Why I ignored books for 20 years, and then picked them up (well, started listening to them) again in 2023 (12/22/23)
I'm not sure why I stopped reading in my 20s.
Maybe it was too much reading as an English major.
Maybe it was feeling forced to read things I didn't want to read as an English major.
Maybe it was the fact that I went to college weirdly sure I would be a brilliant and amazing English major, only to find that other students were way more insightful English majors, leading me to feel resentful of English literature (as a whole...like, all of it), and deciding to punish it (English literature) for making me feel inadequate by refusing to have anything further to do with it.
(awkward pause)
The point is, whether the result of deep-set emotional issues of inadequacy or just really, really liking tv, for the past 20 years I haven't really read. Every now and then I would hear about an author or jump on a bandwagon and read a book or series, but it just never truly stuck. It never become the habit it had once been when I was 13 and devouring "Jane Eyre" and "Pride and Prejudice."
While the lack of reading made me feel a little lazy, I wouldn't say it was a huge concern for me through those years. It was, however, a MAJOR concern for my mother.
As a former English teacher, my mom loved reading but had lost much of her vision in her 30s due to MS. For many years she wasn't able to read, but in the early 00s she discovered e-readers (Nooks, specifically). With her Nook she could make the print large enough to read comfortably. It was like her world opened up again and it made her so unbelievably happy.
Every time we talked on the phone....every. single. conversation. for. 10. years....she would ask me what I was reading. I always knew the conversation was coming, and I dreaded it. The answer was always, "Sorry mom, I'm still not reading anything. I've just been busy."
To 28-year-old Faith it felt like she was nagging.
45-year-old Faith understands (too late) that she was simply trying to connect with her daughter.
After we lost Mom, I resolved to make it up to her and one of my 2021 New Years Resolutions was to read more in her honor. I failed utterly - reading exactly one book that year.
Failing a resolution made in honor of your late mother doesn't feel, you know, great. So, last year I decided to try a different route: listen to more audiobooks in honor of my mom.
I joined audible, pre-paying for credits (no excuses) and replaced the podcasts/musical theater soundtracks that I listened to on my 20 minute drive to/from work with books.
With the end of the year in sight, I am pleased to present you all with the 20ish list of books I finished in 2023.
Stories are so personal and subjective, and different people love books for a myriad of reasons, so I am not sharing my opinions about any of these books (and I can honestly say that I found joy in each of them). I am sharing, however, my favorite quotes from each. I love the moments in a book when the author magically puts words to feelings or experiences that you know well. When possible, the quotes I chose are those moments. In the cases where those moments weren't obvious, I just picked quotes I thought were funny.
My plan is to keep this up, so please help me stay accountable (and feel free to recommend titles).
January
The Heart's Invisible Furies
Author: John Boyne
Why I picked it: I read a great review of the book in a magazine on our flight back from our Christmas visit to Minnesota.
"Maybe there were no villains in my mother's story at all. Just men and women, trying to do their best by each other. And failing."
February
The Keeper of Lost Things
Author: Ruth Hogan
Why I picked it: I'm fascinated by lost things.
"It was no longer grief alone that overwhelmed her, but relief for herself chased by guilt that she could feel such a thing at such a time."
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Author: VE Schwab
Why I picked it: Speaking of titles...this is a killer title. Doesn't it make you want to know more?
"They teach you growing up that you are only one thing at a time - angry, lonely, content - but he's never found that to be true. He is a dozen things at once. He is lost and scared and grateful, he is sorry and happy and afraid."
March
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
By: Douglas Adams
Why I picked it: Dave makes a big deal every time the number 42 comes up, and I wanted to understand why.
"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."
The Quarry Girls
By: Jess Lourey
Why I picked it: True crime set in Minnesota in the 1970s - I'm in. Also, a tunnel system connecting houses in St. Cloud, MN?
"In our neighborhood, the problem wasn't the person who made the mistake; it was the person who acknowledged the truth."
April
A Woman of No Importance
By: Sonia Purnell
Why I picked it: Recommended by a friend (thanks Cliff!).
"Traditionally, British secret services had drawn from a shallow gene pool of posh boys raised on imperial adventure stories, but this regard for breeding over intellect was scarcely a match for the ruthless barbarism of the Third Reich."
May
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
By: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Why I picked it: The title, the cover, the description, old Hollywood - it just seemed like something I would enjoy.
"No one is just a victim or a victor. Everyone is somewhere in between. People who go around casting themselves as one or the other are not only kidding themselves, but they're also painfully unoriginal."
Choosing to Run
By: Des Linden and Bonnie D. Ford
Why I picked it: It's the autobiography (so far) of the first female American to win the Boston Marathon in 33 years, so do you really need to ask?
"I felt exactly the way my hair looked, like shit."
"This is hands down the biggest day of my running career. And if it hadn't been difficult I don't think it would mean as much."
June
Pachinko
By: Min Jin Lee
Why I picked it: I was listening to a podcast and the hosts (whom I found kind of elitest and irritating) talked about it as though everyone in the world had read it...so I felt like I had to read it.
"Living every day in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage."
The House on the Cerulean Sea
By: TJ Klune
Why I picked it: I love both the word and color Cerulean (seriously...that's the only reason I picked this book).
'What?'
'There was no treasure after all! It was a lie to get you here for your party!'
'Oh. I see. So the real treasure was the friendships we made along the way?'
'You guys are the worst,' Lucy muttered. 'The literal worst.'"
July
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
By: Gabrielle Zevin
Why I picked it: A random book reviewer I saw on Tik Tok highly recommended it (and they were actually totally right).
"There was the life you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn't chosen. And sometimes, this other life felt as palpable as the one you were living."
The Language of Flowers
By: Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Why I picked it: This pick was all about the title. I love the title.
"Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else."
Tell The Wolves I'm Home
By: Carol Rifka Brunt
Why I picked it: The description noted that it was about loss. I find comfort in reading about loss.
"I stared hard, trying to find a pattern. Thinking if I kept looking hard enough, maybe the pieces of the world would fit back together into something I could understand."
"If my life was a film, I'd have walked out by now."
August
The Moon, the Stars, and Madame Burova
Author: Ruth Hogan
Why I picked it: Same author as "The Keeper of Lost Things," which I enjoyed.
"When we look up, wherever we are in the world, we see the same sky. We each may have a different vantage point, but we are all looking at the same sun, the same moon and stars. That's how it works with God, in my opinion. I'm sure he doesn't care how we worship or what we call him. Perhaps simply having faith in him and living by it is enough and the trappings of religion are only fripperies."
Normal People
Author: Sally Rooney
Why I picked it: I wanted to watch the mini-series but thought I should read the book first so I could say. "the book is better."
"She believes Marianne lacks 'warmth', by which she means the ability to beg for love from people who hate her."
"It feels powerful to him to put an experience down in words, like he's trapping it in a jar and it can never fully leave him."
September
Cloud Cuckoo Land
Author: Anthony Doerr
Why I picked it: Maureen Corrigan reviewed it on "Fresh Air" in 2021 and the title stuck with me...and I trust Maureen Corrigan.
"Forgetting, he is learning, is how the world heals itself."
"'I know why those librarians read the old stories to you,' Rex says. 'Because if it's told well enough, for as long as the story lasts, you get to slip the trap.'"
Beartown
Author: Fredrik Backman
Why I picked it: I grew up in a small town and I like hockey, but I didn't grow up in a small town that played hockey (Indiana = basketball), so it sounded familiar enough to be comforting and not familiar enough to be boring.
"And when enough people are quiet for long enough, a handful of voices can give the impression that everyone is screaming."
"So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy. There are many ways of doing that, but none is easier than taking her name away from her."
October
The Diamond Eye
Author: Kate Quinn
Why I picked it: It's fiction, but it's based on real a real person, Mila Paclichenko- a female Russian sniper in WW2. I studied Russian in college and spent a semester in Krasnodar. My speaking skills are gone, but I'm still fascinated by Russian history.
"We have bad poetry in the Soviet Union, too," I consoled, and she burst out laughing.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (actually read this one)
Author: JK Rowling
Why I picked it: This was not audible, but an actual book. I started the Harry Potter series over 20 years ago and have been reading this particular book, the last in the series, for around 8 years. It took a long beach vacation to finally make it happen.
"Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it."
November
The Caretakers
Author: Eliza Maxwell
Why I picked it: It was described as gothic meets psychological thriller, which is kind of my thing. It also centers on a true crime documentarian whose film got a man exonerated, but maybe he was actually guilty? Also a true crime doc fan, so that kind of pulled me in.
"A lie told out of kindness is less of a sin than the cruelty of a harsh truth."
All The Light we Cannot See
Author: Anthony Doerr
Why I picked it: Audible and Netflix worked together to bombard me with this book. I had no choice but to listen to it and then watch the miniseries.
"It strikes Werner just then as wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the world - what pretensions humans have!"
December
Then She Was Gone
Author: Lisa Jewell
Why I picked it: After "All The Light We Cannot See" I needed something easy (easy - you know, like a true crime book about an abducted daughter). I think Audible suggested it because I liked "Quarry Girls."
"I'm not going to tell you in ten years you'll look back and wonder what the hell you were thinking, because I remember being 21 and thinking my personality was a solid thing, that 'me' was set in stone, that I would always feel what I felt and believe what I believed. But now I know 'me' is fluid and shape-changing. So whatever you're feeling now, it's temporary."
The Longest Race: Inside the World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike's Elite Running Team
Author: Kara Goucher with Mary Pilon
Why I picked it: Kara Goucher is around my age and was running a lot of marathons around the time I was running a lot of marathons (note: she was running them a LOT faster than I was), and I had a lot of pre-conceived notions about her, based on press coverage. This past year I started listening to a podcast co-hosted by Kara and Des Linden (see my May books for Des's book), and have found her to be so completely different than what I thought, which is always so cool. Plus....it's a running memoir.
"The truth is, running often attracts a personality type that get high off extreme discipline."
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