My Favorite Books of the Year.

Howdy! Christmas is one week from today! (Are you freaking out now? Sorry. I literally bought ZERO Christmas presents this year. I'm not sorry about it, either. And though I was going to make presents for my friends, since I've only gotten two done that seems like kind of a fail, too. So I've basically just given up on the present thing for this year. Whatever.) And there are only two weeks left of this year...praise the lord! 

One of my goals for this year was to read 50 physical books. That totally didn't happen. I only read about 27. But I did listen to approximately a zillion audiobooks, so my book total for the year is currently 109. You can see all the books I read in 2017 here. 

I keep track of everything I read and everything I want to read on Goodreads, which is a really awesome social media for books, basically. I don't actually know anyone who uses it as much as I do, but I have no regrets about it either, so whatever. Anyway, Goodreads holds the "Goodreads Choice Awards" every year, and all the users can vote for their favorite books published that year in several different categories. It's pretty fun, though I've usually only read a few nominees in any given category, and there are many categories that I've read none of the nominees for. But this year I was PISSED about the results. Because there was a book that I thought absolutely should have won for the Nonfiction category and it didn't. It was in the semifinal round and then got eliminated in the final round of voting. And it felt like a cataclysmic tragedy that it didn't win.

So I decided that I was going to make my own collection of the best books I've read this year. Mine were not all published within the past twelve months, which is the stipulation of the contestants for the Goodreads Choice Awards, but they were all books that I read within the past year. So there you have it. And, to rectify the grievous error that was made in the Nonfiction category of the Goodreads Choice Awards, let's start off with:

Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown (2017)

If there is one book to read in the current world climate, this is the book. Brené Brown talks sense into a world that feels like it makes no sense at all these days. This animated video of her ted talk about empathy vs. sympathy is one of my favorite things to watch over and over and over. Anyway, Braving the Wilderness is about how important it is to treat people with decency and respect even when we find it exceptionally challenging, even when we disagree with them politically, even when we find their opinions on things completely abhorrent. It’s also about calling out bullshit in a way that is productive and beneficial to everyone involved. It is absolutely worth reading.

The Moth Presents: All These Wonders (2017)

Have you heard of the Moth? It’s an ongoing live storytelling event. So people get up on stage and tell stories about their real life experiences without using notes or anything. They are gritty and real and emotional. They are powerful and unbelievable. This story by Ed Gavagan is the most powerful story I’ve ever heard in my life. Though it’s not in this collection of transcribed Moth stories, you should totes take 17 minutes out of your day and listen to it. And then you should read this book because there are lots of other great stories in it. 

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai (2017)

Imagine a world where the energy crisis was solved before it ever began to be an issue and how much time and energy that would have freed up for people to invent newer, greater things. That is the world that All Our Wrong Todays begins in. This book is written very much in the style of Kurt Vonnegut, who is one of my favorite authors, and it was really great to read a book that evoked that same feeling I had the first time I read one of his books. I loved every minute of reading it, and was very satisfied with the story in its entirety. The ending did not disappoint, and the action throughout was really engrossing.

The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now by Meg Jay (2012)

Obviously this was geared toward people my age, and I don’t think it would be particularly beneficial to, say, people my parents’ age, but if you’re currently in your twenties or even early thirties, it is worth reading, I think.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (2017)

I’ve already written a blog post about why I loved this book, which you can go read if you want to find out more about why I loved it so much. It is a timely novel. It is important in the America of 2017. It is important. It also won the Goodreads Choice Awards for the categories “Debut Goodreads Author” and “Young Adult Fiction”. Obviously other people loved it, too.

Milk & Honey by Rupi Kaur (2014)

So, funny story, in high school I liked poetry a lot. Then I went to college and found out that you’re supposed to read poems like 30 times and pick them apart to find the six different meanings that the poet buried into the words and it killed poetry for me. I was like “Oh, actually, maybe I hate poetry. Huh!” And then I read this book. And I decided again that I do, in fact, love poetry. Just maybe not the really highbrow, stuffy stuff. And that’s okay. It’s okay to like the poetry that is immediately relatable and evocative and makes me think YESSSSSS every time I turn a page. It’s okay that there aren’t six different meanings behind every line. That doesn’t make it less powerful, less true, less important. After this book, I also read “The Princess Saves Herself In This One” By Amanda Lovelace, and then “The Sun and Her Flowers” came out this fall, and both of those were also wonderful. But Milk & Honey, being the book that convinced me to like poetry again, will always have a special place in my heart. I also started following more short form poets on Instagram, like Nayyirah Waheed, and  Rudy Francisco, then started following Button Poetry too, and found people like Melissa Lozda-Oliva and Sabrina Benaim. It’s been a good year for me and poetry.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014)

This book is excellent. That’s really all I have to say about it. It’s kinda long but it didn’t even take me long to read because it was so damn good.

Colors of Madeleine Trilogy by Jaclyn Moriarty (2012, 2014, 2016)

Jaclyn Moriarty has written a several other books, a few of which I’ve read and really enjoyed, but this trilogy is definitely my favorite of her work. It is fantasy and really very well done. The world she created was completely believable and I got fully pulled into the story and was intensely invested into listening to the audiobooks, even when I was on vacation in Europe.

Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory (2017)

Spoonbenders is about a family of people with supernatural abilities who all find themselves in various predicaments throughout the story. In a lot of ways it was a very normal, average sort of story, but it was also one of those books where you don’t figure out exactly what is happening until the very end because there are all sorts of pieces that you can’t really figure out how to fit together. You follow all of the different family members at different points, and their stories weave and intersect really interestingly and it was overall a really excellent read. 

Net Neutrality: You Should Care.

Have you all seen stuff about the FCC's upcoming Net Neutrality vote? I'm honestly not sure how people could still not know about it, because I've been keeping myself only minimally informed about current events/politics these days because I'm SO EXHAUSTED by it and even I have seen all sorts of stuff about net neutrality.

But, for those of you who are actually living under a rock right now, here's the issue in a nutshell: net neutrality is what ensures that the internet stays a free and open space, and if it goes away, internet providers will be able to charge more for specific things. You want to keep watching Netflix? Well in addition to paying for Netflix directly, you may have to start paying your internet provider more to be able to access it. You want to be able to Google all of life's most puzzling questions the minute they pop into your head? Be prepared to shell out money for speedy results - eliminating net neutrality will mean that internet providers can demand more money for higher bandwidth.

I could go on, but hopefully you get the picture. Repealing net neutrality would help only the huge corporations that provide our internet. And guess what? They already make enough money. Really, they do. And repealing net neutrality wouldn't help any of the rest of us. At all.

Why, then, you might be asking, is this even something worth voting on? Wouldn't this just be a hard no, and we could all move on?

Yeah, you would think so, wouldn't you? But we seem to be living in the upside down, in a parallel reality where everything is the same mostly except a lot more horrible and we have to worry about things like whether the people who are supposed to make decisions in our interest are going to do something that will completely screw over all the individuals of this country. Like, literally all of us.

So, unfortunately, this becomes something else we have to worry about as citizens. It's not enough to be worried about holiday plans and what to buy people for Christmas and the driving conditions for the day and all the normal December things. We also have to worry about whether the FCC will do the right thing and protect us from this really bad move. Isn't that fun?!?

I'm so tired. I'm so tired of carrying the weight of wondering whether everything will work out for an issue that shouldn't even be talked about. It's one thing to feel compelled to speak up about an issue that is complicated and has some definite pros and cons regardless of the solution (and there totally are some of those), but it is so exhausting to be fighting for things that shouldn't even be on the table for discussion. Net neutrality is important. It shouldn't be something we have to fight to not have taken away.

I feel like this world is a confusing, scary place these days, and it takes so much more energy to navigate than it used to. I've been thinking about this song often, mostly just because I think we all need to open our eyes and just do the right thing, but also because it starts off  "All this feels strange and untrue / and I won't waste a minute without you / my bones ache, my skin feels cold / and I'm getting so tired and so old." It rings true. I'm so tired.





If you would like to do something, you can click here to express your desire for net neutrality to be upheld. It only takes a minute or two. And it's important. If you use the internet and don't want to pay more than you already do to continue using it, you should care.