> CD #104: Best of

Dec 13, 2023

We’re barrelling towards the end of the year, and critics all over the internet are publishing their “Best of 2023” lists. The other day, the NYT’s deputy Culture and Lifestyle editor, Melissa Kirsch, wrote about how we might all benefit from making a highly specific, highly personal “best of” list to reflect on the year that has passed.

I want a list that includes everything, regardless of genre: yes, the best thing you watched, but also the best thing you ate, the best advice you received, the best app you discovered, the best line you encountered in a movie, the best book you read that’s been sitting on your shelf for more than a decade, the best change you made to your evening routine.

So that’s what I’m doing for my last post of 2023, giving you the “bests” of what turned out to be a very complicated year. You’ll see there’s bit of recency bias in my list because I have a terrible memory and am pretty sure the first half of this year was actually several years ago, but I hope you’ll also find some good stuff here.

Teresa’s Best of 2023

Best short poem:

Lying While Birding
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Yes Yes
I see it
so they won’t keep telling you
where it is

Best non-clothing purchase: An unlimited windshield chip repair plan I bought for our 2006 Scion XB, which has a windshield that basically sits perpendicular to the road. Nine chips filled and counting!

Best book about what it’s like to be a writer: Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. Here’s a good line from it:

Art is beginning a sentence before you know its ending. The risks are obvious: you may never get to the end of the sentence at all—or, having gotten there, you may not have said anything…

Best tweet about what it’s like to be a writer:

(Related: I’m in the process of moving over to Bluesky and have one invite code. Does anyone want it?)

Best feeling as a parent: Seeing my kids swim all the way across the pool and back when, just a year-and-a-half ago, I thought they might never learn how to swim.

Best panel from a comic: From John Porcellino’s compilation From Lone Mountain.

Best lunch: Seafood congee, made by my dad.

Best brush with greatness: My nerdy conversation about comics-making, pens, and the graphix selection at Shelf Life Books with Drawn & Quarterly founder Chris Oliveros shortly before I hosted his reading there.

Best forgotten old photo (found while looking for photo references for my book):

I don’t remember being this kid, but I’m trying to find my way back to her.

Best books: As if I could never choose one! But here are a few that changed my thinking this year about what a book could be: Unearthing by Kyo Maclear, Alison by Lizzy Stewart, A Heart that Works by Rob Delaney, The Crane Wife by C.J. Hauser, and Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.

Best inspirational quote:

“I don’t love every song I write, but I love that I wrote it.”
– Jeff Tweedy, from How to Write One Song.

Best TV show that ended this year: Reservation Dogs

Best rewatch of a TV show that ended too soon: GLOW

Best thing I said to a friend years ago but still think about a lot: “I’m a GLOW girl in an Emily in Paris world.”

Best thing a friend said to me: “You will endure this.”

Best item of clothing I didn’t buy: I handled this Marni vest in person while being surveilled by saleswoman who clearly didn’t think I belonged in the designer section of Simons (I didn’t).