37 books read.
8 memoirs, of which H is for Hawk (Helen Macdonald) was the runaway winner. fine, specific details and i rather liked being inside her head. i actually now have a hawk memoir section to my library (n=2).
8 non-memoir non-collection non-fiction; it has been an illuminating year. 3 books on food/digestion/health, 2 on music, 2 on the end of the world as we know it, 1 very interesting investigative expose by Masha Gessen (Words Will Break Cement). everyone should read Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything, Martin Blaser's Missing Microbes, Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction. perhaps that should be 3 books on the end of the world.
JS Bach enthusiasts should read John Eliot Gardiner's Music in the Castle of Heaven. i used to hate music theory, but it's funny what i've come back to now that i don't HAVE to do/like/read anything. leisurely learning Bach Partitas and only Bach Partitas on the piano for the entire year? tick.
5 essay collections. Meghan Daum continues to dominate. David Sedaris' dentist essay was worth the other more average inclusions in Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls. i really enjoyed a collection on solitary cooking and/or eating, aka my present enjoyable condition (Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, ed. Jenni Ferrari-Adler). combined with my almost ecstatic solo travel experience in nyc and dc this year, with associated solo dining, i have never felt more comfortable with myself. this may just be happiness. or hermitage.
i also pondered choosing childlessness while reading Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed (ed. Meghan Daum) but would have liked to hear from non-writers.
2 kathy mallory books by Carol O'Connell. my pick would be The Chalk Girl, a return to the classic style of tightly plotted nyc cops and rich people getting away with shit. and of course kathy mallory, swoon-worthy sociopath. i can't decide who would play her in a movie. i don't think such a person exists. also i'm glad that she doesn't age as such throughout the 13-book series, because who needs that.
7 queer-related fiction books. hmm. highlights were The Price of Salt (Patricia Highsmith), which i liked for its oblique, distant yet close third-person narration. Mislaid (Nell Zink) was another with the strange sped-up/slowed-down presentation of only the important stuff, in great detail, with barbed tongues (to mix descriptors) jabbing everyone at least a little.
and my favourite book of the year, Cassandra at the Wedding (Dorothy Baker), the only one i read twice. how had i never heard of this book before? it needs to be in the mainstream or even queer canon much more than it is. dark and debilitating. deflating both neurotic narcissism and boring convention with two sides of the same reflection. making the weird headspace the norm (shoutout to the last book i read this year, Pretend I'm Dead by Jen Beagin, for also inhabiting this perspective). we are all weird and it's alright.
