Year-End Lists

NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour: Favorite Movies of 2017

[see also 2018]

• Baby Driver
  Edgar Wright
• The Big Sick
  Michael Showalter
• Blade Runner 2049
  Denis Villeneuve
• BPM (Beats Per Minute)
  Robin Campillo
• Call Me by Your Name
  Luca Guadagnino
• Coco
  Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina
• Dunkirk
  Christopher Nolan
• Ex Libris: New York Public Library
  Frederick Wiseman
• Faces Places
  Agnès Varda and JR
• A Fantastic Woman
  Sebastián Lelio
• The Florida Project
  Sean Baker
• Get Out
  Jordan Peele
• Girls Trip
  Malcolm D. Lee
• God’s Own Country
  Francis Lee
• The Killing of a Sacred Deer
  Yorgos Lanthimos
• Lady Bird
  Greta Gerwig
• The LEGO Batman Movie
  Chris McKay
• Logan
  James Mangold
• The Post
  Steven Spielberg
• Princess Cyd
  Stephen Cone
• The Square
  Ruben Östlund
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi
  Rian Johnson
• Thor: Ragnarok
  Taika Waititi
• Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
  Martin McDonagh
• Whose Streets?
  Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis
• Wonder Woman
  Patty Jenkins
• Your Name
  Makoto Shinkai

Verso Books: Best Books of 2017 (some of which were published previously but were still “favourites of the year”)

[see also 2023]

Fiction

• Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone
  James Baldwin
• The Corpse Exhibition

  And Other Stories of Iraq
  Hassan Blasim
• The Gift
  Barbara Browning
• Jane Eyre
  Charlotte Brontë
• The Debutante and Other Stories
  Leonora Carrington
• The Vet’s Daughter
  Barbara Comyns
• Segu
  Maryse Conde
• The Doll’s Alphabet
  Camilla Grudova
• The Secret Life of Saeed

  The Pessoptimist
  Emile Habiby
• Darker With the Lights On
  David Hayden
• Hot Milk
  Deborah Levy
• Her Body and Other Parties
  Carmen Maria Machado
• Evening Primrose

  a heart-wrenching novel for our times
  Kopano Matlwa
• First Love
  Gwendoline Riley
• Conversations with Friends
  Sally Rooney
• Love Story
  Erich Segal
• We That Are Young
  Preti Taneja
• Attrib. and other stories
  Eley Williams
• The Hoke Moseley Detective Series
  Charles Willeford
• The Underground Railroad
  Colson Whitehead

Nonfiction

• Morbid Symptoms

  Relapse in the Arab Uprising
  Gilbert Achcar
• After Kathy Acker
  Chris Kraus
• Under My Thumb

  Songs That Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them
  Edited by Rhian Jones and Eli Davies
• Cosmic Society

  Towards a Sociology of the Universe
  Peter Dickens and James Ormrod
• The Greeks and the Irrational
  E.R. Dodds
• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race
  Reni Eddo-Lodge
• Capitalist Realism

  Is There No Alternative?
  Mark Fisher
• No Mercy Here

  Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity
  Sarah Haley
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself
  Harriet Ann Jacobs
• Spheres of Existence

  Selected Writings
  C.L.R. James
• Hell’s Destruction

  An Exploration of Christ’s Descent to the Dead
  Catherine Ella Laufer
• Your Silence Will Not Protect You
  Audre Lorde
• Beyond Words

  What Animals Think and Feel
  Carl Safina
• Against the Grain

  A Deep History of the Earliest States
  James C. Scott
• The Black Pacific

  Anti-Colonial Struggles and Oceanic Connections
  Robbie Shilliam
• Marx’s Inferno

  The Political Theory of Capital
  William Clare Roberts
• Storming Heaven

  Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism
  Steve Wright

Memoir

• Living for Change

  An Autobiography
  Grace Lee Boggs
• Close to the Knives

  A Memoir of Disintegration
  David Wojnarowicz

Nick Schager: Best Movies of 2017, as published by Esquire

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011]

1. Wormwood
   Errol Morris
2. Lady Macbeth
   William Oldroyd
3. Dunkirk
   Christopher Nolan
4. Marjorie Prime
   Michael Almereyda
5. Columbus
   Kogonada
6. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore
   Macon Blair
7. Okja
   Bong Joon-ho
8. Phantom Thread
   Paul Thomas Anderson
9. The Lost City of Z
   James Gray
10. I Called Him Morgan
    Kasper Collin
11. The Blackcoat’s Daughter
    Oz Perkins
12. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
    Noah Baumbach
13. Dawson City: Frozen Time
    Bill Morrison
14. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
    Yorgos Lanthimos
15. Good Time
    Ben Safdie and Joshua Safdie
16. Lucky
    John Carroll Lynch
17. Lady Bird
    Greta Gerwig
18. Atomic Blonde
    David Leitch
19. The Square
    Ruben Östlund
20. Super Dark Times
    Kevin Phillips
21. Alien: Covenant
    Ridley Scott
22. City of Ghosts
    Matthew Heineman
23. Thelma
    Joachim Trier
24. Icaros: A Vision
    Leonor Caraballo and Matteo Norzi
25. The Lure
    Agnieszka Smoczynska

Honorable Mention

• Ex Libris: New York Public Library
  Frederick Wiseman
• Brawl in Cell Block 99
  S. Craig Zahler
• Wonder Woman
  Patty Jenkins
• The Post
  Steven Spielberg
• Call Me by Your Name
  Luca Guadagnino
• Hounds of Love
  Ben Young
• The Villainess
  Jung Byung-gil
• The Ornithologist
  João Pedro Rodrigues
• A Quiet Passion
  Terence Davies
• Get Out
  Jordan Peele
• Stronger
  David Gordon Green
• Baby Driver
  Edgar Wright

Verso Books: Best Poetry Books of 2017

• Kumukanda
  Kayo Chingonyi
• Hardly War
  Don Mee Choi
• Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
  Ursula K. Le Guin and Lao Tzu
• Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night
  Morgan Parker
• Wild Is the Wind
  Carl Phillips
• Night Sky With Exit Wounds
  Ocean Vuong

Tiny Mix Tapes: 50 Favorite Music Releases of 2017

[see also 2010s • 2018 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011]

1. A Crow Looked at Me
   Mount Eerie
2. Experiencing the Deposit of Faith
   Yves Tumor
3. Arca
   Arca
4. Number 1 Angel
   Charli XCX
5. Tommy
   Klein
6. DAMN.
   Kendrick Lamar
7. Dust
   Laurel Halo
8. Melodrama
   Lorde
9. Playboi Carti
   Playboi Carti
10. Fantasii
    Mhysa
11. Hand In Hand
    Felicia Atkinson
12. Mono No Aware
    various artists
13. async
    Ryuichi Sakamoto
14. Who Told You To Think??!!?!?!?!
    Milo
15. Sounds of Sisso
    various artists
16. Universal Soulja Vol. 1
    DJ Escrow
17. Ctrl
    SZA
18. Narkopop
    Gas
19. Thot Breaker
    Chief Keef
20. Hesaitix
    MESH
21. Utopia
    Björk
22. Black Origami
    Jlin
23. Twin Peaks (Music from the Limited Event Series)
    various artists
23. Twin Peaks (Limited Event Series Soundtrack)
    Angelo Badalamenti
24. Paradiso
    Chino Amobi
25. Slowdive
    Slowdive
26. Club Chai Vol. 1
    various artists
27. Capacity
    Big Thief
28. Early Contact
    Leo Hoffsaes & Loto Retina
29. Queen Elizabitch
    cupcakKe
30. Cruel Optimism
    Lawrence English
31. BEAUTIFUL THUGGER GIRLS
    Young Thug
32. Didn’t Have To Cut
    Khaki Blazer
33. Stack Music
    Konrad Sprenger
34. Soft Channel
    Giant Claw
35. Meeting Room + Rare Plants
    woopheadclrms
36. Peasant
    Richard Dawson
37. Lack
    Pan Daijing
38. HYPNOSYS
    Upgrayedd Smurphy
39. AZD
    Actress
40. Grafts
    Kara-Lis Coverdale
41. AS Truth
    Amnesia Scanner
42. Contact
    Pharmakon
43. Not Even Happiness
    Julie Byrne
44. Nyoi Plunger
    Toiret Status
45. Mirror Reaper
    Bell Witch
46. A flame my love, a frequency
    Colleen
47. Pharma
    Nmesh
48. Tara Jane O’Neil
    Tara Jane O’Neil
49. The Saddle of the Increate
    Sun Araw
50. No Shape
    Perfume Genius

Writing in The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum provides this wisdom about lists:

Each December, I write a festive rant about my loathing for Top Ten lists. It’s always the same: lists are reductive, phony, anti-art. Online, they work first as clickbait, then as groupthink. They force critics to rate radically dissimilar projects—the epic, the dramedy, the sleek time-killer, the ambitious game-changer that doesn’t quite cohere—so that algorithms can crunch out a blandly universal must-see selection. I don’t like math, and if I knew anything about how numbers worked I wouldn’t have gone into arts criticism. Plus, I haven’t seen all the TV, and neither have you.

After some important caveats and context, she offers these favorite TV shows:

[see also 2019 • 2018]

1. The Leftovers

Runners-up, not in order

• The Deuce
• Broad City
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
• American Vandal
• Big Little Lies
• One Mississippi
• Search Party
• Lady Dynamite
• GLOW
• Claws
• Alias Grace
• Jane the Virgin

Library Journal: 10 Best Books of 2017

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2016 • 2012 • 2011]

1. You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me
   Sherman Alexie
2. Nomadland

   Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
   Jessica Bruder
3. Hunger

   A Memoir of (My) Body
   Roxane Gay
4. Killers of the Flower Moon

   The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
   David Grann
5. Ginny Moon
   Benjamin Ludwig
6. The Ninth Hour
   Alice McDermott
7. Ghost of the Innocent Man

   A True Story of Trial and Redemption
   Benjamin Rachlin
8. Lincoln in the Bardo
   George Saunders
9. Lucky Boy
   Shanthi Sekaran
10. Home Fire
    Kamila Shamsie

Spin: 50 Best Albums of 2017

[see also 2021 • 2020 • 2010s • 2019 • 2018 • 2016 • 2015 • 2012 • 2011]

1. DAMN.
   Kendrick Lamar
2. Capacity
   Big Thief
3. Ctrl
   SZA
4. Melodrama
   Lorde
5. A Deeper Understanding
   The War on Drugs
6. Black Origami
   Jlin
7. World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane
   Alice Coltrane
8. After Laughter
   Paramore
9. Not Even Happiness
   Julie Byrne
10. Aromanticism
    Moses Sumney
11. Culture
    Migos
12. Drunk
    Thundercat
13. SweetSexySavage
    Kehlani
14. Need to Feel Your Love
    Sheer Mag
15. Take Me Apart
    Kelela
16. ken
    Destroyer
17. Plunge
    Fever Ray
18. Nothing Feels Natural
    Priests
19. The Navigator
    Hurray for the Riff Raff
20. Hot Thoughts
    Spoon
21. The Kid
    Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
22. BEAUTIFUL THUGGER GIRLS
    Young Thug
23. A Crow Looked at Me
    Mount Eerie
24. Process
    Sampha
25. american dream
    LCD Soundsystem
26. No Shape
    Perfume Genius
27. HNDRXX
    Future
28. The OOZ
    King Krule
29. Utopia
    Björk
30. Big Fish Theory
    Vince Staples
31. Glasshouse
    Jessie Ware
32. AZD
    Actress
33. 4:44
    JAY-Z
34. Beach House 3
    Ty Dolla $ign
35. Ex Eye
    Ex Eye
36. Playboi Carti
    Playboi Carti
37. Sleep Well Beast
    The National
38. This Old Dog
    Mac DeMarco
39. War & Leisure
    Miguel
40. The Weather Station
    The Weather Station
41. Slowdive
    Slowdive
42. Pleasure
    Feist
43. Dark Matter
    Randy Newman
44. A Hairshirt of Purpose
    Pile
45. Fin
    Syd
46. Crack-Up
    Fleet Foxes
47. Near To The Wild Heart Of Life
    Japandroids
48. reputation
    Taylor Swift
49. More Life
    Drake
50. Brick Body Kids Still Daydream
    Open Mike Eagle

The Daily Beast: 20 Best TV Shows of 2017

[see also 2023]

1. Big Little Lies
2. The Handmaid’s Tale
3. The Leftovers
4. Better Things
5. Veep
6. Insecure
7. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
8. This Is Us
9. Girls
10. Jimmy Kimmel Live!
11. The Good Place
12. Search Party
13. American Vandal
14. Game of Thrones
15. One Day at a Time
16. The Deuce
17. Claws
18. The Good Fight
19. Will & Grace
20. The Real Housewives of New York City

John Powers: 10 Best Movies of 2017, as published by Vogue

[see also 2018 • 2015]

1. Twin Peaks: The Return
   David Lynch

The next nine (in alphabetical order)

• The Big Sick
  Michael Showalter
• BPM (Beats Per Minute)
  Robin Campillo
• Call Me by Your Name
  Luca Guadagnino
• Faces Places
  Agnès Varda and JR
• The Florida Project
  Sean Baker
• Graduation
  Cristian Mungiu
• Lady Bird
  Greta Gerwig
• Okja
  Bong Joon-ho
• Phantom Thread
  Paul Thomas Anderson