Some Books I Love

This is in no way an exhaustive list.

Books are, indeed, magic.

Dear Readers,

I’ve had a few conversations lately about some books I love, and books I revisit, and books I’ve connected with others over, and I know this is going to sound exceedingly obvious, but it made me really think about just how much I love books. I LOVE BOOKS.

Sometimes as an author, it is hard to love books. My job is books! Books can become such a focus of my work brain that it feels like maybe sometimes I forget what they actually can BE which is magnificent and magical and moving and stunning and cathartic and hilarious and devastating.

This list is not in order by anything other than what I think of as I write it! Also some “I read this in 2023 and liked it” picks at the bottom.

• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. In short, to me, this is a book about where art fits in when the world ends. Kirsten is one of those characters who feels familiar and important to me. Bonus: the HBO adaptation is extraordinary.

• A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry. This little slip of a middle grade novel was published the year I was born, and so it wasn’t historical fiction when it was written but it is now. Meg is also a character who resonated with me, even now as I read it, I might be over thirty years her senior but I am still her in big and small ways. This book sounds depressing — and, yes, it is quietly devastating, even more so now as an adult — but it’s also jampacked full of joy and hope and beauty and life. It’ll probably take you no longer than an afternoon to read it, and what an afternoon. (Shoutout to my friend Kerry Madden-Lunsford for mentioning it recently and immediately inadvertently jettisoning my current read for an immediate reread of this one instead.)

• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Look, we’re three books in, and all of these books are quietly devastating. (Station Eleven is also loudly devastating, given that the Georgia Flu took an immensely bigger number of lives than Covid.) The rest of these books might be too? I always feel guilty on author panels when moderators or audience members ask about favorite books; I would have just spent the better part of an hour talking about the beauty and resistance in writing joyful and funny romcoms, and then I’m like SO HERE’S FIVE BOOKS ABOUT MORTALITY. I’ve started to think of it as something along the lines of I have to take in the dark to let out the light because, look, no one dies in Amy Spalding novels. But a lot of people die in the novels (and memoirs!) Amy Spalding reads. I don’t know what else to tell you. This book is masterfully written, a slowly unspooling quiet dread that multiplies into horror when the truth is finally revealed, all wrapped up like a cozy British boarding school story. (I also really love Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day because haven’t we all spent a lot of time driving around and being an unreliable narrator in the fumbling tales of our own life?)

• The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith. Do you know what I love about Highsmith’s writing, is not just the happy ending she afforded queer characters in a time where fictional people weren’t allowed them, but also how she luxuriates in weird and uncomfortable moments. Do I think about the HEA of this tale, yes. Do I often think about that scene where Therese eats sausages with a neighbor, y’all, SO OFTEN. (Highsmith’s Talented Mr. Ripley is also a phenomenal novel that should not be overlooked just because you already saw the film. There is so much to gain on the page.)