The Stacks’ annual book awards are voted on exclusively by members of The Stacks Pack, so if you want to weigh in on the best of the best, talk books all year long, and meet your new bookish besties, join us! Check out our picks for the best books of 2023 here below.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/thestacks). We are beyond grateful for anything you’re able to give to support the production of The Stacks.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website,
For today’s Unabridged, book lovers Cree Myles (All Ways Black) and Sara Hildreth (Fiction Matters) join us to reveal their most anticipated reads for the first half of 2024. We talk about our reading goals for the year, list a few 2024 books we’ve already liked, and get into the books we’re most looking forward to.
*This episode is exclusive to members of The Stacks Pack on patreon. To join this community, get inside access to the show, and listen now, click the link below.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
Of all the lists and awards that are reigned down on books at the end of the year, this list is my most favorite. I have reached out to past guests from The Stacks in 2023 and asked them to share with us their favorite book they read this year, and the one book in 2024 they’re looking forward to. I love the list because, as you know, The Stacks’ guests have the best taste in books, and the list is unlike what you get in every other publication. My guests have range.
I hope you enjoy reconnecting with the many voices from our 2023 season.
The best books I read this year were almost entirely recommended by Traci! The Other Side and We Were Once Family are massive highlights for me. But there is one memoir that I found via my podcast which I cannot stop thinking about and that is Joyce Maynard’s 1998 memoir At Home In The World. Joyce is a voracious writer and I almost felt the book had me in an emotional chokehold as I read about her relationship with JD Salinger when he was 53 and she was just eighteen. I would describe the book as haunting, both as a piece of writing, and in the book’s place in culture. In 1998 she was shunned and decried by Marureen Dowd as a ‘leech woman’ by daring to speak against Salinger, and even after such bravery it would be eighteen more years till we saw a movement like ‘me too.’
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: RuPaul’s memoir! This is maybe his 5th book, but my fingers are crossed that this time he will finally give us all the wonderful gnarly details of his life story without a filter.
The best book I read this year was Bushra Rehman’s Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion. It’s a beautiful book about a Pakistani girl coming of age in immigrant New York in the 80s, and weaves queerness, Islam and community into a lush, intimate story about friendship.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: Linda Villarosa’s Under the Skin. I’ve read a lot of her brilliant essays about race and health in the US, blending statistics and personal stories, and am looking forward to reading more of her analysis.
The best book I read in 2023 was Teeth by Aracelis Girmay. Aracelis is one of my favorite poets, so I regularly return to her books. Teeth is her first book of poems, and maybe it’s something about where I am or where the world is, but cracking Teethopen felt revelatory. I love these poems. Go read this poem for a sample.
The best book I read this year was Blackouts, by Justin Torres (and that was before it won the National Book Award, thank you very much). It elegantly blurs the lines between fiction and history to excavate queer stories that have been forgotten or buried. The novel is a multimedia experience, and as soon as I finished the book I wanted to return to the beginning and read it again.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: Next year my colleague Sarah McCammon is coming out with her first book, The Exvangelicals. It combines memoir with reportage, tying her own story of leaving the Evangelical church with a larger social trend of others who have done the same.
I loved Bryan Washington’s Family Meal for many reasons, but what made me cry was the book’s exploration of how wrenching and also how bewildering grief can be. We feel Cam’s loss, and we also witness how hard and confusing it is for those who care about him—who don’t always know what to do or how to help, even though they want to—and this felt so resonant for me, especially after the last few years we’ve all experienced. I also appreciate how the novel made me consider what it means to have really important history with someone, and how that can shape what we think of as their “truth” without always being 100% true—we often tell ourselves the same stories about people in our lives, and then find out we have much more to learn.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: I recently received a galley of Crystal Hana Kim’s The Stone Home, a Drop Everything And Read moment for me. She’s a profoundly beautiful writer and I’m loving it so far.
The best thing I read in 2023 was Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I read it during the worst part of a hellish Texas summer, and was swept up and swept into the human-feeling characters and the visceral depictions of the natural world. It’s the perfect read for when you need a good long epic to fall all the way into.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: The book I can’t wait for next year is Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange. I loved There, There and I heard this one is about Indian residential schools and intergenerational trauma — touching on some themes that have been part of my work reporting on the child welfare system.
Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir shifted something in me when I first read it on assignment to interview author Akwaeke Emezi (for the cover of TIME, shameless plug) back in 2021. “Frank and flat-footed, like a soul singer who commands attention without backup dancers and light shows…. ‘Dear Senthuran’ is a brutally honest and vulnerable testimony of survival, of the rejuvenating variety that inspires and activates; if it had a soundtrack, the timeless Clara Ward gospel hymn ‘How I Got Over’ might be on loop” is how I described it then. It was a further clarifying revisit for me this year — in the midst of the publication of my own book(s) — helping me think differently, more clearly about serving audiences beyond the all-consuming white gaze and centering Blackness and queerness and transness along the way. I think all Black creatives — writers, musicians, artists, balloon animal makers! — especially those of us navigating less Black spaces, should read this book. Hell, any creative from historically excluded communities!
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: I’m looking forward to reading Raquel Willis’ new memoir, The Risk It Takes To Bloom. More Black trans everything, please!
The best thing that I read this year was I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. It is the most beautiful book about how the person that brought you into this world and is supposed to be the person that loves and cares for you most ultimately can be the person that does just the opposite. I read it cover to cover in less than two days, feeling all the feelings, relating to it a little too much but gaining such relief of being understood by a fellow human.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: Tender Heartby Hetty Lui McKinnon. It’s a cookbook not only about vegetables but about the unbreakable family bonds forged through food and how by cooking those foods you can stay connected to loved ones who you might have lost.
The best book I read in 2023 was The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depthsby Brad Fox. This book is such a feat. Fox chronicles the descent of a self-taught scientist and explorer into the oceanic abyss, where he discovers never-before-seen species as well as truths about our senses (“the yellow of the sun can never hereafter be as wonderful as blue can be”), all within a four-and-a-half foot steel sphere, the Bathysphere, a marvel of engineering in 1930. With beautiful prose and a restrained voice – like a whisper heard within the Bathysphere – he complicates the whole white male explorer narrative while immersing us in a Jules Verne-slash-The Origin of Species exploration. Plus the book is gorgeously illustrated with paintings of the species he discovers on his voyage. I’m still thinking about this book.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: I’ve read a ton of nonfiction in 2023, so I’m looking forward to reading fiction in 2024, specifically from some of the masters. I can’t wait to read Zadie Smith’s The Fraud, Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and Stella Maris, and I re-read Train Dreams by Denis Johnson every two or three years, so that’s due.
I finally got around to Ring Shout, a novella by P. Djèlà Clarkthis year. The story is a dark, historical, Southern Gothic fantasy set in 1920s Macon, Georgia, about a band of Black women warriors on a quest to hunt “Ku Kluxes,” and destroy demons summoned by the Ku Klux Klan. It’s a mix of so many things I love—history; fantasy; Black culture, spirituality, and dialect. Plus, it’s short. The perfect read for a long plane ride or an afternoon to yourself.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: James from Percival Everett. It’s a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of “Nigger Jim,” a runaway enslaved man and Huck’s travel companion. Like many American children, I was forced to read Huckleberry Finn in school. I wanted Jim’s perspective then and I’m happy we’re hearing from him now by way of Everett, one of our most thoughtful and original novelists.
The best book I read in 2023 was When Brooklyn Was Queerby Hugh Ryan, who is a phenomenal historian and storyteller of early queer life in America. The book is fascinating, with so many nuggets of little-known history, but also just a page-turner with beautiful sentences. Hard to get all of that in one book!
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: …on a totally different wavelength, is one of my favorite novelist’s new book, Meet The Benedettosby Katie Cotugno. It just came out and is an Italian-American family retelling of Pride and Prejudice, and looks like a romp!
I read Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salamain a concentrated burst in early November, in between hours of news reports from Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza. Thrall’s book focuses on a tragic incident in the West Bank in 2012, where a bus carrying Palestinian schoolchildren flipped onto its side and burned for more than half an hour before authorities arrived to extinguish the blaze. Through his meticulous, relentless reporting, Thrall illuminates not just the details of the crash, but the complex web of historical, political, and social relations that comprised the lives of those it affected, and that created the conditions that caused the rescue’s horrible delay (ambulances detained at checkpoints by the IDF; geographical confusion engendered by the ambiguities of Israeli-controlled roads cutting through Palestinian territory to Jewish settlements). Thrall’s sweeping narrative turns what one might gloss as another depressing headline about a terrible but distant accident into an intimate, infuriating epic.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: One of the first books I plan to read in 2024 is Lauren Markham’s A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging, which blends journalism (Markham is an ace reporter, dogged and precise—her beat is immigration, though she’s written beautifully on disability, too) with the more eccentric terrains of philosophy, literature, and memoir. Markham’s new book is—like Thrall’s—about a tragic fire (in this case, the burning of the Moria refugee camp in Greece) that through her burrowing, expansive engagement, promises to elucidate a much larger socio-political situation. Markham strikes me as the ideal guide for such a journey.
It’s hard to narrow down but one of the best books I read this year, and one I cannot stop talking about, is BIGby Vashti Harrison. This picture book encapsulates so much emotion! The text is sparse while the illustration portrays such a wondrous and deep story, and the use of colors! Watch Vashti discuss a bit of how she came to make her artistic decisions on such a rich book about body consciousness, self-love, and growing up in a Black girl’s body. It’s a book I think everyone of every age group should read, learn from, and will feel so immersed in.
The best thing that I read this year was an advanced review copy of Sarah Manguso’s forthcoming novel Liars. It’s a work of very subtle horror about one of our creepiest institutions: marriage. I hope that it is widely enjoyed.
Myriam was our guest for Episode 285, where she discussed her book Creep.
Chain-Gang All-Stars was the best thing I read this year. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah manages to make what is essentially the Mass Incarceration Ultimate Fighting Championship so simultaneously hilarious and thrilling. It is a thoughtful exploration of America’s criminal justice system, and a satire of our insatiable bloodlust.
The best thing I read this year was Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slaveryand the Failure of Emancipation, by Kris Manjapra. This book details how the process of emancipation varied throughout the world, how it was never as clean or neat as we think, and how it often was a contentious, adversarial process that failed to recognize true freedom for the enslaved. It was riveting and so finely argued, and it changed how I see the world and how I understand our present moment. I highly recommend it.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: I’m looking forward to reading Come and Get It, by Kiley Reid, and The Book of Love, by Kelly Link, because I adore both writers’ work.
Favorite book I’ve read this year is American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Masterful research and telling of the story behind the bomb and the people who made it possible. The game-changing scientific breakthroughs that bring our existence into question, the politics of fear and vilification, the big moral questions at the center of the book all feel very resonant at this moment.
My favorite book in 2023 was The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells by Sarah Churchwell. I did not know what to expect when I bought the book at the Bath literary festival, but I went to hear the author speak and was spellbound by her talk and her book. Churchwell bravely traces the role that Gone with the Wind played in creating the myth of white victimhood in America and how that still powerfully shapes current politics. It also convincingly traces a through-line from the Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow to the storming of the Capitol building on January 6th, 2021. Engagingly written and powerfully mindblowing!
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: I am looking forward to reading Undying Book 1: The Kinship of Djinns by sisters Ambreen Hameed and Uzma Hameed. I know Uzma really well and am so excited to read a novel that speaks to my own heritage.
The best book I read this year was Stonerby John Williams. A beautifully written story of an entire life and academic career and tragically unhappy marriage, it is also the most convincing depiction I have come across of what it might actually feel like to die.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: The book I most look forward to reading next year is one I have just started: Helen Garner’s This House of Grief, the true story of a father accused of murdering his three children by driving his car into a dam. I am only a third of the way through this brilliant and gripping courtroom drama, re-released in a handsome new hardcover edition by Pantheon last fall, and I can say already that the powerfully restrained writing, the keenness of observation, and the intelligence of the narrator call to mind some of the all-time greatest works of narrative nonfiction, including the three modern classics to which it could be most obviously compared: Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer, and Emmanuel Carrère’s The Adversary.
The best thing I read this year was We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian. I was so impressed by the storytelling, the research, and the sheer force of this book. The story of the Hart Family Murders isn’t an easy one to tell, but Asgarian did it with such a devotion to the humanity of the children and their families. The book evoked so many emotions in me, mostly rage at the system and a sense of sorrow for what could and should have been. Asgarian did right by those children when so many people did not.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
New York Times Book Review editor MJ Franklin and Debutiful‘s Adam Vitcavage join The Stacks for our annual best books of the year episode. We reveal our personal picks for the ten best books of 2023, and predict trends we anticipate for 2024. Plus, we discuss all the books we’re most looking forward to reading in the new year.
The Stacks Book Club selection for December isRomeo and Julietby William Shakespeare. We will discuss the book on December 27th with Farah Karim-Cooper.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
The Stacks Pack is The Stacks community on Patreon. They are the most ardent fans of the show, and they believe in putting their money behind this little indie book podcast. I am forever grateful for this generous community. This year, as all the book awards and best of lists were coming out, The Stacks Pack was not into what they were seeing. There were lively debates happening on The Stacks discord channel, and one TSP member decided we should have our own awards. And thus, The Stackies were born.
Before I get to the awards themselves I have to say thank you to Elisah who put together the form and ran ran all the rounds of voting. She is a rock star and I am so grateful she took the reins when I simply could not.
The nominations and voting was open only to members of The Stacks Pack. There was one round of nominations, one round of general voting, and one round for finalists. Then we arrived at the below winners. I have included the winners and the finalists in each category. The winners are in bold. They are also all hyperlinked to bookshop.org so you can shop while you read.
If you want to join all the fun of The Stacks Pack please head to patreon.com/thestacksto join in. You earn awesome perks (bonus episodes, the aforementioned discord, virtual book club, reading tracker, and more) and you get to know your money (only $5 a month) is going toward a Black woman run independent book podcast. C’mon, that’s five dollars well spent.
Without further ado, here are the winners of the first ever The Stackies.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
NPR Arts Desk reporter and Book of the Day podcast host Andrew Limbong joins The Stacks to count down his five favorite books of 2022. Traci shares her own list, making it our official top ten of the year. We also get into the trends we saw throughout 2022, and what we’re looking forward to in 2023.
The Stacks Book Club selection for December isTrue Bizby Sarah Nović. We will discuss the book on December 28th with Greta Johnsen.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
It’s time for The Stacks’ annual Best Books of 2021 episode. To help put together this list, we’re joined by professional readers Lupita Aquino (@lupita.reads) and Morgan Hoit (@nycbookgirl). In addition to sharing our top 10 books of the year, we also discuss the trends we saw in 2021, reading for work, and the books we’re excited about in 2022.
To support The Stacks and find out more from this week’s sponsors, click here.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.
Today we’re joined by two of The Stacks’ most favorite readers, Christine Bollow (@readingismagical) and Oscar Almonte-Espinal (@booksteahenny) to share the best books of 2020. We also discuss how 2020 impacted our reading and look ahead to the books we’re most excited about in 2021.
The Stacks Book Club selection for December isCitizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine, we will discuss the book with Darnell Moore on December 30th.
To support The Stacks and find out more from this week’s sponsors, click here.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
Its back! The 3rd Annual The Stacks Book Club Battle of the Books!
We did it in 2018 and 2019 and honestly, its the best tradition and I hope you’re all as thrilled for round three as I am.
To refresh your memory, The Battle of The Books is a March Madness style bracket where you vote to pick the book club book of the year. You also get a chance to win one of TSBC books by predicting the most accurate bracket over on https://challonge.com/thestacks2020 or click here. You create your account put your predictions in for who you think will win. Then on The Stacks Instagram Stories, you’ll vote (starting 12/22) for your favorite books in head to head battles, until we crown one winner, The Stacks Book Club Book of the Year. The results of each round will be updated over on Challonge (our bracket site) and on our Instagram @thestackspod.
You have until Tuesday, December 22nd at 8:00am PST to put in your predictions. The winner will be whoever has the most accurate bracket, and they will win one of our TSBC books from 2020 (winner’s choice). We will announce the winner of the tournament and the winner of the giveaway on Thursday, December 31st once all the results are in.
Here is the important stuff.
Make sure you’re following The Stacks on Instagram @thestackspod.
Register for the bracket if you want to be part of the giveaway CLICK HERE
Vote in each round on our Insta Stories, starting Tuesday December 22nd . All voting on Instagram!
Spread the word!
If you want all the nerdy details of how the seeding was figure out, you’ve come to the right place. Mostly I created a bunch of my own calculations to rank the books based on many factors. The rankings are full of biases and assumptions, and honestly, thats what makes this fun. You all ultimately get to vote, which means you get to decide. Here is how I ranked these books, and below find a more detailed description of what that means.
Podcast Downloads– Raw number of downloads that episode received according to my data (I know older episodes will be at a disadvantage as the podcast grew over time, but also newer episodes suffer because they haven’t been up as long, I’m hoping it all evens out). It is worth noting that I excludedCitizen: An American Lyric from this calculation since that episode is not out yet.
iTunes Episode Popularity– iTunes lets me see how popular each episode is. Its slight different than raw downloads, because they take into account listeners at the time of recording, but they also only include people listening through iTunes. Again,Citizen: An American Lyric was excluded from this category, see above.
Goodreads Scores– I looked up each book on Goodreads and took that score.
Goodreads Reviews– I took the raw number of Goodreads reviews for each book.
Test of Time– The older a book is, the more credit it got, because it has withstood the test of time.
Social Media Input– I’ve asked The Stacks Instagram followers to tell me their favorite book we read this year, and those responses are incorporated.
Traci’s Personal Ranking– Thats right, I’m influencing this competition a little. Its my podcast, so why not?
There are 16 books in the competition, so in each of those categories the books are rated on a scale of 1-16. Each book received a score from each category, 1 being the best, 16 the worst. I then tallied all the scores and divided by 7 (in the case ofCitizen: An American Lyric only 5). The lower the score, the higher the ranking.
I know that sounds like a lot, but just trust me, it makes sense. Here are the rankings based on these calculations, and their total overall raw scores, remember lower is better. Where there was a tie, I broke the tie.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X – 3.28
Sula – 3.85
The Giver – 5.14
Citizen 5.8
The Undocumented Americans – 6.14
Breathe – 6.57
Sister Outsider – 7.57
Trick Mirror – 7.71
The Hating Game – 8.71
Trust Exercise – 9.71
Savage Appetites -9.85
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed – 10.14
Three Women 10.28
The Butterfly Effect – 11.14
Cribsheet – 11.28
Number One Chinese Restaurant – 12.28
Voting begins Tuesday December 22nd, shortly after 8:00am PST for the first round, and will follow the schedule below. Remember you vote on The Stacks Instagram stories. You just click your favorite book in each round’s head to head matchup. Once the results are in, I’ll share the winners with you and we get ready for the next round. The schedule is below.
Round 1 – December 22nd – Sweet Sixteen 16
Round 2 – December 26th – Elite 8
Round 3 – December 28th – Final 4
Round 4 – December 30th – Championship
That feels like a lot, trust me, it’ll be fun and worth it. Here is the important stuff.
Make sure you’re following The Stacks on Instagram @thestackspod.
Register for the bracket if you want to be part of the giveaway CLICK HERE
Vote in each round on our Insta Stories, starting Tuesday December 22.
Spread the word!
For those of you curious who won in previous years, 2018 was The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and 2019 was Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson. Who will ascend the throne in 2020?
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. We are beyond grateful for anything you’re able to give to support the production of this show. If you prefer to do a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
I’ve reached out the guests from the 2019 season of The Stacks to share with us the best book they read this year. I enjoyed talking to each and everyone of our guests, and hearing from them again is a great way to end the year. Each guest shared with me their favorite read in 2019 and one book they hope to read in 2020.
Thank you all for listening to the show, and thank you again to this group of amazing humans for sharing their reading life with all of us.
Of course this is a very hard question. I loved two books A LOT: Mother Winter by Sophia Shalmiyev because it’s such a gripping tale of survival and redemption told through a feminist lens, and Shalmiyev is such a gorgeous writer. I also really enjoyed Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion because she’s so smart and, honestly, this woman could write a grocery list and it would be a deeply fun and engaging and insightful read. (I realize I’m adding another here but …) I also finished Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and I can’t stop thinking about it. I mean, every day it comes up. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2020:The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
I did a lot of reading for homework this year, which included exploring a lot of horror novels and stories I’d somehow missed (turns out We Have Always Lived in the Castle is pretty great!). The books that stayed with me the most of those are two short story collections: Tananarive Due’s Ghost Summer and Alexandra Kleeman’s Intimations. Due isn’t afraid of genre. In fact, she leans into everything that makes both horror and short stories wonderful– deftly drawn characters, warm, spooky, dangerous nostalgia, and an immersive sense of place. Kleeman’s stories are wilder, more surreal, and are horror-adjacent. Kleeman is a master at exploring language, and those unexpected turns of phrase somehow inform her characters’ world views; as the author is confined by available linguistic constructs, so are her characters trapped in their own bodies, their own homes. Unnerving and beautiful writing. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2020:Horror Stories by Liz Phair
In 2019, two of my favorite books insisted on the urgency of life, love, and black feminist creativity. Tembi Locke’s memoir From Scratchswept me away in its depictions of an Italian love affair, cross-cultural family drama, untimely loss, grief, and deep family bonds. Locke’s voice is vibrant and the descriptions of food are mouth watering! More experimental and spare, Aisha Sasha John’s poetry collection I have to live. transported me from Montreal to North Africa, from dance studios into the poet’s very heartbeat. No matter what happens, John insists on her own observations, insights, and indomitable existence. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2020:Dub by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Gabrielle was our guest for Episode 55, and then joined us to discuss Wild Beuaty by Ntozake Shange, Episode 56.
My favorite read of 2019 was Olive, Again, by Elizabeth Strout. Olive Kitteridge absolutely slayed me, so I wondered how a sequel could possibly match the original. Turns out that Olive, Again, is possibly even more compelling as we see an older Olive woven into the lives of the residents of Crosby, Maine. Strout’s sentences are gorgeous, her plot twists surprising, her humor razor-sharp, her compassion deep, and her understanding of the human condition moving and profound. Olive is a both highly original and entirely universal, by turns hard to love and entirely lovable, like most of us. If this book doesn’t break your heart in two, make you cry in public or laugh so hard that water spills out of your nose, change the way you see yourself and others, and leave you with a grand sense of hope, you might be a hologram and not a human. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2020: I’m eagerly awaiting suggestions for what to read in 2020! In fact, I’ll be making good use of this blog post for that very reason!
I was blown away by The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood this year (yes, I was officially the last person to get to it). But I have some advice: when an instant classic comes out, wait 34 years, so you can start the sequel the day after you finish. I DON’T recommend that, but it sure worked out well. I hate waiting! Everything was fresh. (by the way, I also loved The Testaments, though it won’t squeeze into my all-time top ten list like The Handmaid’s Tale).
My favorite read of 2019 was Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help YouFind – and Keep – Love By Amir Levine, Rachel Heller. This was my favorite read because it dove deep into attachment styles, relationship pit falls, and how to achieve a healthy partnership. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in personal development or personal growth. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2020: Recursionby Blake Crouch
My favorite read of 2019 was Julián Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love. I read a lot with my 3-year-old daughter and this is one of our favorites. It’s about a boy named Julián who dreams of becoming a mermaid. His grandmother makes a simple, meaningful gesture to affirm his dreams, and then they go on an adventure to the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. The illustrations are gorgeous and I appreciate that there’s an imaginative children’s book that helps my toddler and me talk about gender. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2020:Dub by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
My favorite book of 2019 was Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown. brown brings Black feminism, sex positivity and harm reduction to talk about how to seek pleasure in all aspects of our lives and thus radically liberate ourselves and others. It was an essential read for me at this point in my life to heal myself and transform the world. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2020:Real Lifeby Brandon Taylor
The book I enjoyed the most in 2019 was The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. A feminist fable retelling set as Christianity was sweeping through the medieval Russian countryside, the magic in this story swept me away. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2020:The Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth
My favorite read of 2019 was Ramayana: Divine Loophole by Sanjay Patel, an exciting retelling of a 2500-year-old Hindu myth. The story is fast-paced with ornate, bold, and dazzling art, so it was perfect to share with my five-year-old, whose interest in the story had been piqued by a picture of Hanuman moving a mountain. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2020:Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby
I read so many wonderful books this year, and one of the standouts was How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones. This memoir is all about Jones coming of age as a gay Black man in Texas, his relationship to his mother, and the ways he fought to survive and thrive. The book is so well written, Jones is a poet and his use of language and craft is evident in every sentence. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2020:Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
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