After having this blog for fourteen years, I’ve wanted to change its name many times. For a while, I thought that bookshark would be more appropriate, pointing towards the idea of reading nonstop like how a shark swims even while sleeping. Recently, I’ve been thinking of Thank You, Books, or something along those lines, because mostly what I feel about reading is grateful. Grateful to be a reader, to be inundated with so many wonderful thoughts and perspectives. Grateful for finding the romance genre, and independently published books, and women writing fantasy and romantasy. Grateful to bookriot for their delightful booklists and everyone else who has recommended me a brilliant read. So, given that I’m way too fond of consistency to change the booklion’s name, I’ll just say it here: thank you, books. Thank you all for coming into my life this year.
So, without further ado, here are the mostly meaningless, yet still fun, Booklion Birthday Awards:
I believe that how many books you read and how many books you abandon are correlated. Namely: the more books you abandon, the more books you read on the whole. If you stubbornly push through a book you’re not enjoying, instead of leaving it unfinished and moving onto the next enjoyable read, you’re going to find reading a frustrating experience. When something is frustrating, we do it less. You’ll probably find yourself reading the unlikable book less and less, taking longer to finish it than normal. Then, having the taste of the bad book in your reading mouth, you’ll probably take longer to pick up your next book, as well. Reading books you don’t like can ruin a good reading habit and destroy your confidence in your ability to pick books.
Yet, if you put down the books you don’t enjoy – acknowledging that something in the book didn’t fit with your tastes or season – you can move along, swiftly, to the next right read. Your reading habit stays as it ever was, undiminished. Your consistent enjoyment in reading, your confidence in your ability to pick books that are right for you at the moment, will lead to more reading over time.
If I were a reading researcher (please, let that be a thing, somewhere), I’d ask as many readers as possible to keep track of 1) how many books they finish in a given time period and 2) how many books they abandon in that period. I hypothesize that the bigger readers would have a significantly higher ratio of unfinished books in a long-term study.
So, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve started keeping track of the books I’ve had to put down after significant time commitment. It’s a wrench every time, it’s so hard to allow myself to imperfectly leave books uncompleted, but I know that it’s the best thing for my reading health overall.
Not-Right-For-Me Books:
The League of gentlewoman Witches – hilarious premise, but quickly faded into stereotypical regency romance
The Alchemist – In my opinion (and I know that most people don’t agree considering the popularity of this title), this is the worst kind of book: a story with a Point. It’s not forgivable, like a story with a subtle point, or even a story with a moral; it’s a philosophy with two dimensional characters pasted atop it. I felt tricked. I wanted to read a novel, and instead I got shouted at about something called a ‘personal legend’ and ‘the language of the world’. UG. Could not finish it.
The Book of Form and Nothingness – I’m still mad, a decade later, about a Tale for the Time Being – a book I loathed – and even reading the author’s style of writing again brought up all of my feelings of resentment.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things – The tone was intimate and menacing. I worried I wouldn’t be able to sleep while reading. Still haven’t read too deeply into the horror genre, and now’s not the right time. I fully expect myself to get obsessed with horror at some later date and wonder at my younger self for skipping it for so many decades…. But I’m not there yet.
The Echo Wife – I’m on board with a cloned second wife… but the set up was clunky and too quick. Felt no connection to main character.
Tell Me an Ending: Memory-deletion sci-fi. Been there done that, with that one movie. Really, though, just didn’t connect with characters.
Neverwhere – I had this idea that Neil Gaiman was one of my incomparable authors, like Jane Austen or Clarke. An author whom I could trust completely, whose works I was saving for future dark days. A sure-fire author. And yet, Neverwhere fell completely flat for me. I had no connection to the characters, even 100 pages in. I opened it every time with a groan. It was for me, at this point in time, unfinishable.
How To See – Thich Nhat Hanh – I never finish his books. I keep trying, every 6 or so months, to see how far I’ve progressed. Is anything making sense yet? More, but not enough. I have a vague benchmark for wisdom in my life: if I ever read a Thich Nhat Hanh book and it makes sense to me… I know I’ll have arrived. Until then, I check and check. Let the words wash over me. See how I’m doing.
P&P: WHAT? I didn’t finish P&P? Not the 20th reading. I had ‘classics’ in my nina hill reading rotation at first, but had to remove it after 50% of P&P. I love P&P, it’s still one of my favorite books (like Nina), but I’m really not in a classics time of life right now. Once I have more energy, once I have the attention to commit again.. I’ll go back. I’ll have whole years of just classics, I bet. Just… not now… not now.
PD James Murder Room: The murder didn’t happen until after the 25% mark! Is this normal for mysteries? Instead of increasing my anticipation, the beginning felt jumpy – I kept losing the flow of the characters. Even after I found out who was murdered – finally – I realized that I didn’t care much about it at all.
Restless Truth – liked the first one, second just bored me.
It Ends With Us – PEOPLE READ THIS AND LIKED IT? I need some com in my rom, or there’s just no point for me. All drama all the time is not my kind of read.
I was Told It Would Get Easier: I was so excited to start another book by the author of Nina Hill. Though it was well written – the characters full and engaging – I had no connection to the subject matter: a single mom taking her only daughter on a college tour. So far in my future that I couldn’t bear it.
The Road to Roswell – just so bored. I know that a lot of people must love it, and I’m always on board for a comic sci-fi, but either I read it at the wrong time or it just wasn’t the right book for me. The jokes were just eye-rolley, and the characters were flat, flat, flat.
The Book that Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence – I loved Mark Lawrence’s (of thorns) series, and so I eagerly anticipated his new series about libraries, of all things, which are the best settings for any fantasy, in my opinion. About half way through, I realized that I just wasn’t enjoying it. After days trying to pinpoint the reason for my dislike, I realized that I just didn’t care for any of the characters. I didn’t care if they survived, met their goals, or had setbacks. Perhaps Mark Lawrence can only make evil characters compelling to me..
The Splinter in the Sky – When I started this one, I told everyone that I was reading a ‘tea sci-fi’, and it was just as delightful as it sounded. A tea-specialist from a tea-producing planet goes on an inter-planetary quest to save her sibling, largely through tea making. However, about half way through, it switched from a personal quest to a world-saving quest, and it was too stressful for my stressed out brain. I have no doubt the book continued to be good, if you weren’t just looking for tea-making, cozy, sci-fi.
Hello Beautiful – Ann Napolitano is a great writer… but it didn’t work from me. The whole book was guessable from the first 3 chapter titles alone, and having been right about everything until 50% through… I just played the rest out in my head and went onto the next book.
Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge – I’m all about retirement age fiction (Thursday murder club, etc), but the beginning of this one was just too depressing. A 70 year old woman who recently lost her husband, only is contacted by her middle-aged children when they want money, and (per the description), is about to get her life savings conned from her. I’m sure it turns out to be witty and redemptive, but I couldn’t get past the beginning.
As a reader, it often happens that books that work for so many other people sometimes don’t work for you. It might be your mood at the time, personal triggers or memories, or a particular scene that turns you off the whole book. Or it’s just your idiosyncratic reading preferences. These were all books that didn’t work for me, not in the sense that I hated them and chucked them across the room in a huff without finishing them – but in the sense that I finished them and thought ‘huh’ and then promptly forgot almost all the details, moral points, and character names. They won’t be books I’ll constantly revisit in my interior monologue, and I won’t seek out further similar titles. In short, I don’t feel much about them. I’m rather ambivalent.
Court of Thorns and Roses by Sara Maas
This was one of those highly readable page-turners – books so thrilling that it’s hard to put them down – but, like many of those books, it won’t be one that will stay with me. The characters were insipid, their love too inevitable. Also, it straddles two genres that I don’t traditionally enjoy: YA and fairy tale rewrites. I read it because I was curious about Sara Maas after reading the Crescent Citybooks. I can safely say, now, that Crescent City represents a more mature work, more original, more specific, and just a better all-around reading experience for me.
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn
This is a book that checked all of the boxes for me, on paper: thriller involving women, anti-ageist, fun writing, great premise, fantastic title and cover. And yet, I never felt connected to the characters. Though each of the women had backstories, they felt like scaffolding propping up cardboard cutouts. There wasn’t a single point in which I cared whether the main characters lived or died, besides a personal bias for people surviving instead of being gruesomely killed. Yet, there’s no denying that the plot was twisty, thrilling, and fantastically atmospheric. Armchair readers got to travel to the catacombs beneath Paris, a Swedish spa, New Orleans, and a classic 70’s, mid-air, stewardesses-are-actually-assassins-and-murder-everyone, scene. It’s a fun read, a good way to spend a weekend, but It’s not one that will stick with me long-term.
The All-or-Nothing Marriage by Eli J. Finkel
This is a book that seems like it would be right up my alley. Esther Perel referenced it in the brilliant and unexpected Mating in Captivity, so I thought it’d be a surefire read. Yet, I have to say that this book was a bit… bland. It followed the standard nonfiction formula: premise, history of subject, grab bag of scientific tips and tricks. The grab bag of tips and tricks was very clinical, citing charts and studies, and a bit scattershot. Admittedly, I am not this book’s ideal reader. I’ve been pretty happily married for 12 years, so we had already figured out almost all of the tips and tricks presented in the final section on our own. This book might be more helpful to someone just beginning a marriage or hitting their first rocky years.
Nora Goes Off-Script by Annabel Monaghan
Another decent contemporary romance. Much like Book Lovers,Monaghan sets down the formula for a standard romance book (meet cute, butt heads, one leaves, comes back on community even day), and then breaks that formula. Here, the main characters don’t get back together at the standard time, which increases the tension exponentially until you believe there’s no way the romance could work out. While the writing style lulled me into a happy, relaxed state with its descriptions of sunrises, tea houses, and writing, there was nothing that I’ve been loving in my romances recently – no one was queer, autistic, it wasn’t set in regency England, and it was very closed-door. All of it amounted for a pleasant, recommendable, but not spot-on-for-me, read.
Enchantment by Katherine May
This is a book about one women’s experience with COVID lockdown, autistic burnout, and trying to bring herself out of that by finding small moments in the day for enchantment with water, air, fire, etc. There weren’t any specific recommendations in the book, unlike with most subject-specific, formulaic, American nonfiction, but the reader leaves with the general sense that they should probably try to seek out more of this enchantment stuff whenever they have time.
For me, this wasn’t a direct-hit read. I enjoyed the author’s slow, almost whimsical writing style (and I loved the audiobook narrator’s accent, of course), but I found it a bit presumptuous how she kept telling me how ‘we all’ felt and what ‘we all’ needed in our lives. In the end, my experience just isn’t very similar to hers (she stopped being able to read during covid, and meditate, and she has a self-admitted social media problem) so it was a little hard to relate to what she thought I needed in my life.
Readers are defined not by the books they finish, but by the books they don’t. Every big reader I’ve ever met has left a messy swath of unfinished books in their wake. A real reader knows when to put down a book, the precise moment when it turns from pleasure into work. They’ve read so much that they know their taste and their mood, and where the two intersect. They know that there are millions of books out there, and that they don’t have to read every single one. If one doesn’t work, they shove it aside, making room for the next.
I’m a big proponent of leaving books unfinished. If they don’t work, don’t power through. It’s pretty much my motto. Yet, even I sometimes get caught up in the ‘must finish it’ craze. It can be hard to give up on a book, hard to admit that it isn’t working for you even though it has worked for so many others, to give up on the idea that just a few more pages might recapture your interest. But, the longer you put it off, the more drudgery you have to endure. If you try to power through, reading less every day, you might destroy a perfectly good reading habit.
The posts in this blog are self-selecting. Most of the books I finish and write about are books I pretty much like (unless finished out of extreme anger), so show a distorted image of my reading. My posts, taken together, might make it seem that I love every book I start, reading each one to its conclusion without effort. On the contrary, I start about two books for every one I finish. A lot of times, I know in the first chapter if the book isn’t going to work for me. Other times, I make it to 100+ pages, or even most of the way through. These ones are a wrench to give up, but I know I must do it for the sake of my over-arching reading life.
I’ve heard a lot of almost-non-readers claim, with pride, that they always finish the books they start. Could this perfectionistic tendency lead to their low-quantity reading habit? I only have anecdotal evidence. But, if you consider yourself a sometimes-reader, a barely-reader, or an occasional-reader, why not try picking up the habit of bull-headedly not finishing books? Cast them to the side with glee… but don’t forget to pick out a new one right after. I bet that you’ll find your reading life improves, that you end up finishing more books when all is said and done.
By way of modeling, I’ve included a list of a few of the books I’ve given up after the 100 pg mark in the last six months, with a word or two as a maybe-explanation (some reasonable, some not) as to why I did so. The books I discarded after reading only a few sentences or chapters are too numerous to bother with listing here.
YOU: Fun turned to depressing
The Stand: The Gross factor
The Silence of the White City: Too messy
Prodigy: Just got bored
Me before You: Sappy
How To Do Nothing: Interesting, but not applicable
The Lost City of the Monkey God: Too slow for interest level
Beloved: Wrong Time
Crying in H-mart: Just wanted to read about Korean food, not emotionally immature parents
The sweet spot: Author made a disparaging comment about Meditation
I’ve developed a bad habit of not posting on the books I read right away. To be fair, I do have three young children, little help, and almost no free time. So I guess it’s not so much a habit as a time of life. To rephrase: I’ve developed a bad time of life that isn’t compatible with reviewing the books I read. Of course, I still read. That’s just survival. Now that my youngest is two, I find that I have small pockets of time opening up. If I’m quick and efficient (which I’m not always) I can use those moments to write.
Now that I’ve started working through the backlog, I ambitiously set the goal of clearing out all 35 unposted titles this year! Oh, I do love an ambitious goal. The thing is, I read some of these books over a year ago, and, if I’m being honest, the ones that remain unfinished are unfinished for a reason. In some cases, I simply don’t remember them well enough to write a full two paragraphs about them. I’m sure you’re sensing by now that this is all one big excuse for what I’m about to do: a stream-of-consciousness compilation blog post.
Here it goes:
Firstly, you must read Sapiens, or preferably all three books by Harari, as soon as possible. The reason I never posted is because I didn’t think two paragraphs of repeating the word ‘brilliant’ would convince anyone to read it. Yet, somehow, I couldn’t get past the word and onto the details before the details started fading for me. As always, his books are filled with unintuitive, historical details and insights (like how the agricultural revolution didn’t improve quality of life, but allowed more people to be supported) and endings that somehow pivot to talk about meditation.
I’ve started the dubious practice of reading books purely for the purposes of being able to recommend them, mainly in subjects that I’m already pretty well versed in. I read a lot of parenting books, for example, just to see how they compare to my favorites, or in case I might be able to fit them better into casual conversation (I’ve never once recommended a parenting book in casual conversation, which is one reason why this is a dubious reading practice). To that end, I found The Power of Habit much more corporate and less practical than Atomic Habits. Cribsheet was logical (written by an economist comparing research on big parenting topics, like co-sleeping and screen time), but sometimes missed the spirit of the question in trying to remain objective. How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t with Your Kids was full of practical self-care tips, but the anecdotes of how extremely some people yelled at or otherwise treated their kids became unreadable about halfway through.
These other books were read in a state of libby-induced panic: when none of your holds has come in but you HAVE TO find another book, STAT. Somehow, I gravitate towards best sellers, YA lit, and other emotional works while in the grip of this reading panic… and it rarely ends well for me. On the plus side, most of these books can be read in a day or two (even with little kids milling about), and there’s a satisfaction all its own to be able to start and finish a book in one weekend.
Read Lady Fortescue Steps Out if you like victorian-era romances with a quirky twist. Read Legend if you are truly curious about all of the hype or feel like you must read it before the film (maybe) comes out. Read The Sun is Also a Star if you like modern, fast, YA romances that are both depressing and hopeful. Read Second First Impressions if you want a really sweet, lovely experience set in an unlikely place for romances: a retirement home. Read the end of the Crazy Rich Asianseries (China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems) for the armchair travel, fashion and food descriptions, but remember not to hope for a sensical plot. Read Girl Waits with Gun (I plan to read more of the series) if you love well-wrought, factual, historical fiction. Read The Perks of Being a Wallflower for its authentic voice, reminiscent of Catcher in the Rye.
Last summer, I made one small change to my reading habit which has spread out to touch every aspect of my reading, from the books I pick, to the genres I read, and how much I write about it all. The change wasn’t even my idea, per say, but my 3 year old daughter’s, who couldn’t get to sleep. She needed me in her room for 30 minutes every night so she could fall asleep without screaming, and I needed something to do during that time. Enter: kindle in dark mode. Before this nightly reading, I had never noticed how much my reading habit waxed and waned with the pace of the book. I’d pick away at the slow parts, reading a few pages here and there as I felt like it, and gobble the quick parts whole. Yet, once I had to sit in that dark room and ingest the slow the same as the quick, I realized how quickly one can get through a book with a consistent reading habit. I increased my weekly reading volume from 250-300 pages to 500-600 pages.
Fixing a 30 minute reading habit per day lead to these changes:
Reading more throughout the day (since I was getting through the slower bits quicker)
Decreasing my nightly TV show habit to make more room for reading
Needing to pick out 2-3 books per week, instead of 1
Book-selecting decision fatigue
Not receiving my carefully selected holds in time for my next read
Selecting random books based on availability
Greater risk taking with book selection
Occasionally, finishing books even though they weren’t a great fit just to avoid having to pick out another book
Reading more thrillers (matched my quick reading pace)
Reading more series (don’t have to pick next book)
Started posting here more after booklion backlog grew alarmingly
Scheduled posts ahead to get through backlog here
Once backlog was clear, looking forward to writing and taking the time to make notes after each book
All of this came unexpectedly, after one change that wasn’t even a purposeful choice. It makes me think back to Atomic Habits, and how powerful doing something every day can be, even if it’s only for a short time. So, if your reading isn’t where you want it to be, look at your daily reading habit – are there some small changes you could make, as well?
Without further ado, here are the mostly meaningless, yet still fun…
I’ve always found the whole thriller genre a bit off-putting. I don’t find car chases thrilling. I don’t find stilted one-liners thrilling. I don’t find jumbled fight scenes thrilling. I don’t find destroyed property thrilling. In fact, I hate seeing property destroyed. It makes me feel bad for the poor, innocent people who own that house, car, or restaurant, who now have to add ‘window repair’, ‘call car insurance’, or ‘finance new roof’ to their already overflowing to-do list. So, the fact that I now consider myself a devoted lover of thrillers is quite the about-face.
I accidentally stumbled into a few great thrillers on Libby, which, to be honest, I selected for their title or cover art (who could possibly pass up a book called The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires?). After that, I picked my way slowly through the genre, discarding more books than I finished, until I started to get a sense of what I wanted. I wanted a thrilling book centered around women, with a narrow scope, fully rounded characters, and slowly revealed backstories. I wanted a book that kept me in suspense not through action scenes, but through clever storytelling, multiple perspectives, and unreliable narrators. It turns out that there’s a name for this sub-genre, one that’s searchable on google and everything: the family thriller.
Here’s my own list of family thrillers- a bit broader in definition than Google’s – in order of preference:
The Guest List by Lucy Foley is a murder mystery that is at least twice as thrilling as your standard mystery fare because the Foley hides the identity of both the murderer and the victim from the reader. Throughout the book, the reader not only suspects various characters of being the victim, but also suspects nearly the entire wedding’s guest list of being capable of murder. This exponentially increases the number of red herrings available and, therefore, the suspense. By the time both the murderer and victim are revealed, the book is over and you’ve spent the entire 320 pages in breathless anticipation.
The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell explores a dysfunctional family that is completely destroyed when a charismatic con artist and his family move in. The story jumps between past and present, so that the reader knows three people were murdered in the house, but we don’t know who was murdered, who survived, or who is telling the story. Worth reading both for the interfamily drama and the suspense.
My sister the Serial Killer by Braithwaite is a book that I could’ve kept reading forever, which is particularly tragic since it’s only 240 pages; more of a novella than a novel. Though Braithwaite gives the reader all of the tools to continue the story to its inevitable, chilling conclusion after the final page, I wanted more of her concentrated, staccato prose instead of merely envisioning it (foggily and incompletely) in my imagination.
My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing is thrilling all of the way through, but it’s worth reading just for the last few words. They’ll haunt you long after the details of the rest of the book have faded. They’ll make you question the reliability of the narrator and give the whole book an eerie, chilling twist.
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls is, technically, an autobiography, and so doesn’t qualify for this list. However, it reads a like a thriller (slower, but with the same sense of impending horror), and a lot of the elements that these family thrillers have: child neglect and abuse, mentally ill family members, substance abuse, extreme living conditions. I read it with the same slack-jawed ‘what happens next’ fascination as I did The Family Upstairs.
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty reads like a thriller for about 95% of the book but actually turns out to be more of a comedic misunderstanding than a thrilling, satisfying conclusion. However, I’d still recommend it for Moriarty’s fans (several of her other books are true family thrillers) and for long, lazy weekends.
I am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells is a suspenseful read (which might qualify more as horror than thriller because of the supernatural elements) that focuses on a teenage sociopath’s inner life and family struggles. I loved the tone of the book and the narrator’s voice. We’ve seen first-person sociopath books and movies before, they’re almost pedestrian at this point, but I am Not a Serial Killer adds an element of innocence to the otherwise macabre storyline.
I remember fantasizing, when I initially started The Booklion, that I’d commission a vanity print of my favorite posts when I hit 10 years (that seemed ages in the future and I obviously had a rosy picture of my ‘far-future’ financial situation and free time). I also had big dreams of my posts making the front page of wordpress, of having legions of followers, of being overwhelmed with ‘likes’ for each post. There was also that time five or seven years ago when someone else started selling book lion T-shir
ts online and I, with obvious hipster inclinations, was righteously indignant because I had come up with that name first (as if it were my original thought to begin with). So there was a lot of drama (at least in my mind), when I began.
Now, wiser and older, I understand that this blog is mostly a personal diary of my reading life, written by me and for me, and my dreams of grandeur have faded. I now view The Booklion in terms of its practicality: its uses include looking up books to see if I’ve already read them, finding the right Christmas gift for friends and relatives (I only give books; don’t you?), and providing a clear writing goal for any short bursts of free time I might scavenge (in between sibling fights and dishes, nursing and vacuuming). What I couldn’t have imagined 10 years ago is that this is enough; it’s more than enough, it’s brilliant and happy and contended. My only wish, then, for this blog in the next ten years is to continue to write it… whenever I find the time to do so.
This year, I’ll do a ‘mostly meaningless yet still fun‘ booklion awards for the past decade, instead of the past year. If I were to be a professor in charge of drafting a list of required reading (oh, what fun! Not the teaching or lecturing, but the drafting of lists of books), then this would be my syllabus:
The books on this syllabus are the ones that populate my mind with ideas. Their climaxes and secondary characters, their plot twists and their shortcomings, pop into my mind at the most unrelated of times, spurring chains of thought that last hours. What do people who don’t read think about, I wonder?
Though they are an old stand-by of mine, I hate writing compilation posts. There’s something so obligatory about writing a sentence or two about each subject-related book; while I have time to muse in two paragraphs, two sentences confines me to summary. And yet, if you’ve ever heard that staying home with three kids under 4 is difficult; that person was telling the truth. I’ve managed to read many books in the in-between times, but writing about them afterwards has escaped me. Compilation posts seem like the only way through the backlog and into a new post-book writing routine. So here is a casual compilation, not sorted by subject, with no obligatory sentences or summarizing.
First of all, read Less. Read it without a destination in mind, without hope for a plot or point, and you’ll do well. Secondly, read Song of Achilles. Hopefully read it after having read The Illiad some years ago, remembering only a flicker of it from high school or early college. Be willing to let the book rewrite the faint memory of ancient Greece for you. However, don’t immediately follow Song of Achilles up with Miller’s second novel, Circe. Song of Achilles is specific and alive where Circe is somehow vague and entrenched in the past. Also, be sure to read as much Hemingway as possible, (even if portrayals of the lost generation don’t interest you), especially if your literary education was somewhat hodge-podge and you missed all of him in your hurry to get onto more important things.
Judging by the number of recommendations I get, everyone thinks Bill Bryson and I are the perfect writer/reader pair. Though I’ve read and disliked three of his books, I keep thinking: ‘maybe I caught him at a bad time’, or ‘I’m sure I’ll like the next one better’. Perhaps what I need is a shouted, written reminder: LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO READ ANOTHER BRYSON BOOK. When it comes down to it, I think I just wouldn’t like Bill as a person. That self-satisfied, almost self-pitying, self-documenting doesn’t appeal to me, which is also why I didn’t enjoy the tone of The Omnivores Dilemma. On the other hand, I’m convinced that Tamar Adler and I would instantly become friends if we met, and if you liked her first book (Everlasting Meal), you would probably find the writing of her second just as delightful, though the recipes much less practical.
For fantasy lovers: don’t miss the Fifth Season trilogy, but feel free to put some space between each book (too much consecutive reading has been known to bog a reader’s mind down with a sort of desperate hopelessness). Also, be sure to read Black Leopard, Red Wolf, in equal part for its rambling fantasy and its brilliant, literary narrative. However, You should wait a few years before reading The Ninth House, because finding out the publication date (2020) after you finish it and are searching google for sequels is a disappointment I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Only read Iron Gold if you just finished the Red Rising series (or have a terrific memory for details), because it relies too much on rehashing the past greatness of the trilogy. An Ember in the Ashes was forgettable.
Also, read Lilian Boxfish takes a Walk, even if you’re sick of titles with charmingly unique women’s names, even if you don’t believe that an 80 year old, however feisty, would walk across NYC at midnight to go to a drug-infused party; just read it. However, don’t bother reading Educated, which seems to be on every required reading list for Serious People. When you strip away the title and a few generic concluding paragraphs, it’s really just an autobiography of Westover’s traumatic childhood; it is not a meditation on the power of education.
Read Life Among the Savages only if (and especially if) you have more than two children, read Elon Musk if you want to read an advertisement about the greatness of Elon Musk (and learn a bit about electric cars and rockets); read Funny, you Don’t Look Autistic with the knowledge that it’s an autobiography written by a 22 year old (so I’m sure you can deduce its shortcomings), and read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck if you want a hodge-podge of mixed philosophies and think books swearing a lot is funny.
And now, the list, written with a Kondo-like hope that typing out their names with gratitude will release me from the guilt of not having had the time to properly review each:
Less by Greer Song of Achilles by Miller Circe by Miller The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway A Moveable Feast by Hemingway A Walk in the Woods by Bryson Omnivore’s Dilemma by Pollan Something Old, Something New by Adler The Fifth Season by Jemisin The Obelisk Gate by Jemisin Black Leopard, Red Wolf by James Ninth House by Bardugo Iron Gold by Brown An Ember in the Ashes by Tahir Lilian Boxfish takes a Walk by Rooney Educated by Westover Life Among the Savages by Jackson Elon Musk by Vance Funny, you Don’t Look Autistic by McCreary The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Manson
Now I think that takes my backlog down to only about 15 books. Wish me luck.
Parenting books are the only slightly more respectable neighbors of self-help books. Like all nonfiction, some parenting books are ridiculous – riddled with exclamation marks and pseudo-science – and yet, I love them. I love them the way it seems some women love to have a heartfelt chat with their group of friends about their innermost anxieties vis-a-vis their children and themselves as mothers. Parenting books are the introverted mother’s best friends.
Like self-help books, parenting books are best read in secret. If you do commit the social faux pas of recommending one to a fellow care-giver, be prepared to justify your guilty habit. I find that the most common fault attributed to parenting books is that they ‘all contradict one another’. Which is completely true, but to my mind, not a fault at all. If they all said the exact same thing, it would mean children were actually cookie cutters instead of human beings. A good, healthy contradiction is stimulating for your intellect. Contradictions force you to think for yourself: if two good pieces of advice oppose one another, you must think through the issue and decide where you stand instead of blindly following the instructions.
So here’s a list of some books I’ve read, listed in order from ‘must-read’ to ‘must skip’.
Oh Crap! Potty Training by Jamie Glowacki – if you are at all nervous about potty training your toddler: read this book. It will fill you to the brim with self-confidence and provide you with an arsenal of theories to help with any potty training problems you may confront. Other parents (and even my pediatrician) look at me like I’m some sort of wonder-mom because I potty trained my 27 month old fully in a week. I take credit, but it’s a complete scam. I simply followed the instructions in the book to the letter. Truly, potty training was one of the easiest parenting challenges I’ve yet faced. Much easier than, say, a trip to the grocery store with two screaming toddlers (where’s the parenting book on that?).
123 Magic by Thomas Phelan – This magical book teaches how to do time-outs properly. I honestly think its most important function is helping parents not feel guilty about time outs, which are necessary when training the savage beast that your beloved child occasionally morphs into. Although book details how to apply the theory to many specific situations, it boils down to this: count each negative behavior by calmly saying ‘one’, ‘two’, or ‘three’. At three, your child gets a minute in their time-out spot per year of life. It sounds so easy, but it’s deceptively difficult. The success of the method hinges entirely on the parent’s ability to remove their emotions from the process.
How to Talk so Kids will Listen, and Listen so Kids will Talk by Adele Faber- This book is not an easy, single step solution to parenting. It’s a complex, multifaceted approach to sustainable communication with your growing child. Of all the books here, this is the one that deserves to be purchased so that you can dog ear and underline as you read and re-read over the years of your parenting career.
Child of Mine by Ellyn Satter- the seminal work on how to feed your child. Every modern book on feeding children summarizes or at least mentions Satter philosophy; it’s the bedrock upon which current theories are based. Although reading each of its long-winded and professionally-aimed 50 chapters would be a harrowing exercise in patience, it’s not really necessary. Basically, the theory boils down to this: your responsibility is to serve plenty of healthy, delicious food at predictable times; your child’s responsibility is to decide how much of it to eat. That’s it. Satter claims that you don’t need to argue with your child about what goes into his or her mouth. If they don’t eat enough, they will be a little hungry until the next regularly scheduled meal or snack, and then they’ll eat more. What a relief! Although I wouldn’t say that employing this theory has helped all that much with my son’s pickiness yet, it has significantly reduced the stress in my life. And, if Satter is to be believed, eventually, it will help with the pickiness too.
Raising Your spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka – Although this book presented many solutions for raising spirited, or high-reactive, children, to me, the most important was how to examine and redefine the labels you give your children. Which is better: difficult or spirited, cry-baby or sensitive, stubborn or persistent? How you label your child affects both their perception of themselves and how you treat them and deal with their challenges.
Getting to Yum by Le Billon, Karen – another book about picky eaters that summarizes some research and lays out a method for overcoming them in a sort of friendly, high-handed way. Includes recipes at the end, some of which turn out well.
No Drama Discipline by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson – sort of a middle-of-the-road book that doesn’t take a revolutionary stand on any issue. Advocates thinking, observing, and connecting while parenting.
The Everything Guide to Potty Training – why bother reading this book when you know about Oh Crap! Potty Training? It merely summarizes all of the approaches.
Oh Crap! Potty Training by Jamie Glowacki – if you are at all nervous about potty training your toddler: read this book. It will fill you to the brim with self-confidence and provide you with an arsenal of theories to help with any potty training problems you may confront. Other parents (and even my pediatrician) look at me like I’m some sort of wonder-mom because I potty trained my 27 month old fully in a week. I take credit, but it’s a complete scam. I simply followed the instructions in the book to the letter. Truly, potty training was one of the easiest parenting challenges I’ve yet faced. Much easier than, say, a trip to the grocery store with two screaming toddlers (where’s the parenting book on that?).
How to Talk so Kids will Listen, and Listen so Kids will Talk by Adele Faber- This book is not an easy, single step solution to parenting. It’s a complex, multifaceted approach to sustainable communication with your growing child. Of all the books here, this is the one that deserves to be purchased so that you can dog ear and underline as you read and re-read over the years of your parenting career.
Book Lion 