I really enjoy taking care of business in the latter days of December. My inbox and apartment are never cleaner; my goals for the coming months and year never so precisely defined. In the spirit of reflection and goal-setting, I decided to round up some best-of lists for myself:
My favorite books of the year:
- Sarai Walker, “Dietland“
- Jon Ronson, “The Psychopath Test”
- Luke Dittrich, “Patient H.M.“
I read nearly 50 books this year, but these three, listed in the order I read them, were the ones I couldn’t stop raving to friends about. Reading Sarai Walker’s “Dietland” was like finding a revolutionary manifesto inside an issue of Cosmopolitan. Egged on by an episode of This American Life, I found and devoured Jon Ronson’s “The Psychopath Test,” which led me to even more books, including Luke Dittrich’s “Patient H.M.”, which I’ll probably be talking about for years to come; his dedication and research are an inspiration to me as a writer.
My favorite stories I wrote:
- CSM Passcode: How Social Security numbers became skeleton keys for fraudsters (November 2016)
- CSM Passcode: Dutch art project exposes extent of surveillance, tests limits of law (April 2016)
- Quartz: South by Southwest is officially, aggressively normcore (March 2016)
- Wired: High Rent Epicenters infographic (January 2016)
- Quartz: The Secret World of Membership Libraries (January 2016)
I wrote fewer stories overall in 2016 as compared to 2015, but that can largely be attributed to my contributions to a forthcoming book by Autodesk on the future of design, as well as a renewed focus on long-term projects. It’s really tough as a freelancer to pursue those front-loaded, research-heavy moonshot projects and still pay the bills. I’m still figuring it out.
My favorite stories I read elsewhere:
These were the stories written by other people that made the biggest impact on me this year, for various reasons:
- New York Times: Hesitant to Make That Big Life Change? Permission Granted
- Buzzfeed: How “Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead” Went From D.O.A. To Beloved Cult Classic
- New York Magazine: What Happened When the Young House Love Couple Tried to Escape the Internet
- New York Times: United States of Paranoia
- Politico: How Cincinnati Salvaged the Nation’s Most Dangerous Neighborhood
- New Yorker: Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All
- The Long & Short: The War on Cash
- Bon Appetit: How to Pair Cheese with Potato Chips
- Racked: The Last Lifestyle Magazine
- New York Times Magazine: Choosing a School for my Daughter in a Segregated City
- Mother Jones: My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard
grace dobush 