Hi, loves. 🌿📚

It's 2024 book time!

This was an incredibly odd reading year: I reread so many books, and I read only half or a substantial chunk of many before putting them down. (I don’t share those — I’d hate for someone to point out that they couldn’t finish my work publicly.) I read less than usual? And a lot of parenting books? I found a soft spot for Elin Hildebrand (!)? I needed a break from life? It was an election year? I don’t know, fair warning: it’s a weird list. But I’m sharing it here because I love reading other people’s and I am so sick of all those emails telling me I need another candle and cashmere sweater. I don’t! But I can always use another book. Please send me your lists, please and seriously.

This was also the year when I realized — yet again — how incredibly difficult it is to write a novel. I knew this before! I’ve been working on mine for years now! And it’s still, to quote my dear friend Kelsey, “pie dough before it comes together.” But I have to say that I am just awed that anyone can ever finish one and make it good enough that it ends up on anyone’s list, so hooray to all the books here, whether I loved them or not.

To that end: This is not a best-of list — this is simply how I spent my reading time. I have no idea whether you’ll like what I like, so suffice it to say, I adored some of them and liked some of them okay, and some are clearly beloved because they were rereads. (I reread books I think will be helpful to me in my own novel-writing.) Some, to be frank, I ended up hating but somehow finished. There are books on here I tried years ago and couldn’t get through, and then read in one sitting on a second attempt. Books find us when we need them. I really do believe this.

So here goes, in the order of how I read them:

I started the year off with Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers. Jessamine and I were at Columbia at the same time, and it’s always thrilling to read a fellow MFAers work — this one was phenomenal, spooky and terrifying. I reread my absolute favorite book, My Name is Lucy Barton, twice (!?). I reread Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rodham, then Prep. I read Sharon Brous’ The Amen Effect, which is a great book to give someone going through a hard time.

God, this list is so odd. I got Kiley Reid’s Come and Get It out of the library the second it was out, and Leslie Jamison’s Splinters (the book that spawned a million text chains). My Elin Hildebrand kick started with The Five-Star Weekend, which was followed by 28 Summers and The Sixth Wedding. It’s like eating cotton candy! Fun! Soothing! And also it helps you think through plot!

I read Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity (my favorite of his is still Digital Minimalism). I reread (!!) Caitlin Shetterly’s Pete and Alice in Maine and also Cynthia D’Aprix’s Good Company. Then I went through a series of new ones: Anna Quindlen’s After Annie, Rachel Khong’s Good Americans, Catherine Newman’s Sandwich (also spawned a million text threads), and Claire Lombardo’s Same As it Ever Was. That was the last book I read before we set off for the summer in Montreal and Cambridge. I know this because Noa and I had a Summer reading competition. I lost.

This was affixed to our fridge in Cambridge. She added to this list, obviously, to win. Her second book is Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

I lost by only reading: Meg Mason’s You Be Mother (I loved it — she wrote it before Sorrow and Bliss, and think you can only get it in the UK?), Sarah Manguso’s Liars, rereading (!) Lucy By the Sea (TWICE), and then my summer Hildebraand kick set in: Troubles in Paradise, The Perfect Couple, What Happens in Paradise, Winter in Paradise. I also read Annabel Monaghan’s Summer Romance, but I’m pretty sure I did that while we were still in Montreal, back in June.

I absolutely loved Alison Espach’s The Wedding People, then immediately launched into Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance (gorgeous). I finally did read Sorrow and Bliss, which I’d had to put down years earlier because it made me incredibly depressed but this time I managed to really enjoy it (even while crying). I was over the fucking MOON when Elizabeth Strout came out with Tell Me Everything. LOVED. I read Rumaan Alam’s Entitlement, and reread (for the third time!) Joanna Hershon’s St. Ivo. My friend Aimee gifted me Danzy Senna’s latest, Colored Television.

In the week before the election, when I couldn’t read anything of substance, I was delighted by Ina Garten’s Be Ready When the Luck Happens until a friend told me she was incredibly rude to her and her daughter in an airport lounge (!!). I reread Elizabeth McCracken’s The Exact Replica of the Figment of my Imagination for the millionth time. And finally just inhaled Betsy Lerner’s Shred Sisters and Susan Rieger’s Like Mother, Like Mother. Both were beautiful.

It turns out this was also my year of reading a fair number of parenting/marriage/self-help books: Aliza Pressman’s The Five Principles of Parenting, Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation (which really only made me more anxious), Lisa Damour’s Untangled (could not recommend more highly), Winifred M. Reilly’s It Takes One to Tango (also highly recommend!).

And I cannot forget the cookbooks. Someone stop me! I buy so many! I had to get Julia Turshen’s latest, What Goes with What; I bake cookies from Zoë Bakes Cookies all the time, and cook dinner from Mostly Plants a lot; The Brain Health Kitchen I got in a moment of feeling like perimenopause was going to eat me and my brain alive, but there are some cool recipes in it.

Write to an author enough and you might end up IN THE BOOK. This is from Julia Turshen’s What Goes with What. I died!

I am not sure what to reach for next — lined up from the library are: Zaina Arafat’s You Exist Too Much and Coco Mellors’ Blue Sisters — so please list your faves in the comments. I want to be taken away (shocker), so send me big, juicy novels. Here’s the 2023 list. And here’s the 2022 one!

Also! If you want to write in community, I am starting a new series in the new year: LUNCH CLUB. It will only run in January and February — Tuesdays around lunch time, an hour to write together. No experience necessary! I’ll offer a poem and prompt and major accountability. I’d love love love to see you there. You can read more about it and sign up here. And I might have openings in my small Friday morning or Thursday night classes — more on that next week.

Sending love,

Abs xo