Reading 2018

2018 Reading List

Read more in 2018 due to joining a book club and starting a book club. Most memorable books were Little Fires Everywhere, Edgar and Lucy, and Sing Unburied Sing. Most annoying book was Hillbilly Elegy. My goal is to read 36 books for 2019. My 2019 list is heavy on non-fiction and those tend to take me longer.  Focus is on more women and black writers.

Fiction

• Little Fires Everywhere  |  Celeste Ng
• Everything I Never Told You  |  Celeste Ng
• A Man Called Ove  |  Fredrick Backman
• The House Of Broken Angels**  |  Luis Alberto Urrea 
• The Hate You Give  |  Angie Thomas
• Their Eyes Were Watching God  |  Zora Neale Hurston
• Sing, Unburied, Sing  |  Jesmyn Ward
• Edgar and Lucy  |  Victor Lodato
• Imagine Me Gone  |  Stephan McCauley
• My Ex Life  |  Adam Haslett

Non-Fiction / Memoir

• Hillbilly Ellegy  |  J.D. Vance
• Holidays on Ice*  |  David Sedaris
• America Like Me**  |  America Ferrara
• Sonata  |  Andrea Avery
• We Should All Be Feminists*  |  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 
• Bad Feminist*  |  Roxane Gay
• Don't Call Me Princess  |  Peggy Orenstein
• Good & Mad***  |  Rebecca Traister

* A re-read

** Did not finish

*** In Progress

Reading

So...I've been pretty sick since the day after Christmas. It isn't exactly how I thought I'd be spending the break. The plan was to catch up on a bunch of social media work (research, writing) for my new job and spend some quality time with the kid. Our quality time has consisted mainly of napping together between trips to the bathroom.

Today, on day four, I realized maybe I should just surrender -- stop trying to work or clean or read between naps. I'm not doing any of them very well right now. I'm embracing reading because my nightstand bends from the backlog and maybe reading will make me happier. That's what the science is saying.

Last night I finally read Ross Gay's, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which I blogged about in November but just got around to. I don't usually read an entire collection of poems all at once, but this was an exception. It is an exciting book, lyrical and lush, full of sorrow and humor. Besides the exceptional title poem, "Feet" was a standout, as was "Spoon", written for a murdered friend. Gay weaves his appreciation and knowledge of gardening throughout and the language is so satisfying, relateable, yet utterly new. I can't remember enjoying a book of poetry this much in a very long time. I shed a few tears, which sounds a little over-the-top, but the themes were treated so beautifully. (I can't mention Gay without noting his essay, Some Thoughts On Mercy.)

And this brings me to where I am now. Smack dab in the middle of Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me. I didn't purposely choose this book to compliment Gay's, but it does. I devoured the first half this morning and will finish the rest tonight before going to bed. I would have finished it all at once, but the kid was interrupting and the book warrants complete concentration. This hit me squarely.

"The Dream thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions, on privileging immediate answers. The Dream is the enemy of all art, courageous thinking, and honest writing."

The book is brilliant, difficult, sad, and unnerving and absolutely required, as Toni Morrison said. When I heard the Tamir Rice ruling last night I just sunk. Again. Again. Again.

I don't know if I can read my way out.