Book Club!

Last year I had a goal of reading 25 books, which averages to about two books a month and which seemed both totally doable but challenging enough that it would require some changes in my behavior, which was kind of the point of the goal. Unfortunately, once the pandemic hit in March, I became so distracted that it was hard to focus on texts longer than social media captions, and the same book remained by my bedside, barely read, for about six months. This year I’ve done a much better job meeting my reading goal and I’m excited to share what books I found most enjoyable and hear your suggestions, too. First,…

I set a goal for myself for this year to read 25 books. I chose that number because it seemed both doable and ambitious enough for me that I would *have* to change my habits, which was the point of the goal. Many, many moons ago – before kids and even before marriage when I had a lot more uninterrupted solo time (and the focus and energy to fill said time with activities other than lying horizontal staring off in the distance or at a screen) — I easily read a book a week, but in more recent years, I’d be lucky to reach 10 or 12 books in a year. So…

I finished the beautiful and moving When Breath Becomes Air on the subway yesterday on my way to an endocrinologist appointment. I could have finished it in a day or two, but I stretched it over five days, which meant I arrived at my doctor’s office, after finishing the epilogue, in tears. The book is a memoir written by the late neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi in his final months of life as he faced his terminal cancer diagnosis and fought to make and find meaning in the limited time he knew he had left. He and his wife, also a doctor, decided to have a baby (a girl) knowing that Paul would likely…

What are you reading these days? I just started reading The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir, the newest book by Vivian Gornick, a memoirist I love who wrote one of my favorite books, Approaching Eye Level. She also wrote the acclaimed Fierce Attachments, her most popular work to date. All of her books center around the basic themes of battling loneliness, finding meaning in one’s life, and a desire for independence as well as connecting deeply with others. I particularly like the book description for “Approaching Eye Level” and think it might speak to many of you: Gornick “explores the fear of loneliness and the search for self-knowledge. Many of…

After reading and loving The Distance Between Us last month, I was eager for another, similar story for my next read. I’m partial to memoirs, and, in addition to The Distance Between Us, I also adored The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, which I read years ago on my honeymoon. Both memoirs are stories of turbulent childhoods in which the authors face enormous adversity and eventually rise above it. In my hunt for another memoir like these two, I found North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both. I read it last week and it did not disappoint. From the Amazon description: Sex,…

I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions this year (although I have a sort of belated one I thought of last week after seeing Louis C.K. to do to at least one cultural activity — see standup, a play, a band, etc. — every month), but I instead made a few “goals,” which are almost the same things as resolutions but, like, with less chance to feel shitty if I fail. Anyway, one of my goals was to get back into reading books, which is something that I basically stopped doing last year after reading less and less since Jackson was born 3+ years ago. It’s just that, with a small child…

I prefer memoirs to novels, and I love a good coming-of-age story, particularly one with a feisty female protagonist who faces unique challenges (or normal challenges in a unique way), so Fairyland, by Alysia Abbott, was right up my alley. A coming-of-age memoir about a woman who was raised by her single, gay father in 1970s and 80s San Francisco at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, Fairyland is, as a New York Times book reviewer noted, “an elegy of sorts, written two decades after a father’s death by a woman who is now a parent herself.” I think what I appreciated most about the rich telling of her story was how…

This Sunday marks eight years since Drew and I were put in touch — over the phone — by our mutual friend, Meg. I was talking about the list of things I was looking for in a guy when suddenly something clicked in her head, and she immediately picked up the phone and called Drew, whom she knew from her days living in New York. That first conversation led to a blind date two weeks later, and the rest, as they say, is history. I’ve been thinking about that initial meeting and how much has changed since then and how lucky we were to have been introduced to each other. I’ve also…

For our first book selection of the year, we read “Fault in Our Stars,” a young adult novel written by John Green. i was excited to read this one because: it’s short, which works well with my current reading schedule of ten minutes at the end of the day after 12 or so exhausting hours of chasing a crazy two-year-old; it’s a YA novel which, for me, means that maybe there’s a chance my tired old mind can follow what’s going on; it has like over 10,000 reviews on Amazon and an average rating of 5 stars, so it must be good. And it was!! Ok, confession: I didn’t LLLLOOOOOVVVVEEEE it like…