What follows is by no means a definitive list of the best novels of the past decade—as a student of literature, there is nothing I can say with more certainty than that I have not read everything and have no authority to label literary works the “best” of any sample. However, I’ve taken stock of what I’ve read since 2010 and what stands out most in my memory. The resulting 17 books—you didn’t think I’d be able to narrow it down to one book per year, did you?—are skewed somewhat based on my area of study (American war literature, which turned up a lot of U.S. authors and some war stories) and on my personal literary tastes (I tend to gravitate toward women writers and dystopian storylines). P

For many, the American adaptation of The Office is most notable for the star it made of Steve Carell. For the series’ first seven years, Carell’s take on Michael Scott brought “uncomfortable comedy” to new heights and reinvigorated the phrase, “That’s What She Said.” It also led to a promising film career with box office success in films like The 40 Year Old Virgin, Get Smart and The Big Short, as well as a much deserved Oscar nomination for his powerfully subtle performance in Foxcatcher. But for me, watching The Office (especially via frequent re-runs) is all about the evolution of Jim Halpert via the gifted work of John Krasinski. On paper, Jim Halpert was a wise guy slacker who spent the

An autobiographical top ten. This list offers, in no particular order: movies, books, graphic novels, games, whatever, that I encountered somewhere between 2010-2019. Pattern Recognition I bought a paperback of William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition (2006) in an airport, not sure which one, sometime in 2010. I do remember that my intention was to find something that would tenaciously hold my focus. I’m a decent flyer but I tend to while away my time switching between three of four different points of distraction, music, books, writing, not really able to focus properly on any one thing. The experience is a mix of guilt and frustration, guilt that I’m not being productive in this oh-so-precious

As a deeply nervous person, I’ve always felt that making lists is an important and soothing activity. You can arrange almost anything into a list, which makes it possible to bring a semblance of order to any kind of chaos. Even as a container though, lists are flexible enough to keep that order fluid and interesting. For example, here is a list of some of the best lists: Craig’s, New York Times Bestseller, Santa’s ‘Nice’, and the no-fly. With that flexibility though comes a number of challenges for the arbitrary process of making lists, especially of something as colossal as a decade music. Does the list maker try to be objective, or instead present some autobiographical portrait of their

My first love will always be American cinema. It’s what I was raised on and has provided a steady diet of enlightenment, escapism, and guilt-free entertainment. But as I grew and my tastes expanded, I wanted more. My first foray into foreign film, i.e. films with subtitles, was 1980’s The Gods Must Be Crazy. Despite having to get used to reading dialogue on the screen, eleven-year-old me found great joy in this charming tale of a how discarded Coke bottle sends an African villager on a trek to the “civilized world.” In my experience, foreign films tend to be freer to explore issues and characters that would be brushed aside from mainstream American films and their tendency towards black and

Climate change is real. Naysayers who ground their disbelief in a devotion to oil, coal, and just general ignorance may not see the day this planet comes to an apocalyptic ending of our own creation, but it’s coming. Denying climate change is like denying gravity, the earth being round and the staying power of all things Kardashian. But it would be nice to blame someone else for the fragile future ahead. What if it were a higher/otherworldly intelligence? Yeah, I’m guessing immigrants from outer space would be a galvanizing catalyst to stop the eco-insanity. 1996’s The Arrival proposes such a hypothesis. From writer-director David Twohy, who would go on to notoriety with the Riddick trilogy

Although I've been reading and watching science fiction at least since I discovered MST3K on cable as a young kid, the past decade marks the first time I really started thinking critically about science fiction television, film, comics, and literature. Luckily for me, my burgeoning interest in sci-fi has been met with some of the greatest entries into the canon in recent memory. Here are some of my personal favorites since 2010. 2010 - Inception (dir. Christopher Nolan) I'm just going to say it - 2010 wasn't exactly a banner year for sci-fi. Despite several franchise reboots (Tron, Universal Soldier, and Predator all made their way back to the big screen in 2010), a few fun animated films (i