year in reading
contextualized, not ranked
I want to talk about what I read this year, and rather than giving my reviews or favorites or making some sort of “gift guide,” I’m especially interested in where I found the books I read, when I read them, and where I read them. I’m interested in how reading was contextualized in my life this year.
There are books I read from but did not finish. I will not include those books. I will say that virtually every book I finished this year is one that I consider “worth reading.”
I also taught excerpts from several books to my undergraduates: I will place a star next to those titles.
This may be quite long.
The first book I read this year was Tremor by Teju Cole*. Then I read An Image of My Name Enters America by Lucy Ives, which I bought at a bookstore by the beach in Venice, LA, the day before the wildfires started. Back in Western MA, after my LA trip was cut short, I bought Renee Gladman’s My Lesbian Novel from Bookends, the bookstore down the street from my house. I borrowed Ariana Reines’ A Sand Book (a reread), Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip, and Peter Gizzi’s Threshold Songs from the library. Then more Gladman: TOAT (To After That). I read Prairie Dresses Art Other by Danielle Dutton, The Anthropologists by Aysegul Savas, Wave of Blood by Ariana Reines (which I wrote a review of in the spring, and then had the amazing pleasure of getting to have dinner with Ariana in Western Mass in the fall).
Spring semester started: I read Franz Kafka’s The Trial for a seminar. I wanted to fill in the gaps in my reading of an all time favorite poet, Joanne Kyger, so I read a lot by her: Not Veracruz, Some Life, and All This Everyday. Then more Ariana: Mercury, The Rose, and Coeur de Lion. In workshop with Peter Gizzi I read Rosemary Waldrop (Nick of Time), Etel Adnan (Surge), and Mei Mei Berssenbreugge (Hello the Roses)*. I read Night Philosophy by Fanny Howe.
I went to Florida with my partner where I bought and read Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyoyemi. I read The Lover by Marguerite Duras and The Swimmers by Julia Otsuka. I read On Being Numerous by George Oppen (another Peter rec). I bought Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner from Amherst Books. It was spring now. More compressed prose from French women: Fleur Jaeggy’s I Am The Brother of XX, found at Antidote Books in Brattleboro, and Do What They Say Or Else by Annie Ernaux. I read Paradise Logic by Sophie Kemp. I went to see a wonderful reading by Julian Talamantez Brolaski at Unnameable Books in Turner Falls, MA, and bought xir book Of Mongrelitude.*
In June, I went to my first writing residency on the Cape Cod National Seashore. One day I read a book that I found in the cabin: it was You Are Here: An Anthology of Nature Poetry, edited by Ada Limon. On a couple of hikes/drives into Provincetown from my shack, I went to the fabulous Tim’s Used Books and bought and read first Color Television by Danzy Senna and then Autoportrait* by Jesse Ball. In the shack I also read First Days of the Year by Hélène Cixous. That book is magical. My friend Haley recommended me Dreaming in the Fault Zone: Poetics and Healing by Eleni Stecopolous. My mom gave me When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka, which I read while camping. I read Notes on my Dunce Cap by Jesse Ball waiting at urgent care for a splinter I got from being barefoot on a wooden porch during my residency.
In Paris towards the end of June, I bought That They Were At the Beach by Leslie Scalalpino, from After 8 Books. I read that during the heat wave. When it finally cooled, I bought and read Deborah Levy’s August Blue at a bookstore near Rue Jourdain in Belleville. Levy was in the English language section of almost every bookstore I went into that week, so I considered it a sign.
When I got back to Western MA, The Deborah Levy fest continued, with Hot Milk, The Cost of Living, and Real Estate. In preparation for teaching an online poetry course I read (and then taught) The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley, Eileen Myles’ A Working Life, Etel Adnan’s The Arab Apocalypse. On my birthday in July I read most of Catherine Lacey’s Mobius Book. Then Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton, which my mom gave me as a birthday present. I read Early Work by Andrew Martin.
Summer turned into fall. I read James Hollis’ The Eden Project: The Quest for the Magical Other: A Jungian Perspective on Relationship. When a book has two subtitles that’s how you know it’s powerful. I’m proud to say this is the only self help book I read this year. It (the reading of self help books) had become a bit of an epidemic for me in the years 2019-2024. I re-read How Should a Person Be by Sheila Heti, which actually has the title of a self-help book, but is not that.
Pan by Michael Clune entered the chat. I said I wasn’t picking faves but this one stands out.
I read Gabe Bump’s The New Naturals. I read How to Start a Fire and Why by Jesse Ball, and finally finished My Life and My Life in the Nineties by Lyn Hejinian which I started in 2021. Alice Notley’s Mysteries of Small Houses did a number on me. I read Marta Werner’s Writing in Time, for Hannah Brooks-Motl’s seminar on absorption and address in poetry.
Then a little sequence of nonfiction: I read Hole Studies by Hilary Plum in a very short amount of time, then Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit by Aisha Sabatini Sloan and Blackfishing the IUD by Caren Beilin. More Michael Clune : his stunning memoir White Out. Etel Adnan’s Journey to Mt Tamalpais.
Now we’re getting closer to the present. In October I went to Unnameable Books in Brooklyn and bought and read the essay-poem Justice Piece/Transmission by Lauren Levin. I read Nineties: A Novel With No Moral by Lucy Ives. I read Annie Ernaux’s novella A Simple Passion in a sitting in the Jefferson Market Library in NY while waiting to get on Amtrak. I saw Madeline ffitch read at UMass and then bought & read her book Stay and Fight. I read Doctor Williams’ Heiresses by Alice Notley one day recently. My partner’s mom gave me Louise Gluck’s Rose and Marigold: A Fiction, which I read last week. And, in what will probably be my final book of 2025, unless I finish Kate Riley’s Ruth before New Years, I read Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding this past week/end.
In other book news, I finished my own novel manuscript this December. More on that to come soon, I hope, xo.