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

trunk dwelling.

I have taken to sitting on top of my car. I go there after I go for a walk, or when I’m talking on the phone, and sometimes just because I want to. I have a patio attached to my apartment, with two chairs, that would work for this purpose. There’s plenty of sittable grass around my building, too. But if the weather is kind, I’ll plop myself on the trunk of my car, just like this. I hop up and lean back at a 45-degree angle and look.

Up, at the trees, the clouds, the sky. I look ahead, and watch cute pups and their owners, or I follow the turkeys who — I swear to God — look at least one way before crossing the street. Or sometimes, I don’t look at all. I close my eyes and listen: to the trees swishing their leaves, or the whoosh of the cars as they drive past, or to the just-as-important but quieter wonderings of my heart. 

And I think. About everything important and nothing important. It’s kind of the opposite of meditating, where you’re supposed to let all thoughts out of your head and only focus on your breath. Instead, I focus on everything except my breath, welcoming every weird question and thought, seeing where it takes me. What kind of job will I have next? I wonder what Glennon Doyle is doing right now? Do I really believe that I can do hard things, like she says we can? Where are these seven police cars driving to so quickly on a Sunday morning? Where do turkeys sleep? How do turkeys sleep?

This new trunk-sitting habit of mine doesn’t make much sense. As previously mentioned, there are plenty of other, more sensible places for me to sit with my thoughts. I know that others think this new habit is weird, too, because sometimes, when my eyes are open, cars slow down and drivers look at me sitting on my trunk. Every once in a while, a pedestrian passes through the parking lot, notices me, and squints at me sitting on my trunk, too. 

But since the world doesn’t make much sense to me these days — both the big things (What did our president just say?, How many humans in the world haven’t had a hug since all this started?, etc.) and the smaller but still-important wonderings of my own life (What will I have for dinner?, What is it I plan to do next with my one wild and precious life?, etc.) — I thought, why does this have to make sense? And what does it even mean for something to make sense anyway? 

Maybe, instead, sitting on my trunk is what makes the most sense. The first time I sat here, I was on the phone. I didn’t want to keep walking, and I didn’t want to go inside yet, and I didn’t want to sit on the ground, so I perched on my car. And when the phone call was over, I just…stayed there. And it felt good, easy, natural. I plopped myself on top of my trunk again a few days later. And then again, and again.

The trunk of my car has become a bit of a buffer; it provides some quiet time before going back into my apartment, where my laundry needs folding or my plants need watering or my resume (which has been a Google Doc tab open for weeks) is taunting me to finally pay attention to it. The trunk of my car is my own scratched-up, metal-island oasis that I can plop myself on, where I can just…be. In times like these, what makes sense is to do what feels good, whenever and wherever we can.

And I’ll keep coming back to it, until my trunk dwelling stops feeling this way.

Maybe your created oasis is not on top of the trunk of your car, but inside a dark closet, or on a blanket thrown on the grass, or both depending on the day. Maybe it’s found on a 5-minute walk around the neighborhood or a 25-minute drive on the highway, where the destination is nowhere except deeper into your own heart/thoughts/life. Maybe it’s all of the above, or somewhere different, either a physical place or a moment — even just one — you can steal for yourself. However you can, I hope you find space to seek out what you need in these times — moments of comfort, rest, joy, relief, hilarity, stillness, clarity — even if they don’t make much sense to others. If it makes sense and feels good for you? Well, then, that’s all the reasoning you need.

And maybe, just maybe, if we stay here long enough, the trunk-sitting and the highway-driving and the closet-dwelling and the slowing down will help the rest of the world make a bit more sense, too.

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.