Category Archives: existentialism

2023 year in review

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Each year during this time of year, I love to reflect back on the previous year. I love to scroll through my old pictures. I like to look through all the books I’ve read. I like to reflect on the big, memorable moments. If I don’t stop to do this periodically, to look at it all, my life starts to feel like one big blur. I have come to cherish this annual reflection, which helps me stop time and appreciate where I’m at in my life, what I have accomplished, and all of the wonderful people who have inspired me and buoyed me up along the way—many of whom are you!  

This year I watched my children grow, and try new things, and learned more about who they are. I read more books than I have in years and found solace and regulation in all of my time spend in a good books. I traveled to Chicago, where I got to stay in a fancy hotel room with big, sweeping views of the city and Lake Michigan. Friends visited me in Oregon and Idaho, and they offered their wisdom, inspiration, and encouragement. A professional fire was lit in me this past year, from many embers that had been quietly burning, and I signed not one, but two book contracts and also completed another manuscript for an unrelated project that was a pure joy to create. I also enjoyed many much needed coffee dates and dinner dates with loved ones. All of this was made possible because, for the first time since having children, I have had sufficient childcare this past year. Each moment spent in my office was a cherished gift, and I worked (out of necessity) with a laser focus that I never had before becoming a mother.

Not all of my eras have been so good or so certain, and there has also been heartache, fear, and illness this year too. However, this era is a rich one for me. I awake to beautiful views, and wonderful people, and inspiring work, and I have felt grateful every single day. 

portrait of the author

Trees at Leisure by Anna Botsford Comstock

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Trees at Leisure by Anna Botsford Comstock is a very unusual little book! At first I thought it was a chapbook. Then, perhaps a small book of poetry. I was a few pages in before I decided to Google it and find that this is actually an instructional book, intended and funded to inspire understanding and appreciation for trees–and originally published in 1916 no less! The illustrations are gorgeous. The text is strange and insightful. It’s worth the quick read through.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

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The pacing of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan is more like that of a short story than a novel. This is nothing against the story–I love shorter works! I would classify this piece as a novella.

This book was a pleasant Christmas read, which was perfect because I finished it on Christmas Eve this year! This is a plot driven book with decent writing. It won the Orwell Prize for fiction that tackles a social issue, and it does that, and does a fine job of it.

In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

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Over the Thanksgiving break, I read Hernan Diaz’s incredible book In the Distance. This is such a unique book, and as I read it, I marveled that folks at Coffee House Press were able to recognize it and publish it. (It then went on to be a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction!) I really do think it can be difficult to recognize books like these when they are submitted to publishers. The writing is obviously excellent from the beginning, so that helps it become recognizable, but there’s a surprising element of plot that goes on to drive this novel–and that’s requires a close read through to the end. As someone who reads a lot, I know just how big of an ask this is. Normally, a piece of writing needs to show itself off and say what it is immediately. This book shows itself off, but, in my opinion, is slow to reveal what it is.

As I read, new insights slowly emerged, making the experience at once both intellectual, but also emotional. That said, this book is also dogged and difficult and inconceivable at times, especially in the last half as plot and meaning start to cohere (congeal?) I found myself thinking the book was too extraordinary at times, but then reminded myself that books should tell the story of the extraordinary! Diaz integrates a kind of fanaticism in the great tradition of magical realism and is also both contemporary and traditional in its approach. This is a book worth reading and might make a great film too.

Jane: A Murder by Maggie Nelson

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I followed up Maggie Nelson with more Maggie Nelson. This time it was her 2016 book, Jane: A Murder, which explores the 1969 murder of Nelson’s aunt Jane. Obviously, I’ve just been mesmerized by everything Nelson touches lately. This book is thoughtful, creative, but also frightening in the true crime kind of way. I don’t have much more to say about this piece–just that I think Nelson’s work is so novel and important and a way forward for us literary types.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

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The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson wasn’t on my reading list, but I dropped everything when I remembered I hadn’t read it. What a great book! First, it should be taught in graduate-level theory courses. (It probably is, but nothing like this was taught in mine.) We need more feminist theory like this that truly integrates the (deeply) personal with the philosophical. I can’t be the only one who gobbled this up, and I suppose I can do my part by quoting it and integrating it into my scholarship myself.

The blurbs about this book say it’s about art and philosophy, but, I don’t know, somehow those descriptions fail to capture what Nelson is doing, which is, admittedly, unparalleled and difficult to describe.

The book helped me understand some philosophy and culture more deeply through her insights and critique. Unsurprisingly, I clung to her thoughts on motherhood, joy, femininity, womanhood, and culture. Perhaps especially as a mother, I appreciated the spare, yet complex prose. What can I say–The Argonauts is yet another important book by Nelson.

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

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I decided to go ahead and read Heaven by Mieko Kawakami this summer while I was at it, and, wow, this is a heavy, but, of course, excellent book. It is such a departure from the much more distanced and gentler narrative in Breasts and Eggs, which I also read and wrote about a few weeks ago.

I’m not sure how I missed this, but there is a heavy portrayal of bullying in Heaven, and I don’t think that’s a spoiler, but I do think it actually does need kind of a big “trigger warning” splashed across the front of this book because it.is.intense.

However difficult this book may be, it is excellent, as Kawakami is proving herself (to me) to be an excellent writer–excellent pacing, character development, and a deep emotional landscape.

As an aside, this book is also much shorter than Breasts and Eggs, but my copy also included an excerpt of Breasts and Eggs at the end, and I’m not quite sure why this choice is being made because the current version available of Breasts and Eggs is also an elongated version of the original, but I just wanted to add here that this length of book–just Heaven–is a great length, and I think Kawakami works really well within this frame.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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What a great book! As you know, I normally do not read in this genre, but Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel was exceptional. I even found myself slowing down at the end to savor the final events.

Too often I find that “sci-fi,” if you can call this “sci-fi,” lacks emotional depth, is too self aware, too clever, too focused on an overt plot. (I know sci-fi lovers will argue about this with me all day long.) But, I’ll always be impressed when an author can bring it all together in the writing–emotional depth, development, and beauty.

This is a book that examines the “simulation theory,” and the meaning in life, by jumping through eras of time. Each era is described with sparse, but powerful language. I recommend it!

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

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Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami delves into a modern, urban female experience. The main character navigates the big questions women must face and the relationships they must navigate. Kawakami leads the reader through these issues without defaulting to any oversimplifications. The opposite, actually. Each question and relationship is as complex as real life. This book feels almost memoiristic, as I imagined Kawakami as the main character. (I’m prone to doing this though.)

The main character, Natsu, comes from poverty and brings herself out of that slowly as a novelist (the most unlikely of stories!). This character’s life leads her away from her family roots (in a sense) and complicates her relationships with her now very small extended family, not that these relationships are ever uncomplicated.

Her past (experiences with poverty and loss) also complicate her relationships and her abilities to be in a romantic relationship and to create a family of her own.

The book is strange. Natsu is confused. There is tragedy and there is triumph. It is nuanced, and that is true of the human experience, and in this case, it’s focused especially on the female experience.

I read that Breasts and Eggs was once published as a novella and then was expanded into a longer novel, which is the version I read. Through most of the book, I found myself wishing that this was two separate books, but then again, I love a good, short, digestible read. However, now that I’ve reached the conclusion, I do think extending it into one long book is defensible.

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

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For the first half of this book, I felt myself impatient with the main character, Lucy. I am so hungry for a female lead who is not so passive, who knows her own mind. However, the writing was good enough that I suspected this all too common characterization of female leads was going somewhere meaningful, and I was right. I also grew to appreciate the spare writing style and the diary-entry style that she uses to develop a consistent sense of voice and theme throughout.

Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy by the Sea is a great book worth reading. Although this history seems so very recent, Strout’s book helps me recall just what the early days of the pandemic were like and the politics surrounding that time.

Even more interesting to me were her characters and the subtle insights she develops through the book to help the reader see just how they came to think and act like they do. None of this life gets wrapped up in a pretty bow, and Strout’s work reflects that not uncomplicated reality.