A handful of nights ago a friend messaged about how he was reconsidering his relationships to his hobbies. I’m pondering what they mean and if I really care about anything other than being the best human I can be. He talked about how he loves playing music but had recently turned his appreciation for it into a chore. He already creates for a living, and wondered what if the rest of my time can just be spent unfolding myself?

I told him how I was thinking of the word joy, and remembered a video I’d posted on social media two and a half years ago, right after I moved to Montana, about how I’d been looking at my practice of writing and trying to make adjustments based on that idea: working only on what brought me joy (day to day, moment to moment) and ignoring all the rest. Even then, I’d acknowledged the — not necessarily limitations, but potential sticky areas — of this concept; how someone like me, easily prone to both distraction and anxiety, could probably unwittingly use this as a ruse to jump from project to project without ever finishing anything and potentially wind up feeling less joy; even more stress/worry on top of lack of creative fulfillment.

For both my friend and my above mentioned practice, I suspect there’s wisdom somewhere in the middle — a dash of focus and commitment, a spritz of continual check-ins over whether one is ultimately feeling connected to what they’re working on (or what they feel that they should be); if potential goals for it are still in alignment with what they want; if, at least for myself, a project is something I really want to pursue during my short time on this rock ball considering all the people I want to love, mountains I’d like to admire and I don’t know, snacks I should probably consume while stuck to the couch at night (this, too, might be important?) 

I read a lot this year. A lot for me in general, and a lot considering how very busy the last twelve months were with creative work while also caring for my unschooled kids. I know that my relationship to the practice of reading shifted throughout the year — at times providing inspiration, solace, expansion, empowerment at my ability to focus! — but I’ve been feeling critical lately over what I know some of it was really about for me, which was a blooming curiosity over how much I might be able to read in order to be seen as REALLY good.

Looking at that sentence, I note how truly weird it is that we choose such random shit to judge our self-worth against, and also what a nerdy thing to select as a marker of being awesome rather than like hey I went sky diving! But I do believe that in our increasingly visible, curated lives, reading books is seen as a basic form of “smart” that you’re just supposed to do in the way that having plants and mid century modern furniture feels some barometer for adult living. (I’ll say that the concept of reading as a part of my identity has also long been with me — as a kid I coped with just about any difficulty by holing up reading, and I tended to be praised for such — outside of that, though, it also brought real joy. I think how car rides across Portland to my grandparents’ during the holidays were some of my most inspired times; on those drives I knew I had time off school to read and daydream about all my books and the stories I’d one day write — simply put, beneath any praise informing who I thought I should be, reading has always made me happy.)

I’d like to share about some books now, but I’m thinking that perhaps one way to return to one’s inner happy does entail slowing down a little — breathing; potentially considering a value system of, “Maybe only if this feels right. Maybe only if it aligns with my deeper ethics of loving myself; of following my gut; of knowing that I deserve good things and that I’m always enough exactly as I am, without any accomplishments.”

I had a funny experience reading this year where increasingly, the books I consumed bled together thematically through no intention or planning of my own. Some books were plucked from the thrift store, several were already on my shelves, a handful my book club of former neighbors in Portland were planning to read and some appeared as recommendations within other books. Yet trippy things kept happening — two separate back-to-back books seemingly randomly mentioned not only Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, but also the writer Marcel Proust. Miranda July’s All Fours talked wonderfully about women aging right after I read Annie Baker’s play Infinite Life about women contending with pain and aging. I read an essay in Elissa Gabbert’s book Every Person is the Only Self mentioning the poet Rainier Maria Rilke’s interest in “doors as magical portals” a few weeks after I wrote about this particular interest of my own. In the Wake of Madness by my friend Bettie Lennett Denny felt in conversation with Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which I’d picked up directly after. One night earlier this month, I couldn’t sleep and kept trying to remember what the words “bric brac” mean — the next day I picked up a new book and found the term used a few pages later. Elissa Gabbert had referenced George Orwell’s essay “Why I Write” about a week before I opened Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Message (now horribly overdue from the library) where I found a quote from Orwell’s very essay on the first page. Sex at Dawn had invigorating overlap with Mating in Captivity, and I was delighted recently finishing a section of Mating in Captivity about sexual fantasy and power dynamics that felt similarly refreshing to thoughts Maggie Nelson offers in her book, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint. Finally, I’d bought Nelson’s book knowing little about it only for one of her essays to align enormously with a topic I’d been writing a piece of my own on, and that has greatly affirmed and informed some of my thoughts on such. 

Are we all just thinking the same things all the time? Maybe, but good folks throughout the ages have shared pretty lovely views on the idea of everything being ultimately derivative, as well as concepts of a collective consciousness containing all sorts of inspiration/possibility sort of swirling around us all the time that who knows who may be grabbing from at any moment … 

I personally like to think of synchronicities as a little nod that I’m following some correct inner instinct; some perhaps otherworldly representation or embodiment of flow, purity, source energy, life.

With that, a few books I particularly loved in 2024 —

Invisible War: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine by Norman Soloman

This book made this list easily due to Soloman’s compelling reflections on the way war both impacts and connects everybody on our planet despite many Westerners living lives extraordinarily detached from the death, destruction and terror that our tax dollars fund globally. Invisible War succinctly examines the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and rigorously interrogates the mainstream media’s complicity in American’s general perceptions of the inevitability of war, as well as whose lives are valued (typically Americans, Canadians or white Europeans) and whose are seen as expendable, if not entirely erased from mainstream news coverage altogether. I have a good friend in my town whose political views are constructed primarily around his resistance to war, and his hope to build broader unity against it. I imagine that this book’s title may read as suspiciously left-wing to those who lean more conservative or who have personal ties to the U.S. military, but I’d eagerly recommend it to any human willing to look more closely at a subject matter that at its core is a bipartisan issue, and one that if more Americans banded together over, we could feasibly play an important role in changing.  

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

I went on a Louise Erdrich kick shortly after moving to Montana, plowing through much of my library’s selection of her works and enormously appreciating every one of them. Funnily, I heard of The Sentence not long after but the premise just didn’t grab me — I marvel as it’s since become my favorite of Erdrich’s works, with main character Tookie landing a slot in my brain I don’t imagine she’ll soon leave and the relationship of Tookie and her husband Pollux being one I now think of with odd regularity. This story takes place in Birch Bark Books in Minneapolis (the bookshop that real life Erdrich owns) and follows a year with the store’s employees as the spirit of one of their least favorite customers haunts the aisles. Perhaps this is the element I’d initially pre-judged as something I wasn’t seeking, but it also takes place during peak covid times/the racial justice protests of 2020, and does so with an energy and depth I came to find myself very moved by. My friend Erin is currently devouring everything Erdrich she can and mentioned how she enjoys the way the male characters are written as beautifully as the female (agree); I also love Erdrich’s simple knack for capturing human quirks that dimensionalize even the most minute of her characters so nicely. Lastly, this book ends with a seven page list of Tookie’s favorite books — I recently read a quote where Erdrich mentions only writing from her characters’ points of views, never trying to get her own across, and having read several works from Tookie’s trove it feels true that Erdrich shows the same skill for wonderfully conveying her characters through their book recommendations.  

On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint by Maggie Nelson

I became aware of Maggie Nelson a few years ago when I read her partner Harry Dodge’s memoir My Meteorite. I’d done enough googling when I finished that book to know that Nelson teaches writing at USC and is considered pretty special; a highly regarded thinker of our times; but still I was unprepared for how much this book would challenge and excite me. Shortly after beginning, I told Nolan it was one of the smartest books I’d ever read and that I was wildly intimidated by it. I had to look up words constantly and found that a majority of her sentences required multiple readings (I talked about this process to a friend and they said “sounds like reading philosophy” — yes!) Nelson mentions a few times how long this book took her to write, which strikes me as appropriate. On Freedom is broken up into four essays examining the idea of freedom (and care, and constraint) in regards to art, sex, drugs and climate — and her thoughts in every one feel slowly spawned, deeply examined and correctly complex in their presentation. In “Art Song,” Nelson argues against theories that we should be moving towards a practice of art as care or justice oriented, insisting that art ought to remain capable of offering us a variety of experiences and outlets, and one of many takeaways I appreciated from “The Ballad of Sexual Optimism” was an idea of “describing — indeed, experiencing — sexual encounters in frames beyond that of sin, abuse, violation or trauma [… and rather also as possible] scenes of learning.” I love that her views don’t ever appear to land in one category or seem like they are “for” one demographic or type of minded person. This book has expanded me greatly and I feel lucky that the literary gods encouraged me to tackle it when they did. 

Some other books I enjoyed this year:

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari — On Acting by Sanford Meisner — In the Wake of Madness by Bettie Lennett Denny — Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler — Virgil Wander by Leif Enger — The Great Offshore Grounds by Vanessa Veselka — State of Wonder by Ann Patchett — Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power — This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel — Last Go Round by Ken Kesey — Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young — Infinite Life by Annie Baker — Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez — Train Dreams by Denis Johnson — You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson — On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong — Anita Del Monte Has the Last Laugh by Xochitl Gonzalez — Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison — All Fours by Miranda July — The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow — Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray and What it Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha — Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic and Power by Pam Grossman — Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo — Tom Lake by Ann Patchett — Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi — The Person Is the Only Self by Elissa Gabbert — Mating In Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence by Esther Perel — Mom-Com by Adriana Mather — Llewellyn’s Sabbat Essentials: Yule by Susan Peznecker 

Wishing a happy New Year to all —