I maintain a Google document going each year that keeps track of the best music, movies, books, and TV I've enjoyed that year. Sometimes I even take note of best restaurants and food experiences. As we close the book on 2017 and as I prepare to create a blank 2018 Google document in a few days, here's a look at what made the cut in my favorites of 2017.
15 Favorite Films
Dunkirk (my review)
A Quiet Passion
The Lost City of Z (my review)
A Ghost Story
Columbus (my review)
The Florida Project (my review)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
The Unknown Girl
Darkest Hour
Loving Vincent
Song to Song (my review)
Personal Shopper (my review)
Mudbound (my review)
Lady Bird
Get Out
Read my full "best movies" article at The Gospel Coalition.
15 Favorite Albums
The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding
Radiohead, OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017
Sara Groves, Abide With Me
Nassau, Heron
The National, Sleep Well Beast
Young Oceans, Suddenly (Or the Nuclear Sunburst of the Truth Revealed)
Julie Byrne, Not Even Happiness
The Porter's Gate, Work Songs
Hazel English, Just Give In / Never Going Home
Kendrick Lamar, Damn
Beautiful Eulogy, Worthy
The Brilliance, All Is Not Lost
Fleet Foxes, Crack-Up
Rostam, Half-Light
Moses Sumney, Aromanticism
Read my "40 Spiritually Charged Songs from 2017" list at The Gospel Coalition
10 Favorite Things on TV
The Leftovers
The Crown
This is Us
The Vietnam War
Chance the Rapper performing this song on Colbert
Grand Designs
Stranger Things
The Royal House of Windsor
The Oscars ceremony moment when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway flubbed the best picture announcement
Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer on Saturday Night Live
10 Favorite Books Released in 2017
The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb: Searching for Jesus’ Path of Power in a Church that Has Abandoned It by Kyle Strobel and Jamin Goggin
The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher
Mere Sexuality: Rediscovering the Christian Vision of Sexuality by Todd Wilson
Movies Are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings by Josh Larsen
Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor by The Gospel Coalition
Doctrine and Race by Mary Beth Swetnam Mathew
12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke
Winsome Persuasion by Rick Langer and Tim Muehlhoff
The Art of Loading Brush by Wendell Berry
God and the Transgender Debate by Andrew Walker
10 Favorite Books I Read (But WERE Not Released) in 2017
Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be by Cornelius Plantinga
The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton
On the Incarnation by Athanasius
Pollution and the Death of Man by Francis Schaeffer
Is God Anti-Gay? by Sam Allberry
Knowing God by J.I. Packer
Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper
Identity and Idolatry by Richard Lints
The Gospel in Genesis by Martyn Lloyd-Jones
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke
10 Favorite Restaurant Experiences
Camden Exchange (Dublin, Ireland)
Central (Lima, Peru)
Rimessa Roscioli (Rome, Italy)
Tartine Manufactory (San Francisco, California)
Astrid y Gaston (Lima, Peru)
Little Sister (Manhattan Beach, California)
Rafael (Lima, Peru)
The Mighty (Los Angeles, California)
Biscuit Love (Nashville, Tennessee)
Pioneer (Indianapolis, Indiana)