A personal goal I have set for myself is a plan to collate and consume a canon list of the “best” pieces of media. I have not set a timeframe for this goal but I have over-engineered a solution to give me a random choice from 5 categories with best-of lists created by myself. In this quick introduction I want to explain the categories, how the lists were created, outcomes I would like to achieve and some justification for undertaking this.

Categories and List Creation

Though art can be expressed and consumed in many ways, I wanted to collate some canonical best lists of media I can consume easily but can still engross myself within. These categories of media are:

• Albums (500)
• Fiction Literature (100)
• Video Games (100)
• Films (500)
• Non-Fiction Literature (50)

I do truly believe that art is personal and therefore almost impossible to empirically rank, however I did my best to collate some lists of media worth consuming within these categories. These lists are not exhaustive nor are they particularly well researched, as to not introduce my own biases. I will discuss this a little more at the end. Each section was created slightly differently.

Albums

Simple and lazy. These 500 albums are the rolling stone’s top 500 albums. I don’t think this even begins to capture all the greatest music and it definitely has some popularity bias (I think like 5 beatles albums exist in the top 50) but it is a mixed list. A limitation is that it was only last updated in 2012. If I manage to finish this, I think I might take a crack at a more modern list (The needle drop has a “most loved” of each year).

Fiction Literature

This list was a mix to develop, similarly with the non-fiction list. I ended up using an amalgamation of the Modern Library’s list and The Greatest Books of All Time. I definitely avoided some more modern lists (and honestly a lot of the more “user recommended” books). This was on purpose, I haven’t read enough classical literature and this list I created seemed to have contain a large amount (in some part due to the modern library not being that modern).

Video Games

For this one, no list exists which captured what I wanted. Some requirements were that 1) it couldn’t cover defunct or online games and 2) it had to span a large range of time (not just modern, not just classics). I did turn to AI for this one to try and build a mixed list for multiple eras of gaming. It starts in the early 90s and ranges up to modern day. I am a big fan of classic games so was keen to start here but I did want to avoid further back due to wanting more depth in the gameplay. That is not me dismissing the C64 and Atari eras (I own a beloved atari 2600) but cracking into early arcade era felt like I was ticking a box of gaming rather than enjoying the art.

Films

This was a very lazy list to create. I just took letterboxd’s top 500 list and I am using that. With a quick skim there seemed to be a good mix of films on there that I hadn’t seen (compared to IMDB’s top list) and the nice thing was that it didn’t shy away from foreign language films, which have defined some of my most memorable cinematic experiences.

Non-Fiction

This list was created in a very similar way to the Fiction list with the small stipulation of only 50 books. This was mostly due to repetitions constantly coming up (do I truly need to read all 3 iterations of the communist manifesto?). I think this will probably be the most hit-or-miss category. I did think there would be more self-help books and similar, and I am glad that there doesn’t seem to be that.

Outcomes of This Experiment

I have a few things I would like to achieve from this. I would like to write to this blog, even if it is a small amount review. I don’t always have justification for the things I enjoy and I have been stuck in a rut with media for a while now. I want to have a strong answer when people ask me what I have been reading/listening to/playing/watching. This blog will be a basic log, I have a big checklist to get through I do not plan to update this after every check. I want the ability to write longer reviews if I think they are warranted, or just cluster some together if I only have a line or two of thoughts. An entry here a week would be nice.

Another thing I would like to get down is some sort of rating system. After trialing letterboxd for a while, I realised that I struggled to rank any film a 5/5 due to no film being “perfect” in my eyes. Even my favourite films of all time (which I hope I can re-watch and review), struggled to hit that threshold as I was sure there were improvements to be made. I would love to develop a ranking system or conclude that a ranking system is pointless. Either of those outcomes would help me process my own consumption of art. My friend’s suggestion of “did you like it or not like it; that is the only ranking that matter” seems overly simplistic for me but may actually be the appropriate outcome.

Why?

The simple answer is I am stuck in a creative rut at this point. Art has always been an escape for me, one I would particularly appreciate at the current time and I have a fear of approaching anything new. What if I don’t enjoy it? I have become seemingly obsessed with optimising my time that the idea of watching something for 2 hours, or listening to an album I might not enjoy would destroy my free time. This is inherently false. As I pull out the “doom rectangle” from my pocket and stare, mouth slightly agape, at the 50th AI-generated reel aimed at raising my dopamine levels by 0.0001% to get me to scroll for at least another minute to serve me ads to fill the pockets of 100 people as they choke the world out, I have begun to think that might not be the most productive use of my time.

I mean, I could work more, concentrate on making more money or learning a new skill which I could monetise but honestly the constant drag of repetitive capitalism seems to be giving me a permanent migraine. 26 is too early to be experiencing late-stage burnout and honestly, all I can feel is that the worst is yet to come. Silicon valley seems intent on destroying artistic individuality, a practice I have almost definitely contributed to, purely without realising, and I am keen to try and hoard the emotions and experiences from what art we do have left.

This is a bit of an overly dramatic approach to listening to some music and watching some films but hey, I ain’t doing things in halves. I do also miss reading, so adding books here was a drive for me to try and read more. This blog, is also a vehicle for me to also try and write more, a skill I only seem to exercise in writing technical documentation or emails; doing it for fun seems almost foreign to me.

A Brief Technical Aside

I am sure someone will care at some point if I ever publish this blog but I am running this site currently using Hugo and docker. Super simple, just wanted to write markdown. I also custom built my top list picker on top of FastAPI and Python. It rolls the categories, tracks my progress and does some other small things but is very simple. It is pretty much an over-engineered spreadsheet.