A Year of Reading as Retreat and Renewal, Part 1
In 2023 my TV stayed mostly dark and instead I read 50 books. In this three-part series I share how writers and poets helped nurture clarity, connection, community and creativity in my life.
This post is the first in a three-part series for paid subscribers in which I take you into my library to peruse all 50 books I read in 2023, a year in which I read voraciously for retreat, renewal, restoration: to save my life, essentially, because that is what words have always done for me.
Stories in other mediums did not call to me this year, even though there is great storytelling on television and via streaming (I recently made an exception for the extraordinary documentary “American Symphony” featuring the love story of
and Jon Batiste, which I’ve already watched twice. Don’t miss it).This year, I wanted to be steeped in words: the ones I’ve been writing here and the creative outpouring of all the writers whom I was in conversation with this year, because that’s what it felt like—conversation. During a year in which I left my long marriage and became my mother’s full-time live-in caregiver as her dementia advanced, books were my refuge. Over meals, curled up in bed, on walks or sitting on the beach, they kept me company when I was at my loneliest. They quenched my thirst for clarity, connection, community and creativity—the touchstones of my life.
I read not just as a reader but as a writer, marveling at how these writers and poets take their own unique spin on language, structure, character, scene, pacing and more. Beyond the inspiration and entertainment, there is instruction of the best kind.
I hope you’ll find some new friends among the list as well.
Clarity
The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo
This book was a gift to me from my dear friend
who publishes the beautiful about the intersection of mental health, physical health, spirituality, and the immigrant experience. We have been on a journey of deep self-discovery together and The Book of Awakening is the gift that keeps on giving. For each day of the year, Nepo invites us to contemplate some aspect of our complicated but beautiful human existence with a very short essay and meditation. Published over two decades ago, translated into 20 languages and reaching more than a million readers, Nepo says it best himself about why the book is so beloved: “When wholehearted and true, we are a sturdy conduit for love and care to keep the world going. If I had to guess, I think this book has touched so many because it is a drink of water from the ocean of love and care.”The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
My copy of The Four Agreements is well-traveled. After I read this slim volume’s four agreements based on ancient Toltec wisdom—Be impeccable with your word; don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions and always do your best—my daughter nabbed it from my shelf as one of the few books she tucked into her backpack for a trip around the world this past year. And when she had imbibed its lessons, she sent it from Chile back to Florida, where I could revisit the wisdom of the Toltecs, who were dream masters: they saw a person’s life as the manifestation of their dream, as an art. People control their dream by making choices, knowing that every choice has a consequence.
The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile
I was first introduced to the personality typing system called The Enneagram in 2020 but really deepened my knowledge working in 2022 with Enneagram coach Mindy Klein at Enneagram With Me. I am a Type Two: The Helper (no surprise there!), Mindy and I confirmed through an interview-style assessment. Then I heard a wonderful interview with the mother of all things Enneagram, Suzanne Stabile, on Glennon Doyle’s “We Can Do Hard Things” podcast this year, and wanted to dig even deeper. In The Road Back to You: The Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery, I learned that understanding one’s Enneagram type is a path to greater compassion for oneself and for others. I loved the ten paths for transformation to be the healthiest Two and avoid self-defeating patterns.
The Book of Boundaries by Melissa Urban
I long to be a Boundary Queen but it goes against everything in my nature and my upbringing and that aforementioned Enneagram Type Two. Urban has the answers: 130+ scripts with language you can use to set those tricky boundaries and tips for pushing back against boundary guilt, pressure and oversteps. This practical, accessible, relatable book is one I’ve been reaching for all year.
Connection
Ms. Demeanor by Elinor Lipman: Always charming with a dose of wry social commentary, Lipman’s novels make me laugh out loud and deliver satisfying endings that feel destined not saccharine. In this latest book, Lipman explores the ramifications of sexual freedom for a middle-aged woman when Jane Morgan, a snarky 39-year-old lawyer who has sex on the rooftop terrace of her Manhattan apartment building with a 27-year-old colleague, is shamed as a scandalous woman, sentenced to six months of home confinement. Beneath the plot twists and the humor is a serious message about sexism and guiltless pleasure.
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin: A novel set in a bookshop? An unlikely love story in the form of a persistent publisher’s rep who keeps walking into his life? The twist of an abandoned baby in the bookshop that the cranky owner has to take care of? With all that and more, Zevin had me in the palm of her hand. And you can see the film version of this novel here.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: I would not have typically chosen to read a novel about two video game creators had
of not given it a glowing review but she was right. The novel follows two friends, a man and woman who meet as children and--often in love, but never lovers--come together as creative partners in the world of video game design. In the end, the work they did was far more fascinating than I expected it be, but what really grabbed me was Zevin’s ability to immerse me in a tale of identity, technology, the human experience and the need to connect: to be loved and to love.I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai: I came to know
through her Substack SubMakk and given what a brilliant writing teacher she is, I knew her latest novel wouldn’t disappoint. It’s a suspense novel set at a New Hampshire boarding school with an unsolved mystery at its heart, the murder of a classmate of the protagonist Bodie, a successful podcaster who is haunted by her own trauma from those school years. I admired how skillfully Makkai weaves in sharp commentary on society’s dismissiveness of female sexual trauma through the darkly witty voice of Bodie, all while keeping me feverishly turning the pages to see if those questions would finally be answered.
Violeta by Isabel Allende: I have read all of Allende’s novels and this is definitely in the vein of her work, a sweeping saga told by 100-year-old Violeta about the destruction of a family fortune, a fiery marriage and love affairs, and a cast of other fascinating characters set against political upheaval in Violeta’s homeland, an unnamed Latin American country. Interestingly, it’s framed by two pandemics: the Spanish flu and the Covid crisis, so lessons for survival for modern-day readers.
Meet Us By The Roaring Sea by Akil Kumarasamy: I was lucky enough to have the lovely Akil lead my Fiction Writers workshop at The 2023 Chautauqua Writer’s Festival. She signed a copy of her first novel for me, which was beautiful, inventive, at times incandescent. Set in the near future, a young woman finds her mother’s dead body on a kitchen floor in Queens and begins a journey through language, archives, artificial intelligence, and TV for a way back into herself. The Washington Post described it as “a kind of multilayered dream sequence that asks big questions about civilization, memory and survival,” and I couldn’t agree more. Weirdly beautiful, it takes on climate change and other big themes in this age of disruption we’re living through.
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. Like so many others, I loved Cutting for Stone, his first book, so was thrilled to hear he was publishing a new novel, spanning 1900 to 1977 and set in Kerala in south India. It follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. The writing is lush, the characters compelling, and even at 736 pages, I felt like I moved much too quickly through it. It is one of those novels with so many drop-dead gorgeous lines and stunning insights into the human condition that I often paused to re-read a passage, and only very slowly came back into the present.
The rest of this second weekly newsletter is for paid subscribers, who also get audio versions of every newsletter (scroll till the end to find it). If you’d like to read the full Year of Reading series and my Friday newsletter on all the things inspiring Clarity, Connection, Community and Creativity in my life, I would be honored to have you join us! Thank you for being here.
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