Best of 2022

This is the best season. Let's go.

When I talk about pop culture from my childhood, I'm sitting in the back seat of my dad's car. He's driving, his arm stretched across the top of the leather bench seat, his hand tapping along to "The Long Run," by the Eagles, playing on the tape deck. I watch the scenery through the rear windshield, the road signs scrolling almost perfectly with the downbeat.

I've described this scene to friends my age , and, although their memories are not identical, we all share this experience of being happily captive in the back seat, nodding to the music our parents were listening to at the time. Inevitably, the soundtrack derives from a limited hit parade: songs that were in high rotation in the 1970s and 1980s.

Technology has made it bus passengers in 2022 can listen to the music they love, or talk on the phone or watch their own movies with their own headphones and their own screens. We could all listen to "The Long Run" in stereo, but we might as well fall back on the bespoke specificity of our Spotify Wrapped playlists.

We're currently in the thick of prime season, the time of year when critics release their lists of their favorite movies, songs, podcasts, and books from the past 12 months. The atomization of mainstream culture means that my pop cultural wanderings may not intersect with those of a particular critic, that I may not have read any of the books or heard any of the songs of a particular list.

That's why I love this time of year.

That's queuing season. It's a cultural potluck that builds playlists, books Libby, and stuffs recipe boxes, a time to deviate from your particular media diet and sample the dishes of others. Favorite Jon Pareles albums. Eric Asimov's most memorable wines. The performances that marked Maya Phillips. I've been getting into my own cultural romp over the past year, so it's likely that many of these reviewers' picks will be new to me.

I wrote last year that I would like to be able to get annual best-of lists from everyone I know, and that those lists would not be limited to the usual kinds of things that can be listened to, watched or read. I want people's very subjective and specific lists: the best advice they've received and the best ideas they've had. The best seltzers they've tried or the walks they've taken, the best changes they've made to their morning routines. I want ideas for living better across the spectrum of existence; no category is too idiosyncratic.

I asked people close to me what extremely specific things, experiences or notions would be on their best-of lists . My editor Amy Fiscus' favorite vacation moment was seeing the sunset over Lake Michigan. "Americans don't have to go to the West Coast to see the sun slipping over the horizon from endless water," she said.

My friend Ali's best-of-everything in the list includes changing her grocery routine, picking up exactly what she needs from the market instead of loading up the pantry like she l did at the height of the pandemic. And she listed the Perfect Tides video game, a coming-of-age story set in 2000. "The story is so sweet - I cried, I loved it," she said .

The best thing I baked was these crispy chocolate chip cookies; they're like Tate's, only better. The best advice I've received this year came from a story a friend told me about what she thought to herself when her three children were very young and felt overwhelmed, like s 'there weren't enough hours in the...