Some of them may have been less spectacular than I hoped, but nothing was truly disappointing. I saw more than usual and there weren’t any duds. I had a good year for seeing movies in the cinema. I’m finally in the homestretch! (Whew.) Best Movies My ambitious Dorothy Dunnett project- reading all 14 Lymond Chronicle/House of Niccolo books-has been a great escape for the last three months. The best guilty pleasures this year were the Midnight Texas trilogy by Charlaine Harris and The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan. My summer LGBT reading project was fun, and the books from that post that have stayed with me the longest are Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin and Spy Stuff by Matthew J. The year started out slow, but then I finally got reading glasses! The two best non-fiction books I read this year were The Lost City of The Monkey God by Douglas Preston and Caesar’s Last Breath by Sam Kean. There have been plenty of entertainment surprises along the way. I started blogging again, although not as regularly as I’d hoped. The year has ended with more reading, less television, and a bunch of new actors on my watch list. I began 2017 watching foreign soaps and making Chad Lowe collages. I’m grateful that I can still turn to books, movies, TV and music to raise my spirits. Until recently, I used to ignore the news as much as possible now I probably give it too much of my attention. The Stuff That Entertains Me is now more likely to be The Stuff That Keeps Me From Total Despair. Most mornings I wake up with a sense of dread, almost afraid to open up the laptop to see what real-world horrors will dominate my morning news feed. Normally I approach my Year End Wrap Up with enthusiasm, but 2017 has been a very tough year.

Spy stuff by matthew j metzger