or can be deduced to have influenced the look, tone or premise of the classic sci-fi sitcom.

Not the one-off parodies like Casablanca, just the main influences. Imagined or otherwise. Most of the time.

Ranking the Mel Brooks films

There are some great parody films out there, but the overwhelming abhorrence and laziness of the genre in general means I'm reluctant to give any of them a chance today, unless I already happen to like the person making it.

I don't know what I think of Mel Brooks, since I've never watched anything he's done as of the time of writing this intro. Some of these films are pretty popular though, and not just among idiots, so worth a try. Here's what I reckon about The Top 11 Mel Brooks Movies.

Free, pointless ebook: 1001 Books That I've Read

Dave Warburton, 1001 Books That I've Read

2015-19 (collected 2019) / Ebook / 178 pages / UK

*

Pithy "reviews" (some as many as four words in length) of a seemingly totally random selection of books organised by author, all copy-pasted from a blog without the original context (if any) or cover images to look at, and only some finickity tweaking to make the pages square up. I don't know why I bothered. At least it's free.

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