I (famously) do not like running and judge those who run obsessively. It is one thing to run short distances to exercise or to relax, however, to run for long distances? Marathons? Ultra marathons? Iron Man races? To them I say: what are you running from. Go to therapy. Do you like running for miles and miles and miles? Talk to a trusted friend or loved one. Get help! However, I know who I am, which is to say, a hypocrite. This is a moat and a beam situation. That same obsessive energy that I judge in others: that is me. I do not run, but I do burrow myself into entertainment to the point of obsession and then list and rank things with that same obsession. I have developed incredible endurance. And like the runners that I judge, I am also running from something; often the number of books, movies, audiobooks, and podcasts I have consumed have a direct correlation to my mental state. This year was a long and strange one for me and one in which I read a personal record of 90 books. Whoa you are thinking, Holly, were you running from something?? To which I say: yes. But one thing about me? I can turn lemons into hours and hours of watching movies and reading books. Still better than running.

Books

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Because of the sheer GIRTH, I have a lot to recommend. After the Quick Top 3 Nonfiction and Top 3 Fiction Books, I organized them thematically around the things I was interested in this year which turned out to be People in the UK, People in Europe, Mormonism, Theology, and The Modern Age and Why It Is So Weird.  

Top 3 Non-Fiction Books

• Eichmann in Jerusalem (Hannah Arendt): Timely and nuanced, this book is about the Eichmann trial and details how the state of Israel argued that they were able to execute this man. Famous for the phrase “the banality of evil” which I have thought about every day since I read it.
• Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (Svetlana Alexievich): Hands down the most fascinating book I read this year. The book is comprised of interviews of people living in Russia and talking about Russia in the early 2000’s. An incredible mosaic of life and experience, some of it strikingly different than life in the west and much of it hauntingly familiar. Cannot recommend enough, I think about it all the time.
• My Bright Abyss (Christian Wimen): This book is absolutely essential for anyone who is interested in living a life that is interested in Christian spirituality. It is beautiful and heartbreaking and honest.

Top 3 Fiction Books

• Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel): This is a cheat because it’s one of three and they are all an absolute delight. They are historical fiction about the life of Thomas Cromwell, a counselor to Henry the VIII. One of my friends said that women’s “I think about the Roman Empire everyday” is thinking about Anne Boleyn and this book is for those girlies (me).
• The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoyevsky): Been on my list for ages but hands down my favorite of Dostoyevsky’s books. Features three brothers—one that is intellectual and miserable, one that is violent, and one that is a saint (tag yourself?) plus some chaotic female characters and Father Zosima who I love with my whole heart. Underrated part of this book? The murder mystery!!
• The Corpse Washer (Sinan Antoon): Read this for my Literature and Religion class—it is about the Iraq war from the perspective of an artist living there who also works as a corpse washer. The actual translation of the title is The Pomegranate Tree Alone (I hate it when publishers change the name when they translate to English because they think English speakers are dumb and won’t buy it if it is not straightforward and I hate that they are probably right). One of the most beautiful things I read this year—also it is short.

Top Three (whoops four) Books about People in the UK

• Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte): Read this again for the first time since high school and it SLAPS. It is so creepy and transgressive and dark!! I was absolutely delighted.
• The Prime of Ms. Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark): A book set in Edinburgh! That features descriptions of places I see every day! It is a book about a girls school teacher who wields incredible influence over her students and also is a fascist. Really clever and funny and short.
• The End of the Affair (Graham Greene): If you, like me, enjoy reading about Catholic guilt and aesthetics, this is the book for you!
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (Patrick Radden Keefe): An excellent book about The Troubles—well researched, well written, incredibly interesting. I read this right after reading Secondhand Time and came away feeling like we live in such an uneasy peace. Are we really more tolerant of difference?

Honorable Mentions: White Teeth (Zadie Smith), The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart (David Gregg), Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy), A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 (James Sapiro)

Top Three Books about People in Europe

• Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald): I don’t know why The Great Gatsby is considered the best book about America in the 20’s when this book exists. I mean sure, it is set in France, but I feel like that makes the Americanism pop all the more. It is sad and beautiful and twisted, and it has grown on me the more time has passed and the more I think about it.
• Monoliths (Jack Gilbert): I am in love with Jack Gilbert. I want to climb in his poems and then eat them from the inside out.
• Swann’s Way (Marcel Proust): This book was a full body experience—memory and thought and time and imagination are so weird and wonderful and this book recreates the experience of being inside a brain in real time.

Honorable Mentions: Napoleon: A Life (Andrew Roberts), SPQR (Mary Beard), The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway), Asymmetry: Poems (Adam Zagajewski), The Iliad (Homer)

Top Three Books about Mormonism

• Understanding the Book of Mormon (Grant Hardy): This book (and Givens’ By The Hand of Mormon) kicked off a new age of scholarship about The Book of Mormon and shifted the field from apologetics to literary criticism and philosophical interpretation. This examines the different priorities of the three main speakers of the Book of Mormon (Nephi, Mormon, Moroni). Absolutely foundational.
• The Mormon Culture of Salvation (Douglas J. Davies): This book is boring but has fascinating ideas. Written by an anthropologist, it examines Mormon culture generally (why do we have such thin patience with physical sickness, especially chronic? Why are we so ok with death?) and then focuses on how action and work figure into our conflicting ideas about grace.
• Original Grace (Adam Miller): Speaking of grace, what if we took our own doctrine seriously instead of relying on the ideas of a Christian faith whose assumptions (original sin, hell, etc.) don’t align with said restored doctrine (no original sin, hell, etc.)? This book is insightful and tender and a joy to read.

Honorable Mentions: Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (Richard L. Bushman), Brief Theological Introductions, Americanism Approaches (Ed. Elizabeth Fenton), Re-Reading Job: Understanding the Ancient World’s Greatest Poem (Michael Austin)

Top Three Books About Modern Life and Why It Is the Way That It Is (Weird)

• Capital In the 21st Century (Tomas Piketty): Does trickle down economics work? Well, this French guy gathered all the economic data from every country that has it since we started collecting it and tried to figure it out. Turns out no! Other fascinating discoveries occurred along the way about the nature of inequality. The first 2/3 are the economic and data analysis and is widely accepted, the last 1/3 are his policy recommendations and are hotly contested.
• The Nineties: A Book (Chuck Klosterman): I love a history of pop culture book—the nineties were a weird transitional time! Really fun to read and to see the threads of things to come.
• The Burnout Society (Byung-Chul Han): This book was probably the most influential book on me that I read this year and fundamentally changed my outlook on what is happening in the world. What have we gained from liberation from institutions? What have we lost? Also, Big Brother would be unnecessary because we actually opt in! Orwell simply did not consider that personalized ads are fun.

Honorable Mentions: No One is Talking About This (Patricia Lockwood), The Agony of Eros (Byung-Chul Han), The Human Condition (Hannah Arendt), What Are People For (Wendall Berry), Beautiful World, Where Are You (Sally Rooney),

Top Three Books about Theology

• The Gospels as Stories: A Narrative Approach to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (Jennine K. Brown): How does the character of Christ or God or the disciples change depending on how you tell the story? Really easy to read explanation of basic literary analysis of the bible and exploration of the idea that how you read changes theological conclusions.
• Confession (Leo Tolstoy): This is the document that got him excommunicated! I loved it and found it very faith affirming and the issues he has with the church and with society are so astute and well-articulated. I love reading how intelligent people think through Christianity (i.e. what they hate and what they love).
• The Testament of Mary (Colm Tobin): What if instead of Mary being a stand in for what we think all women should be and what the Catholic church told us she was, she was a human being who was very, VERY, angry that her son had to die? And didn’t like John at all? And thought Jesus’s followers were annoying? This book rocks and really makes you realize how much of what we think about Mary is just fanfic.

Honorable Mentions: The Problem of Pain (C.S. Lewis), A Grief Observed (C.S. Lewis), Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (C.S. Lewis), The Only Problem (Muriel Spark), The Perfect Generosity of Prince Vessantara: A Buddhist Epic (Ed: Margaret Cone)

For Any of You That Read Poetry!!: Nightingale (Paisley Rekdal), Unseen Hand: Poems (Adam Zagajewski), Selected Poems (Herbert Zbigniew), After (Jane Hirshfield), Transgressions: Selected Poems (Jack Gilbert), The Beauty (Jane Hirshfield)

Movies

Every couple of years, I get really into watching all the *new* movies; I get really invested in the Oscars, I religiously listen to the Big Picture Podcast, and I see a lot of movies in theaters. However, because the movies don’t care about the Gregorian Calendar and just care about the Oscars, there are a bunch that I haven’t seen yet because they haven’t been released—all this to say the *real rankings* will shake out around the time of the Oscars but for now I am categorizing by the way I think about them in my head.

Dudes Rock Movies: Mission Impossible- Dead Reckoning Part One, Godzilla Minus One, Dumb Money, The Holdovers

Dudes Rock a Little Bit and Then Not at All Movies: Oppenheimer, The Killer, Napoleon, Maestro, The Iron Claw

Movies that Made Me Feel Bad (In a Good Way): Killers of the Flower Moon, The Iron Claw, Leave the World Behind, How to Blow Up a Pipeline   

Movies that Made Me Feel Bad (In a Bad Way): Saltburn, Poor Things, A Little Life

Movies That Made Me Cry (In a Good Way): The Boy and the Heron, Past Lives, Asteroid City, Are You There God? It’s Me Margret?, The Iron Claw

PR Disguised as Movies: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, Renaissance: A Film by Beyonce, Maestro, Barbie

Movies That Think They Are About Feminism but Do a Bad Job: Poor Things, Barbie

Girls Are Complicated Movies: Anatomy of a Fall, May December, Bottoms, Priscilla, Polite Society, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margret     

Movies That Made Me Actually Laugh Out Loud and Not Just Blow Air Out of My Nose: Bottoms, No Hard Feelings, Theater Camp, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Polite Society

Movies that Inexplicably Feature Music That Sounds like The Lumineers: Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Tentative Top Ten: Past Lives, Asteroid City, Bottoms, The Iron Claw, The Boy and the Heron, Priscilla, May December, No Hard Feelings, Oppenheimer, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margret

Time moved in very flexible and warped ways this year—the first 6 months were this agonizing crawl through the worst depressive episode of my life and the second 6 months was this amazing trip and the beginning of a program I love in a beautiful, ancient city. I wish I could tell you that I learned tidy little lessons that I could sum up for an end of the year blog post, but the truth is that life is as messy and magical as it has ever been. In my experience, eventually, things get better. People are so funny and sometimes mean but mostly do their best. Nothing is real and everything matters. Sometimes the sun shines through the curtains and makes them glow on cream-colored mornings.

Happy New Year!