2021: A year in reading

Books

21 Jan

I started the year with Chanel Miller’s ‘Know My Name’. It’s become a tradition that I start the year with a book about surviving sexual violence, often a memoir. It’s as if my body needs a corrective after the sentimentality of Christmas and the feeling that the whole world is ensconced in happy, Hallmark families while I'm out here on my own. In 2020, I began the year with Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s ‘I Choose Elena’ followed closely by Vigdis Hjorth’s ‘Will and Testament’. Reading these books felt like possibility. Each author was trying to find a new way of being alive after the horror of what happened to them and the world’s indifference toward that pain. In 2015, Chanel Miller’s then anonymous victim impact statement went viral. She is a beautiful writer and her memoir is layered, evocative and full of the little details about recovery that I wish more people knew. (I got a lot from this interview with her too.)

Then I read ‘Luster’ by Raven Leilani. A funny, voice-y novel about race, class and identity. (This was a good interview with the author.)

Leena recommended ‘We Are The Weather' by Jonathan Saffron Foer which I never would’ve picked up on my own. It’s about climate change, eating animals and the psychology of changing our behavior. More than that, it’s about what it’s like to make arguments about climate change, which I wrote a little about here. It was my first JSF book and I still marvel at the deftness with which he structured the argument/story. A handful of lines still echo in my mind, particular the final scenes where his grandmother (who survived the Holocaust) dies and he contemplates what generational justice might look like.

Then, in something of a sprint, I went through 5 books on sexual violence. With hindsight, I wonder what about January/February 2021 made me think that was a good idea..

They were:

‘The Kiss’ by Kathryn Harrison,
‘What Do We Need Men For?’ by E Jean Carroll,

This book made news because it includes a chapter about Donald Trump but the book itself is so much more than that. There’s a real poignancy to the simplicity of listing all the men who’d harmed her, though the humorous tone became grating as I read.

‘Is Rape a Crime?’ by Michelle Bowder’,

One of my favourite books of the year, it combines memoir and treatise to ask and answer the titular question. The book deftly excavates the contradiction between rape being one of the most traumatic events a person can endure while also being a crime that legal systems seem both unwilling and unable to investigate.

‘Blueberries’ by Elena Savage and
‘Traumata’ by Meera Atkinson.

The first a collection of essays, the second a more academic look at trauma and recovery.

To break the intensity of all that (& to hide from stress in my own life), I read ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ by Celeste Ng after watching the TV adaptation. A great read.

Then, I had surgery. I’m fine but the recovery process was longer and tougher than I was told it would be. Instead of being ‘back to normal’ after 2 weeks, I was confined to bed. Each day, I woke early, showered (if I could manage it), changed the dressings on my wounds and got back into bed to read. I read on kindle because (would you believe it?) real books were too heavy to hold. Within a few days, I found a lovely rhythm of logging onto Amazon, seeing what I was interested in and downloading what I thought of as a friend for the day. I enjoyed Suleika Jaouad’s ‘Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted’ immensely. I sank into Mohsin Hamid’s work, devouring both ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ and ‘Exit West’ (which the Obamas are adapting for Netflix). I highlighted every page of Cathy Park Hong’s ‘Minor Feelings’. It is essential reading on race and the Asian-American experience, if such a thing exists. (This piece is also great.) I fell in love with Randa Jarrar through her book, ‘Love is an Ex-Country’. Trigger warnings apply for the chapter on her experience with a well-known Irish author. Mary Beard’s ‘Women in Power’ was a quick, punchy read. And Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Hope in the Dark’ was as rich as Solnit's work always is.

Then my big book order arrived and I got enough strength in my arms to hold an actual book again. I started with Torre Peter’s ‘Detransition Baby’ which I really enjoyed. Anne Helen Petersen’s ‘Can’t Even’ was a little lacklustre to me, though I think that’s because I’d already read so much of her other work on burnout. The last chapter on her decision not to have children, in part due to how poorly America supports families was both interesting and depressing.

In May, covid restrictions finally began to lift and I got busy leaving the house and seeing humans in person. T Kira Madden’s ‘Long Live The Tribe of Fatherless Girls’ was the only book I read that month but also one of the best books I read all year. It’s a collection of autobiographical essays that I bought after loving this piece. (The title is quite misleading. Her father is a big part of the story.) I bought ‘No-one Tells You This’ by Patricia Lockwood for €1 on kindle. It’s a book of two halves - the first about being on the internet and the second about a very small child who’s going to die. It was just as affecting as everyone said it would be. I loved her first book, ‘Priestdaddy’ though I couldn’t stick with her poetry collection ‘Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals’. I might try again this year. (Related: Brandon Taylor on internet novels.)

I read ‘Co-Dependence’ by Amy Long on the couch waiting for my love to fly home after a long time apart. While I think it would have benefited from a bit more finessing, it was a solid read. I was enthralled by Tracy K Smith’s ‘Life on Mars’. I read ‘Everything is Personal’ by Laurie Stone. It’s advertised as a series of mini essays, but really it’s a collection of her Facebook posts from 2018ish onward. She writes tight sentences about a wide range of topics so it was nice to dip in and out of, but ultimately, I prefer more of a narrative thrust. (TW here for people impacted by sexual violence.) I bought ‘The Cancer Journals’ by Audre Lorde in the run up to surgery, thinking that it’d be good company while I was in hospital. Turns out, I was way too vulnerable to read so I left it aside for a few months. When I came back to it, I devoured it quickly. It’s much shorter than I expected and eminently quotable but I’d really recommend that you engage with the original text.

Then, I read ‘An Exclusive Love’ by Johanna Adorjan. It’s the moving story of her grandparents suicide. Followed by ‘Like A Mother’ by Angela Garbes which examines the science of motherhood. (Here’s a good interview with the author to whet your appetite.) Amy Berkowitz’s ‘Tender Points’ was next. It’s a short book about sexual violence, chronic illness and trauma

Throughout the year, I tried a few books that didn’t capture me. Bernardine Evaristo’s ‘Girl Woman Other’. Jessica Freidmann’s ‘Things That Helped’ and Sophie Ward’s ‘Love and Other Thought Experiments’ were all DNFs. I’m a completist so it’s hard for me to put down a book I’ve started. But I’m trying to leave the ‘not for me’ books aside because life is just too short to read bad books!

I read Catriona Morton’s ‘The Way We Survive’ quickly, not wanting to sit in painful material too long. It felt like sitting and chatting with a friend over coffee. I read ‘The Secret of Superhuman Strength’ by Alison Bechdel for book club, or rather, I read two-thirds of it for book club and then the final third after book club. It’s a graphic memoir about the author’s relationship with exercise. It’s both a personal history of how exercise trends have changed over the last few decades and a meditation on what it means to live and move in an aging body. (Here’s an interesting piece on it.)

After my first vaccine, I was floored for days. After the second, I curled up with Stephaine Danler’s ‘Stray’. Her first book, Sweetbitter, was a huge hit which spawned a limited series and a barrage of gross and frankly sexist articles about the author’s appearance. ‘Stray’ was billed as the behind the scenes of what was happening in the author’s life while publicly she was drowning in success. I enjoyed it but wished the publishing industry had let this one sit and develop before rushing another book into production. It would have benefited from some additional marinating and more careful craft work. After a tough day, I curled up with Maggie Smith’s ‘Keep Moving’. This also began as a series of facebook posts but in the hands of a poet, the format felt much more appropriate. Written in the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of her marriage, it’s a series of short pieces offering encouragement, hope and stamina. It’s wise without being twee. I felt better after reading it.

I’ve followed Ashley C Ford’s work since she worked at Buzzfeed. (Here are two of my favorite pieces). She’s been working on her first book, ‘Somebody’s Daughter’ for years and it is worth the wait. It’s her story of growing up with a brusque, hard-working mother and a father in prison for rape. Ashley learns why her father is in prison and reckons with that information while also trying to recover from her own rape. It’s a moving, well-crafted book that was loved by Oprah and a NYT bestseller. It’s worth the hype.

Next I read, ‘You Are Your Best Thing’ co-edited by Tarana Burke (founder and CEO of MeToo) and Brené Brown (author, researcher). The introduction piqued my interest. As with most essay collections, there are some amazing pieces and some that would have benefited from a bit more finessing. But if you’re a fan of Brené Brown’s other work, I’d really recommend that you read this too. Then, I read ‘Real Estate’ by Deborah Levy and it was the most singular reading experience of my year. I was supposed to be writing but instead, lay on a deck chair, texting my girlfriend to turn on the robotic vacuum from where she lay on a beach in Italy. Levy’s ‘living autobiography’ trilogy has been a treat, and I’ve really enjoyed the fresh perspective she has brought to the genre.

I read nothing in all of September. I'm not sure why. I returned to books with Katherine May's ‘Wintering’ which I wrote about. It's a lovely book, and a nice one for this time of year if you're looking for comfort. Then, I read Kerri ni Dochartaigh's 'Thin Places'. It’s a story about nature, trauma and family set in Northern Ireland. It's a beautifully told story of building a life after a horrific past. Next, I read ‘Ghost in the Throat’ by Doireann Ní Ghríofa. A blended story of her life as a young mother and the life of an eighteenth century Irish poet and a lament she wrote following the murder of her husband. I expected to love the modern sections and muddle through the historical material but instead found that both strands enlivened each other. When ‘Ghost in the Throat’ showed up on the New York Times 'best books of 2021' list, I wasn't at all surprised.

Next, I read ‘Memorial Drive’ by Natasha Tretheway. Barack Obama recommended it and I'd listened to a number of moving interviews with the author. When Natasha was a young adult, her mother was murdered by her stepfather. This memoir reflects on her life with her mother and without her. It grew from the author’s chance meeting with a former police officer who remembered her from the crime scene and offered to share her mother's file. This is a book that couldn't have been written decades ago but I cherished the richness of the story that time has brought. Tretheway is also a poet and this book glows with wisdom and clarity. I wanted to save it for a week when I could tolerate some sadness, though ultimately, I found it almost uplifting.

I finished ‘Meatless Days’ by Sara Suleri having put it down in March. It's a short collection of 9 essays about life in postcolonial Pakistan. Weaving together her personal history with that of Pakistan, it's a moving portrait of grief, change and immigrant life. I also finished ‘Rubyfruit’ by Rita Mae Brown, a coming of age story of a young queer woman in the States. This turns up on every list of 'must read' LGBT+ fiction and I'm glad I read it. I devoured ‘Acts of Desperation’ by Megan Nolan over the course of a few days. A fast-paced story of a young woman living in Dublin who drinks too much and becomes embrolied in a one-sided relationship with an unavailable man. I love Nolan's non-fiction and this was just as gripping and evocative as I hoped.

On a plane, I enjoyed Curtis Sittenfeld's very short collection of stories called 'Help Yourself'. I love Sittenfeld's fiction and the first story, in particular, is a gem! Sittenfeld has an amazing ability to create rich characters seemingly from very little and then puts them in situations that feel ordinary but still enriched with comic complexity. She's always an author I enjoy and then later, study. The last book I read this year was Lucia Osborne Crowley's 'My Body Keeps Your Secrets' which kept me company on a chilly post-Christmas flight. The book is an exploration of the intersection between sexual violence, shame and chronic illness. It weaves together both the author's personal story and the voices of women, trans and non-binary people around the world. I was very moved by her first book 'I Choose Elena' and this did not disappoint. If you're new to her work, she's written some fantastic non-fiction.

2021 was a strangely shaped year. I spend much of either in a covid lockdown, waiting for a vaccine or feeling overwhelmed and under-prepared when some sort of ‘normal’ life returned. In total, I read 44 books in 2021. It’s less than I hoped, but I also lived a lot of life.

On to 2022..

P.S. I also enjoyed Ana’s list and was somewhat inspired by this piece.