Tag: Books

Reading in 2024

January 1st, 2025
Last year was difficult in a lot of ways. My reading life was not one of them. 2024 was a deeply satisfying year in books for me, and this brings me great joy, especially compared with 2023. At several points in 2024, I thought Wow, I like everything I’m reading! No slumps, no slogs. Just a bunch of fine novels, memoirs, and biographies that added richness to my life. I read 65 books in 2024, and I enjoyed almost all of them.

Here’s what I read in 2024, in chronological order:
- Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
- Wellness, Nathan Hill ♥️
- This Is How It Always Is, Laurie Frankel
- It. Goes. So. Fast. The Year of No Do-Overs, Mary Louise Kelly
- Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results, Shane Parrish
- How to Say Babylon, Safiya Sinclair ♥️
- The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak
- Draw Your Day: An Inspiring Guide to Keeping a Sketch Journal, Samantha Dion Baker
- My Cousin Rachel, Daphne duMaurier ♥️
- Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
- The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran ♥️
- Love + Work: How to Find What You Love, Love What You Do, and Do It for the Rest of Your Life, Marcus Buckingham
- Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward
- Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, Chip Conley
- The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel
- CXOXO: Building a Support Team Your Customers Will Love, Mercer Smith
- Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, Lisa See
- Mozart: The Reign of Love, Jan Swafford
- The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah
- The Trees, Percival Everett ♥️
- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, William B. Irvine ♥️
- King: A Life, Jonathan Eig ♥️
- Kaikeyi, Vaishnavi Patel
- How High We Go in the Dark, Sequoia Nagamatsu
- All the Sinners Bleed, S.A. Cosby
- Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, Cal Newport
- Thistlefoot, GennaRose Nethercott
- State of Wonder, Ann Patchett ♥️
- The Garden of Eden, Ernest Hemingway ♥️
- Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott ♥️
- The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage, Brené Brown
- Long Island, Colm Tóibín
- Jamaica Inn, Daphne duMaurier
- The House of Eve, Sadeqa Johnson
- All Fours, Miranda July
- The Little Paris Bookshop, Nina George
- Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry ♥️
- Why Birds Sing: A Novel, Nina Berkhout
- Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See, Bianca Bosker ♥️
- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Deesha Philyaw ♥️
- The Bee Sting, Paul Murray
- Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies, Caitlin Doughty
- Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha, Tara Brach
- Blackbird House, Alice Hoffman
- Swamplandia!, Karen Russell ♥️
- The Collected Regrets of Clover, Mikki Brammer
- The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy
- Take What You Need, Idra Novey
- Catalina, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Last Night in Montreal, Emily St. John Mandel
- Dare To Lead, Brené Brown
- Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar
- Bunny, Mona Awad
- Intermezzo, Sally Rooney ♥️
- Anatomy of a Disappearance, Hisham Matar
- East of Eden, John Steinbeck ♥️
- Interior Chinatown, Charles Yu ♥️
- The Women, Kristin Hannah ♥️
- Be Ready When the Luck Happens, Ina Garten
- Splinters, Leslie Jamison
- Blue Sisters, Coco Mellors
- The Frozen River, Ariel Lawhon
- The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami
Happy New Year! Here’s hoping 2025 is as good as 2024 for reading 🥂.
Purr factory

November 9th, 2024

I woke after sunrise today for the first time in a week. Through my closed eyes, I sensed the glow of light when I stirred. Usually it is pitch dark when I wake. I saw an abrupt brightening, and when I opened my eyes to see what caused it, I heard the thunk of our cat jumping to the wood floor from the window sill, and I saw the curtain drift shut, and I watched a cat tail swish toward the bed.

I closed my eyes again and lay on my back under our comforter. A moment later, I heard the soft pouf of Tootsie jumping up on the foot of the bed. Through the sheets, blanket, and comforter, I felt the weight of her on my shins, my knees, my thighs, my stomach, as her fuzzy paws walked up my body before she arrived on my chest and lay down. She rubbed her furry face agains my chin and began to purr. I felt her rumble in my chest, and her contentedness seeped into me.

I had planned to get up and brush my teeth, but instead I lay in bed, the morning light shining softly through white curtains, the warm cocoon of our bed, and a purring cat on my heart. I pop out of bed every day, in the dark, as soon as my alarm goes off. Today I stayed put to pet a purring kitty and soak up her goodness.

Daily writing prompt
What is good about having a pet?
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Satisfied reader

November 4th, 2024

I am having a spectacular reading year, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Sally Rooney released a new novel in September. I checked my library every week after its release to see if they had a copy yet. When it finally showed up in my Libby app, the wait list was already eight weeks long. After two weeks, I didn’t want to wait anymore, so I made the rare decision to buy the book. I reserve fiction purchases for books my library doesn’t own, but I also sometimes buy novels I know I will love and will likely read again.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney fell in the latter category. I recognized the second chapter as a short story she published this year in The New Yorker and that I heard on their Writers Voice podcast, which is where I learned she would have a new novel out this year. I listened to the story on a morning walk on our Fourth of July trip to Missouri to see Brian’s cousins. I remember exactly where I was when I heard it: the steep hill next to the condo’s pool, the fresh cement sidewalk white in the sun, another steep hill down to the Lake of the Ozarks. “Opening Theory” is a story with characters I was instantly captivated by. I wanted to spend more time with them: a ton was unsaid in the story, and I wanted to go deeper with Ivan and Margaret.

I finished Intermezzo in four or five glorious days of reading, and I finished with a smile on my face and the deep satisfaction of having just read something that rings all my bells. Rooney builds the characters’ layers slowly, or maybe it’s more accurate to say she unpeeled them like onions. Either way, she created complex characters who I understood and had compassion for by the end of the book. I love her for it. My week was happy last week because I got to read this book.

And this was just one book of many greats this year! Another joy is Karen Russell, who didn’t publish a new novel in 2024, but who Louise Erdrich read a story from on The New Yorker‘s Fiction podcast. I enjoyed the reading and Erdrich’s delight and respect for the story. She appreciated Russell unabashedly, and I remembered that “The Ghost Birds,” one of my favorite short stories I’ve ever read, is by Karen Russell. I loved her collection of short stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, and particularly the title story, which is sweet and funny and also a little ghastly. Russell is quirky and fresh, and she sets scenes that are memorable. I’d never read Swamplandia!, so I picked it up after I heard Erdrich read her, and I do not regret it.

Speaking of quirky and memorable, Miranda July had a new book out this year, which I also loved. As did Lauren Groff, with her The Vaster Wilds, which is unlike any book I’ve read, and was phenomenal. I plan to slowly read everything Lauren Groff has ever written.

And I revisited favorites this year, like Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel and Jamaica Inn, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, Hemingway’s Garden of Eden, and Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder. I read some thought-provoking nonfiction, like Safiya Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon about growing up as a Rasta girl in Jamaica, William Irvin’s Guide to the Good Life about the art of stoic joy, Jonathan Eig’s MLK, Jr. biography King: A Life, and Bianca Bosker’s Get the Picture which made me appreciate art even more, and helped me learn how to connect with it, and made me want more art in my life.

I bought a new e-reader this year. I read outside in the Blue Ridge mountains on quiet summer mornings. I read a couple of books in actual book form.

I hit some reading doldrums in 2023, and it bummed me out. I didn’t end up reading as much as I’d have liked, or as much good stuff. This year is so much better. I don’t know what made the difference, but whatever it is, I want to keep doing it. Maybe it’s because I started 2024 with something fresh and excellent: Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory. This was a gift from our son, and I loved every page. With 2025 coming up soon, I’ll try to find just the right book to set the tone for the year.
New ereader

June 13th, 2024

I’ve been having trouble with my kobo over the past few months. It’d freeze up mid-novel, and I’d have to go through a whole 15 minute process of jabbing at the screen, sighing and being dramatic about my book not working, angrily holding the button for what seemed like forever to get it to turn off, then boot it back up again. Or the battery would go from 75% to 0% in a matter of minutes. It worked great when it worked, but the times it didn’t work got to be frustrating enough that I started looking into replacing it.

I’ve had two or three nooks from Barnes & Noble, but borrowing ebooks from the library was a giant pain, which is why I moved to the kobo. I could borrow books using the Libby app on my phone, then sync my kobo, and voila, the book was on my device. I loved this! It was the best! Until the kobo started breaking down and disrupting my reading. I hated that. That was the worst.

This time around I didn’t want to just buy another low-tech kobo and have the same problems, so I decided to try something different. Library borrowing is my top priority for an ereader. E-ink, self-lit, and lightweight are second, third, and fourth priorities. A friend told me about Boox, which makes e-ink Android tablets. With something like this, I’d be able to add the Libby library app directly to my device and read from there. I’d also be able to add the kobo and nook apps, which would give me access to the scores of books I bought on both of those services, all in one place. I own copies of most of my favorite books through the nook, but I can’t access them from my kobo because I bought them from Barnes & Noble.

So I splurged and bought a Boox Page, and the UPS guy delivered it yesterday. It’s going to take some getting used to. I’m in the middle of re-reading Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, so I set up my Libby account and am reading from inside the app, which has a different look from what I’m used to on my kobo. I managed to make the font big, which is the most important first step. The next step was figuring out how to increase the spacing to give a little breathing room between lines. I can’t figure out how to increase the margins, which is annoying — I don’t like the words running up against the edges of the screen — and I don’t like the page turning action that happens. I don’t need it to simulate a page turning, I just want to go to the next page, but I can’t figure out how to turn that off.

I’m eager to keep exploring and get everything set up the way I like. I’m particularly excited to get back into my nook purchases. I have copies of my favorite Hemingway in there, and I’ve been wanting to reread A Moveable Feast, which my library doesn’t have and I didn’t want to have to buy again. I was pleased that the Page came with a case, as well, so I don’t have to immediately go out and buy one. Boox devices seem to not be very common, though, and I really loved my kobo case which I could convert into a stand to prop up my book on the table to read while I eat. I’m not sure I’ll be able to find something similar for the Page, so that’s a problem I’ll need to solve.

Daily writing prompt
What notable things happened today?
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Before I pick up my phone

February 10th, 2024

In January, I set a timer for 10 minutes and drew what I wanted to do more of and less of in 2024. It was easy to fill out the More column. I’ve always got more I want to do and learn and experience: draw, paint, listen to music, walk, hike, start a travel journal. The Less column was trickier. But one thing I drew in that column was my hand holding my phone and scrolling Instagram.

Recently, while scrolling Instagram, I saw one of those silly little list memes: 20 tiny habits to change your life (or something like that). The list included things like make your bed, step outside at daybreak, and at the end of one day, write a 3-3-3 for the next day: one big goal you’ll spend 3 hours on, 3 small tasks, and 3 maintenance items.

The list had a bunch of fun and inspiring things on it, along with everyday things like drink water before a meal. One habit-to-build that jumped out to me was this: before I pick up my phone to scroll something, read a passage from philosophy or a religious text. I liked the sound of this a lot. At first I thought, I’m sure poetry or any other type of reading could be substituted here, but I’ve never read philosophy, and I am interested in the teachings of different religions, so I’d learn something new if I followed the idea as written.

I don’t really know where to start with either of those things, philosophy or religious texts (that I’d be interested in — Buddhism comes to mind), but I wanted to try this switch, from scrolling to reading a passage, so I looked to our shelves and found a couple of books I can revisit for now: The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, and the Tao Te Ching. I’ve also got a couple of poetry books — Mary Oliver’s A Thousand Mornings, and Basho’s On Love and Barley.

I’ve started working on this new habit this week with The Prophet, which I haven’t looked at in probably 20 years. When I remember, as I reach for my phone, I pick up The Prophet instead. Everything about the experience is lovely. I feel a peace and beauty when I read it that’s soothing. I remember this same peaceful feeling from the other books on my shelf as well.

Our bookshelves are pretty bare, though, since I read mostly fiction and mostly on an e-reader. Once I’m through with these four books, I’ll need to find others.
Reading in 2023

December 31st, 2023
I just finished the final book I’ll finish in 2023: Someone Who Will Love You In All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg. It’s a collection of quirky short stories that are funny and philosophical and weird, and that are all about love in one form or another, including the love a dog Rufus has for his ManMonster, told from the point of view of Rufus. Our son gave me this book as a Christmas gift, and told me it is one of his favorite books of all time. Of course this made me want to read it, every word. I laughed, I cried. It was the perfect book to end the year with.

This book took my reading year out with a bang. I’m grateful for that, because it wasn’t a great reading year for me compared to other years. I started but didn’t finish several books in 2023 because they just didn’t do it for me. I’m not going to suffer through crap I don’t want to read, not any more. I’m almost 50, I don’t have time for that.

I remember blogging at least twice this year about being in a reading slump, and my book count this year was 49 on a goal of 60. I set a goal of 60 because 60 was fewer than what I read in 2022 because why even set a reading goal, that’s dumb when I read for pleasure, and I don’t want to pressure my reading life, but Goodreads has a reading challenge thingy, and I do challenges, and I figured why not, 60 is easy. I read 60 in 2019, 65 in 2020, 70 in 2021, and I don’t know how many in 2022 because I forgot to publish a “Reading in 2022” post and Goodreads doesn’t easily give up that stat now that we’re in the end of 2023 (but I counted manually because now I want to know, and the count in 2022 was 64). So 60 is the minimum number of books I’ve read in a year since I started paying attention to that.

Well, now that minimum has dropped to 49. I don’t know how to deal with this for setting a goal for 2024. I’ll figure that out tomorrow. But for this year, for 2023, I read 49 all the way through to the end. Only a couple of them were terrible, but I finished them anyway because either I paid for them or they were short. The rest were pretty good, and a few were excellent. Things really turned around in October when I got my hands on Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, and then Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and then Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds. I wasn’t in a slump anymore when those came out.

Looking at my list, I have no recollection of some of the books; I am nostalgic for where I was and what I was doing when I read others. I am nostalgic for the early part of the year when I was preparing for my February trip to Istanbul. Seeing If We Were Villains takes me back to our summer beach vacation to the Outer Banks, where I turned the pages so fast I almost tore them. I remember really enjoying The Golem and the Jinni, and buying a copy of When God Was a Woman for one of my best friends, and sending it immediately after I finished the book.

Here’s what I read in 2023, in chronological order:
- The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak ♥️
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
- Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay ♥️
- Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay ♥️
- Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali
- Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
- Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
- I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson ♥️
- When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone
- The Magicians by Lev Grossman
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt ♥️
- Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
- Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z.Z. Packer
- The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker ♥️
- Weyward by Emilia Hart
- The London Séance Society by Sarah Penner
- The Measure by Nikki Erlick
- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
- Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb ♥️
- Still Life by Louise Penny
- The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron
- All the Names by José Saramago
- If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio ♥️
- Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff ♥️
- The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden ♥️
- Honor by Thrity Umrigar
- The Forgiven by Lawrence Osborne
- Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
- A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley ♥️
- The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
- Tom Lake by Ann Patchett ♥️
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin ♥️
- The Housekeepers by Alex Hay
- The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff ♥️
- The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna ♥️
- The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak ♥️
- The Memory Keeper of Kyiv by Erin Litteken ♥️
- The Alice Network by Kate Quinn ♥️
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
- North Woods by Daniel Mason
- The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder David Grann ♥️
- The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
- The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams ♥️
- Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg ♥️
Daily writing prompt
What makes you feel nostalgic?
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