Last year I made a fuss about the fact that I had read some ungodly amount of books but you know what? This year I read even more. This is who I am! I walk around a little city listening to my little audiobooks and I refuse to leave school– I read constantly! It’s a good life!

My Favorite Three Nonfiction Books

The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Seabag Montefiore: This was probably my favorite thing I read this year. It covers a wild family having a wild time as they happen to be ruling Russia. Not only did the stories in here read like HBO shows (sex! drugs! murder! revenge! vodka! bears!), it really helped to contextualize Russia’s more recent history. It is a genuine romp and is so fun and funny to read (For the record, this is recommendation tested: two friends have read it and liked it this year!)

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow: I have had a niggling suspicion for a while now that that people tend to project whatever they want onto prehistoric times in order to justify something about today (men go to work because they were hunters, women stay at home because they were gatherers, etc.) and no one is more guilty of this than philosophers. I like all those guys but what do they know about prehistory?? They are not archeologists! Anyway, this book made me feel justified because it goes through the archaeological evidence and written records and pushes on the assumptions often made about prehistoric times. I found so much of this book mind blowing and I found the portrait of human nature presented more compelling and interesting than any presented in a philosophical text or in modern contemporary fantasy. Also it made me realize how little I know about the people living in the Americas and the fascinating, nuanced, varied cultures and societies they lived in. Can’t recommend this enough.

Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn: I read a bunch of books on love and relationships this year– mostly because I thought it would be funny but then it ended up that some of them were really nice. This one was incredible. It is a series of conversations with people talking about the different kinds of love in their lives– love between friends, between romantic partners, parents to children, siblings, etc. I was bowled over by this, I cried multiple times, and I left feeling like my life was simply bursting with love. I can’t wait to read it again

My Three Favorite Fiction Books

Middlemarch by George Eliot: This is about people living in the fictional town of Middlemarch and how their lives intersect. I read this book because I wanted something charming that would give me the feeling of knowing the small town gossip and it was all that and more! I finished and was like “Is this the best book written in English?” It is like all my favorite Edwardian era novels except it had more moral and character complexity. All the little micro-interactions with each other– they matter! It was heartbreaking and funny and so grounded.

On Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham: This is a story about the first 25ish years of the life of a young man with a club foot. Did I first hear of this book because it is one of Sophia Coppola’s favorites? Yes. However, despite this book not being a particularly Good Time, I finished feeling like there was something very true about the humanity that had been portrayed. Some real nice villains in this (it’s everyone). Youth is a disease that all must live through. I think about this book all the time.

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak: A novel about a doctor that lives before, during, and after the Bulshavick revolution in Russia. I was absolutely gripped by this– one of those books that has everything: romance, adventure, survival, tragedy, political strife– what’s not to love!! It is also horribly sad and a fascinating look at what that period in Russia would have meant for an average person.

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Special Elena Ferrante Shoutout

My Brilliant Friend had been on my list for a long time but I finally got around to reading it and I think it is one of the best things I have ever read– all four in the series are incredible. I feel like the NYT saying this was the best book of the 21st century so far makes it too hyped and got everyone’s expectations out of whack but I thought they were incredible– I can only speak for myself! Its writing style is sparse and its narrator is often insufferable but the more she goes along, the more painfully relatable I found her to be. This book was like someone looked into the weirdest, darkest, most messed up corners of every female relationship I have had and put it to paper. I (multiple times!!) was like “how did she know about this??” like Elena Ferrante was Wario Taylor Swift. Delightfully, the books get better as they go along and the last one might have been the best. Not only are they books about competition between friends, devotion, crippling self loathing and envy, they are also about Naples, Italy, poverty, political activism, parenthood, aging, taking care of aging parents, feminism, romantic relationships, and how to navigate a career as a woman. In short: about life. I have been drawn to those kinds of stories all year– Middlemarch, On Human Bondage, and Doctor Zhivago all have an element of this kind of lived-in narrative style. There is a brutality to the honest portrayal of characters but there is also, by default, compassion. I don’t really have any interest in fiction that gives me easy heroes and villains– I would rather read about people, with all their contradictions, finding redemption in and through each other because that is the only thing that seems to work in real life and anything that indulges the childish fantasy of a character undefiled by their humanity has nothing to do with me. I want characters that are capable of great good and great ill and muddle their way through. I think people are fascinating! I love them so much! Bunch of weirdos!!

Here is the longer list of recommendations, organized by what I was apparently interested in this year.

Modern Life and How It’s Weird

How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter (no not that one)

A journalist covering civil wars talks about the contributing factors/ signs that civil war is coming to a society. I didn’t really agree with some of her USA analysis but it was a fascinating read (great companion to Alex Garland’s movie from this year, “Civil War”)

On Photography by Susan Sontag

I have a big fat intellectual crush on Susan Sontag and I loved this– photography has changed everything about art! Is that a good thing?

Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think about Abortion by Gabrielle Stanley Blair

This girl thinks everything I think about abortion (always vindicating to see your worldview in print) and it basically boils down to this– why is reproduction solely a woman’s issue? Men have been around for 100% of the unwanted pregnancies, how come this is solely up to the woman to prevent and take responsibility for?

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

An investigation on the opioid epidemic and the family that profited from it. I feel like I am a little late to the game with this one but it is such an impressive piece of writing and investigative journalism.

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman

Best Overview of Russian History in Order to Understand the Current Conflict

The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes

The Most British Book I have Ever Read

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Books that Sent Me on a Tailspin or Crisis (I will not be explaining)

Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying by Sallie Tisdale

Age of Anger: A History of the Present by Pankaj Mishra

A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov

The Professor’s House by Willa Cather

Books Where When I Was Reading them I thought– Am I Having A Stroke? This is Extremely Weird– but I Still Liked It

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut

Almost made my top three but wouldn’t have worked with my categories anyway because it is part nonfiction and part fiction (hell ya am I right). About the edges of scientific knowledge and the people that pushed the boundaries of that knowledge. Absolutely fascinating, had me googling like crazy. We live in such an incredible mysterious world that we have amazingly learned so much about and yet still understand so little about. Thought about this for days and definitely want to reread it.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

My Year Abroad: A Novel by Chang-Rae Lee

How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told by Harrison Scott Key

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Magnus by George Mackay Brown

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

Books Where Women are Doing Stuff

Poor Things by Alasdair Gray

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Outline by Rachel Cusk

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Glaskell

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Books About Making Movies

Blood Sweat and Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan

The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story by Sam Wasson

Making Movies by Sidney Lumet

Books about Relationships

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Look, sue me, I love Sally Rooney. This was great! I really enjoyed exploring loneliness and grief between brothers. Honestly this is one of my favorites of hers.

Good Material by Dolly Alderton

The Will to Change: Man, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks

And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman

Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

North and South by Elizabeth Glaskell

Books about Religion and People Trying to Figure it Out

The Poetics of the Biblical Narrative by Meir Sternberg

I read this for my dissertation and it was absolutely fascinating– basically a literary analysis of the bible. This is the driest book I read this year but also made me cry because I was like the bible is amazing and God knows what he is doing: being silly and having fun with storytelling.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

This is from the perspective of Dina, Israel/ Jacob’s only daughter (she is the one that her brothers say was raped and then they kill all the men in the city). This did not make me feel good and there were definitely things I thought were a little weak but did make me think and overall I thought was interesting.

Response to Job by Carl Jung

Buddha Da by Anne Donovan

Paradise Lost by John Milton (I am who I am. Its scripture baby)

Books Where Spooky Stuff is Happening

Witch Wood by John Buchan

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Didn’t really care about this book (I was like governess in charge of creepy children? I’m bored) but then I had a nap dream where all the spooky stuff in the book was happening to ME and I was like never mind this is good.

Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

Books about How Politics Can Really Mess Up Your Life

Stalin: The Court of the Red Czar by Simon Seabag Montefiore

Basically the sequel to The Romanov’s but not as fun because anytime it was funny, a bunch of people were brutally killed

Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

About evangelists in the USA and how their gendered read of the Bible really set them up to love Trump

The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark

The World Turned Upside Down by Christopher Hill

The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Books About People Moving around in the World

The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Bel Canto by Ann Pachett

Collections of Poetry That I Loved

Green Squall by Jay Hopler

Slip by Amelia Loulli

After Lorca by Jack Spicer

Books I Did Not Like or Did Not Finish

Babel or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang

Setting things on fire is not a good way to end a book about wanting to change the world– it’s cowardly actually! Cool magic though

The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

First of all, this book is not about relationships with other people and not really about how to be disliked, mostly it dared to ask: what if you just got over your victim complex?? Have you tried that?? I didn’t like it at first because the questions I was coming up with were way better than the boys questions and I think it would have been harder for the old man to answer MY questions but then I didn’t like it because I looked it up to see if this way of thinking is effective in therapy and the answer was a resounding NO.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

Look I don’t know how to fix climate change, it is uncharted territory, but communism? That is extremely well documented territory and I am sorry but I simply am not interested in a communist state– I do not trust the concentration of power in the hands of a small group of people! I believe in Democracy and– though I have my criticisms– capitalism! Sue me!

A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares by Krystal Sutherland

It’s been something of a dream come true of a year: I am living and traveling around Europe, I wrote and turned in a dissertation about things I found fascinating, graduated from divinity school with a master’s degree, I am in a program where I am expected and encouraged to write poetry every day, I sing in a community choir, I have amazing friends (old and new!) and I have all the time in the world to read. It is a delightful season of life and I am doing my best to savor it. Here is a picture of me at Tivoli Garden in Copenhagen on something like my 7th glass of non-alcoholic glögg.