The Books, Videos, Movies, and TV Shows That Changed Me Last Year

Evan is still off hiking in the wilds of New Zealand, and he wrote this piece before embarking on his trip. It’s a fitting companion to both his accountability scoring for his 2023 predictions and his exhortation for builders to acquire cultural taste. Let us know what pieces of culture you loved last year and/or what you’re planning to consume this year in the comments. –Kate

As 2023 closed out, I argued, “The problem you solve for customers is increasingly one they can’t even articulate for themselves. The ones that are easy to understand have already been built and funded over the last 20 years. Building something of true excellence will require a hungrier engagement with the world—and that will have to start with developing superior taste.”

One of the best ways to develop great taste is to, well, taste stuff. Engaging with a variety of media, cultural artifacts, and content helps you develop a sense for quality. This aesthetic muscle allows builders to engage with their customers in a fundamentally more empathetic way.

The natural next question is with what content to start. What is excellent, and why?

2023 was one of my favorite years for content ever. There were so many films, books, and videos that meaningfully affected me. So I examined my databases where I track all the TV, movies, and books that I consumed last year and pulled out the ones that changed me as a person. I evaluated my selections on three criteria:

Recall: You know how your teenage crush consumed you? Every little thing would make you think of them and sigh longingly? The best content does that, too. It worms into your brain and pops up over and over again, long after you first watched or read it. I wanted to optimize for content that I couldn’t quite keep tucked away in the back of my mind.
Before-and-after factor: This list focuses on content that instigated a distinct change in my personal life or creative practice. It is, admittedly, an imperfect measure, as I actually think that much of the value of consuming quality is an overall intellectual and spiritual uplift, but these works made an impact.
(Mostly) fiction: I have and will continue to review non-fiction work for readers. Last year I particularly enjoyed McKay Coppins’s Mitt Romney biography; Ben Smith’s Traffic, which profiled Buzzfeed and Gawker; Make Something Wonderful, published by the Steve Jobs Archive; and Rick Rubin’s guide to creativity. But I already wrote tens of thousands of words of analysis on these books! Go read those if you want nonfiction. The point of this list is to expand your horizons, not just recommend the same stuff as every other tech publication.

None of these links are affiliates. I’m not trying to get paid by Amazon; I just want our readers to feel joy. So please, consume and enjoy.

Books

The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, books 1 and 2: The all-too-common flaw of sci-fi novels is that they contain interesting scienfitic ideas that are subsumed by clunky prose, female characters who are mostly sex objects, and a story that lacks emotional engagement. Not here. Hyperion is well-crafted, beautifully written, and has plot lines that burrowed into my heart. The first book may just be the best sci-fi novel ever written? And somehow, the second is even better? Read this if your brain breaks around the space-time continuum and you want to read The Canterbury Tales in space.

The Will of the Many by James Islington: The fantasy genre is full of tropes—a boy becomes a hero, the hero was foretold in a prophecy, etc.—so authors have to learn when to follow the trope and when to subvert it. The Will of the Many is a story of rebellion and danger, set in a Roman Empire-esque world, that perfectly nails this balance. While I enjoyed the author’s previous fantasy series, this book is heads and shoulders above his previous work. If the momentum continues, it belongs in the same conversation as The Lord of the Rings, The Cosmere, Game of Thrones, and other fantasy greats—it is that good. Read this if you want a story of rebellion, anger, and Roman revenge.

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman: I cheated—this one is nonfiction, and it wasn’t my first time reading it (it was likely my fifth). It happened the way it always does: I cite a passage in my research, start reading the next sentence, and then, oops, I finished it again. The book, which was published in 1985, is a theoretical take on the dangers of TV and how the perils of news as an entertainment product are not well understood. If the author had seen TikTok, his brain may have exploded. Read this if you are concerned about our current media environment and want to understand the structural reasons for why it is damaging.