Ask George - December 2024

Which books did I like this year? What was my favourite album? And what tickled my TV fancy?

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Welcome one and all to the final paid newsletter of the year,

Yes, this is the last VGIM Insider exclusive missive for 2024 on the basis that I don’t think anybody wants to be disturbed during the middle of Christmas with games industry insight.

So instead of doing a typical Ask George or Debrief post, I’m instead using this newsletter to both i) do my personal riff on end of year awards in honour of yesterday’s The Game Awards extravaganza and ii) answer a reader question about what culture I enjoyed this year by presenting to you the catchily titled My favourite cultural stuff over the past 12 months awards. Or the MFCSOTPTMAs, for acronym fans out there.

Before I reveal the winners, a quick outline on the rules of engagement:

• First up, everything on this list is something that I enjoyed this year for the first time. This means that not everything I give an award to actually came out in 2024, so please bear with me there.

• I will be picking one thing from each of the following categories - favourite work of fiction, non-fiction, favourite film, favourite TV show, favourite album and favourite game - to summarise.

• And as a reminder, you can find out about all the best games from 2024 in next week’s free VGIM when I’ll be doing the annual reader round up as per usual.

So without further ado, the winners of George’s “Stuff I liked in 2024” awards are:

Favourite fiction book - The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)

Favourite non-fiction book - Meet Me in the Bathroom by Lizzy Goodman (2017)

Favourite Film - Sing Sing (2023)

Favourite Album - Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee (2024)

Favourite TV Show - Industry (2020-2024)

Favourite Game - Fallout: New Vegas (2010)

A hearty congratulations to all the winners. But why did each of these things emerge victorious? Paid subs can read on below…