It’s not been an amazing year, all things considered. But even in a non-amazing year, life contains a lot to celebrate and enjoy. So here’s what’s given me hope and cheer this year:
1 The recovery of Agnes the beaver has been one of the only things to make me feel reliably good this year. She was brought into an Indiana wildlife sanctuary, The Pipsqueakery, emaciated and covered in maggots, and they have lovingly nursed her back to health.
2 You can still take a course at the Open University. I have just finished my MA in classics and got a distinction – I am delighted and proud.
3 In general, it is so wonderfully easy to learn things now compared to when I was at school – we used to hoard French magazines from rare trips. Now I can listen to as much French radio as I want, whenever I want.
4 Green sea turtles are no longer on the endangered list.
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5 The world of YouTube lectures – James Marriott has a brilliant list on his Substack, Cultural Capital – brings us all education for free. (jmarriott.substack.com/p/a-youtube-education)
6 The majesty of wind farms – I love to see them in the landscape, as glorious as the windmills of old.
7 Misha Glenny has been chosen to take over In Our Time from Melvyn Bragg – a brilliant apolitical appointment of a man with a fantastically wide and interesting intellectual range. I’m thrilled that this beloved programme is in safe hands.
8 China’s emissions have reduced off the back of its sustainable energy policies.
9 Flesh by David Szalay is the best Booker-winner in years – gripping and timely, it is about the lifelong effects of sexual abuse on men, a topic that should be discussed much more widely.
10 MR James’s short stories – these aren’t new, of course, but they are perfect for this time of year and as fresh and shiver-inducing as ever they were. Treat yourself to them, and to some of the BBC adaptations (but not Lost Hearts, I can’t watch it – this one is, quite literally, too haunting for me).
11 Anatomy of a Cancellation – a wonderful podcast documentary by the BBC, using the Rashomon effect (multiple, conflicting perspectives), which is perfect. Thoughtfully presented by culture editor Katie Razzall, it’s a story where your thinking changes as you hear from every new person.
12 Brazil has moved forward on indigenous land demarcation, and the Peruvian Amazon has designated 283,000 hectares to be protected.
John Lithgow as Roald Dahl in Giant
13 Brilliant theatre: Rhinoceros at London’s Almeida, Giant and The Years getting their West End transfers. The UK is still a cultural powerhouse; incredible work is happening here.
14 A real flowering of independent games such as Blue Prince (developed by Dogubomb and published by Raw Fury), Strange Antiquities (developed by Bad Viking and published by Iceberg Interactive) and Chants of Sennaar (developed by Rundisc and published by Focus Entertainment) – you will have a great time with any of these over the holiday.
15 There’s a chance that the shingles vaccine prevents dementia, according to a study by Oxford University. I went to get my vaccine as soon as I read this. And even if it doesn’t, it definitely prevents shingles.
16 There is No Antimemetics Division, by British author and programmer qntm, is some of the best science fiction I’ve read in years. Exciting and scary in equal measure, brimful of ideas.
17 Learning the piano – I’ve taken this on this year, in the old-fashioned way, with a lovely teacher who I found via an ad in a local corner shop.
18 UTI antibiotics are really good now, and you can get them from a pharmacy without having to see a GP. I don’t need to give a lot of info about how I know this, and I expect you don’t want many details. But they’re really good – I started feeling noticeably better within an hour.
19 Notre Dame cathedral is resurrected.
20 Young people are getting into vinyl and Polaroid cameras, and creating “personal curriculums” to stave off brain rot – I think the kids might be more OK than we realise. The good news is that for teenagers anything their parents were into is so lame, and now we have to realise how stupid we look staring at our phones.
21 Polio has been eradicated in all but two countries in the world.
22 In a way, isn’t it a relief that the golden age of TV is over for now? That thing when 10 amazing new TV shows were coming out every week has changed, now all the tech money has gone to AI. A chance to catch up on some of the excellent work of the past 15 years.
23 I think it’s probably great that weight-loss clubs are going out of style because of GLP-1 inhibitors. Whatever they do or don’t do, I think the era of believing that fat people (like me) just have a willpower or emotional problem is over.
24 There wasn’t a pandemic. Every year this is true is worth celebrating.
25 Important personal news: the other day a woman in her mid-20s walked past me on the street and then walked back and said, “I’m sorry but I just have to tell you that you have an amazing ass.” Well, there you go. Truth is beauty, beauty is truth, that is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know. Have a good end to the year.
Naomi Alderman’s new book, Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today, is published by Penguin
Photographs by Johan Persson; Ben Birchall/PA Wire