Must Read/Watch/Listen/etc.*
Prologue:
(For the purposes of this post, read will always stand in for the act of consuming media of any sort).
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, at the very least to save time when people ask me what shows to watch or books to read.
This isn’t a list of what you think is good or is on the top of your mind. But the list of things that when someone tells you they haven’t read it, you just go “WHAT? Read this immediately”. We all have those.
Everyone else should make their Must Read list too! I want to know what REALLY good stuff I’m missing. So like consider this a meme. Kids like memes, right?
Television:
Best:
Wire
Great:
SportsNight
Farscape
Friday Night Lights
Rome
Sandbaggers
Scrubs
Venture Brothers
Coupling
Jekyll
Utena (Revolutionary Girl)
Profit
Pretty Good (gets cheesier here, I'm less willing to defend their quality):
Battlestar Galactica (season 1)
Leverage
Doctor Who (Stephan Moffat episodes) (okay this is before Season 5. I'm talking Lady in the Fireplace, Blink, Boom, the award winning ones)
Buffy
Babylon 5
Neongenesis Evangelion
Kenshin (anime)
Books:
Best:
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett
Ted Chiang short stories
(which can be found here: http://books.google.com/books?id=xa_wbcnyKXMC&pg=PP1&dq=ted+chiang#v=onepage&q&f=false and here: http://www.freesfonline.de/authors/Ted_Chiang.html )
Great:
Chasm City, by Alastair Reynolds
Vlad Taltos books by Stephen Brust (start with Book of Jhereg)
Bromeliad trilogy (Wingers, Truckers, Diggers) by Terry Pratchett
Discworld books by Terry Pratchett
First Law (start with Blade Itself) trilogy by Joe Abercrombie
Master of the Senate (Lyndon Johnson bio) by Robert Caro
Princess Bride by William Goldman
Hyperion by Dan Simmons (only read the first book!)
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Deepness In the Sky by Vernor Vinge
Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
Pretty Good:
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
In the Balance series by Harry Turtledove
Culture series by Iain Banks
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Dream Void (trilogy) by Peter Hamilton
Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
Vorkosigan series (starting with Cordelia’s Honor) by Lois McMaster Bujold
Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robison
Playing with your Food by Penn and Teller
The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore White
Movies:
Jesus Christ Superstar
Dark Knight
Playing by Heart
Kill Bill
Blow Dry (starring Alan Rickman)
Princess Bride
Sneakers
Primer
Casablanca (also good? the MST3K of Casablance: http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/casablanca )
Blade Runner
Graphic Novels:
Watchmen
Sandman (start with Volume 2, Doll's House or Volume 8, Brief Lives)
Audio (I'm so naive to music that I don't have much to list, so I grouped it in with the audio tracks I do feel passionate about):
Penny Arcade Podcasts
Sufjan Stevens (particularly Illinoise)
Braid soundtrack
NES Soundtracks
Scrubs soundtrack
Garden State soundtrack
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy audiotapes
America the Book audiotapes
Jonathan Coulton songs
Video Games:
Super Metroid
Metroid Prime trilogy
Katamari Damarcy
Master of Orion (1 or 2, I mean I love 3, but we must be honest)
Braid
Portal
Super Mario World
Ducktales
Metal Gear Solid
To reiterate, this is not just stuff that is good, or “cheesy fun!”. But the things you would defend to the hilt as some of the best books you’ve ever read.
(I really must get around to annotating all of these.)
(For the purposes of this post, read will always stand in for the act of consuming media of any sort).
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, at the very least to save time when people ask me what shows to watch or books to read.
This isn’t a list of what you think is good or is on the top of your mind. But the list of things that when someone tells you they haven’t read it, you just go “WHAT? Read this immediately”. We all have those.
Everyone else should make their Must Read list too! I want to know what REALLY good stuff I’m missing. So like consider this a meme. Kids like memes, right?
Television:
Best:
Wire
Great:
SportsNight
Farscape
Friday Night Lights
Rome
Sandbaggers
Scrubs
Venture Brothers
Coupling
Jekyll
Utena (Revolutionary Girl)
Profit
Pretty Good (gets cheesier here, I'm less willing to defend their quality):
Battlestar Galactica (season 1)
Leverage
Doctor Who (Stephan Moffat episodes) (okay this is before Season 5. I'm talking Lady in the Fireplace, Blink, Boom, the award winning ones)
Buffy
Babylon 5
Neongenesis Evangelion
Kenshin (anime)
Books:
Best:
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett
Ted Chiang short stories
(which can be found here: http://books.google.com/books?id=xa_wbcnyKXMC&pg=PP1&dq=ted+chiang#v=onepage&q&f=false and here: http://www.freesfonline.de/authors/Ted_Chiang.html )
Great:
Chasm City, by Alastair Reynolds
Vlad Taltos books by Stephen Brust (start with Book of Jhereg)
Bromeliad trilogy (Wingers, Truckers, Diggers) by Terry Pratchett
Discworld books by Terry Pratchett
First Law (start with Blade Itself) trilogy by Joe Abercrombie
Master of the Senate (Lyndon Johnson bio) by Robert Caro
Princess Bride by William Goldman
Hyperion by Dan Simmons (only read the first book!)
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Deepness In the Sky by Vernor Vinge
Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
Pretty Good:
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
In the Balance series by Harry Turtledove
Culture series by Iain Banks
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Dream Void (trilogy) by Peter Hamilton
Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
Vorkosigan series (starting with Cordelia’s Honor) by Lois McMaster Bujold
Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robison
Playing with your Food by Penn and Teller
The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore White
Movies:
Jesus Christ Superstar
Dark Knight
Playing by Heart
Kill Bill
Blow Dry (starring Alan Rickman)
Princess Bride
Sneakers
Primer
Casablanca (also good? the MST3K of Casablance: http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/casablanca )
Blade Runner
Graphic Novels:
Watchmen
Sandman (start with Volume 2, Doll's House or Volume 8, Brief Lives)
Audio (I'm so naive to music that I don't have much to list, so I grouped it in with the audio tracks I do feel passionate about):
Penny Arcade Podcasts
Sufjan Stevens (particularly Illinoise)
Braid soundtrack
NES Soundtracks
Scrubs soundtrack
Garden State soundtrack
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy audiotapes
America the Book audiotapes
Jonathan Coulton songs
Video Games:
Super Metroid
Metroid Prime trilogy
Katamari Damarcy
Master of Orion (1 or 2, I mean I love 3, but we must be honest)
Braid
Portal
Super Mario World
Ducktales
Metal Gear Solid
To reiterate, this is not just stuff that is good, or “cheesy fun!”. But the things you would defend to the hilt as some of the best books you’ve ever read.
(I really must get around to annotating all of these.)