I set out to read 52 books in 52 weeks this year. As someone who works full-time and goes to school mostly full-time and also appreciates a good, long Netflix binge, I wasn't sure if it could happen. But last night, I curled into a blanket and stayed awake until 12:30 in the morning to finish my last book of the year, a murder mystery by Gillian Flynn. So I did it. That was number 52.

I have a lot of reflections on this year of reading. About discipline, and falling into habits, and creating new ones, and redefining and relearning solitude, and what it means to spend time. And I have a lot of reflections on this list of books, too. I realized that I read a lot of books about death (The Year of Magical Thinking, When Breath Becomes Air, The Bright Hour); in some ways, that seemed fitting for 2017. I finally dug into collections of poetry (Citizen, Salt, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude) that, in other ways, restored my faith in 2017. I realized that I can read mysteries and thrillers, but still can't watch horror movies. I unashamedly read self-help books and young adult novels and memoir, and read even more of some of my favorite authors (Rob Bell, Anne Lamott, Roxane Gay), their books lining my shelves. And maybe most importantly, I realized that it doesn't matter what you like to read -- non-fiction or sci-fi or historical biographies -- as long as you read. Or not read. What matters is that you spend your free hours doing something that is good to you; maybe that is reading 52 books, or hiking 52 hikes, or doing 52 of literally anything that makes you smile/light up/feel true to yourself. What matters is that you spend your time enjoying your life.

And I loved this year of reading. The hours sitting in my bed or on my couch or at my desk, in coffee shops and the library and in bookstores. The stories and feelings and voices that met me each time I opened a book, started a chapter, read through the acknowledgments and dedication. I've kept track of every book I've read in a spreadsheet since I was a 9th grader to remember these moments, these words and titles, but I wanted to put this year in books in a separate list here. To remember, and to maybe add a few new titles to your lists, too. They're listed in the order that I read them, and then I added my top three below.

2017 in Books:

The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalinithi
The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr
There Is No Good Card for This, Kelsey Crowe & Emily McDowell
Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn
Salt, Nayyirah Waheed
Citizen, Claudia Rankine
A Prayer Journal, Flannery O'Connor
Furiously Happy, Jenny Lawson
Scrappy Little Nobody, Anna Kendrick
The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides
Love Warrior, Glennon Doyle
How to Be Here, Rob Bell
Hallelujah Anyway, Anne Lamott
Shrill, Lindy West
The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence
The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer
The Odd Woman and the City, Vivian Gornick
The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, Christopher Germer
The Tao of Leadership, John Heider
The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
Why I Wake Early, Mary Oliver
You Are Therefore I Am, Satish Kumar
Difficult Women, Roxane Gay
Upstream, Mary Oliver
Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham
Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, Maria Semple
Hunger, Roxane Gay
What is the Bible?, Rob Bell
Sex Object, Jessica Valenti
The Dream of a Common Language, Adrienne Rich
Into the Water, Paula Hawkins
On Living, Kerry Egan
The Inner Voice of Love, Henri Nouwen
The Bright Hour, Nina Riggs
Dog Songs, Mary Oliver
The Princess Saves Herself in This One, Amanda Lovelace
The Sun and Her Flowers, Rupi Kaur
Everything, Everything, Nicola Yoon
Turtles All the Way Down, John Green
No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July
The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel
Make It Happen, Lara Casey
Braving the Wilderness, Brene Brown
Manual of the Warrior of the Light, Paulo Coelho
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, Samantha Irby
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, Ross Gay
The Child Finder, Rene Denfeld
Caribou, Charles Wright
Unbelievable, Katy Tur
Devotions, Mary Oliver
Dark Places, Gillian Flynn

2017's Top Three:

The Bright Hour, Nina Riggs
Upstream, Mary Oliver
When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalinithi

I'm not sure I'll read 52 books again in 2018. I have more classes to take and a thesis to write and maybe a new hobby to start or resolution to make. But I went to the library this morning to stock up again, picking up four books I might try to read while in Fargo over the next five days. It's unlikely, but I'm grateful that -- among other things -- this year of reading left me wanting to read more.

Why did people ask, "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing.
-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

I signed up for English 160 on a whim.

It looked interesting (it was), it was a night class (which meant more time to hang out in the Atrium, my college's social hotspot, during the day), and it counted for a required humanities credit (thanks, liberal arts).

On the first day, after passing out the syllabus and talking through the assignments and giving us a short break halfway through the three hours, Dr. Joan Kopperud showed us author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's now-famous TEDTalk, "The Danger of a Single Story." I had never met Dr. Kopperud before, and I still didn't know what to expect from this course, but after hearing Chimamanda speak the words, "When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise," I realized two things: one, that Monday nights from 6:00-9:00 pm were going to be a literature heaven-on-Earth, and two, that I needed to get to know this professor.

The class came and went each week. I would dash across town from my internship, dash across campus to Academy Hall, dash up to the third floor, books and dinner and highlighters in hand. I would sit in my desk (the same, awkward, left-handed one every week), listening to freshmen and seniors and Dr. Kopperud share thoughts on each book we read. We read fiction and nonfiction and poems and plays that were single stories from India, or Saudi Arabia, or England, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I questioned why I had decided not to become an English teacher; I wondered how I could live a life that wasn't surrounded by reading and sharing literature with others every day. I panicked that I hadn't chosen the right major; I poured through the course catalog and my senior year schedule, trying to squeeze any other English courses into my last two semesters (I didn't). And, I (eventually and timidly) asked Dr. Kopperud if she would have coffee with me outside of class. She, with all her energy and kindness and openness, agreed.

A class that started as a core curriculum requirement quickly became a space to confront the unknown in each chapter, ask questions about each story, and write not-totally-researchy papers about them. A professor that started as a name next to the most ideal class time quickly became a mentor, cheerleader, and permanent book-recommender. She also became the person who gifted me a hardly-used food processor before I moved across the country, who makes time in her schedule to grab coffee when I'm back home from across the country, and who ventured to my new home across the country with another of my college-year-and-still-now mentors. The whims -- the things you hardly think about, the things that require minimal brainpower at the time, like entering the Course Registration Number for English 160 as you register for the spring semester of your junior year -- can burrow deep into your heart and stick around to shape your own story.

During our coffee date this January, over Starbucks and swapping book titles, I mentioned how I wanted to join a book club in Portland, but felt a little overwhelmed by the idea. (Once a month? Sometimes it takes me two months to get through two short stories. Saturday mornings? I don't leave my room until at least 11:00 am. Through a Meetup group? Maybe I'm more of an introvert than I think I am...) Dr. Kopperud, with that same energy and kindness and openness as when I first asked her to coffee three years before, leaned in and smiled. She went on to tell me what she's been doing with her girlfriends for years: a One Book Book Club.

So tonight, I made a sign for my apartment door and threw some frozen pizzas in my oven as a group of women gathered around a pile of Americanahs in the middle of my living room floor. Some had read the book in its entirety in two days; some had yet to crack open the cover. We were from Arizona and Zimbabwe, rural and "urban" North Dakota. We were full-time employees and students and volunteers, part-time writers and dancers and yogis. We shared our own stories and learned more about each other's as we talked about this single story and all that it brought up -- race and gender and love and privilege. One book, one evening, and one club that (I hope) will shift and grow and share more books and more evenings and more stories; a One Book Book Club.

I still have each book I read during English 160. They sit ear-marked and underlined on my bookshelf, next to an ear-marked and underlined Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, reminding me of the danger of a single story (and how whims and 20-minuted TEDTalks and energetic, kind, and open professors can make your own story much more interesting and full circle-y). Now, every book that is a part of the Portland edition of One Book Book Club will, in some small way, be part of that semester -- and will be a part of my story too.

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2017 in books.

one book book club.