What I read last year
And the case for letting your books make friends
For the past few years I read within tight themes. This was either because I was writing a book proposal, working on an actual book, processing new life experiences, or some combination of the above.
Last year I read more organically, a non-process process that led to just picking up whatever I was in the mood for. It helped that I finally finished unpacking books and put them in plain sight, in tall piles, on my dresser. If you’re anything like me (and I’m sorry if you are) you buy new books all the time and they get thrown on the book heap and sometimes don’t resurface until god knows when, if ever.
Mixing old (still unread, thrifted, aged) books and new in these piles always left me with lots of choices when I finished a book. It also created little friend groups of books. Book cliques, if you will. Similar themes, subject matter, format style, or experiences across time, so many connections! I didn’t intentionally do this, I only noticed it in hindsight as I gathered up all my books at the end of the year.
I read these three books over the course of the year but they’re deeply interconnected given how centered they are on rich people (women specifically), fashion, and a specific window of time in the United States. Reading about the jet-setting fashionable rich people of the past is unfortunately extremely my shit. Seeing the same names, department stores, and social events pop up across all three books added so much to the experience of each book. Not only are they in conversation with each other but how wild is it that that the cover designs are similar? Highly recommend giving all three as a gift, including to yourself.
Of the three, I learned the most from WHEN WOMEN RAN FIFTH AVENUE. As an extremely casual student of fashion, it wasn’t just astounding to read about women (who I had mostly never heard of) who genuinely shaped multi-million dollar businesses and changed the face of retail repeatedly, but also how they navigated (and in some cases, regretted) having giant all-consuming careers.
And! I just stumbled across another book connection! I just finished CEMETERY CITIZENS: Reclaiming the Past and Working for Justice in American Burial Grounds by Adam Rosenblatt yesterday (“CEMETERY CITIZENS is the first book-length study of this emerging form of social justice work. It focuses on how racial disparities shape the fates of the dead, and asks what kinds of repair are still possible.”) I just connected the dots between Julie Satow’s book and his mentions of Maggie Walker, who was a community activist, the first Black woman bank owner in America, and the founder of a women-led, Black department store in Richmond, Virginia in 1905. Her store was “primarily staffed by Black women, featured Black mannequins and allowed Black customers to enter through the front door. ‘Buy Black,’ Walker exhorted in a 1906 speech. ‘Every time you set foot in a white man’s store, you are making the lion of prejudice stronger and stronger.’”
Her section in Julie Satow’s book is only a handful of pages long. But now I want to read a whole book about her and the movie that it inspires. Unsurprisingly, she was forced out of business by white merchants. And sadly, as I opened Adam’s book to refresh my memory of where Maggie Walker’s name appeared I was reminded that one of the mentions came toward the end, about how vandals defaced the entrance to Evergreen Cemetery and Maggie Walker’s gravesite amid the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. A reminder, as his book clearly details, that structural racism and violence extend beyond the living.
Back to Julie’s book (can I call her Julie?): I also felt like I received a real education in how retail has changed and why. I guess I’m guilty of only seeing as far back as my own life, believing there were “always” department stores or “always” malls and it was a genuine eye-opener to learn the distinct cycles of retail, how they changed and why. What I wouldn’t give to have seen some of the early decadent department stores she describes.
Another prime example of only seeing as far back as my own life is abortion and reproductive rights. Abortion became legal in 1973, only five years after I was born. I have never known a life without access to abortion and reproductive care. And yet I found out Roe was overturned when I got back into my car at Kinney Drugs after buying a pregnancy test and Plan B, just to put a real fine point on it.
Jessica Valenti and her team at
are not only doing hero-level work in continuously tracking legislation, threats, and press around abortion and reproductive rights, but also constantly scanning for new messaging strategies and language manipulation. Sadly, these messaging strategies work. Media is picking up extremist anti-abortion talking points and their false framing then parroting it back out. And casual consumers of the news are buying it! That’s why her book is so essential.A few months after reading it, I picked up Annie Ernaux’s book HAPPENING (written in 2000), where she details the experience of getting an illegal abortion in 1963. I had bought three of Annie Ernaux’s books, not even paying attention to what they were about. And this happened to be the first one I picked up off the pile. Wild.
It would feel like a historical document, a part of the past, if it wasn’t for everything that’s happened since 2022. It’s a terrifying and infuriating read, and shows how control, shame, and fear are not new tools in the misogynistic and patriarchal playbook. What people say to her, how acquaintances treat her, how doctors talk to her—along with the very real possibility of her own death—it’s all deeply chilling. And now it no longer feels like something firmly rooted in the past.
On a (sort of?) lighter note, I hadn’t even put the connection between the two books below together until I looked at the group photo at the top of this post. I realized that both THE CRYING BOOK and BLUETS share a format, fragmented narrative. And wildly they also share a book cover design language. I don’t know if this was intentional by the designer of Heather Christle’s book (if I’m remembering correctly, she references Maggie Nelson’s book frequently) but they do look lovely together! Each book takes a singular focus and explodes and explores it out, the color blue, the action of crying. Fragmented narratives are also extremely my shit. I’m always quite curious about books that take this approach (including books by Jenny Offill and Patricia Lockwood). Do I dare try?
When I think “favorite books” I’m typically focused on the story, subject matter or point of view on it, writing style, and/or form. These are books I usually decide to keep, to have on hand as reference. Otherwise I tend to give most of the books I’ve read away after I wrap up each year. These were the ones that stuck with me last year:
INHERITANCE: A MEMOIR OF GENEALOGY, PATERNITY, AND LOVE by Dani Shapiro. Absolutely mind-blowing. A memoir that will make you question everything you’ve assumed about your own identity, how we become who we are, and what family is and means.
INTERMEZZO by Sally Rooney. Let me be clear, Sally Rooney could redraft the phone book or a restaurant menu and I’d read it. No one writes sex like her, so much so that her books make me want to be in a relationship, even a genuinely fucked up one. And when I tell you I sobbed reading this book! I was so sad for it to end. I love you, Sally Rooney.
. This book is so muscular and tight, a benchmark for me in terms of how I want to write when what I really want to do is wallow instead. Her stories of magazine life and Girl Boss culture, making terrible choices when it comes to men but also falling in love are like, inject it into my veins already? It’s also one of the few books that digs deep into a chaotic and traumatic upbringing while still making room for grace and love, and how feeling like a misfit sometimes never leaves you. . What a fucking banger. I heard about this book via Everything is Fine and I cannot recommend listening to that episode enough, it was one of my all time faves! For all the books I’ve bought based on interviews, newsletters, and podcasts, this was the rare case of the book being even better than I expected. Just incredible from a personal history standpoint, a cultural standpoint, but it’s also just laugh-out-loud funny, just a million quotable lines, family dynamics at their most bonkers.This reminds me that I also read JUST KIDS by Patti Smith last year but my daughter borrowed it and now I don’t know where it is. What a gorgeous book, my word. Reading it in the same year as Alex Auder’s book felt like getting a specific type of NYC education, one where I felt like ok, I think I finally get it.
ALL FOURS by Miranda July. I don’t like liking books by Miranda July! But I did love this book. It’s as wildly original and as berserkly horny as you’ve heard. Although I think if I was still married this book would’ve made me walk straight into the ocean. It was nice to read it from the other side and understand why it caught fire while also being relieved that I wasn’t living that when-to-make-art, I-feel-trapped, emotional-labor-balance-bullshit life anymore. This book also straight up gave me blue balls, if that’s your thing.
IN DEFENSE OF WITCHES: THE LEGACY OF THE WITCH HUNTS AND WHY WOMEN ARE STILL ON TRIAL by Mona Chollet. This is my most dog-eared book of 2024 and it’s not even close. A quarter of this book has little bent page corners. Although I feel like the book meanders, it did more to reframe my assumptions, shake my brain, further stoke my righteous anger, and frankly confirm why women only gain power as they get older than almost any other book I read last year. I tried to find a quote to include here but it’s impossible to choose and all of them are long. Buy the book!
A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan
THERE THERE by
1984 by George Orwell
I mean, duh, everyone. Sorryyyyyyyy I’m the last person on Earth to read these books! So sue me! (DO NOT FUCKING SUE ME)
If you’re looking for more book recommendations, you can also check out what I read in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018. In rereading them I realized I’ve written the same intro like three times. Sorry, not only do I like to repeat myself but apparently I also have the memory retention of a parakeet. No shade to parakeets! And yes apparently I really did have THE ETHICAL SLUT in my pile of books for three years. Look, it took a while to get through. Just like life.
Recent posts you might’ve missed
You can find my books here.
You can find more writing here.
You can find my work for brands here.
You can find me wasting time on Instagram and Bluesky.
Liking this post (🖤) helps more readers find it.
Your description of “All Fours”=chef’s kiss!! 😘🫣