The final installment of our 2023 wrap up is here! Today, we close our recommendations series with comments by music aficionado Ben Bland, Paddington appreciator Graham Moore, and book lover Liz Barnes.

Benjamin Bland, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Caroline Polachek’s Welcome to My Island has got to be the best unabashed pop album of the 2020s so far. It’s rarely been far from my ears since it dropped in February. Haunting new records from Irish avant-folk troupe Lankum (False Lankum) and the transnational chamber jazz group Le Cri du Caire (self-titled) have also been in particularly regular rotation of late, whilst James Holden’s latest dose of captivating electronic wizardry (Imagine This is a High Dimensional Space of Possibilities) has become my go-to escapist album of 2023. Finally, Liturgy’s 93696 is a demanding but beautiful slab of totalist extreme metal that will 100% definitely make you popular with your entire family if you play it on Christmas Day.

I got to catch a few titles at the London Film Festival in October, a few of which I’d strongly recommend when they’re in cinemas next year. Yorgos Lanthimos’ adaptation of Poor Things is an absolute joy. At the other end of the scale, Jonathan Glazer’s interpretation of The Zone of Interest is a horrifying – albeit essential – piece of cinema and Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters is a devastating work of documentary/re-enactment. In terms of films out now, if you haven’t caught Celine Song’s heartbreaking but beautiful Past Lives then stop what you’re doing and be sure to get to your local cinema while it’s still showing.

I’m very bad at watching new TV but I did get hooked on The Traitors last Christmas and can confirm that the first series of the Australian version (available on BBC iPlayer) is even more enjoyably addictive.

I find depressingly little time/energy for fiction at present. The most recent novel I finished was John Kennedy Toole’s idiosyncratic (but very readable) modern classic A Confederacy of Dunces, which offers an enjoyably farcical vision of 1960s New Orleans. I also recently listened to the audiobook of Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome (which was definitely not written and read by the comedian/actor Matthew Holness), which will please anyone who misses the mad silliness of Darkplace.

A shout-out to the best music podcast out there, The Independent Music Podcast, which is coming to an end at the close of the year. There’s an enormous back catalogue of episodes full of amazing sounds to explore so do get listening.

I’ve got far too many records to catch up on so I suspect that will take up plenty of my time over the break. New albums by Danny Brown (Quaranta), Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist (Voir Dire), Evian Christ (Revanchist), Wayfarer (American Gothic), and Yussef Dayes (Black Classical Music) are at the top of the pile. Obviously we will be watching The Muppet Christmas Carol on Christmas Day because it’s obviously the best Christmas movie ever made. I’m also really looking forward to catching the new Aki Kaurismäki movie, Fallen Leaves, which I think is out this month. It’s not seasonal but, following a recent work trip to Baltimore (which I highly recommend), I’ve committed to rewatching The Wire with my partner, who’s never seen it. I’m looking forward to getting her verdict. I also might try and continue reading the Dune novels, in anticipation of the new film in the spring, although this might also be the winter break in which I finally accept that I don’t enjoy reading sci-fi…

Graham Moore, Research Student and Associate Lecturer

I’ve been rewatching Elementary; it’s a great procedural detective TV show that actually gets the character of Sherlock Holmes right for once. I’m also re-reading Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series – it’s very fast-paced, and I like to be distracted in my free time! I’m also cutting down on screen-time before bed, so a diverting read is helping there.

We will no doubt have our obligatory Family Viewing of Paddington 1 and/or 2 when home for the festive period. Christmas isn’t Christmas until Hugh Grant has done his jailhouse musical number.

Liz Barnes, Lecturer in Modern History

I’m not a huge lover of TV – I rarely have the attention for it if I’m honest. I’m an avid watcher of Survivor whenever I’m in the US for research trips, though, so I was thrilled to see a UK version debut this year – it’s real top-quality trash. I’ve also really enjoyed The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix (glad to see Edgar Allen Poe’s horror imaginings still have some mileage in them).

Games are more my speed, so I’ve spent a lot of time with those in 2023. Like many other people, I lost a significant portion of the year to Tears of the Kingdom (though I’m yet to complete the main story, I got a bit exhausted with just how vast the world was). I’m back to playing Stardew Valley lately – nothing like pretending to be a farmer to help you wind down at the end of a long day emailing. I’ve not gotten round to Baldur’s Gate 3 yet, but I’m hoping to over the holiday – an extra incentive to get through my marking as quickly as possible!

In terms of what I’m listening to, it’s almost always the most recent The Mountain Goats album. My Spotify wrapped informs me, year on year, that they’re my top artist and I am utterly unsurprised. Lately I’ve also been loving the slightly more mellow Yazmin Lacey – her debut album Voice Notes is definitely my favourite of the year. Not been a big podcast year for me, but Welcome to Night Vale continues to captivate and delight me, it’s so wonderfully strange.

Overall though, it’s been a year for books. I broke my ankle in August, so I spent a lot of time trapped in once place – books have always been a great way to travel without moving, so I leaned into that. I am absolutely opposed to reading non-fiction in my spare time (outside of my terrible longreads habit), so get through a lot of fiction. Looking through my list of 5 star reads, a few stand out: Sian Hughes’ Pearl is a beautiful reflection on motherhood, grief, and memory; Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh examines mass consumption in a very literal sense (caution: it’s about farming people for meat); Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow combines my two great loves (reading and gaming) and offers a moving portrait of friendship and creativity; Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark isstunning and utterly horrifying sci-fi; Caroline Bird’s The Air Year is simply one of the best poetry anthologies I’ve ever read (I loved this so much I gifted it to a friend for her 30^th). I could go on, but I’ll spare you…

There are several books I’ve been looking forward to getting into that I’ve saved for the break – Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Max Porter’s Lanny (I love a folk horror), and a graphic memoir I’ve been hoping to get to for a while called It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood. I also recently, thanks to some birthday generosity from friends, went to a ‘reading spa’ at an independent bookshop in Bath. I came away with a large stack (courtesy of said generous friends) that I’ll definitely start working through in December. Don’t ask me in January how many of these I actually finished…

All comments and opinions presented in this article are that of the author.

We have made every effort to abide by UK copyright law but in the instance of any mislabelling of images, please contact the author of the blog post.