+ favorite books of 2019 +

One of my favorite parts of the year is always reflecting back on the books I've read and in particular the ones that have remained with me (plus, this year, a few other bookish happenings sprinkled in for good measure). Without further ado, the year's favorite books—for essays and poems, asterisks, as always, to denote the *very* favorites from among the favorites.

Things That Are // Amy Leach

This was, without question, my favorite book of the year. I am indebted to one of my kindred spirits of instagram, Helen, for recommending this book to me and I've since shared it with many friends. Creative non-fiction and nature writing are two of my favorite genres and this book of essays is the loveliest confluence of the two. Amy Leach's writing about the most dazzling or mundane of natural phenomena is riveting. I loved her writing, her lyricism, and her expansive vocabulary. I loved her adoration of the stars and the night sky, deepest space and deepest oceans. She feels to me very much a kindred spirit, with her love and attention to the most minute of plants or creatures; her attentiveness is instructive.

favorites*:  (*because all of these are)
Talent
Radical Bears in the Forest Delicious
Silly Lilies
Please Do Not Yell at the Sea Cucumber  (I mean, this title?!)
You Are Going to Fly
God
Memorandum to the Animals
The Same Old Joy
Sail On, My Little Honeybee
Twinkle Twinkle
The Oracle
(Glossary)

Landmarks // Robert Macfarlane

I have my friend Elizabeth to thank for the introduction to Robert Macfarlane and his wondrous explorations of language and landscape. This book also ranks highly on my list of the year's favorite books—it was a joy to read and revel in. I spent several lovely hours reading during the summer in my parents' oak-shaded backyard at my childhood home in New Jersey. The rustling of the trees above and the occasional shadow of a butterfly overhead were so fitting a setting for contemplating the contents of this book.

With this particular work, Macfarlane intersperses chapters and glossaries, each denoting and defining in near-forgotten words the nuances and intricacies of landscape, weather, and environs. His work utilizes and catalogs primarily the words of his home-British isles. I loved reading "Postscript," which recounts other like projects of broader, more massive scope and also "Gifts," included in my later edition of the book with highlights of readers' contributions of landmark words. That Macfarlane includes a blank glossary section for the utilization of the reader was the most wonderful of discoveries (I have absolutely used and added to it). This book again touches the intersection of two of my favorite types of literature—creative non-fiction and nature writing. A book such as this, reveling in language, seems to me to fit well enough within the creative non-fiction category, though perhaps it defies categorization entirely—no matter, as both category and description are ancillary to the fact that I really and truly loved and adored this book.

One of my favorite chapters, "A Counter-Desecration Phrasebook," recounts a once-proposed wind farm which (had it come to fruition) would have devastated the moor landscape irreparably. Macfarlane writes about the metaphysical debate of the issue and how proponents of the project versus protectors of the landscape utilized vastly different vocabularies to describe the moor and make their case. This piece by Macfarlane a number of years ago in The Guardian shares something of the tone and ethos of this chapter and others in the book (though I thought the Guardian piece took an even stronger bent). I'm looking forward to reading much more Macfarlane in 2020, as well as revisiting Landmarks often to recall favorite new-to-me words and put them to use. I would include some favorites here, but there are literally dozens and dozens; I don't know how I could distill such a list, let alone begin to try and select only a few words from my heavily annotated volume.

Blue Iris // Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver—always and forever my favorite. Poetry being another favorite genre and Mary Oliver being my favorite poet of all, I am still reading my way through all of her many works. I love a good anthology and I own both volumes of her new and selected work and Devotions, but I also harbor a deep-seated desire to experience her work in its totality—the beloved and renown classics alongside the B-side poems that perhaps did not reach anthology status. I tend to make marvelous discoveries among these individual volumes, so while I will continue to love the larger selected works, I have enjoyed wending my way through the smaller regular works (or at least those I can get my hands on—her earliest work is out of print and seems nearly impossible to obtain, so I am indeed grateful for the anthologized selections that include those earlier eras).

Blue Iris was a lucky DI find and I was delighted to add it to my shelves. Having read the two volumes of Mary Oliver's new and selected work several years ago, I was delighted to discover that many of my most favorite poems originated from this volume specifically. I've since added Devotions to my personal library, so the coming year will include, of course, much more from Ms. Oliver.

favorites (some of which were already favorites, but I loved even more in the context of their original publication):
The Sunflowers
Black Oaks
Goldenrod*
Skunk Cabbage
Spring
The Oak Tree at the Entrance to Blackwater Pond
Freshen the Flowers, She Said
The Bleeding-heart
A Blessing*
Peonies*
Poppies*
Just Lying on the Grass at Blackwater
White Flowers
Upstream*
How Would You Live Then?


Below: After Mary Oliver passed away in January 2019, I and a few friends held an evening of poetry in memory of our beloved poet. It was undeniably one of my favorite nights of the year, reveling in language and Mary Oliver's evergreen devotion and attentiveness to the natural world.

God's Silence // Franz Wright

I was given this volume of Franz Wright by my friend Alyssa and I was delighted to find how much I loved it. Wright won the Pulitzer for his book Walking to Martha's Vineyard, released several years prior to God's Silence. In addition to penning his own work, Austrian-born Wright also worked in translation, translating various works of Rainer Maria Rilke. The synchrony of a poet translating another poet's work is comforting, is it not? (I have similar warm fuzzies whenever I think of Longfellow's translation of Dante's Divina Commedia—another Guardian piece for your consideration.) La divina Wikipedia also tells me that Wright and his father are the only parent-child pairing to have won awards in the same Pulitzer category—talk about relationship goals!!

Back to the book—the title of this volume is striking, particularly given Franz Wright's religious background and sentiment. Wright converted to Catholicism and much of his work involves interesting interpretations of religious themes, though often not at first glance. In literature (and my experience of it), religious allegory is typically thinly veiled; I appreciated so much the depth and candor of Wright's poems and that his abiding conviction often lay below the surface, requiring more thought and care of me as a reader. Indeed, the manner of his writing is complementary to the title (and brings to mind these words of the Old Testament) and several times throughout these poems, Wright invokes repetition of the phrase "I have heard God's silence like the sun." This book gave me much food for thought and many favorite poems to revisit.

favorites:
Vow*
Woods Hole Ferry

A Word for Joy
The Reader*
The Heaven
Hell
Rosary
Paying
Language My Country*
Delirium*
Preparations*
Lesson
Poet's Room in a Museum
The Hawk
Prescience
A Happy Thought
Living Twice
The Process
Admission*

Ordinary Light // Tracy K. Smith

I love Tracy K. Smith's poetry and her memoir was lovely. Ordinary Light is an exploration of many things, but among them Smith's relationship with her mother and her relationship with her Christian upbringing, the two being inextricably connected. Smith also writes about poetry, illness and healing, grief and loss, and race. I already knew she is brilliant, having read Wade in the Water and heard her speak, but reading her memoir absolutely solidified it. There is something so gratifying in knowing that a poet you love is just as skilled in their prose. I've felt it with Mary Oliver and it is undeniably true of Tracy K. Smith as well.

I also love the title of this work—coupled with the cover image, it reads to me as a loose Vermeer reference (I've no idea whether or not it is). It feels very fitting as much of this memoir focuses on or ties back to the domestic sphere, but through Smith's eyes as both observer and participant in her own life. I flipped back through my dog-eared pages to find a couple of quotes to accompany this entry—two favorites (of many) follow below.

"It would have been nice not to have had to care about anything other than the private certainty that God belonged to me. It would have been nice not to have had to worry about whether my believing was visible to others. But there were lots of things it would have been nice to have that I didn't. I was reminded of that fact many times each day."

"I realized I had no idea what the story was that I was a part of. I didn't yet know what was important to me or what would remain important years down the line, after the thrill of experiencing these first freedoms, and the weight of living with what they brought, had passed. But I wanted to believe I was right when I told myself that the God I'd learned to believe in so long ago was still there, bigger and more real than I had imagined, and that He was long-suffering, abiding, that whatever He was would blaze bright and undeniably near when the thing that led me to Him was not obligation or fear."

Our Homesick Songs // Emma Hooper

I happened upon this book on the new fiction table at my local library. Initially I was drawn in by the premise and cover design, and within it I found a lovely and lyrical story set in eastern coastal Canada. Emma Hooper has a way with words that reminds me of light sparkling on water—at one moment it sends light radiating back, at another it has changed to reflect dark and moody depths. The layers of this story slowly unfold and reveal more about each character, as they move back and forth in their lives and their world.

With this book, I do have one notable complaint, specifically a stylistic choice that really grated—a complete and utter lack of quotation marks. It seems a minor detail, but it really hindered the readability at times (particularly during back-and-forth-style conversations with characters' thoughts mixed in). To some extent, I want to believe Hopper made this choice to further the dreamlike atmosphere of the novel, but I could never get used to it. Ultimately, I found it a distracting and ineffective narrative device, a gimmicky-sort of unnecessary.

I Gave Her a Name // Rachel Hunt Steenblik, illustrations by Ashley Mae Hoiland

This book is a separate but complementary volume to Rachel and Ashmae's earlier collaboration, Mother's Milk. They read very differently and while I love them both, I think I Gave Her a Name is my personal favorite of the two (not that we must pick favorites! I'm very much a proponent of the "both-and" approach and mentality!). I love reading Rachel's poetry because she sees and knows the divine feminine and Heavenly Mother in everything and it shines through in her words. I flipped back and read the end notes as I moved through the volume—I discovered so much fodder for additional reading, quotes, or simply brief credits to the sources or inspiration of a particular poem that were instructive and lovely. Ashmae's illustrations are striking and I looked through a friend's color edition of the book—they are even more striking and rich with detail in full-color. Rachel (and bb fetus-Milo) came to our book club and she read some of her personal favorites for us—it was a lovely evening that I think we all reveled in (depicted in two photos below <3).

Rachel is a lovely human who also recently launched Tiny Kindnesses—I highly recommend following her account for these daily reminders of the goodness and quiet kindnesses of people across the globe.

favorites (with page numbers noted):
Mother Time* (26)
To See If We've Called* (26)
Stoic Mother* (65)
Free-Range Parent* (67)
Through (69)
Poet Laureate (88) + Tracy K. Smith
The Archivist* (90)
What Joanna Taught Me* (91) + what my friend Rebekah [who previously worked at the Church History Library] shared with our book club, that the Relief Society minutes [from the very early days of the church] were not kept in the Church Archives until sometime during the 20th Century—before that, they had just been in a box in someone's attic (IN SOMEONE'S ATTIC! this is an exclamation point of outrage and utter astonishment!).
What Cora Taught Me, One Million (106)
Design Mom* (114)
She Knows it By Heart (123)
Without a Microphone (133)
Hide-and-Seek II* (158)
The Composer (162)
After Moving to China* (196)
What Dar Taught Me* (196)
Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather* (199) + my own musings on the parallels of this story to our mortal journey—the fall and Christ's redemption & resurrection
I Was Home* (209)
My Son* (210)
The Queen of Heaven (213)
Crowns* (213)
Alma* (222)
The Mother Reminds Us* (236)
What Kerry Taught Me* (254)
What Ashmae Taught Me (264)

Becoming // Michelle Obama

I have long admired Michelle Obama and I loved reading Becoming. I've heard wonderful things about the audiobook as well, but I enjoyed my tactile reading experience, particularly with its inclusion of Robinson-childhood and Obama family photos. The cover image strikes me as the embodiment of the word 'thriving' and for Michelle Obama, thriving and becoming indeed seem synonymous. I loved the stories about her family background and upbringing, law school and her career trajectory, Barack's state political career, Senate bid, and ultimately Presidential race and holding office. Michelle Obama did so much to redefine and claim the role of FLOTUS and I admire her efforts on so many levels. Her continuing work to further education for girls around the world is inspiring. Some of my favorite parts of this book were the sections in which Michelle Obama writes with warmth and candor about her family's years in the White House; there are so many fascinating aspects to life there that I'd never considered. I also loved reading about her senior staff members and how they all supported each other. No matter one's personal beliefs or feelings about the Obamas' politics, Michelle Obama is undeniably a class act.

What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky // Lesley Nneka Arimah

Consider this my commitment to reading more short stories in 2020. This debut collection by Lesley Nneka Arimah was marvelous and at times eerily discomfiting. The premises of so many of her stories were striking and made me reconsider the modern world and its trappings. The stories varied in length, but again and again I was amazed and awed by Arimah's wit and brilliance in crafting stories that drew me in immediately and kept me alert as I tried to navigate the worlds and social norms she crafted in each of them, which often challenged my own. This book was absolutely not what I had expected based on the title and I'm glad that it wasn't.

favorites:
The Future Looks Good
Second Chances
Windfalls*
What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky*

Wide Sargasso Sea // Jean Rhys

For the longest time, I knew of this book by title only and knew absolutely nothing about it; I had some ill-conceived notion that it was YA novel penned in the 90s, which in hindsight is a hilarious notion to have had. This book is actually a quite brilliant 1960s novel by Caribbean-born author Jean Rhys. Her experience lends a unique perspective to such a work, which plays off of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, by illuminating the backstory of Bertha Rochester (née Antoinette Cosway, as she is known in this book).

Wide Sargasso Sea reads like a fever dream and gives a plausible account of Antoinette's origins and descent into madness, ending with the familiar events at Thornfield Hall. Bertha is often painted as the villain of Jane Eyre, when really I believe she was just some of the collateral damage in Mr. Rochester's continually seeking for love and approval. Mr. Rochester is enigmatic and he feels Jane Eyre his equal intellectually, though she is his moral-ethical superior in every regard, evidenced by his treatment of both women. I am sympathetic to Mr. Rochester's plight, but also firmly of the belief that the lesser of two evils is still evil; two wrongs do not make a right. Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books because of Jane herself—her moral fortitude is commendable and the way she navigates situations fraught with complications is admirable. Wide Sargasso Sea illuminates the backstory and depths of a character often glossed over as a plot-point in Jane Eyre and I loved this second-wave feminist view of a character very deserving of a second look.

Women Who Run With the Wolves // Clarissa Pinkola Estés

I bought this book several years ago after it was recommended by my dear friend Emily Golightly, but it had been gathering dust on my shelf for far too long. I finally dove in this year when we read it for my friend Kersti's book club—now it is a well-loved and well-thumbed volume peppered with post-it flags (color-coded post-it flags, no less, as I had an inkling early on in the reading that I'd be grateful for such a system—an inkling that proved correct).

This book is hard to describe, as its inherent mysticism sounds at first hokey and bizarre. If I had to describe it in a sentence, I'd call it a creativity how-to manual rooted in folklore with a Jungian bent—how's that for clearing things up? But hear me out—this is one of my favorite books that I've ever read, this year and in general, and I plan to revisit it often. Clarissa Pinkola Estés compiles dozens and dozens of folk stories and fairy tales from across time and across the globe, using a Jungian interpretation to dissect the elements of each story and illustrating how each piece or character is symbolic of an element or aspect of the female psyche. She uses these stories to illustrate the forces at work in preventing women from living their best and fullest lives. Clarissa Pinkola Estés' view on what constitutes creativity is broad and expansive—it was inspiring to read the book for this fact alone. She examines the pitfalls and roadblocks to living a wild, creative life and gives readers the tools to combat the trappings and tricks of the modern world, which would have us live in distraction, rather than express our soul's innermost being through creative work.

For those curious, these are the topics/themes that I identified in my reading and the colors of post-it flags to correspond:

• yellow // wolves (à la the titular symbol)
• green // nature/earth/the natural world/cycles
• light purple // the vocabulary and ways of women & the wild woman
• blue // intuition/instinct
• deep purple // creativity/creative fires/creation
• pink // relationships/partnership/love/knowing & being known
• orange // hangups/what stops us/what not to do/how to overcome roadblocks

honorable mentions: called such only because I included them in my 2018 list:

Decolonizing Mormonism // edited by Gina Colvin & Joanna Brooks

My Family and Other Animals // Gerald Durrell

Have you any reading goals or prospects for 2020? I have deviated during the last several years from my usual bent of rereading my favorite books. While there are many new books (either new releases or simply new-to-me aka previously unread) I hope to read in 2020, I also intend to carve out time for rereading some past favorites; I used to spend a larger proportion of my active reading time doing so and it's something I've missed. I'd also (per usual) love to hear your 2019 favorites, as perhaps I need to add them to my list!

past annual book lists:

+++++++++++++

2018 • 2017 • 2016