Reading, Writing, and Me

We're in the final few days of 2023, so that means it's prime time for goals – both reflecting on the ones we set this time last year and setting new ones for 2024. Usually, I include goals with my stats, but I think this year, I want to separate the posts so that they're both a little shorter. Stay tuned for the full stats breakdown in the style of last year's post on New Year's Day, and if you want to see where I was this time last year, you can check out this post.   Usually, these goal posts have a somewhat sad tone as I generally fail to meet most of my goals, particularly the one everyone looks to each year – books read. College has not been the greatest thing that ever happened to my personal reading life. However, this year looks a little different for the better. I'm thrilled to announce that I far exceeded my wildest dreams on number of books read, and I hope to keep that up into the new year. I also kept these goals in mind as I selected books out of ...

The Pisces  by Melissa Broder Overview: Lucy's life is falling apart. She's 9 years into a PhD with a thesis she can't bring herself to finish. Her longterm boyfriend won't commit, so they've finally broken up. She has no self esteem and no direction. So when her sister plans on leaving her Venice house for the summer, she invites Lucy to come to California to reset and dog sit. Instead of getting to know herself better, Lucy looks for validation from every man the internet can provide for her. This is a whirlwind story that definitely gets more than a little weird halfway through. Overall: 3.5 Characters: 3.5 Having read Broder's two later books first, it's clear how her Lucy was the blueprint for her subsequent main characters. She has the signature over-honesty and prickly edges that I love from Broder's later work. Her sharp tongue is a bit less refined and confident, though, than the later characters. All the pieces are there, they just haven't ...

I made the decision this year that I wasn't going to review every nonfiction book I read like I do with fiction. The reviews just don't come us naturally to me, and it's usually more trouble than its worth to figure out how to adjust my review formula to the nature of nonfiction. This year, I did replace a lot of my podcast consumption with nonfiction audiobooks, though, so I read a staggering number of them, and I thought it would be fun to make this list to give a bit of insight into the other half of my reading life.  The books suggested on this list are the ones I remember enjoying most. While I did leave ratings for them in my spreadsheet, without my detailed reviews to look back on, this list required a lot of reaching back in my memory. I have a few I actually reviewed on the blog that I will link on their titles. Otherwise, I'll share the official Goodreads summaries. These were engaging, fun to listen to, and had me wanting to play the audiobook any time I was ...

The Bee Sting  by Paul Murray Overview: The Barnes family is full of secrets. It might not seem that way on the surface as they appear to be a quintessential, small town, Irish family – husband, wife, daughter, son. But that sheen of normality is challenged as the 2008 recession settles in for the long haul and the family business's downturn brings to life issues that had long been stuffed down. With every family member not quite trusting the others, there is an intense web to unravel to reunite the Barnes family again. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 This is a multi-POV book, so you get to know each family member quite well. There's a slow drip of their complexity as the book opens with each of the children narrating a large chunk. You get to know them and the rules of the town and the realities of their parents through their eyes. It's interesting to start with the stories of the past that were sanitized and filtered down to them and then slowly, through the rest of the book, fi...

It's not quite the end of the year, but it's getting close, which means that we're well into list season. While I'm hoping to get a few more books in before the end of the year, I figured I'd put this list out early in case you need last minute gift ideas for the people in your life. Your local bookstore is a great place to pick up gifts when you're out of the shipping window!  I've done way more reading this year than I have in recent memory (almost the whole time I've been tracking my reading) While more details on that will be in my stats post in about a week, I'm currently working on finishing my 120th book of the year, which is wild to think about considering I haven't made it to 50 books in recent years. That's given me plenty of books to assemble this list from (which might be why this isn't a true list of ten), and there are still a few books I can't believe didn't make it as I'm editing this post. There were so many g...

Wellness  by Nathan Hill Overview: Jack and Elizabeth are soulmates. Or that's how it felt when they met in their early 20s in Wicker Park. She's a directionless, wide-eyed college student, and he's an artist who secretly wants acceptance from his art school peers. Jack and Elizabeth get married, have a kid, and become middle aged people. Along the way, that fated feeling fades. Their jobs grow more tedious, their time is pulled in more directions, and there's expectations of who they're supposed to be as fully formed adults. There's also plenty of history that they haven't shared with one another, gaps in their intimate knowledge  that would explain everything. It is the reader, though, that gets the privilege of experiencing the full patchwork of who Jack and Elizabeth are now and who they were through every life stage. Overall: 5  Characters: 5 I'm someone who loves deeply explored characters, and that's what this book is for 600 pages. Which migh...

Laura & Emma  by Kate Greathead  Overview: Laura descends from American royalty – diluted enough that it doesn't come with all the privileges, only most of them. She works for the nonprofit that her family started and her lifestyle is greatly supplemented by them. She's not sure she wants to have a child at all until a surprise pregnancy changes everything. She decides to keep the baby and raise the child as a single mother. This book cover the 1980s and 1990s as Laura navigates New York society and raising a daughter without a partner in a world full of social pressure. In the most slice of life style possible, you come to see the trials and tribulations of not just one mother-daughter relationship but the web of various familial ties that surround Laura. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 While some might find Laura off-putting, I very much enjoyed her as a narrator. She's frank and says what other people aren't willing to. This aspect of her comes through most in her narra...