We haven’t had a good roundup of everyone’s favorite ____ of the year in a while! Let’s discuss movies, podcasts, TV shows, books, recipes, and more…
We’d love to hear yours in the comments! Here’s a template to use…
- Movies:
- TV:
- Podcasts:
- Books:
- Recipes:
- Best purchase under $25:
- Other:
We’ve started collecting all of our year-long suggestions along these lines with the tag Little Things. Check them all out here! You can also check out our favorites from 2023.)
Kat’s 2024 Favorites
Kat is the founder/editor in chief of Corporette; you can read all of Kat’s posts here.
Movies: It’s so sad how I’m just not a movie person anymore! I watched a lot of Hallmark holiday movies midyear because a good friend and I had been joking about trying to write one together, but I’m not quite sure that’s my vibe. Hanukkah on Rye was definitely the best of the ones I watched. My husband and I also enjoyed the documentary, Citizen Jane.
TV: The Diplomat (eeee that ending!), What We Do in the Shadows, Ghosts, Shogun, Barry, The Bear. We also rewatched season 1-4 of Battlestar Galactica with our 13-year-old.
Podcasts: Readers turned me on to Wiser Than Me, where Julia Louis-Dreyfus interviews women older than her. I also love Culture Study.
Books: For nonfiction, I liked the book The Light Eaters — fascinating! I also read a lot of books about gardening, natives, soil health, etc. For fiction, I primarily read romance — favorites contemporaries from the year were Not Another Love Song, The Seven Year Slip, and The Last Days of Lilah Goodluck. For historical romance, I read a lot of Alice Coldbreath, Mary Balogh, and Loretta Chase. For romantasy/paranormal, Quicksilver, Ali Hazelwood’s Bride, and the book that everyone made fun of for the title, but was actually pretty charming: That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf.
Recipes: I tend to make a lot of high protein, high fiber meals for myself, so I’ve heavily adapted recipes for Sean Casey’s Cheesy Taco Rice (doing 1/2 cauliflower rice, adding beans, spinach, and matchstick carrots), Stealth Health’s Beefy Cheesy Burrito (doing 1/2 ground beef, 1/2 ground turkey, adding spinach), baked oats from TikTok (sort of based off this recipe? I add chia and skip the drizzle), and a three ingredient, high protein mac and cheese based off this recipe (with a bit of this orange powder thrown in at the end). I just made these pizza bites, also, which I’ll definitely be making again. (They were kind of reminiscent of something called “lard bread” that a friend’s mom used to bring to parties, which I’d always seen as a decadent treat, so it was nice that the calories were so much better for the pizza bites.)
Best purchase under $25: The Bug Bite Thing saved me from mosquito bites this summer. It was also the year that I bumped up my summer hat game to “super dorky wide brims that protect the sides of my face as well,” and I liked this packable visor for walking and this wider one for relaxing or working in the garden. (The second one is very protective but isn’t the best if you want to be aware of your surroundings because it blocks a lot of the side view.)
Other: Readers turned me on to the Future Skin foundation from Chantecaille — pricy but I do feel like it’s a really good one. I also added peptides to my regular routine; I like this 6 Peptide Skin Booster from COSRX.
Elizabeth’s Favorites
Elizabeth writes our morning workwear reports here at Corporette! You can read all of Elizabeth’s posts here.
Movies: My teenager and I saw Inside Out 2 in the movie theaters twice this summer, so I guess that has to be the winner. It was funny and sweet, but it was also obvious that a lot of care was put into helping kids (and adults) understand big feelings.
TV: With so much heavy stuff in the world, I had to avoid some of the hard-hitting dramas this year. I loved the kooky Girls5eva and dramedies like My Lady Jane and The Perfect Couple. If you have access to Acorn TV, I was very into cozy British mysteries like The Madame Blanc Mysteries and Signora Volpe.
Podcasts: The first half of the year was heavy on politics, but I tried to scale back a bit for my own sanity. For non-political consumption, I loved Noble Blood, I Said No Gifts!, Normal Gossip, and Las Culturistas.
Books: A lot of books ended up in the “did not finish” pile this year (see above re: heavy stuff). We Solve Murders by Richard Osman was one of the few that I managed to fly through in a weekend and was an absolute delight.
Recipes: These confetti cookies from Smitten Kitchen are the consistent hits on my Christmas cookie trays.
Best purchase under $25: I’ve already mentioned the balloon pump that has brought SO much joy to my family this year, but a very close runner-up is this waterproof phone case. I’m not proud of this, but self-care for me right now looks like standing under a hot shower at the end of the day watching a mindless video on my phone. Ideally, that video is going to be a clip of a ’90s band playing on Letterman or Conan, but sometimes I just let the algorithm decide. This nifty little phone holder attaches right to the shower wall and keeps my phone safe and dry while I decompress.
Other: I turned 40 this year and finally discovered that my skin responds best when I pare down my products to just the essentials. This night cream from Cerave has been my fall/winter go-to and it’s a dream.
Kate’s 2024 Favorites
Kate is our longtime editor and writer here at Corporette — you can see all of Kate’s posts here!
Movies: My clear favorite this year was I Saw the TV Glow — so much so that I saw it twice in the theater. The soundtrack (available to stream) is really great, too. I watched way more (streaming) TV than films this year, so my only other 2024 rec is Deadpool & Wolverine.
TV: My guilty favorites this year, as always, were silly reality shows like Love Is Blind and The Circle. (On the non-guilty side, Queer Eye‘s new season just dropped, yay!) I loved Baby Reindeer (amazing, disturbing), Angela All Along (amazing, fun, campy), The Lincoln Lawyer (a light-ish legal series), unREAL (dark, bingeable), Girls5eva (hilarious), and I enjoyed documentaries and docudramas like Unbelievable (infuriating), Dancing for the Devil (bizarre), Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal (wild), and Quiet on Set (disturbing). I also rewatched a couple seasons of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (hilarious as always — a comfort watch) and Daredevil (one of the best Marvel series, IMO).
Podcasts: Pre-election, I listened to a ton of Pod Save America, but lately it’s a depressing listen for me. Exposed: Cover-Up at Columbia University was a horrifying investigative podcast about a Columbia OB/GYN who got away with sexually abused his patients for 25 years. Also, I always recommend Behind the Bastards for deep dives into the actions of horrible people and corporations. (Hmm, I need some LIGHTER podcasts for 2025.)
Books: My favorites this year were Jennette McCurdy’s memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (a tough read, and a good companion to Quiet on Set, mentioned above), and on a lighter note, Blank, a novel by Zibby Owens.
Best purchase under $25: Just looking at my Amazon purchases, 2024 good buys were this hanger stacker, this rocker pizza cutter, and this suet made with chili peppers to deter squirrels from eating it. (Don’t worry, our neighborhood squirrels get to eat all the seed that the birds drop all over the ground.)
Other: Music! I listened to a ton of Chappell Roan as well as two albums released this year: Guster’s Ooh La La and Joywave’s Permanent Pleasure.
ANN’s 2024 Favorites
Ann is our morning writer at CorporetteMoms — you can read all of Ann’s posts here!
Movies: I do most of my movie watching on airplanes, so I usually end up watching oldies but goodies. On my last flight (a 24-hour door-to-door journey across the Pacific), I re-watched Crazy Rich Asians, Pride & Prejudice, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Little Women, and everything they had from Disney. I did watch The Garfield Movie with my oldest’s Girl Scout troop and it exceeded my expectations.
TV: Ditto using the plane as TV time. I’ve watched a lot of Suits, Law & Order, and a whole season of Top Chef. My spouse and I did sit down and watch Next Baking Master Paris for a few weeks after the kids went to bed. As you can see, I love legal dramas, so the new Matlock is on my list.
Podcasts: Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me always gives me a needed laugh about current events. I’ve started listening to British Scandal on the recommendation of a coworker. My oldest really likes Circle Round, which features folk tales from around the world that even grown-ups can get into.
Books: I got my spouse a Guess Where Trip for his birthday, and one of the places we stopped at was Monocacy National Battlefield. I’m not a Civil War enthusiast, but the visit was so fascinating that I wanted to learn more so now I’m working my way through Desperate Engagement: How a Little-Known Civil War Battle Saved Washington, D.C., and Changed American History. For a lighter read, I really enjoyed The Burnout by Sophia Kinsella (of Shopaholic fame) over the summer.
Recipes: I get a lot of cookbooks from the library, and I’m currently going through Snacking Cakes: Simple Treats for Anytime Cravings because I always want cake now. For online recipes, a few of my go-tos are Smitten Kitchen, Woks of Life, and Sally’s Baking Addiction — I’ve never had a bad recipe from any of them. My MIL is allergic to dairy and eggs (so she’s basically a vegan who eats meat), so I’m trying to up my vegan baking game. I’m trying the vegan version of these cinnamon rolls over the holidays. Finally, here is the cutout sugar cookie recipe I use every holiday.
Best purchase under $25: For holiday gifts, these food-themed hairclips for my oldest and this kids’ cooking set from Material for my youngest. On my flight to Asia, this travel-sized facial spray and these silk sleep masks were indispensable.
Other: Once the weather gets cold, I stock up on knits even though I probably don’t need any more. I usually treat myself to a sweater from La Ligne during their annual Thanksgiving sale. I’m experimenting with different carry-ons so I’m going to try using this classic tote bag from Lands’ End — I got the large zip-top with the long handles. We got hooked on this chocolate-covered licorice when we were in Denmark last year and they now ship to the U.S.!
