Recommended Reading
I had grand plans to tell you about my 2019, to set down an honest reflection of the year (let’s be real, I wanted to write a piece on the whole decade), but it’s New Year’s Eve and I write best when I make it quick, so let me tell you about one of my 2019 resolutions instead.
Resolution-making is one of my favorite parts of the year. Every year, a couple of friends and I text back and forth, reflecting on what last year’s blueprints accomplished (or didn’t) and how we’re sketching out the upcoming year. Usually this occurs at the end of December, more often in the beginning of January, but I found myself initiating these conversations around Thanksgiving. (Yes, everyone was annoyed. No, I’m not sorry.) Like this letter, it’s one of the ways I keep up with friends I don’t see as often, but it’s also one of the ways I keep myself accountable to those closest to me (M and I go over these quarterly).
I grew up reading constantly, but like many, I stopped my strong reading habit after I no longer had a curriculum for it. I read books here and there, of course, but I couldn’t call myself a voracious reader anymore. This annoyed me (I still would not put myself in that category, please see my friend Jess, who reads 100 books a year), so I set the bar low at one book a month. The first four months were very slow (in part due to a yoga mentorship—another resolution—and the required reading that went with that), but I found myself picking up the pace in the last half of the year, especially during the holiday season, and read 17 books total (next year, I'll aim for 24). If you’re interested, I’ve listed the books with the date finished and Amazon links below, otherwise you can skip ahead to where I talk about what I learned from this list.
Books I Read in 2019
Becoming by Michelle Obama, January 27 ↗
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, February 28 ↗
Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice by Mark Singleton, March 10 ↗
The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America by Stefanie Syman, April 28 ↗
A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, May 8 ↗
Blue Nights by Joan Didion, May 31 ↗
Bhagavad Gita translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, June 29 ↗
All About Love by bell hooks, July 31 ↗
Every Day is for the Thief by Teju Cole, August 10 ↗
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, August 18 ↗
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, September 23 ↗
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, October 16 ↗
Upstream by Mary Oliver, November 6 ↗
Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay, November 15 ↗
The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa, December 6 ↗
Normal People by Sally Rooney, December 21 ↗
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, December 29 ↗
For the most part, I chose books that called to me during the various seasons. Rebecca Solnit had been on my list forever, and something in my gut told me that it was time. Same with A Handmaid’s Tale, a book that I somehow passed over and, by the time 2016 rolled around, hit a little too close to home, so I put it off until I felt I could stomach it. The Body Keeps the Score appeared everywhere from my psychiatrist’s office to yoga teacher trainings, and I was submersed with it and my grief for the better part of September. I started Ocean Vuong’s debut novel on my birthday after I saw all of the hype that it more than lives up to, and I caved into Normal People when we were heading to Belize and I needed a fast read—it was so good, I finished it in a day.
With the exception of yoga, the common threads were unintentional. Looking back, it’s an interesting curriculum, but one I simply was trying to balance between male and female authors, white and POC voices, fiction and non-fiction. I kept running into the color blue: “The Blue of Distance,” the title of every other essay in Solnit’s collection; Blue Nights by Joan Didion, the sequel to the autobiographical The Year of Magical Thinking, which I buried myself in two years ago; The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa, a book that found it’s way onto my shelf years ago in DC but sat unopened until November. Blue in terms of longing, of something that dances between ephemerality and permanence. Blue in terms of grief, in terms of legacy. It was a blue year.
I ran into other hyphenates and then I hung close: Nigerian-American, Vietnamese-American, Palestinian-American, Indian-American, Filipino-American. What does it mean to move across the world, as my parents did? What does that make me? I deliberately sought out Filipino-American stories (please send any recommendations), but I found some universalities in the stories of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and The Namesake, echoes of displacement and ancestral trauma in The Blue Between Sky and Water. Especially after my grandmother’s death, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I came from, my ancestry, and also my legacy. It’s something I will certainly carry with me into next year.
I also read a few books on how to live. The Bhagavad Gita was required reading for yoga teacher training, but I was pleasantly surprised on how accessible it was, how useful, even in the modern age. As much as I struggle with meditation, I found reading it to be its own easy guide, lulling me into introspection on my commute. All About Love was something that called out to me from a used bookstore this year, and bell hooks articulates the philosophy of the love ethic that my mother raised me with: love as a choice, love as a structure, love was a way of life. I am not sure if what I was thinking about influenced the books I picked up or vice versa, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. My stack shows where I’ve been and who I am, and it’s a reflection I’m satisfied with.
Next year, my resolutions and goals are mostly the same: mostly about habit-forming, the small changes that add up to what I hope is a happier life. There are a couple of big goals too, goals that build off the past few years; there are many miles to travel, new worlds to visit both by plane and by book. One big goal is to be more considerate of my community: keep up with my friends more often, go out a little more (there’s a spreadsheet), write this letter more consistently, campaign for Elizabeth Warren. I hope you’ll join me.
Happy New Year loves—send me your reading lists or resolutions, or call me so we can chat. Can’t wait to hear from you.
All my love,
Kara
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