The 50 best books I read in the after times, reviewed

I didn't have much sex but I did read much books

Back from that week long silent meditation retreat, which I’ll write about in an upcoming newsletter. But now: books.

I used to do these wild book reviews at year end, they took hours and hours and all I remember from them was one time after spending a week writing it and doing things like triple-checking links and downloading book cover graphics and filtering them through VSCO so it was both aesthetically and informationally perfect, a lady wrote me and said “YOU ARE AN ANGRY WOMAN WHO READS ANGRY BOOKS.” And that was only 2017! Anyway, the last one of these “best books of the year” published in 2018, and aside from a few reviews in this newsletter (this one, this one), I haven’t done a proper year-end list of all the books I read and liked in years. At first I thought, Why not start where I left off? (2019, lols). Then I looked back over the list of books I’ve read since January 1, 2019, and it was very very very long and so I thought, Why not start where my life left off? And that was April 2021 and that list was manageable to sort through, and I narrowed that list down to 50, and that’s being really, really cut throat about it. I mean, Sally Rooney got fucking cut! Anyway, here is a list of books I have read since things I didn’t want to happen happened, not the after-times but my after-times.

Remember, reading is my sport, passion, hobby, professional duty, and safe word. I hunt books, I chase books, I corner kick books, books are my best friends, books are my lovers. I remind you that here not only so you don’t feel bad for not reading enough, but so if/when you get through this truly ridiculous and long post, you’ll remember that I waited years to write this list and had an extremely satisfying time making it.

Not every book has a comment, especially the fiction since I’m not a literary critic and couldn’t appropriately review a work of fiction if I tried; I just like what I like. Some books are closer to the top of the list because they are highly recommended, so there is some hierarchy, but in general I am recommending the best of what I read and it’s a flat recommendation across them.

I read across a variety of authors; I hardly ever agree fully with a text, and sometimes read authors or thought leaders I genuinely dislike or find problematic. Please never interpret any recommendation as an endorsement of someone, or their entire catalogue of work, or every statement made in a text I recommend. I trust humans to make their own decisions with their own minds.

I am using Amazon affiliate links in this post. I normally post the public library links with them, but because of the volume I did not. You can find those links through searching WorldCat. As an aside, this is the only affiliate marketing I use, and only use for books. I buy my own books from Amazon, Bookshop.org, and independent retailers.

Okay I think that’s it! Happy almost next year!

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If you read one book

I don’t even know how to answer this. I cannot choose one! But I will. I choose Undoing Drugs by Maia Szalavitz not only because it’s meticulous and radical, but because we need harm reduction as a standard now. Please read this book, share her work, follow Drug Policy Alliance, and where you can: normalize harm reduction. Drug use is not criminal.

Prompt: What was the best book you read between April 2021 and today? Go.

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Non-fiction, Addiction, Anthropology, Philosophy, etc.

1. Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex | year. 2020 | pages. 226 | author. Angela Chen | I found this book through Ann Helen Peterson’s Substack, and because I had no clue what asexuality was aside from the last letter in LGBTQIA, I wanted to know. I thought I’d be reading about a foreign experience, something that had nothing to do with me but would expand my understanding in a necessary way, and while I did find that, I also found my own story within that experience. I was educated by this book, but I was also liberated by this book. It changed the way I think about my own sexuality, sexual and romantic experiences, and culture in general. It’s listed as #1 for a reason. Angela and I recorded a podcast together, I will be publishing that here in this newsletter in January.

2. Work: A Deep History from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots | year. 2021 | pages. 460 | author. James Suzman | In the 1930’s, John Maynard Keynes predicted “human beings would be so much richer, so much more technologically advanced, that the problem of scarcity…would have been solved. And now we’d only work 15 hours a week.” Suzman starts his book here, asking why, here in the time period Keynes’ predicted we’d have so much abundance and automation we wouldn’t need to work almost at all, we are working more ever. Granted, I read this book when I was being kicked out of my company and furious at the world and basically devoid of all ability to pretend capitalism is anything more than the master of all addictions that we should as a species divest from, so maybe it’s number two only because it gave me questions I hadn’t thought to ask about why we do what we do at all in a time of my own profound confusion. Maybe it’s only as good as I remember it being because of where I personally found myself when I was reading it. Or maybe it’s objectively as good as I remember. Either way, sorry to the friends I tried to explain this book to in July 2021.

3. The Urge: Our History of Addiction | year. 2022 | pages. 400 | author. Dr. Carl Erik Fisher | I’ve written about this book in a previous review; I interviewed Carl in a podcast, he generously answered questions for this newsletter, I went on his podcast, I mention his work in like every other newsletter, so literally everything I have to say about this book has been said. I love it! If you love this newsletter, you will too.

4. Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction | year. 2021 | pages. 384 | author. Maia Szalavitz | See above.

5. The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture | year. 2022 | pages. 576 | author. Gabor Maté MD | I pre-ordered this book, read it as soon as it was available over a matter of days, and abruptly stopped at around page 400 when it got into the practical applications which potentially says more about me than the book. I thought this book was meandering, trying to boil the ocean, and I don’t really need Gabor to explain to me what it’s like to be a woman, etc. I think he could have probably done this in half the length. BUT: I thought it was absolutely worth it, there is plenty of brilliance contained within, integrations of ideas I hadn’t considered, words that voiced things that before reading, I didn’t have the words for. I 100 percent recommend it, think it is a necessary text, even if a thick part of it was unnecessary.

6. Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body | year. 2017 | pages. 336 | author. Daniel Goleman, Richard Davidson | In the last few decades there’s been an explosion of research on meditation, and claims of what meditation can actually do for us is absolutely overblown. Here, two scientists and committed practitioners get to the absolutes of how meditation can actually benefit us. I like it because it gave me a much better base to move from in terms of how to approach my own practice, and what results I can expect given what effort or commitment I bring. It kind of cuts down the Tony Robbinsification of it all, leaving us with a really practical, and beautiful, motivation for cultivating a regular practice, and a way to sort through what meditation has truly been scientifically proven to do.

7. A Brief History of Everything | year. 2001 | pages. 354 | author. Ken Wilber | I’ve read this book multiple times, and each time I do I take away something different than I did before. Parts of this book and parts of Wilber’s work is cornerstone to my philosophy and has given me the ability to marry extremely complex and seemingly disparate ideas into cohesive arguments, even programs. This particular book is helpful at examining spiral dynamics, emerging stages of human development and states of consciousness, and why we are where we are, and what we need to do in order to save the planet lols. A gem, (paraphrased): “The culture gap is equal to the scope of climate disaster.” I also very much loved his somewhat follow up to this book, Trump and a Post Truth World.

8. Facing Love Addiction: Giving Yourself the Power to Change the Way You Love | year. 2003 | pages. 240 | author. Pia Mellody | I read this book this summer, or rather listened to it on my drive across the US, after hitting the same fucking bottom (and running the same painful and humiliating habits) romantically. While I had read plenty co-dependency and sex/love/relationship lit, and had worked with therapists for years (specifically around my romantic relationships), I don’t think anything made as big of an impact on me and those patterns as this book did. For sure, there was a decade of healing that preceded it, lots of practice opportunities, and a lot of compensating and complementary practices (like somatic release or meditation) that helped me turn the corner on what has felt like “the thing I’ll always have”, and perhaps this book was just divinely timed. But still, reading this gave me an entirely new perspective and set of instructions; how I’ve moved through romantic stuff since is not even comparable, and it’s further rearranged (in a good way) some of my non-romantic relationships.

9. Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear | year. 2022 | pages. 304 | author. Dr. Carl Hart | I could write five articles on this one. It’s such a good book and I disagree with some consistent themes. In summary, Dr. Hart has a great argument—yes, we should be able to decide what to put in our bodies. Yes, decrim, legalize all drugs and drug use. Yes, cocaine and crack and smack and “plant medicine” should all have the same moral weight. Etc. Where he gets it wrong (IMO) is in his pro-drug stance (like, we don’t need anyone arguing on behalf of drugs okay? The drugs have that covered), and his constant refrain that the only people who should use drugs are those who are essentially stable and employed which isn’t all that different from the idea that it’s wrong to use drugs to self-medicate and adds additional layers of shame to those most likely to benefit from what he’s arguing for; I found it surprisingly classist and ableist and further categorizing of who should be able to put things in their body, or furthering the idea of the functional addict, i.e., the addict who still performs his capitalist duty. Complicated. Worth your time if you’re into this stuff.

10. Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology | year. 2022 | pages. 224 | author. Jess Zimmerman | A re-examination of the classics and the monstrous qualities assigned to mis-behaving women, and an opportunity to reclaim what we’re not supposed to be (loud, angry, aggressive, greedy, gluttons, etc.) as our actual strengths. It was such a fun book, the combination of so many favorite things (gross ladies and mythology, yes please).

11. Caliban and The Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation | year. 204 | pages. 288 | author. Silvia Federici | TLDR: this is a book that takes the Marxist argument of primitive accumulation and expands it to include sexism. It is a history of the making of women into witches, into vessels of capitalist production (the uterus as the source material for the propagation of the work force), and helps to make sense of why hundreds of years after fucking feudalism ended, our reproductive and lifestyle choices are still policed. I read it a few times over the last few years and will probably have to read a third, fourth and fifth.

12. Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America | year. 2003 | pages. 248 | author. Thomas Szasz | Thomas Szasz is one of the larger influences on how I think; reading his seminal Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers in 2017 gave me an entirely different language and conceptual framework, especially around drug taking and the therapeutic state. Pharmacracy is similar to Ceremonial, but builds on the basic premises established. (I’d probably start with Ceremonial Chemistry if you’re interested in this kind of thing). It explores the consequences of creating a fiat diagnosis system, of turning people and their problems into diseased and disease, and examines what it means to live in political system that increasingly limits personal freedoms through the medical establishment, or the Pharmacracy.

13. The Beyond Addiction Workbook for Family and Friends: Evidence-Based Skills to Help a Loved One Make Positive Change | author. Carrie Wilkens. There’s so few resources that exist for family and loved ones of folks struggling with addiction, and a lot of it is totally out of line with what we now know to be humane, dignified and effective approaches to addiction treatment. This workbook, along with its companion text Beyond Addiction, are the gold standard for how to support yourself and your person.

14. White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind | year. 2021 | pages. 320 | author. Koa Beck | Another severely important book that rewired my brain. Koa and I did a podcast on this earlier this year which I think is worth listening to. Koa’s book helped me make sense of why capitalism will never save us from the harms of capitalism and it was extremely timely for me to read it. This was hands down one of the best books I read in 2021.

15. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity | year. 2021 | pages. 704 | author. David Graeber, David Wengrow | Here is a previous review of this book from a different newsletter: This is a seriously long book, 526 pages without notes (692 with). I have been fascinated with David Graeber’s work since reading his essay Bullshit Jobs over the summer (recommend the essay, not the book), and as soon as I saw this huge ass yellow volume in my local bookstore I bought it. It’s a rethinking of the history of the world, of inequity and inequality, of how “Western” views of liberty and freedom were actually borrowed from Native American philosophers; mostly though, it’s a re-examination of the idea that hunter gatherer societies naturally move to horticultural, agrarian, and eventually industrial. The authors challenge the idea that societies inevitably organize into our modern formation; or the idea that the humans that came before us didn’t already experiment in what we think of modern and inevitable structures and actively decide against them. If I had to do a book report on this I’d fail, because it’s so dense and I didn’t understand a great deal of it, but it did leave me with the unshakable belief that we’re a far more creative species than we give ourselves (our those that came before us) credit for, and that whatever we’re in right now has a lot less to do with inevitable progress as it has to do with the loss of understanding our unlimited creative capacity as individuals and communities. It also gave me really loosely formed arguments I keep trying to have at dinner parties that make me absolutely look like I have no idea what I’m talking about (i.e., it’s a book with enough information to make you act like an asshole who thinks she knows something because she read one book.) I recommend it only because it for certain upended a lot of assumptions I buy into. I think differently because of this book.

16. How To Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence | year. 2018| pages. 464 | author. Michael Pollan | This was definitely the book that got me seriously considering the use of psychedelic drugs for healing (not recreation), which I have a few times now. I didn’t try psychedelics because of this book, but it did help end my years long consideration of it, and now there’s a Netflix series and Big Psychedelic and you can basically buy peyote in a Goop pop-up store. I loved this book; I also worry about the emerging commodification of psychedelics and the idea that they are some kind of silver bullet or panacea for treatment resistant depression and addiction, which they aren’t. I thought it was an incredible read, but being someone who never had an issue with pills, powders, or hallucinogens, I think for those of you who did or who feel like reading a book about how great “plant medicine” is (in quotes because psychedelics are drugs, we are talking about drugs, not an “it’s different because meditating white people who drive Teslas do this” which the term “plant medicine” connotes and thus elevates above, say, crack) might threaten your sobriety, I’d skip it. Related, this article by Kailey Brennan wrote for Recovering, Why are psychedelics reemerging in the culture right now? This Sam Harris podcast on the same subject. Editors note: I did not find psychedelics to be ultimately helpful to me; I’ve had more profound experiences and breakthroughs in a very committed and deep meditation practice, and at this point have no plan to try them again, but I am glad for the experiences I did have coming to this conclusion.

17. Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again | year. 2022 | pages. 368 | author. Johann Hari | I’ve read all of Hari’s books so far and found them valuable. He’s a great story teller, investigator, and he threads together insights and interesting ideas about popular subjects (Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs [history of war on drugs, addiction, connection], Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope (pscychopharm, mental illness, depression; both books I think are worth your time); this one was on our addiction to our devices and apps and distraction, and how we are losing our ability to think deeply, connect with each other and our surroundings, and focus. I’ve read most of the books that exist on social media, internet and smartphone addiction, and while they all say the same things in different ways, this was a great synthesis. I underlined a lot of this book and it absolutely contributed to some change in my habits and justification of using less Instagram, etc.

    Prompt: Did you read any of these? Similar or dissimilar take-aways?

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Non-fiction, Spiritual, Self-Help

I actually read so many of these kinds of books the past 18 months—much Pema, much Ram Dass, much Abraham Hicks and Martha Beck and basically any Zen master who could help me understand how to make sense of what was happening to me. That being said, what ended up resonating was a lot of what I’d already read. Ram Dass’s Paths To God, Pema’s When Things Fall Apart, and a few other beloved texts were read over and again (I’d finish and return right back to the start). Also notably missing: all the Abraham Hicks books I bought and read and loved, but did not find worthy of taking up one of these spaces. Law of attraction stuff saved me in some pretty dark times, especially talks you can find on Youtube and Spotify by searching Abraham Hicks, and I would recommend those over any text. (Also just remember when I recommend LOA stuff, I do so in the context of all these other suggestions, not as an evangelist.)

18. Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality | year. 1992 | pages. 184 | author. Anthony De Mello | I’ve read three of this author’s other books since reading this one in early 2021, none of which hold a candle to this. He’s kind of a dick! I kind of love it! Very straight forward, “grow up and get over it” kind of advice from a very wise priest that I sorely needed.

19. The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self | year. 2021 | pages. 352 | author. Martha Beck | It is not an exaggeration to say this book saved me in a very dark time. We interviewed her on Quitted (here, here) and that interview was also very, very good. This is something I’d recommend to anyone, but especially recommend to someone going through a major life transition.

20. The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise | year. 2015 | pages. 184 | author. Martín Prechtel | The best book on grief I have ever read in my entire life. I think every single human being needs to read this book and keep it for when we all, inevitably, face our own unfathomable losses and grief. It infected me, it changed me, it gave me such a gorgeous perspective on what it means to love and lose.

21. Practicing Peace in Times of War | year. 2014 | pages. 112 | author. Pema Chödrön | It’s extremely hard to choose one Pema book for this since I’ve read her almost constantly these past 20 months (I’m trying not to duplicate authors within this list) but this one is the one I would have everyone read. I read it in 2020, and I read it again in early 2021, when I was directly confronted with the choice to declare war on the happenings I absolutely did not want to be happening, or choose peace. It’s a simple, easy message we are almost eager to ignore: that our individual choices throughout our days matter; that the state of the world is dependent not on other people’s states of mind, but our own.

22. Zen Mind, Beginners Mind | year. 1970 | pages. 192 | author. Shunryu Suzuki | I don’t think I would have understood this book until I meditated for a decade, meaning, it probably would have just gone over my head, but I read it ten years into my practice and it’s concepts were right on time. I think this is a great book for anyone who appreciates taking bites of Dharma and sitting with it. It’s in my “always reading” pile now.

23. Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes | year. 2019 | pages. 2019 | author. William Bridges | This book was the absolute best book I read on liminality and change; it helped me live into the fundamental ambiguity of the in-between, to stay there instead of trying to fix my groundlessness with reinvention or a new venture. It’s in some ways required reading.

24. The Hidden Messages in Water | year. 2005 | pages. 159 | author. Masaru Emoto | So many people have told me about this book. I finally read it after working with a new therapist who for an obscene amount of money told me that instead of doing even more deeper work and spelunking into my already plundered depths, all I needed to do was say nicer things to myself and my whole life would change. Lol. I’m not saying that how we talk to ourselves and each other will solve every single issue on the planet, but also I’m not not saying that?

25. What is Zen?: Plain Talk for a Beginner’s Mind | year. 2016 | pages. 208 | author. Norman Fischer | I read a lot of texts on various religions and wisdom traditions as well as new age lit, and I do this as a practice (usually a few pages a day but sometimes, chapters or whole books in a day) to remind myself of what matters and keep myself immersed in the dharma. I thought this book, written in a question and answer format between a Zen priest and a Zen lay priest, was phenomenal. It is an extremely practical, humble, direct and honest account of what Zen is. Think of it as a kind of Zen 101 but at the same time the principles could be applied across disciplines, religions, traditions. I’m adding this to my “always reading” rotation and I’m sure I’ll go back to read it a few times. “If you really see your life as it is, you’ll see it’s nothing but connection, compassion, and love.” I mean, what else do we even need?

26. Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself | year. 2021 | pages. 304 | author. Nedra Glover Tawwab | I found both this book, and Melissa Urban’s Book of Boundaries, to be extremely important texts in terms of understanding how to create and maintain healthy boundaries. If you’re interested in boundary work, I recommend both of them as complements to one another.

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Non-fiction, Memoir, Other

27. Stash: My Life in Hiding | year. 2023 | pages. 288 | author. Laura Cathcart Robbins | This book, written by one of my closest friends, was something I got to see birthed. Laura sent me the first seventy pages and I read them; then she re-wrote those 70 pages and I read those re-written pages; then she wrote the whole book and I read that; then she revised that whole book and I read that; then I read it again. Each and every single time I read this book I am still turning pages like that first night on my couch reading a google doc, like I can’t get enough or she can’t finish it fast enough so I know what happens next. This is such a beautiful memoir and I am so excited for it to be out in the world in March.

28. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen | year. 2011 | pages. 304 | author. Christopher McDougall | I got way into running over the pandemic and this made me fantasize running barefoot in the desert. I’m back to yoga now but still, this was an epic book that anyone could love.

29. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning | year. 2020 | pages. 224 | author. Cathy Park Hong | All I can tell you is that this book is the reason the fire emoji was created 🔥

30. The White Album: Essays | year. 1979 | pages. 224 | author. Joan Didion | The best Didion of all the Didion.

31. The Year of the Horses: A Memoir | year. 2022 | pages. 280 | author. Courtney Maum | Courtney is one of favorite novelists (I wrote about her work in newsletter #38 (#11), and this was her first memoir which was such a gorgeous braided memoir of horse stories and research, women stories, midlife and depression. Like Laura’s book, Stash, this was one I read a few times, and it got better and better and better.

32. Girlhood | year. 2021 | pages. 336 | author. Melissa Febos | I know Melissa’s work because we dated the same guy years ago, a man I call Peter Cigarettes because I started smoking cigarettes after I dated him. He was pretty terrible but I’m forever grateful that he was the kind of guy who talked about his ex on a third date, and that I was the kind of lady who needed minimal data points to plot an entire ex-girlfriend’s life on the internet. She is easily my favorite memoirist, one of my favorite writers of all time, and though I am heavily attached to her Abandon Me because it was the first ARC (advanced reader copy) I ever read and what made me fall in love with her writing, Girlhood is probably her best, yet.

33. I’m Glad My Mom Died | year. 2022 | pages. 320 | author. Jennette McCurdy | This is the story of Jennette McCurdy’s (a child actor who is very famous and I whom I had never heard of before her book broke the internet) life from age six to her late twenties. It captures her mother’s extreme abuse, her entry into anorexia and then graduation into bulimia, descent into alcohol addiction, and eventual recovery. I loved it because it was, literary-wise, well crafted; she was able to speak in the present tense of each age in a way that fully captured that version of herself; she pulls no punches and somehow also blames no one or performs any kind of take down. It’s a pure and honest account of her own contained experience written so well you can’t actually put it down. I loved it because it’s simply a great victory of healing. I loved it because the eating disorder parts felt so familiar. I started taking diet pills when I was eleven, I didn’t want boobs or curves, I was very good at anorexia and then very bad at it, bulimia felt like a humiliating consolation prize for failed anorexics. I don’t think I’ve seen that story told before anywhere, or at least the way she told it, and I needed it.

34. The Sunset Route: Freight Trains, Forgiveness, and Freedom on the Rails in the American West | year. 2021 | pages. 320 | author. Carrot Quinn

35. Rome: A History in Seven Sackings | year. 2018 | pages. 432 | author. Matthew Kneale | For you Italophiles: every time I go to Rome I read a history book on the region. Of every single book I’ve ever read on Rome or Roman history (or Italy or Sicily, etc.), this was the most fascinating.

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Fiction

As mentioned above, none of these are really reviewed though there are short comments. I can’t. All I can tell you is I couldn’t put any of them down, and when I finished them, I wished for more. I’ve found that over the past few years I’ve leaned towards uncomplicated, happy books when it comes to fiction so most of these are that.

36. Second Place | year. 2021 | pages. 192 | author. Rachel Cusk | I’ve read other Cusk books, most of which I find to be both exhausting and over-hyped. This one though, I absolutely loved.

37. Olga Dies Dreaming | year. 2022 | pages. 192 | author. Xochitl Gonzalez

38. Darryl | year. 2021 | pages. 192 | author. Jackie Ess | A book about a cuck in one of the most adorable and somehow lovable voices.

39. The Bell Jar | year. 1963 | pages. 288 | author. Sylvia Plath

40. The First Bad Man | year. 2015 | pages. 289 | author. Miranda July

41. Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents | year. 1993, 1998 | author. Octavia Butler | I’ve written about both these throughout this newsletter; if you’re in to post-apocalyptic stuff, you’re welcome.

42. Matrix | year. 2021 | pages. 272 | author. Lauren Groff | It took me multiple tries to get into this one and I was VERY HATEFUL at first toward the voice in this book (who are you Lauren Groff!) but then, I got it, and loved it, and was so sad when it was over.

43. Dept. of Speculation, Weather | year. 2014, 2021 | pages. 178, 224 | author. Jenny Offill | Just trust me.

44. The Copenhagen Trilogy | year. 1969-71 | pages. 384 | author. Tove Ditlevsen | This is actually a trilogy of non-fiction but for some reason, it read like fiction. I was deeply affected by these works; as a writer, I was inspired by her craft.

45. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow | year. 2022 | pages. 416 | author. Gabrielle Zevin

46. Dear Edward, Hello Beautiful | year. 2020, 2023 (not yet available) | pages. 400, 400 | author. Ann Napolitano | I read Dear Edward earlier this year (we have the same editor/publisher and I’d had it forever but just got around to it) and I read that in one sitting. When I got an ARC of her next book, Hello Beautiful, I dropped everything to inhale it as well.

47. Lucy By The Sea | year. 2022 | pages. 304 | author. Elizabeth Strout | I loved all her Lucy books. Really simple, easy reading.

48. Sea of Tranquility | year. 2022 | pages. 272 | author. Emily St. John Mandel | One day a lady in the bookstore overheard me ask my friend Emily Sander if I should read Infinite Jest and she said “I’m sorry to interrupt I can’t let you read Infinite Jest here’s some Emily St. John Mandel” and she loaded me up with Glass Hotel, Station 11, and Sea of Tranquility. I recommend all three.

49. Afterparties | year. 2022 | pages. 272 | author. Anthony Veasna So | I read his essay, Baby Yeah, in n+1 magazine in 2021 and couldn’t wait for his collection of short stories to be published. Anthony Veasna So died in late 2020, these works were published posthumously.

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Late addition

I read this while writing this list and it made the cut.

50. Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help | year. 2008 | pages. 294 | author. Eva Illouz | I still haven’t quite distilled her thesis, but in a way it reads like she’s entirely against therapy, which for me was a profound switch from most of what I read. I’m not recommending it because I agree with her arguments, but because reading something that runs so obviously counter to what I think of as extremely helpful breakthroughs in how we know ourselves and others was thrilling and challenging and brought forth a lot of new thinking. I love a book that I don’t agree with in general, but also learn from, and this was that. I wrote about it, briefly, two newsletters ago (“Mental health is ‘a contrario’”). I think it’s really important to consistently challenge what we take at face value (here, that therapy and communication/behavior modification informed by therapeutic discourse and practice is good), and this book gave me the space to do that.

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