Books that transformed the way I think
Fox and I by Catherine Raven
The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka
Proverbs of a She-Dandy by Lisa Robertson
Books that shook me
Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund
Things I Didn’t Do with This Body by Amanda Gunn
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Books that wrapped me up in a little cocoon
Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer by Ali Smith
The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay
Happily by Sabrina Orah Mark
Books that reconfigured my own writing
The New Testament by Jericho Brown
From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus, translated by Ann Goldstein
A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux, translated by Tanya Leslie
Books queering the form
Dyke (geology) by Sabrina Imbler
Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer by Ali Smith
Books that articulated something no one else has
Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die by Tawanda Mulalu
Aurelia, Aurélia by Kathryn Davis
New Life by Ana Božičević
Books that changed what I think writing can do
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Milkman by Anna Burns
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin
Books I ate up with a spoon
The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman
Books I read when I had COVID
Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Scratched by Elizabeth Tallent
Franny & Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Books I can make hide nor hair of
The Scent of Time by Byung-Chul Han, translated by Daniel Steuer
Books I wish I hadn’t read
None
Books I reread
Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle
The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams
Whereas by Layli Long Soldier
Books that pissed me off (in a useful way)
Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
The Portable Jung edited by Joseph Campbell
Books I couldn’t stop talking about
Mother Tongue by Jenni Nuttall
Big Fiction by Dan Sinykin
Books that helped me sleep
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Books that helped me be a more functional human
How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price
How to Be an Adult by David Richo
Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt
Achingly good books that come out next year
After Image by Jenny George
Books I’m still reading (year’s not over!)
We Are a Haunting by Tyriek White
After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz
Nuclear Family by Joseph Han
Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson
Books I may forever be in the middle of
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis
