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🏆 = #1 (it’s a tie)
⭐️ = top 5
🙅🏽‍♀️ = quit

🙅🏽‍♀️ The New Naturals - Gabriel Bump

I tried so hard to love this but quit halfway through. It started out strong – a heavy story of a couple experiencing loss – but then got so murky. I couldn’t keep up with all the characters and misfits. Everyone was headed toward a mountain but seemed like they’d never get there. It dragged on and on and I had to give it up.

The Nursery -

Excellent, quick read and brutal postpartum fiction. I don’t think I’ve read a more accurate description of regret / resentment / shock after birth. The collapse of identity in motherhood was so complete. The ending was random, kind of magical realism, and maybe didn’t work, but I didn’t mind at all.

The Best Minds - Jonathan Rosen

Beautiful, haunting, long. Maybe too long. The story was so sad, and the book felt like a college review course on lit crit, postmodernism, and philosophy. It’s hard to imagine working on a book of this scope - he must have been obsessed.

How to Stay Married - Harrison Scott Key

Wanted to hate it, loved it completely. Cried through the whole last quarter.

🏆⭐️ In the Dream House -

Impossible to put down, every word mattered, poems and horror stories, never read anything like it before. A perfect book.

The Quickening - Elizabeth Rush

Nice writing, some cool learning about Antarctica and glaciers, but slow and self-indulgent. The connection between becoming a mother and watching the world melt was a stretch and sentimental. She seemed more enamored with her idea than I was. It took a while to get through.

Dyscalculia - Camongne Felix

Wanted to love this more than I did. The math metaphor felt flat. It was definitely different than what I expected - more of a prose poem.

More - Molly Winter (audio)

Entertaining, juicy, hot, but cliche and absurd in a Park Slope white lady way. Fun to listen to on walks and jogs.

Bee Sting - Paul Murray

This book would have been so good if it was cut in half. 600+ pages and so many words were unnecessary. The characters were interesting, deep, complicated, compelling. The sections with no punctuation made me insane. Loved the Ireland setting/voice/sensibility. Loved all the layers of hiding, secrecy, grief, ghosts. I raced through it to get it back to the library in time, not sure I’ll remember much of it.

Splinters - Leslie Jamison (audio)

Divorce memoir core. The details of the marriage and her entry into it felt so familiar it haunted. Painful in its accuracy and I related to almost all of it. The latter half was so self indulgent and ultimately boring. Way too precious about her motherhood and her own self. Could have been an essay.

⭐️ Monsters -

Excellent. Essays about our worship of harmful men and the preponderance of misogyny and abuse through Western culture. The parts about mother-artist-monsters was incredible. Such a terrific voice, clever, funny, and humble. The essay about Raymond Carver had me in tears.

Love and Trouble - Claire Dederer

Wanted to read after loving Monsters so much but it was forgettable. Lots of sex and debauchery, some Gen X nostalgia. Nothing special.

🙅🏽‍♀️ Lessons for Survival - Emily Raboteau

Recommended by Roxane Gay. Quit at 40%. Couldn’t hang with the climate change stuff. Fun to read about NYC neighborhoods but it was boring and I couldn’t with the righteous New Yorker of it all.

Women Are the Fiercest Creatures - Andrea Dunlop

Romance thriller, kind of Iike candy, not amazing but entertaining and a good escape.

Woman in Me - Britney Spears (audio)

Surprisingly good. I really felt for her and her voice was actually authentic and moving, even if ghost written. What a crushing example of a trauma narrative. Also, beautifully read by Michelle Williams!

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🙅🏽‍♀️ Daughter - Claudia Dey

Quit about 2/3 of the way through. I really tried but this book was so boring –confessional, the point of view was all over the place, didn’t like the main character. It offered a romantic portrait of a father-daughter pair that I had zero interest in. Writing style was strange, like reading someone’s family drama diary.

🙅🏽‍♀️ How to Love Your Daughter - Hila Blum

Recommended by a friend, quit about halfway through. Some interesting moments but also very boring, similar to Daughter - uselessly confessional. Nothing original about the voice. Couldn’t get into it.

Martyr! - Kaveh Akbar

Recommended by a friend. Loved it – every word counted, obviously written by a poet. It might have lost steam a bit in the second half but I stayed with it even so. Really lovable characters and portrait of Brooklyn, sobriety, and grief. I’d like to read his poems.

A Life of One’s Own - Joanna Biggs

Sleeper hit - recommended by I can’t remember whom on Substack and picked it up on a whim. The essays were so moving and made me want to read all the writers she talks about. This book inspired me to start Middlemarch.

Middlemarch - George Eliot

Serious investment of time and energy, it took a long while to get going. The language was so complex, at times opaque, and I definitely felt not smart enough to understand it. But somewhere about halfway I got hooked on the love story, and ended up loving all the twists and turns. Happy ending felt like a reward after 900 pages.

Come and Get It - Kiley Reid

Super fun, entertaining, literal beach read for my trip to SSI. Great characters with such clever insightful descriptions of conversations, expressions, and gestures. Hard to put down. Liked it more than her first book.

🏆⭐️ All Fours -

I really did not want to be one in the chorus of middle-aged women singing the praises of this book. And yet! It’s perfect. Nothing else needs to be written about motherhood or midlife or women again. She wrote it exactly the way it needed to be. It made me want to break free in every way. Still thinking about it months after finishing.

This American Ex-Wife (audio) - Lyz Lenz

Really wonderful blend of memoir and nonfiction - a true manifesto. Her wit and intelligence is so refreshing and I’ve since become a super-fan. I wish I’d read instead of listened.

Idlewild - James Frankie Thomas

Recommended by my sister, written by an alum of my high school about our high school. So fun to read. The story was chaotic and I’m not sure it was a great book but the depiction of the school and nostalgia of it all kept me hooked.

Manuscript by JH

My partner’s newest novel – it’s a dark, harrowing, haunting, heartbreaking story of sisters, the pandemic, grief, and our country’s demise. It needs work but I’m so hopeful for it.

We Were the Universe - Kimberly King Parsons (in progress)

I have no idea what this book is about or whether it’s good - partly because it’s a trippy, associative, meandering story. But also because it’s the book I read on my phone in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, so I literally don’t remember much of it. It does do the trick of getting me zoned out in another world so I can sleep.

⭐️ Liars -

Why is she the world’s best writer? This book was beautiful, painful, near perfect. Every word counted – I think I read it in less than 24 hours. Of the divorce books I read this year, this was my absolute fave.

Survival Is a Promise - Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I was so excited to read this biography of Audre Lorde bio but ultimately found it to be a slog. The writer was so passionate about her subject but I think her motivation to create a poetic biography ultimately clouded the content. I loved learning more about Audre and loved being with her poems again, but it was overwritten and indulgent at times.

Sea of Tranquillity - Emily St John Mandel

Rec by my brother, and have been wanting to read for ages. It was a fun world to get lost in. I found the characters a bit hard to connect with at times. Hard to not compare with Station 11, which I preferred, but it was still terrific.

Hood Feminism - Mikki Kendall

The first few essays moved me so much, and really helped flesh out all the ways white feminism is harmful. She’s a terrific writer, exacting, and so complete in her vision. In the latter half, the essays lost fire and started to sag, seemed a bit forced.

James - Percival Everett

Rec by a friend – I resisted reading it because I have zero interest in Huck Finn. But it was so good, totally caught me up, hard to put down. Some parts are painful and nauseating to read, but other parts were funny and so clever. Read it all in a few days.

I Have Some Questions for You -

Rec by my brother, also a great world and story to get lost in - good escape. It’s written in a second-person address direct address, which really worked. All the built-up anxiety and dread was terrific. The setting felt adjacent to my high school and college, so I could definitely identify. Not sure how I felt about the end but still really enjoyed.

🙅🏽‍♀️ Raising Mentally Strong Kids - Charles Fay

I can’t remember why I wanted to read this but I quit about 1/3 of the way through. It felt like everything I’m trying to get away from in parenting, and totally not considering of neurodivergence or kids who aren’t just easy and compliant. Big ick.

🙅🏽‍♀️ The Apology - V

I’ve wanted to read this for so long and I love her so very much, but I had to quit. The descriptions of the sexual abuse were just way too hard to read, like it was giving me bad dreams and making me feel sick. I continue to be in awe of her work either way.

Of Woman Born - Adrienne Rich (in progress)

Re-read from college. The first chapter was so wonderful and I felt so excited to be back with Adrienne’s voice again, but it’s slow-going otherwise. So academic, and takes a lot of brain power I don’t really have anymore.

Intermezzo - Sally Rooney

Loved. Similar vibe to Normal People but the relationship between the brothers was the most moving vs the romances. The internal and external dialogues were so sharp, so insightful - she makes writing look easy. Cried through the final pages, even if it was a bit corny and cinematic. I hope they make it a show too.

Colored Television - Danzy Senna

Loved this. Hard to put it down. Such a great story and her voice is so strong, smart, and quick. The story also had a great build, so much doom and dread and anxiety it was almost like a thriller but about novel-writing.

⭐️ No One Gets to Fall Apart -

Closed out the year with this winner. Beautiful, devastating memoir about writing, friendship, her mother’s schizophrenia. Interesting pairing with Colored Television, both about mixed-race women and their relationship to their work as writers. Such a strong voice, I adored this book.