My top 10 favs of 2017: A year spent reading, watching and listening to intriguing stories

This year, amidst the madness of the world, I consumed 46 books, 48 movies, dozens of TV programs and many podcasts. These were my favorites:

(Note: Not all were released during the past 365 days.)

1. “Voices in the Ocean: A Journey into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins” by Susan Casey
2. “The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well” by Meik Wiking
3. “It” by Stephen King
4. “When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II” by Molly Guptill Manning
5. “When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi
6. “The Year of Pleasures” by Elizabeth Berg
7. “So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading” by Sara Nelson
8. “Invasive” by Chuck Wendig
9. “Big Mushy Happy Lump” by Sarah Andersen
10. “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert

(Honorable mentions: “Paul Hollywood’s Bread” by Paul Hollywood, “Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good” by Kevin Smith, “I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories from the Stacks” by Gina Sheridan, “My Reading Life” by Pat Conroy, “Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself” by Alan Alda, “Simon’s Cat vs. the World” by Simon Tofield and “Obits: Reading behind the fine print” by Barbara Larsen)

Overall reading ratio: 51% fiction, 49% nonfiction; 51% male, 49% female.

1. Sense8
2. This Is Us
3. The Great British Baking Show
4. Stranger Things
5. Grace and Frankie
6. Madam Secretary
7. The Expanse
8. The Santa Clarita Diet
9. Penny Dreadful
10. Fortitude

(Honorable mentions: The Great British Baking Show Master Class, Timeless, The Defenders, Supernatural, The Closer, Pitch, Grimm, Haven, White Collar, The Following, Notorious, Iron Fist, The Good Place and Too Young to Die)

1. Hidden Figures
2. Obit
3. Collateral Beauty
4. Moana
5. Our Souls at Night
6. The Boomer List
7. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
8. LBJ
9. The Post
10. It

(Honorable mentions: The Orient Express, Hasan Minaj: Homecoming King, A Street Cat Named Bob, Me Before You, By Sidney Lumet, Going In Style, Baby Driver, Atomic Blonde, Patton Oswalt: Annihilation, The Big Sick, Wonder Woman, Hitman’s Bodyguard, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and The Typewriter)

1. The Vinyl Cafe
2. Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
3. The Daily from the NY Times
4. Death, Sex & Money
5. 99% Invisible
6. Criminal
7. Dear Hank & John
8. 10 Minute Writer’s Workshop
9. Nocturne
10. Radiolab

(Honorable mentions: Live from the Poundstone Institute, Smithsonian Sidedoor, The Nerdist, Lovett or Leave It, Reply All, Work in Progress, WTF with Marc Maron and You Must Remember This)