A Year In Reading - 2015

It's been a terrific year of reading for me. Last year felt like a jumble of misplaced words and thoughts, after losing my reading list in the birth year of my son. I remember reading Me Before You early last January, in a strange, milky haze of motherhood and misplaced sleep. Beyond that, everything in that year, including my newfound identity of 'mother', felt like an interrupted thought, a word at the tip of my tongue that never quite leaked out.

This year felt more solid and whole on the reading front (and many others). I aimed to read a book a week, which is my goal every year. And that seems to work for me. I guess I even surpassed that goal.

I don't like to list favorites here. Books are so uniquely their own, to stand them up against one another feels wrong. However, I was asked to compile a list of recommended young adult books for Cleaver Magazine and, while I personally hesitate to call it a 'best of' anything, it is a list of amazing books that were powerful and meant something to me and each of our awesome reviewers. I link to it here.

I love to list the books I've read, to remember where I've been and where I ended up in my reading year, in the hopes that you'll tell me where you were and we can talk about the places we overlapped. I only included books I completed and enjoyed. So this list is made up of a ton of excellent reads and I celebrate all of them. I also linked to the books I offered more thoughts on in my blog or on the Barnes and Noble Kids blog.

I suppose the best thing about this reading year were how many of my amazing friends published incredible books this year and last (highlighted below). And I discovered some new-to-me authors that are probably not new to anyone else whose books I'm thrilled to have finally found: Lauren Groff, Nova Ren Suma, Lucia Berlin, Elana K. Arnold, Celeste Ng, Angela Flournoy, and Marilynne Robinson.

I hope you had a terrific reading year too. And I have more news soon, about a redesign for this ole blog in the new year.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Brunt Rifka
Blue Birds by Caroline Starr Rose
The Summer Prince by Alaya Johnson Dawn
Free to Learn by Peter Gray
I'll Be Right There by Kyung-sook Shin
The Girl with Borrowed Wings by Rinsai Rosetti
The Color Master: Stories by Aimee Bender
Red Butterfly by A.L. Sonnichsen
Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead
The Professor and the Madmen by Simon Winchester
Rainey Royal by Dylan Landis
Evil Spy School by Stuart Gibbs
Watch the Sky by Kirsten Hubbard
The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
Outline by Rachel Cusk
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
We Are All Made of Molecules by Susin Neilsen
One Thing Stolen by Beth Kephart
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
Suart Little by E.B. White
The Penderwicks #1 by Jeanne Birdsall
The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma
The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White
Lost in the Sun by Lisa Graff
For Real by Alison Cherry
Arcadia by Lauren Groff
The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein
Emily Windsnap and the Ship of Lost Souls by Liz Kessler
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich
Smile by Raina Telegmeier
He's Gone by Deb Caletti
The Night We Said Yes by Lauren Gibaldi
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Rules for Stealing Stars by Corey Ann Haydu
Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann
The Marvels by Brian Selznick
Some Luck by Jane Smiley
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
M Train by Patti Smith
The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin
Honor Girl by Maggie Thrash
Bone Gap by Laura Ruby
Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas
Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt
The Accident Season by Moira Fowley-Doyle
Infandous by Elana K. Arnold
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nahesi Coates
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin
My True Love Gave to Me: Stories Edited by Stephanie Perkins
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics by Chris Grabenstein
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Stories by Lucia Berlin

The Way We Keep Books

While books bulge off my shelves and cascade on my night table with occasional dog-eared pages, for the most part, I don't own many of the books I love. Most are in circulation at a library or travelling through wandering hands at a used-book store.  I used to carry certain slim books of poetry through my life but, after so many brown-box moves, they have vanished.

I used to run into someone on the subway (a person who appears in my life in strange ways since a job I had just out of school.)  What are you reading? I asked once, because he always kept a book in his pocket, a paper fold leaking from the zipper. I'm not reading it, I just like to have it with me, he said. 

I thought I understood. But then I didn't. And then, I thought, he had always been somewhat odd.

I am an avid reader and, I hope, a thoughtful one. I do like to be with books, to have them in my bag, to stand among them in cozy shops or libraries, to know they are near. But books have always stayed with me in strange ways.  I could love a book, clutch it to my heart, oh, oh, oh, and, a week later, someone could ask me its plot.  I'll hmm and stammer.  Most of the time, I don't remember the main character's name.

Books have never been reference for me.  I can't quote a single line. I can't point to the shelf, pull it out, read a passage. Oh, I read that!  I'll say when someone mentions a title. But then I never seem to know the facts, the figures, the names, the place.  

It seems a book is mine and I am its, when it is in my hands.

Feelings, stirrings, moments, do linger after I leave the pages. They do keep.  A certain wishing of almost-twin birthdays on a plane, a girl peeling potatoes in the back room of a catering hall.  Sometimes I can connect these moments to specific books. But most of the time?  I can't tell you the writer or even the title.

For someone who often considers books her life's blood, I have wondered, am I the only one, who is only able to keep pieces of books in a dusty jar of memory?

Reading In the New Year

Though we're days into the new year, I am still thinking about my last year in books and how I plan to move forward in this one. I have never felt right creating a best-of list because books touch me in such a deep, personal way.  I take the time to reflect on certain books on this blog and still feel that I can not express what they mean to me.  Others I prefer to keep only in my heart. I could never pit them against one another, arrange them before or after or in between. So, I'm not reflecting in that way.  But I do want to learn from my reading habits and move ahead.

Last year, I made the decision to leave many books unfinished. I don't know whether this is good or bad.  I used to push myself through a book until I came out the other side.  Sometimes, I'd be truly grateful I did.  Last year, I didn't leave that option.

Still, I've decided to carry this habit forward with me in 2013.  It sounds like such a minor allowance but, for someone who often creates obligations where they don't exist, it actually provides relief. Oh, I don't like this book?  I don't have to read it!  Such a simple thing...but you can't imagine how long it took for me to get to that place.

Last year, I read just seven non-fiction books (all but one was memoir.)  I've decided to change that this year.  I'm dreaming a new novel and I'm just not smart enough to write it.  It's going to require a lot of research and I hope to find the right kind of narrative to take me away.  First up: The Big Oyster: History On the Half Shell.    

I also took a bit of a drastic step in my reading life this year.  I deleted my to-read list.  It had become too overwhelming and, last year, I spent a lot of time reading books and feeling as if the pleasure was not in the read but the fact that I had simply checked it off.  It just didn't feel right.  I'm starting new.

My final thought is about books and this blog.  I have struggled to understand how I want to write about books in this space.  Since I don't consider this a book review blog, I made the decision last year to write only about books I, didn't merely like, but, loved.  (It should be noted that I don't write about every book I love because of my inability to express that love.) Sometimes I highlighted books I didn't love but appreciated for a certain style or structure or theme.  I plan to continue that way this year.  And I hope to make a proper distinction between the head-over-heels kind of books and those that impressed me for other reasons.

Do you have any reading goals for the new year?

Happy reading!

When It Comes to Reading Is Timing Everything or Nothing?

I often find myself in terrible reading funks, unable to concentrate, disconnected and distracted.  It happens a lot more than this self-proclaimed book lover cares to admit, the weary push through book after book. Whether the book is good, bad, or mediocre, it can be an awful lot like pulling teeth.  The funk is Seinfeldian in nature. It's not you it's me, I whisper to the poor pages.

I am happy to report that I am on quite the opposite track these days.  I'm on a runaway reading spree.  Completely alert.  Flying through books.  As soon as I finish one, I'm ravenous for another. The New York Public Library can barely keep up with me.

But, again, it's me, not the books.  I recently raced through two books.  They were written by two critically acclaimed writers with big prizes attached to their names. The reading experience was completely painless.  However, I did not like them.  My impression of them will remain stagnant, stale.

I think it's interesting that a book can still be unsatisfying, whether I'm in the right mindset or the wrong one, whether I'm racing forward or slogging through.

And, in the same way, a book can stand out no matter what frame of mind I'm in. I read Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief during one of my worst reading funks to date. It lifted me out of the reading funk only temporarily, for the six hours I sat to read it, then I drowned in the funk quicksand immediately after.

And yet, the love of a certain book can be all about timing.  For example, I read Jane Eyre at the age of fourteen and despised it, then read it several years later and, to this day, count it as one of my all time favorite books.

But I'm finding little rhyme or reason to it all.

I'm curious to know your thoughts. Do you think it is particular mindset that allows you to love or hate a book?  Is it the quality of the book itself?  A serendipitous combination?