If there’s one thing that this year’s paltry list of things I’ve watched, read, and to which I’ve listened tells us, it’s that having a baby destroys any semblance of free time one may have previously had. The numbers of books read and movies watched have dipped to levels so low as to be previously unheard of. (However, I suspect if you checked the graph for numbers of nappies changed or numbers of hours of sleep lost to calming a grizzly baby, the graph would be exactly equal in magnitude yet precisely opposite in trend.) Here, then, is the piss-poor list of media stuff I’ve consumed this year.

Movies

This year, I watched 52 movies, at a rate of one movie every 7.0 days, or 0.14 movies a day. This is down from 2015 numbers of 69-5.2-0.18, and a new low, taking over from 2012’s 62-5.9-0.17. The high remains 2003 at 186-2.0-0.51. Here, check out the latest graph:

(Don’t worry about 2000 and 2001 – the data for those years is incomplete.)

So the list for 2016 is as follows:

• The Good Dinosaur
• Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
• Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
• Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
• The Martian
• Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
• Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
• Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi
• The Last Patrol
• Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens
• Zootropolis
• Kingsman: The Secret Service
• Captain America: Civil War
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
• Garden State
• Gravity
• Deadpool
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• Night at the Museum
• Night at the Museum 2
• Ghostbusters
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
• Zootropolis
• Straight Outta Compton
• The Big Lebowski
• Sherpa
• Everest
• The Walk
• The Resurrection of Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts
• Spooks: The Greater Good
• Green Room
• Kubo and the Two Strings
• The Intern
• The Nice Guys
• Bridge of Spies
• Steve Jobs
• Frankenweenie
• Citizenfour
• The Big Short
• 10 Cloverfield Lane
• My Scientology Movie
• Coraline
• The Revenant
• The Secret Life of Pets
• Weiner
• Concussion
• X-Men: Apocalypse
• Star Trek Beyond
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• Elf

Yes, Rogue One is on the list twice, because I saw it twice. Yes, I’m counting it twice, because this is my list and I can do what I want (and also because I paid cold, hard cash for it twice). Highlights were: most definitely Rogue One (loved loved loved it); I love a good espionage thriller, and Bridge of Spies, with the always-watchable Tom Hanks was a pleasure to watch; The Revenant was brutal and brilliant; Kubo and the Two Strings had me weeping in the cinema; and The Last Patrol, the final part of Sebastian Junger’s war documentaries (following the brilliant Restrepo and Korengal).

If it had actually been released this year, my film of the year would have been The Martian. I loved it. It was smart, it was funny (Damon gots comedy chops, yo), and free of the jingoistic bullshit that similar “Let’s get our man back” films have. The science was refreshingly plausible, and the whole ride didn’t disappear up its own existential a-hole like, say, the interminable Interstellar. I liked it so much I even bought the t-shirt. However, given this year’s viewing of the flick was a rewatch, it can’t claim the title of my fave film of the year, so I guess we should raise a glass and toast Rogue One, which has that honour – for it is an honour – bestowed upon it.

Also of note is the boy and I working through the Star Wars and Harry Potter series. Whilst he loved all seven Star Wars movies (he’s not seen Rogue One yet – I don’t think he’s ready for it), he tended towards the prequels – there’s something about Anakin that drew him in, and he was more interested in his rise and fall than in Luke’s rise and non-fall in the original trilogy. I can only guess that that means my son is going to turn out to be a serial killer. And I totally forgot that Revenge of the Sith has some brutal crispy-fried Anakin scenes towards the end that are totally unsuitable for a five-year-old, and that I should have edited out. My bad.

The Harry Potter movies went down a treat with him too, most likely due to a younger, more relatable set of characters (if you actually can relate to young wizards, which I think most 5/6-year-old kids think they can). It’s only watching these films through a kid’s eyes that it becomes apparent that there are some scary things in there. Not the obvious stuff, like the basilisk in Chamber of Secrets (which is obviously fantastical), but the werewolf/dog animagus stuff in the already-dark, Cuaron-directed Prisoner of Azkaban, or the resurrection of the nose-less Voldemort in Goblet of Fire (it was the nose more than anything that got him). I know the films are 12/12A, and I know showing them to a 6-year-old is probably borderline, but I made sure we watched them during the day, with the curtains open and the lights on, the audio set to night mode to reduce the dynamic range, and frequent stops to reassure that it was all made up and in no way real. I’ll take the same approach when I show him Cannibal Holocaust this year.

Books

I read a hilariously poor number of books this year. That number was five. Five books in twelve months. Yikes. My excuse is that I usually read during my lunch breaks at work, but with Mrs S. being on maternity leave for most of the year, I’ve been heading home for lunch with her and child 2. Anyway, here’s the list:

• When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow – Dan Rhodes
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne
• Arabian Sands – Wilfred Thesiger

My BfaM and all-round good egg Matt bought me the Dan Rhodes book, and I loved it – despite being a massive fan of Dawkins, it was obvious that his obediently scientific and objective world view and borderline acerbic manner was ripe for exaggeration and skewering, and Rhodes nails it. I don’t get why The Dark Knight Returns is hailed as the masterpiece that it is – maybe it was ground-breakingly original and unique in the 80’s, but to me it was just confusing and dull. Hey-ho. The Neil Gaiman book was a 99p-er on sale on Amazon that I took a punt on and, not really enjoying the much-vaunted American Gods (yeah, sue me…), I didn’t expect much. I think that worked in its favour, as I ended up liking it quite a lot. The Harry Potter script was interesting – the story was a reasonably enjoyable romp, but perhaps I’m not sufficiently down with reading scripts to fully ‘get’ it in its entirety. Maybe a novelisation would help.

I’ve wanted to read Arabian Sands since finishing A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby, a book for which I’ve previously expressed my love. The last few paragraphs of Hindu Kush catalogue the protagonists’ encounter with Thesiger in the Hindu Kush whilst they’re inflating their air-beds for the night. Thesiger calls them a pair of pansies for partaking of such comforts. Reading up about him, it appears Thesiger has every right to hold that opinion: Arabian Sands is his account of his time crossing the Rub’ al Khali, the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia, a number of times. It chronicles in great detail his trips to map out previously uncharted territory, his relationships with a number of Bedu tribes, and the unbelievable hardships he suffered on his travels. Whilst there’s a lot of names – tribes, tribes folk, Wadis etc. – that have a tendency to go in one ear (um, eye?) and out the other, his terse writing is a wonderful catalogue of a way of life and of a people that, even at that time, was in real danger of disappearing, with the advent of technology and the interminable hunt for more and more oil. Not the easiest read, but worth it.

Hopefully, 2017 will give me more of a chance to read, so I’m hoping this list next year will be greater than a measly five books in length.

Music

Yowzer, this’ll be a short section. I bought precious little music this year, but of the few I did buy, here’s my irrelevent verdict:

The new Metallica album, Hardwired… To Self Destruct, is far better than I expected it to be, after the St. Anger and Death Magnetic. In fact, I totally dig it. Deal with that. The new Helmet album, Dead to the World, is as disappointing as the last few have been – momentary glimpses of genius (riffs, solos, lyrics etc.) are subsequently sullied by Page’s shitty vocals. I can’t even say I’ve listened to the new Weezer (The White Album) and Deftones (Gore) records enough to pass comment on them. Same with the new Dinosaur Jr. (Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not) and Neurosis (Fires Within Fires). There’s a new Planes Mistaken for Stars album out, Prey, that no-one told me about and so I haven’t listened to that yet. I hope it’s great. The Baroness album, Purple, was last year, right? Shame, that’s a great album.

Yeah, I don’t have much to say about music this year, as with most years of late. Read into that as you will.

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So there you have it. In brief summary, I liked Rogue One, and the new Metallica album, but didn’t read many books. To be honest, that was just about all I needed to write, rather than 1500 words of self-indulgent waffle. Perhaps I’ll do that for next year’s review, then. You’ll just have to tune in then to find out. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.