What Boshemia Loved in 2022
Well, here we are again! The end of yet another year of general fuckery in politics and life in general. And yet, also a year filled with personal joys, excellent cinema, and spellbinding reads.
Here, we’ve rounded up our Top Watch, Read, Listen and Activity of the year. We hope you find some inspiration from this list, and maybe even discover your new favourite TV show or artist. Enjoy!
TOP WATCH
L: It’s a recent release, but I absolutely loved the new adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It’s one of my favourite books, and the Netflix version starring Jack O’Connell and Emma Corrin is almost perfect. I’ll forgive them for cutting out a lot of the ending purely on the basis that the love/sex story is done so well. Fair warning: don’t watch with your parents.
Q: I've already spoken at length about my 11 favourite films of the year, so I'll take this time to talk TV! The years highlight was without a doubt Better Call Saul, with season 6 cementing it as one of the greats (and arguably greater than Breaking Bad). The final season was a culmination of over a decade's work - instead of a sweeping epic, like the last few episodes of Breaking Bad, this was a quieter story about regret and evolution. The tragedy of Kim and Jimmy is a love story for the ages, and the final episode was a masterpiece in storytelling.
E: On Thanksgiving Day, I saw a double feature of The Menu and Bones and All — while Bones and All deeply disturbed me (despite the beautiful Timothée Chalamet’s rural caricature that charmed me), I was absolutely floored by Anya Taylor Joy’s performance in The Menu. A sizzling critique of the people who seek extreme and lavish dining experiences and the absurd foodways under late capitalism, The Menu is a stunning dark comedy for anyone who has ever worked in the food industry or suffered in the company of a self-proclaimed “gourmand.”
READ
L: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. It is far more than you expect it to be. It’s glitzy and glam, desperately sad in places, vulnerable, and ever so easy to read. I devoured this book in under six hours. Read it immediately!
Q: I have also just picked up The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, and so far so good! At the risk of sounding incredibly cool and uncultured, I've been reading a lot of old TV essay recaps by Matt Zoller Seitz. His book of Mad Men essays, The Carousel, is practically required reading for anyone interested in TV. Plus it's been a goldmine for a certain upcoming podcast (watch this space). I've also been going back and reading his Sopranos essays as I was watching earlier this year. To glean so much art and symbolism from a weekly TV show is such a beautiful skill and I miss the era of TV recaps more and more.
E: This year I wanted to dedicate more time to reading, and finally accomplished this. Today I’m finishing book 58, and I tracked this with an amazing platform / app called The Storygraph, an amazing alternate to Goodreads founded and created by Black women. While it feels like an impossible task to choose my favorite book this year, I wanna highlight my favorite audiobook narrator, Julia Whelan. I probably listened to 30+ books narrated by this absolute gem.
LISTEN
L: I’ve semi-recently stumbled upon a small Irish band called Sprints, who I looooove. They’re on Spotify – start with Literary Mind and work back through their singles. Beyond that, this really has been the year of angry girl music for me. I’ve been listening to Wet Leg and The Linda Lindas on repeat. And, of course, WEAWMA, the Boshemia podcast, duh.
Q: The new SZA album lives up to the hype and more, Beyonce released one of the greatest albums of 2022, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't talk about the new Carly Rae Jepsen album. The Loneliest Time is just as shimmery and glittery as her previous albums, but more mature and melancholy. Songs like Western Winds and Bends are beautiful and groovy, yet sad, while she still shows off her pop banger credentials with Talking To Yourself and Surrender My Heart. The Loneliest Time is definitely a pandemic album, but the themes of lost love and isolation are timeless.
E: Dubbed the “country Lana Del Rey” by one of my closest associates, Ethel Cain stole my heart this year with her dream pop country album Preacher’s Daughter. It’s a concept album exploring themes of rurality, the embrace and escape of small-town living, and a complicated relationship with religion. In short: an album I really relate to, and perfect for driving back country roads during winter.
ACTIVITY
L: My newest hobbies are geocaching, macrame, and learning. Geocaching is so nice though cos it gets you outside and is a sort of community. Essentially, it’s a worldwide scavenger hunt. People leave geocaches in concealed locations, and post location clues to the app for people to find. When you find one, you add your name to the logbook / roll of paper, and put it back for the next person to find. It’s super fun and a really lovely free activity to do on a nice day.
Q: 2023 is the year that I finally become good at bass. Actually good! The lovely producer Jake has been giving me zoom lessons for the past 18 months or so: it's always fun to do, I just need to commit. Consider this my formal notice - I will practice bass more.
E: While this activity happened only ONCE, and probably will never again, I got the chance to fly first class across the country with my wife and pets, and let me tell you — airlines are a SCAM, they are absolutely terrible, yes, but I have never known such luxury as the first class flight — I don’t know how I will ever fly (in economy, my usual) ever again!
That’s been our roundup for 2022. Happy New Year! We’ll see you in 2023.