I somehow didn’t make it to 30 songs this year, but it’s a good mix. I still love doing this. The year seemed to fly, but then I look at what I put down towards the start of it and it reminds me of these little pockets of time or events that maybe I would have forgotten if I hadn’t had a song attached.

A few things on this list are imported from my personal library and not on Spotify (particularly in the UK) so may not show up for you. At the time of posting, those include:

Track 4 – The Swing Shouters Little Band‘s version of Good Queen Bess from their tribute to Johnny Hodges. A cracking album, and a great reminder of going to dance in Tours.

Track 5 – Always See Your Face by Love. I think this is just from the High Fidelity soundtrack so I don’t know why it’s not on Spotify. Weird.

Track 24 – Alan Cumming as the Emcee singing I Don’t Care Much from the 1998 new Broadway cast recording of Cabaret. Every single song from this album lodges itself in my head on a rotating basis. I love it and I love this song the most and I love Alan Cumming.

Anyway, I missed putting my 2017 playlist up here, so you can see that too, minus whatever Spotify has booted off it in the meantime.

At the start of 2018, I challenged myself to read and write something every single day. I managed to keep this up (I missed about 3 days writing and 2 reading, and never on the same day) and I think it might be one of the best things I could have done for myself. So about a week ago I decided to start using Goodreads again in order to track things, get recommendations, and keep myself motivated to continue the habit.

I chucked the last few years of books in there and you can see what I read in 2018. I haven’t really decided what my favourites were. Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera and Theft by Finding: Diaries Volume One by David Sedaris are strong contenders. I really loved Normal People but it’s also on every list ever, so.

My favourite song of the year, and maybe even one of my favourite things of the year, has to be Danny Nedelko by IDLES. It makes me happy. So does the video. So I’ll leave you with that.