A Library of 56 Books

My lists, reviews, and my book of the year

From the youngest of ages, I have found identity in calling myself a reader. I have always been immensely proud of my inclination towards books, my desire to sit in silence and read, the academia of it, the thoughtfulness. When we moved to the house I spent most of my childhood in, my parents let me have the cavernous room upstairs, with dormers and three closets and windows on all the walls but one. But it was the built-in bookshelf I loved most of all. Freshly painted shelves to stack full of Babysitters Club, Nancy Drew, Red Rock Mysteries, and my favorite, the dearest to my heart, my Christy Miller series. I carried chapter books in my backpack as soon as I had the inkling to, reading before class and after tests and during that odd gym class period for the students who chose band but still had to get some sort of physical activity credit every year.

In high school, I read mostly in the summers, mostly John Green, mostly pitiful love stories to compare mine to, at the age of fourteen. And in college, I really remember just one summer I really read. I read 12 or so books and felt a renewed spirit even then, a remembered love of reading for fun. The schoolyear started back up again, though, and my nightly reading in bed was replaced with Ian McEwan for my British Lit class, political essays for American Presidency, In Cold Blood, oddly, for a communications class I can’t quite remember. Reading went back to skimming, to searching for quiz questions before watching Bachelor in Paradise on my laptop.

But the summer Price and I got married…I chopped my hair off and wore Ann Taylor and discovered the library at the back of our neighborhood. It was the nicest library I had stepped foot in, minus the one in Topeka, Kansas where I went with my mom and grandmother to visit her sister. I downloaded the app and latched my card to my keyring, my brand new name written in cursive for everyone to see. I was a library member. I was also a secretary at the time, a secretary for a woman who couldn’t stand me I’m afraid, and I was incredibly bored. We worked for the Governor, who was nearing the end of his second term, rumored the beginning of his presidential run (which he did embark on), and the summers were so slow. And was I right to do so? I’m not sure. But I read at my desk when the Governor was tucked away in meetings. Never letting myself become too enthralled to forget my five, then two minute post-it note warnings that the meeting was ending, my black heels I kept in my bottom desk drawer at night softly clicking in the massive conference room as I walked as confidently as I could to deliver said notes to whatever senior staffer sat beside him. My boss one time commented on my books, and I told her my workload was little, asked what I could do to help more. She never gave me anything, so my reading continued. My trips to the library after work becoming more and more frequent. It was that summer I read a book about a girls boarding school, one character being named Kit, and here we are.

That summer felt so much like a homecoming to who I had once been, a middle schooler in the library, my neck cramped from reading the titles with my head crooked. That summer, everything changed…my name, my home, my routines, but somehow…I was returning.

Two winters later, Price and I lived in a tiny rent house with a sheet between the kitchen and the bedroom, as we waited for our home renovation to be completed. I bought five or so books from Barnes and Noble when we went Christmas shopping, and in the week between Christmas and New Years, I sat in Price’s recliner and read them all in the span of mere hours each. In the new year, I discovered Goodreads and felt so near to that tiny reader I was, again. I read 36 books that year, mostly in the spring before we got pregnant in July.

This past January, when I set my goal at 25 books for the year, I was thinking of little Kit Murphree, on her way. I was assuming I might lose this part of me again, almost like college when time was sucked away and this time replaced with bottles and baby books and exhaustion, that I’d return to reading down the road, maybe in the car rider line one day. But surprisingly, I’m reading my 56^th book of the year right now and hope for four more by the new year.

How did we get here? A few weeks into Kit’s life, I discovered the superiority of my Kindle instead of doom scrolling during bottle feeds, during naptime, before bed. So I downloaded Bridesmaid for Hire, a stupid, short read I rated one star, started reading and never really stopped.

I read a lot of books as suggested on my Kindle Unlimited page, not all of value, but all inspirational to keep reading. Quickly, I began to discover authors and find books that way, something I had never really done. For a decade or so, my favorite author has been Kate Morton, but her books are few and far between, so I never have had the ease of finding an author at the bookstore and picking a book at random, confident in the familiarity of their writing, their storytelling. But I’ve discovered a collection of authors that I might could recognize if you handed me a book of theirs with the name blotted out. There is something so comforting in noticing adjectives they prefer, repetitions, sentence structures. This year, I feel, too, that I honed in on what I really do love to read, what slows me down, what keeps me up at night. My whole life, on those little first day of English class questionnaires, I’d say my favorite genre was realistic fiction (which…what even is that? Is that a legitimate answer? I’d argue no?). But today, I know how drawn I am to, boiled down, thrillers. Preferably non-gory, preferably layered, mysterious families, preferably ones that still spend time on character development and not just the thrill factor (such as Frieda McFadden…sorry!) I read one Nicholas Sparks this year, just wondering if a classic love story would be sweet, and it nearly knocked me off my fast-tracked book train, so I steered back on course, on the mysterious route.

I learned a substantial bit about myself as a reader and as a writer this year. How I prefer stories to be structured. What kind of characters I fall in love with. What leaves me emotional, what is too far for me. I think these books and authors I discovered during naptime are greatly the reason for my return to writing somewhere outside of my journal. I have been so inspired by their consistency in trying, in sharing, in creativity. The power to capture the minds of their readers, all from a little story that started in their mind, all through the immense power of stringing sentences and adjectives and punctuation together.

So I thought I would publish a few lists to capture my year of reading, lists that I’ve been keeping on my phone since April. Not the typical order of lists, but the right ones for my thinking. And then finally, at the end, my book of the year.

Authors I now will blindly buy any of their books at Barnes & Noble:

- Lisa Jewell – Easily my greatest discovery this year. This is the kind of thriller I’m talking about. Beautifully haunting, layered, complex, but yet…relatable?

- Gillian McAllister – Similar to Lisa. Her writing style is especially enthralling to me.

- Carola Lovering – She has four or so books out, mostly layered stories of love, past love, friendship.

- Sally Hepworth – Little more straight forward thrillers, shorter than the first two, but always, always a four or five star.

- Liane Moriarty – Not a new discovery, but an honorable, loyal mention, as I have loved her for years. And I was given an advanced copy of her new release this year, and that was such an incredible honor.

Books that left me thinking for days after (my Goodreads reviews beneath):

- Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

And again, Liane has written a book I read every single possible spare moment I had in my day. The power of her writing lies, I think, in her ability to create characters and their worlds with such beautiful, witty, and meaningful detail. And in this book, her words had such power in conveying the meaning and value of every detail of life outside of her book…in the life of the reader. Loved how different it was from her other books – with the presence of possible magic or something of the sort at least. However, it still felt like a classic Liane: a touch of mystery, layered relationships, interesting characters, and an extremely well thought out storyline.

- The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

This was a very hard read, but such an important one.

- The Good Sister by Gillian McAllister

The subject matter was incredibly hard to read, as I am a mother to a tiny baby, too. However, again Gillian’s writing is just beautiful. She wrote so many things of motherhood I felt deeply in my bones…guilt, responsibility, love, marriage. Just a heartbreakingly stunning story.

- If He Had Been With Me by Laura Nowlin

Books I wish I wrote (my Goodreads reviews beneath):

- Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave

Everything about this book was so beautiful…the writing, how it made me yearn for a childhood and home that isn’t mine. The characters, how stunningly Laura is able to evoke their feelings, thoughts, fears, loves. Surprising to me, but I’m writing this as one of the most beautiful books I’ve read.

- Heirloom Rooms: Soulful Stories of Home by Erin Napier

- The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell

- Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister

Brilliant.

Books I would buy hard copy (not just download on my Kindle):

- The Girls in the Garden by Lisa Jewell

- Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

- The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue

- Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica

- Bye Baby by Carola Lovering

And finally, my book of the year…The Night She Disappeared. This was my first glimpse into the thrilling literary world of Lisa Jewell, the thrilling world of the way she writes, the way she weaves stories in and out, how she somehow relates the readers to these characters involved in wildly mysterious circumstances, as we sit in our nursery gliders and lay in our beds in the dark, reading. I really had never read anything quite like her writing until this book, her writing so distinct, her stories so incredible. After I read this one, I immediately got on the Libby waiting lists for every single one I could find, eventually impatiently opting out of waiting and just ordering used paperbacks from ThriftBooks. If you take one thing from this entire collection of book reports, I hope it’s to order one, too.

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As we inch towards 2025, I’m excited for another year of reading, of holding my baby on my chest, softly turning the pages above my head, consuming these stories as quickly as I can, not for fear of a quiz, but for the love of reading, for feeling like a child again.