When people learn I’m in library school, their first question is usually “Like the Dewey Decimal System??” followed by “What’s your favorite book?” I don’t have an all-time favorite book. I do have books that I consider foundational in my reading (Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Summer We Got Free by Mia McKenzie), but it’s difficult to select an all-time favorite that I return to the way I return to Avatar: The Last Airbender each year, restarting it as we reread the Torah (cyclical! seasonal! ritualistic!)
So it’s hard to look at my reading list from 2021, which includes a whopping 74 books, and select a favorite, especially because I tend to be generous in my reviews. Storygraph tells me that my average star rating is 4.26/5 and that I read 23 five-star books last year, but I get most of my book recommendations from Roxane Gay, so this is not a surprise. As no one book rises above the rest, here are the best ofs:
Best Endings
It’s hard to end a story. Television shows hold up depending on their series finales: The Sopranos versus Game of Thrones. The endings of these books received audible wows or vigorous head-nod affirmations from me:
Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia (novel) [Roxane Gay Book Club]. Garcia weaves through five generations across two families in Cuba, Florida, Texas, Mexico, and Guatemala, tying together stories of immigration, salvation, and loss. I vaguely knew the path of one of the protagonists because I listened to Garcia’s conversation with Roxane Gay before I finished the book, but I delighted in how we got there, and the ending still surprised me.
The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams (novel). I think my cousins Peter or Jean recommended this to me, but I cannot remember. In any case, it was a great recommendation. This was such a strange, entirely self-contained little book with noticeably low plot stakes and delightfully high theoretical stakes (what are words? who decides meaning?).
Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo (memoir). Before the Mvskoke poet was a poet (though perhaps she was always a poet), she was a painter. I read somewhere that Harjo has the most graceful, grounded, and profound command of the English language in the history of writing and yeah! That pretty much sums it up!
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak, translated by Natalia Wiśniewska (novel). I’m still thinking about this novel six months after I finished it. Shafak writes through the 10 minutes 38 seconds after Leila’s murder, then spends the second half of the book exploring how her closest friends cope with her death. Funny, warm, devastating, and full of a lot of love.
Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be by Nichole Perkins (essays) [Roxane Gay Book Club]. Riotously funny, incisive, and wickedly smart.
Books Worth a Second Try
Sometimes I put books down halfway through because I have to return them to the library or I need a break or I forget to keep going (which Fran Lebowitz says is an insult but sometimes I put a book down and it gets buried in my life). Most books should be read at least twice anyways. Toni Morrison said so. These four all found their way back into my reading pile, and I’m glad they did:
The Five Wounds by Kirsten Valdez Quade (novel) [Roxane Gay Book Club]. I charged through 200 pages of The Five Wounds before having to return it to the library and move to Indiana. I picked it up last week and fell right back into Angel, Amadeo, and Yolanda’s world. This is a family novel in the whole sense of family and also gets “Best Ending” mention. I was alright till the very last sentence, then I cried.
Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia (novel) [Roxane Gay Book Club]. I tried Garcia’s novel three times before I made it all the way through. The first chapter is almost a one-off, temporally isolated from the rest of the book, but it lays the groundwork of the second half and the very last page.
Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett (novel). I read Arnett’s second(? third?) book in fits and starts, but I’m glad I finished it. We follow Jessa-Lynn Morton, a queer taxidermist from Florida whose father has just committed suicide and is now tasked with managing the varied expressions of grief from her remaining family (including herself). The taxidermying scenes are intense, as are the depictions of Florida.
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kaddish (novel). I couldn’t get through the first 75 pages, but like Garcia’s Of Women and Salt, false starts were exchanged for strong endings. The protagonists and readers puzzle through the recovered papers at the heart of the story together. I called it “gripping and stupendous” in my review.
Honorable Mention: Beach Reach by Emily Henry (novel). I read this one twice with no issue. It’s a feel-good romance novel set on the shores of the Upper Peninsula (apparently known as the UP, this is what I have learned by living in the Midwest). My best friend Kathryn recommended it to me after I read Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation, and this is definitely the stronger of the two.
Biggest Surprise of the Year
Finishing The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon: an 848-page epic fantasy novel. I’m not a huge genre-centric reader (more on that in the next issue), but Shannon’s writing was very clear and compelling. I could follow all of the character names and understood who went where and why. I did not totally follow the final battle sequence, but I chalk that up to my novice fantasy reading rather than Shannon’s writing.
Books from my Book Clubs
I read along with Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club and the Bookish Book Club, which is a group of bookish people (professional and not) who read books about books. Here are my two favorites from those two reading lists (besides the ones I already mentioned):
Roxane Gay’s Book Club: Milk, Blood, Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz (stories). Rarely has a book grabbed me so forcefully in so few pages. Another book set in Florida, which has never seen so much representation in my reading list. Perhaps the Good Place was too harsh.
Bookish Book Club: Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom (non-fiction). I have worked at a library that has four books bound in human skin. Once a macabre attraction that visitors could request and examine, the availability of the materials was limited by the time I worked there. Instead, I learned from my colleagues how to talk about these books in ways that provoke empathy: whose skin holds these texts? Did they consent to that practice? How does one have autonomy over their body in death? Rosenbloom explores these same questions with generosity and measuredness. She doesn’t side with any one perspective (should we preserve these objects? should we burn them? what are they to us?) but provides room and reason for all views. Our club unanimously enjoyed it, a rare commendation.
Housekeeping & birdseeking
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What I’m currently reading: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Absolutely hilarious.
A reminder to send me your questions for the next few issues!
This is a good time to share the newsletter before I gear up for my next (and last!) semester of library school
bird
More later.
The fact that their are available books bound by human skin gave me the chills, and I say this as someone who has been in a room with child skeletons and pretty much every part of the body embalmed and splayed open for us to examine.