30 before 30 :: the books

I’ve always loved reading but, like many others, college reading and assignments forced me to stop reading for fun. I rediscovered reading in the latter part of my 20s, ironically, when I was working full-time and in grad school full-time. My job required too much of me, and grad school on top of that was depleting my humanness. I ached for time to myself, not having to worry about how 18-year-olds’ choices affected my sleep or how APA citations impacted my grades. 

I started reading again, sometimes waking up at 5:30am to get an hour in before I had to start on that paper or respond to that duty call. It was time just for me, before the rest of the world woke up and required something of me. I have vivid memories of sitting on my couch in my apartment on the 9th floor of Ondine Residence Hall, reading a book and watching the sun rise out my window.

Reading doesn’t feel like fun anymore, like just a hobby or a pastime. Reading has saved me from nights of loneliness, especially in this last year of the pandemic. It’s helped me witness lives outside of my own, pushing me to acknowledge my privilege and power and the shitty systems in our world. And every book, in some way, has stretched me to learn new things about myself. Books are crucial to my life, a requirement that allows me to show up better in the world. It sounds dramatic, but dang — it’s true. Just like I need a cup of coffee in the morning, I’m a better human when I make time to read.

The circumstances of my 20s were the perfect conditions for reading as much as I did: I was single for most of this decade and lived alone for most of it, too. I leaned into my introverted side and preferred Friday nights curled up on my couch with a book. I became a morning person and learned to wake up a few hours before work, with nothing to do except what I chose.

My reading habits will change in this next decade, I’m sure of it. I hope that one day, I have a partner whom I live with, who goads me to put down my book to watch his favorite movie for the fifth time or who whisks me off the couch on a Friday night. I hope that one day, I will have children running around my house who will steal away my morning peace, but give me the opportunity to reread the Junie B. Jones series.

Maybe this next decade will allow room for all of it. The quiet and the chaos, the solitude and the family, the time to read squeezed alongside the rest of life’s big, messy moments. I’ll hold onto both possibilities: grateful for the books I’ve read so far, hopeful that there will be many, many more. 

And so: here are the best books I’ve read in the last decade. Like choosing songs, narrowing these down was hard. If I’ve counted correctly, I’ve read over 330 books since 2011. I only know that fact because I’ve kept track of every book I’ve ever read in a Google Spreadsheet, which made it easy to remember and also reminded me that I’m a little bonkers.

Memoir:

1. Tiny Beautiful Things x Cheryl Strayed

2. Untamed x Glennon Doyle

3. Between the World and Me x Ta-Nehisi Coates

4. Gift from the Sea x Anne Morrow Lindbergh

5. When Breath Becomes Air x Paul Kalinithi

6. The Bright Hour x Nina Riggs

7. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone x Lori Gottlieb

8. How We Fight for Our Lives x Saeed Jones

9. On Writing x Stephen King

Nonfiction:

1. Love Wins x Rob Bell

2. Bird by Bird x Anne Lamott

3. The Crossroads of Should and Must x Elle Luna

4. Attached x Amir Levine & Rachel Miller

5. Daring Greatly x Brené Brown

6. The Road Back to You x Ian Cron & Suzanne Stabile

7. Missoula x Jon Krakauer

8. Eaarth x Bill McKibben

9. Bad Feminist x Roxane Gay

Fiction:

1. The Poisonwood Bible x Barbara Kingsolver

2. Americanah x Chimamanda Adichie

3. The Round House x Louise Erdrich

4. All the Light We Cannot See x Anthony Doerr

5. Gilead x Marilynne Robinson

6. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine x Gail Honeyman

7. Where the Crawdads Sing x Delia Owens

8. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue x V.E. Schwab

Poetry:

1. Devotions x Mary Oliver

2. Milk and Honey x Rupi Kaur

3. Citizen x Claudia Rankine

4. Good Bones x Maggie Smith

five at a time.

I got a book of poetry by Maggie Smith in the mail yesterday. I ordered it early in this pandemic, knowing it was an unnecessary purchase for my wallet but an important one for my heart. It arrived last week but I’m limiting trips to my PO box, located right in the middle of campus, probably the busiest spot these days. I tore off the packaging and started reading, searching the Table of Contents for the poem for which the book is named (Good Bones). I stopped myself after four more poems, put a bookmark between the pages, and set it on my end table, on top of another half-read book.

“Huh,” I thought. “Isn’t that something. Two books at once!” 

I looked around my apartment and saw another book on my couch. Oh, I thought, I guess I was reading that this weekend, too. I looked around — my bedside table, my desk, my bathroom — and I had not one or two or three in-progress books lying around, but five. Five! I have never read more than two books at one time, and even two-at-a-time is a rarity. It was a bit disconcerting that, without realizing it, I’d become a five-books-at-once person. At least for now.

Seeing these books scattered around my home caused me to wonder: What other parts of me have changed ever-so-slightly during these times?

I speak of “change” loosely. I will not buy into the nonsense that we should use this time of quarantine to become Better Versions of ourselves, though it’s tempting. To use this time to get healthy and fit, to start a side hustle, to deep-clean the closets in our houses and maybe the garage rafters while we’re at it, to teach ourselves Portuguese and get our kids to learn it, too. The pressure, accompanied by the feelings or language of “should,” that every moment should be spent becoming the Best Version of ourselves? That is harmful shit that comes from our productivity-obsessed, white supremacist, capitalist society. We do not have to do anything other than what makes us feel a little bit more okay. That’s it.

(And, side note: If any of that feels good to you during this time, then do it! But only if it’s truly how you want to spend your time. Deep-cleaning and working out and vigorous washing of the dishes have been balms for me, areas of my life that I can control in the midst of the unknown. But that was true before this time, too.)

Because things are different now. Time feels different and routines are different and how we show up in our day-to-day — with our work and our families and ourselves — is wildly different. We’ve been asked to adapt, to pivot, to change our lives. This pandemic was like: “Here is a thing that you did not ask for and don’t know how to handle but, like it or not, it is all yours to figure out! Good luck and godspeed!” And that fact is changing us; in small ways, like my book-reading habits, and in bigger ways, like the effects of extended isolation and extended time with our partners/children/housemates and a shifted work/life rhythm. 

For myself, quarantine has brought a lot of alone time. I’m single, I don’t have kids, I live alone. I’m used to alone time, but this is some unprecedented alone time. So in trying to figure out what to do with my unstructured solitude — days and hours of the quiet, my connection to other humans through a screen that sometimes hurts my eyes — I’ve been thinking about who I am. This time is providing an opportunity to question how and why I do things — to come face-to-face with myself in a different way.

Why do I only read one book at a time? Why am I still meal-prepping the same salad for lunch every day even though I have plenty of time to cook and eat something different? Who am I when I haven’t been a human in the way I’ve been one for the last 29 years?

I’m learning I can read more than one book at a time, switching easily between a thriller and poetry. That my internal motivation for leaving my bed or couch or desk is dangerously low when it comes to working out. But, for writing in the mornings, my motivation is a bit higher. It’s surprisingly high for going into the office (AKA my second bedroom), too. I’m learning that I prep meals not because I don’t have the time but because I do not like to cook! I still don’t take my vitamins or regularly floss, despite this extra time. I still do make my bed every morning. I don’t talk to myself as much as I thought I would, though I’m learning how to speak up in different ways -- to admit when things are not okay, even when it feels like I should just get over it. 

I’m learning that my natural state of thinking is in scarcity mode, and I’m learning (trying to learn) how to adjust that. I’m gentler with myself in some ways and have developed harder edges in others. I’m learning (trying to learn) how not to stare at myself during every Zoom call. To instead close my eyes a minute before each meeting starts to pretend I’m really with the person on the other side of the screen. I’m learning this experience is not a competition for who has it worse, who is more tired, who is more stressed or overworked. I’m allowing myself to be sad and scared and lonely, even though there’s guilt that creeps in that things could be much harder for me. And I’m learning to forgive myself for wondering if I should be trying to change for the better, even though I don’t buy into that narrative.

I am learning the very complicated ways I am a human during this time.

In moments of “shoulding” on myself, and in moments of restlessness or fear or scarcity, I turn to the Instagram posts I’ve saved (a lot) and the articles I’ve bookmarked (several) that say to the collective Us: None of this is normal. It’s okay to react to social distancing however you react. Cry. Laugh. Savor it. Resent it. There is not a “right” or “wrong” way to do what we’re being asked to do. There is not a “right” or “wrong” way to cope with what we’re being asked to cope with. Do not feel pressure to use this time to become A Better Version of You. But you can if you want to, I guess. It is okay to change and be changed by what is happening. Breathe. In and out, in and out. Repeat.

This is hard for us all, in ways we will not know until we talk to each other, ask each other, “How are you, really?” This is changing us, in ways we will not know until we talk to each other, ask each other, “What’s different now?”

In big ways and in small ways, we are changing. We are changed. We may not know how changed until we see five half-read books piled up around our apartment, and think, “Huh, I guess I read multiple books at a time now.” We may not know how changed until we see someone face-to-face again, finally, and burst into tears. We may not know how changed until we head back into our offices and our changed lives and think, “This is not the same. This will never be the same.”

Maybe you have your own five-books-at-a-time version of change. Maybe everything is the same, or nothing is the same, or you don’t give a shit about how things have changed. All of it is okay. Breathe. In and out, in and out. Repeat.

Tonight, I’ll pick up Good Bones and read some poems. Then maybe I’ll read a bit of Running the Rift, a borrowed book from a former professor-turned-friend-turned colleague. And then, if I’m feeling really wild, I might end the night with a few chapters from another, different book! Just because. And to remind myself that though there are bigger, scarier changes — many are still to come — some are surprising, lighthearted, welcomed.

Huh. Isn’t that something.

heart-filling times.

A handful of weeks ago, in the midst of some heart turmoil times, I thought of an essay in “Tiny Beautiful Things.” I specifically thought of one particular line that I needed to read to have the courage to carry on through said heart turmoil times; the words I believed would grant me permission to do the thing I had to do.

When I went to pluck my copy off the shelf to locate these words, it was gone! Not totally surprising, since I think I have owned at least six copies of this book and have gleefully given each one of them away. So I did the thing anyway and survived without the line and ordered a new copy for myself.

And now I’ve been rereading. I haven’t read this book cover to cover since I was 22 and unemployed and sleeping in the trundle bed I lugged across the country to Portland. I am going slow, underlining words and folding in corners of pages and sitting for awhile with the ‘Yours, Sugar’ at the end of every piece.

The last few weeks, I’ve been sitting in some heart-filling times — a snap-of-the-fingers shift from the turmoil, just like that. Karaoke singing and nature walks and bookstore adventuring, big belly laughs and big questions and big conversations that get right to the good stuff. In one essay, Sugar writes, “The whole deal about loving truly and for real and with all you’ve got has everything to do with letting those we love see what made us.”

These heart-filling times have only been so because they’ve been filled with some of my heart-people, in Fargo and Minnesota and across the country: the ones who see me, all of me, when I’m at my fullest and when I’m at my turmoiliest. And who let me sit with them, too.

This wasn’t the line I was looking for when I started, but it was the reminder I needed all along.

2017 in books.

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:

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

2017's Top Three:

1. The Bright Hour, Nina Riggs
2. Upstream, Mary Oliver
3. 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.

this is a public service announcement.

This is a Public Service Announcement.

Stop scoffing at how the subtitle of this book includes both "advice" and "love" and is written by someone called Sugar. Forget everything you think you know about advice columns. Tuck away your feelings about how silly they are. Set fire to the idea that only desperate people write in to them. Whether you are a 24-year-old living far away from home or a 62-year-old who has never left home, there is some part of your life that needs both advice and love. From Sugar. Accept that no matter how finely stitched or tightly wound or perfectly scheduled your life is, there is always room for more love.

Google Map your local library or used bookstore or not-used bookstore. Go there. If you can't go right now, put a Post-It in your paper planner or an appointment in your iCal so you can go as soon as you have an hour of freedom from your job, your other job, your responsibilities, or your other responsibilities. Get it in your hands. (Don’t use an e-reader.)

If it's not there, put it on hold. Request that another copy be ordered for you and shipped to the store, or better yet, to your front door. Don’t wait and return in a week or two or when you know you'll have more time to read. You won't go back, because you'll come up with all sorts of excuses as to why you don't have enough time right now. Right now will turn into this summer will turn into this year will turn into this life. There is never enough time in life to read things that aren't gross bills reminding you of the capitalist patriarchy, or the airline credit card offers that show up in your mailbox every Monday, or the textbooks you're supposed to want to read because their titles match your future degree. Get it now and find the time later. Make a habit of reading one chapter before bed or getting up one hour early to sit in your lime green chair with the next chapter. 

When you have the book in your hands, flip through the pages. Read what Sugar says inside the front cover. Look at the empty margins, the crisp corners, and the meager 26 letters filling 353 pages with thousands of words and maybe just as many revelations for your life. Now move the book into one hand and grab a pen with the other. A highlighter works too. Whisper a little apology to the book; because by the time you get to this line on page 15 -- “The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love” -- you will already have covered it with ink and tears. You will have smudged it with your greasy face oils as you buried your face deep into that sentence and breathed in its truth. 

Dog-ear the top corners so you can use that quote on page 130 for an Instagram caption, or so you can easily find 'The Ghost Ship That Didn’t Carry Us’ to read out loud to your roommate one rainy night, or so you can remind yourself of whatever you need to be reminded of next week or next year. The questions you need to ask yourself will come hurtling through these pages straight into your gut. They will lead you to answers that have been there all along, but have been in hiding or hibernation because they will bring a devastating but maybe-much-needed hell that may or may not turn into a definitely-much-needed heaven. Turn to page 155 to be reminded that "every last one of us can do better than give up." Wherever this book brings you to in your life, it will be okay.

Put it on a shelf, or better yet, near your bed. Pull it down when you are full of uninhibited joy and naïve optimism, and pick it up when you are completely drained of those things. Especially then. Read your favorite column, the one that speaks to you and resonates with you and makes the world seem a bit brighter. Read it again. Read it one more time, out loud to yourself. Tell your friends about it. Make them sit criss-cross-applesauce on the floor with you or on the other side of the FaceTime screen with you as you say the salutation ("Dear Sugar") and until you say the closing ("Yours, Sugar"). They will listen to Sugar's words. They will listen to yours.

If you find that this book was not for you, give it to someone who might make it theirs. Let it feed them. If you find that this book was perfect and made for you, still give it to someone so they can make it theirs too. There is enough for everyone.

Eventually, you will find another book. Get a title from a friend, mentor, or stranger on the bus. Ask them about one that has moved them, rattled them, taken care of them in a way that only books can. Remember the title. Write it down. Thank them for it. There is nothing stronger and more intimate than recommending a title to someone, and having them read it.

Then, if they ask for a recommendation in return, share this -- or your very own -- Public Service Announcement for your favorite tiny, beautiful book.