Best of 2017

As in years past (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016), here are some of the things I enjoyed this year (inspired by Eve Tushnet’s annual list).

Best non-fiction read for the first time

• Christian Texts for Aztecs by Jaime Lara: an academic-press glossy-paged wonder of a history that involves feathered sanctuaries and sunburst monstrances and is the coffee-table book in my dream house.
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander: I’m not one to have my worldview changed overnight by nonfiction; this did it.
• Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft: a practical manual to recognizing, understanding, and escaping abusers. I would urge everyone to educate themselves by reading it—you may not know it, but someone in your life probably needs an ally.
• Alternative Academic Careers for Humanities Scholars by the #Alt-Academy collective: in the most academically and professionally challenging year I’ve had to date, this book gave me hope and excitement.
• A Book of Migrations by Rebecca Solnit: I tend to disregard “travel writing” as a genre. This more than justifies the beauty of it.

Best fiction read for the first time

• Írisz: as orquídeas by Noemi Jaffe: Whenever this gets translated into English, we’re having a bookclub.
  
• Marlena by Julie Buntin: I love nothing quite so much as messy girlhood.
• Swing Time by Zadie Smith: Except maybe a furious London.
• House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk: Or a sprawling Polish epic.
• El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes: I loved studying this more than I liked reading it. What a playground for literary theory. What a weird year, that that’s a sentence I just unironically wrote.

edit 12/26/17: add, star, and highlight the overwhelmingly good La verdad sobre el caso Savolta by Eduardo Mendoza, which became an instant favorite.

Best movies/TV watched for the first time

• Joan of Arcadia: Consistently moving, honest, beautiful, brave. What an unlikely and wonderful thing to have been made.
• Ugly Betty: I’m glad I’ve finally admitted to myself that I just super love telenovelas.
• The Good Place: Got in on the ground floor and have been laughing ever since.
• Slings & Arrows: I watched season one in a blast of paper-finishing relief. It made me miss theatre more than I already do. I want to make things again.
• Silence: Not only did I love this movie, I really loved the review I wrote of it.

Best performances

• Love’s Labors Lost
  Blackfriars Playhouse, Staunton, Virginia
  October 14, 2017
• DC United 1-0 New England Revolution
  RFK Stadium, Washington, D.C.
  August 27, 2017
• Fall Out Boy
  EagleBank Arena, Fairfax, Virginia
  November 2, 2017
• John Mulaney
  DAR Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C.
  November 3, 2017
• Verónica Sala
  Thelonious Jazz Club, Buenos Aires
  June 25, 2017

Best exhibits/museums

• Cómo atrapar el universo en una telaraña
  Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires
  (my review here)
• Museo Brocheriano
  Villa Cura Brochero, Córdoba, Argentina
• The Life of the Art Object
  The Fralin Museum of Art
  Charlottesville, Virginia

Best posts or articles by other people read in 2017

• Elizabeth Bruenig, “On the political uses of evil”
• Phil Christman, “On Being Midwestern”
• Julia Flanders, “Time, Labor, and ‘Alternate Careers’ in Digital Humanities Knowledge Work”
• Fr. Maximilian, “A Helpful Homily”
• Amanda McLoughlin, “Career Advice for Millennials”
• Matthew Sitman, “Against Moral Austerity”

Best posts or articles by me

• Path of Duty: the tragic, holy obedience of Mother Cornelia Connelly
• teach us how to pray
• self-preservation is not instinct to me, it’s craft
• ❤ ❤ ❤
• notes from bible study
• é só trabalho
• bonus: I was on Spirits to talk about Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Weyward to talk sports, nationalism, Christianity, and more.

[James Madison voice] Highlights
in roughly chronological order

• I had my first role in a Spanish-language play (Salinas in El gesticulador).
• I learned TEI and got to work on a really cool text-markup project.
• I got to quiz Argentines about the American Revolution at a bar. For work.
• You know, for a while there, I was the happiest I’ve ever been.
• My Catalan improved a lot. (It’s only been like seven years in the making, lol.)
• I met my niece!
• My best friends got married.
• I got a tattoo that I absolutely love.
• I started working at the UVa Library’s Makerspace.
• I started a newsletter about Latin America. (It’s awesome.)
• I presented about my fav colonial friar to our department.
• Thanks to America, I got to cross “get on a magazine cover” off my bucket list!
• I taught 70 university students intermediate Spanish, and I did a pretty good job.