Let’s Twist Again Like We Did Last Year
Our readers (with extremely good taste) named the books, movies, and music they are likely to return to this winter
Okay, so you’re sentimental.
You’re sentimental and avant-garde. You can’t help if you know what’s good—what’s good for the 10th time, not just the first time.
In my Readers’ Survey last week I asked what movie, book, or music you find yourself wanting to feel again in the short dark winter nights.
I loved reading your answers — some of them match my own, but you gave me a whole new treasure chest I have to check out . . .
Books
The Line Tender by Kate Allen
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of the English Language, by John McWhorter
“His Own Where, by June Jordan, read on audio by Sapphire. On another level.”
“For book, I really loved Eugène Süe’s gothic The Mysteries of Paris”
“The Stand in the book, and the TV version”
Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
M Train by Patti Smith
“Comfort reads like Douglas Coupland.”
Absolution: Book 4 of The Southern Reach series, by Jeff VanderMeer
“Watching the new Frankenstein has me wanting to return to the text.”
“Maybe I’ll try Sentimental Education by Gustav Flaubert, or Oblimov, by Ivan Goncharov.
Aphrodite by Isabel Allende
Sunrise on the Reaping, by Suzanne Collins
The Portable Curmudgeon by Jon Winokur
“I must return to Tolkien and reread The Two Towers. I still can’t believe I had patience for so much geographic and scenery description when I was a pre-teen!”
“Any John McPhee.”
Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb trilogy
“Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These. I bought it in Dublin. A fetching young man brought me a coffee as I had just begun it.
He asked if I read her first novel. I hadn’t. He recommended it as well and said, “I’m very happy for you.”
“The Long Walk by Stephen King/Richard Bachman. I read the book when it first came out, and I’m listening to the audiobook now in preparation for watching the movie.”
The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Micheal Chabon... looking forward to seeing the opera.”
Movies
“Screw Paul Thomas Anderson and “One Battle After Another” — time to rewatch Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadasssss Song.
“In the Mood for Love” - kills me everytime
“Celluloid Closet— and then watching all the movies in it.”
“My partner and I have plans to watch Spinal Tap, which we haven’t watched in at least 15 years. I will also probably re-read Car Camping: The Book of Desert Adventures, by Mark Sundeen.”
There is something mysterious about the 1943 horror film The Seventh Victim, that always draws me back to it. With a similar vibe, the 1966 film Eye of the Devil. A melancholy sadness that fits the season.
A Christmas Carol - with George C. Scott, 1984
“Pure comfort food: Practical Magic, Rocky Horror, Alien.”
“We’re No Angels (Bogie and Ustinov)”
“Probably my old fav The Godfather Part 2. I would also like to hear what MTG has to say about went on in the belly of the beast. That’s my “Godfather” takeaway -- you bring down a criminal enterprise when minions flip on the leader.”
This Is 40, Crimes of the Future
How the Grinch Stole Christmas & Horton Hears a Who (both free on YouTube)
“Well, we just rewatched The Ghost and Mrs Muir and Bell, Book, and Candle.
“It has been a long time since I’ve seen Shelter, and likewise Children of God. I’d like to watch both of them. Also, I would love to rewatch Caravaggio by Derek Jarman, and anything by Pedro Almodovar, like Bad Education.
“Anything by Agnes Varda”
“I love rewatching Parenthood - I used to feel like Martha Plimpton and Keanu Reeves and now I totally identify with Dianne Wiest’s character.”
Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella
Music
“It’s not movies or books that call to me in winter — it’s music. Colder weather always sends me first to Ocean Rain, from Echo & The Bunnymen.”
Blue Yule Christmas Blues + R&B Classics
Wild Seed, Wild Flower, Dionne Farris
“Patty Griffin - When It Don’t Come Easy; Indigo Girls - Mystery; Anna Nalick - 2AM (Just Breathe). Anything in my playlist that elicits a heavy sigh is the mood of the season.”
The New Possibility, John Fahey
The Met: live video of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. (SB: This is my stepmom’s pick, and I am getting a free subscription for a few days to check them out.)”
“The first record, a 78, that I put on a record player at age 3, was Old Timey Songs for Children by the New Lost City Ramblers. I hear something different every year I get older.”
Rest of 2025
In the coming weeks, I’ll share with you the other results from the Readers Survey, it was an eye-opener for me, as well as a virtual book club, movie fest, Santa list. Thanks so much for spilling. If you want to “uncloak,” go ahead in the comments, or add anything you’d like.
Another bit:
I’m a member of the SF/Bay Area Film Critics Circle, which like other regional film critics’ groups, is voting on our picks for the best movies and film work of the year. Our picks, in turn, will weigh heavy on the Academy Award and Golden Globes and SAG minds, as they contemplate their nominees.
What does this mean for me right now? I am chugging movies.
I have to watch about 100 more before we start doing our voting rounds. Ay yi yi. Some of them, darn it, have not even in distribution deals, and of course, often those are my favorites. But I’m going to organize it all, and share my picks and critic’s thoughts with you in the coming weeks.
It feels heavier this year. The arts in America have been drained. It’s not just the sciences who’ve suffered this loss. The creative lights have left the country in terms of pursuing their next act, or they’ve hung up their spurs. Many are coasting on dregs. The best work in literature and film right now— and I mean quantity in addition to quality— are happening elsewhere. The US translation or screening premiere is not the “big event.” Nope. It just isn’t.
If you see an extraordinary American effort, it is either found major “foreign” financing, or it is the work of some crazed impoverished loner who can barely get screened in a festival.
When you hear about the profound layoffs in the movie industry, publishing, studios, the closing of campus dissent, the contraction in Hollywood and New York — well, today’s scene is the fruit of it. Americans today are the LAST to know the cutting edge, not the first. Next year, it is going to be worse, and even more noticeable. Get used to being “the last to know.” Come to admire and support the countries and cultures where film is flourishing. You will be reading about them, not the other way around as the conceits we grew up with.
Could anyone have imagined this in the 20th century?
I knew this— I’ve been wanting to editorialize about it further— but when I reviewed your lists below of great movies you like to re-watch during the winter holidays, it hit me again.
The minor and major classics you picked below? The level, the quality is NOT happening in the US today. I’m not being nostalgic, it’s the fact and everyone in the entertainment press and industry knows it. Yes, it’s all comers: the great comedies we used to take for granted, the sparkling children’s films, the zeitgeist of our dramas. The decline is across genres.
Well, more to say, but in the meantime: Y’all have great taste in your past. Thank you for sharing all of it!
— Susie
In Case You Missed It
A Christmas Miracle on the Road to Oaxaca
UNTIL Egypt’s Aswan Dam plugged her up, the Nile River flooded every year, spreading her chocolate waters across the land, depositing the rich sediment of eroded topsoil from the heart of Africa to fuel another year's productivity in the fields.
Fantastic post Susie!! So many gems and reminders of things I’d forgotten I liked!! Happy Thanksgiving, and happy trails too. ❤️
Now, how could I have missed the email with your survey in it? Could it be that the buttloads of daily political, fundraising and advertising emails that pollute my inbox obscured it? No matter. With your permission, I'd like to throw my entries into the ring.
I've been a fan of Jon Winokur's books of quotations for a very long time, ever since I found "The Portable Curmudgeon" at a booksale.
As for movies (and TV programs) worth watching again, I'll cast my vote for two David Lynch creations:
Twin Peaks, the original series (1990), which I found used, for cheap, on blu-ray. I even found a cheap used blu-ray player to watch it on!
Eraserhead (1977), the Criterion edition. (In heaven, everything is fine!)
By the way, are you in Ithaca again? On vacation, or are you there for a function?