2024: Year in Review

I'm feeling in that middle ground a lot when I'm reading books now. Yet another book slump. There are plenty that are fine, but they also feel forgettable. Where's the literature enrapture? Given the general malaise, I suppose it's even more remarkable when a book does break through.

In 2024, that book was probably Miranda July's All Fours, which I hated and loved at the same time. It's insane, she's insane, it's a bonkers plot with no connection to reality--and yet it's the realest thing I've read in awhile. There's that famous quote by Graham Greene where he says, "For writers it is always said that the first twenty years of life contain the whole of experience—the rest is observation." I typically bought that line, believing that meaning was mostly constructed in youth and adulthood was sort of trudging along. So I loved July's book for suggesting middle age was something amazing and unpredictable all on its own, even if I'm not going to spend $10,000 to renovate a crappy motel room for an erotic affair.

After reviewing my list, I realize there were a few others that stood out. Justice marked my entry into a new career, and it's a readable and thoughtful intro to ethics. North Woods is a compelling ghost story of sorts. Eve made biological history fascinating. Trust was good old-fashioned fun.

I read 40 books, just one short of what I read in 2023. 

Books Read:

1. The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck
2. Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal
3. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders (reread)
4. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
5. So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan
6. Foster by Claire Keegan
7. Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck
8. Land of Milk and Honey by Pam Zhang
9. Y/N by Esther Yi
10. Justice: What's the Right Thing To Do? by Michael Sandel
11. How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur
12. North Woods by Daniel Mason
13. Chain-Gang All Stars by Kwame Nana Adjei-Brenyah
14. Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution by Cat Bohannon
15. James by Percival Everett
16. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
17. The Fraud by Zadie Smith
18. Valley of Giants: Stories from the Women at the Heart of Yosemite Climbing by Lauren Delaunay Miller
19. Blackouts by Justin Torres
20. Martyr! by Kaven Akbar
21. Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
22. A Light Through the Cracks: A Climber's Story by Beth Rodden
23. The Money Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
24. The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen
25. Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks by Philip Terrie
26. A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
27. All Fours by Miranda July
28. Pastoralia by George Saunders
29. A Night Boat to Tangiers by Kevin Barry
30. Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
31. Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
32. The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan
33. Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo by Boris Fishman
34. Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett
35. Trust by Hernan Diaz
36. Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
37. War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans
38. Come and Get It by Kiley Reid
39. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
40. Good Material by Dolly Alderton

Goodreads gave me some stats that I thought were fun:

• Total pages read: 12,835 (though it's actually more than this because Goodreads thinks I only read 39 books)
• The Bee Sting was my longest book (656 pages)
• So Late in the Day was my shortest book (128 pages)
• Average book length: 329 pages

In other stats news: I hiked 500 miles (for a total of 190 hours--destroying last year's numbers) and watched 94 movies (a little down from 2023). I own 38 houseplants--31 at home and seven at work, also slightly down from last year.

Here's to 2025.

Essay #32: Stats

Jeremy recently said a line that he'd heard somewhere about how middle age is just the process of setting arbitrary goals for yourself. All the real achieving is done, so why not complete a marathon!

To be fair, our world gives us a lot of things in which to track arbitrary goals. It's one of the reasons I know I don't need a Smart Watch. I'm pretty confident I get 10,000 steps a day anyway. But there are some stats I sort of like, regardless of how meaningful they are. So here goes:

Books read: 41

That's actually my highest total since having kids, a fact I realized just now. I've long kept track on an Excel spreadsheet, but I've started using Goodreads. I don't love the app, but it's relatively convenient.

Movies watched: 113

That seems like a crazy number, though considering I've replaced nearly all TV series watching (with the exception of The Great Pottery Throw Down) with movies (usually divided over one to two nights), it doesn't seem quite so bad. Letterboxd tracks this stat.

Miles hiked: 336

I realized how close I was to achieving 365 miles just a week ago--not enough time to make up the missing miles by today. Alas. Hiking 365 miles in a year is an arbitrary goal I hope to achieve next year. I use AllTrails to track my hikes.

Houseplants owned: 43

Thirty-four live at home, and another nine live at school. I walked around and literally counted my plants.

2023: Year in Review

A successful year with forty-one books read! A number of ones that I enjoyed. In my mini-foray into nonfiction environmental books, there were the excellent Desert Solitaire and On Trails. I finished Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet. I liked experimental books, from Woolf's classic Orlando to the faux-biography Biography of X. Some strong showings in both fiction (Either/Or, Erasure, Small Things Like These) and nonfiction (How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, Monsters).

I received a Kindle for Christmas, so we'll see if that has any effect on my reading habits.

1. If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
2. The Two Doctors Gorski by Issac Fellman
3. The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin
4. Verity by Colleen Hoover
5. Either/Or by Elif Batuman
6. Sourdough by Robin Sloan
7. The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
8. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
9. Brutes by Dizz Tate
10. Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
11. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
12. Wild Thoughts from Wild Places by David Quammen
13. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
14. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
15. Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
16. On Trails by Robert Moor
17. The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde
18. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
19. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
20. The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
21. The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
22. Half-Life of a Stolen Sister by Rachel Cantor
23. Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart by John Guy
24. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
25. The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
26. Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari
27. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore
28. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
29. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
30. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante
31. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Ovinkan Braithwaite
32. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt
33. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
34. Pet by Catherine Chidgey
35. How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement by Fredrik deBoer
36. Erasure by Percival Everett
37. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
38. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
39. The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freiman
40. Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer
41. Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

A few stats: twenty-three books by female authors; eighteen by male. Thirty-two fiction and nine nonfiction. Eight books published before 2000; nine books published in 2023.

Essay #31: Butterfly Clips

To those who have asked, Amelia has said that her favorite Christmas gift is her butterfly clips: four large, plastic clips that cost thirteen dollars at Target (I’m not bitter). I remember such clips from my own childhood, but they’ve made a huge comeback—the Target accessory section must have had several dozen different versions. The clips come in two parts, each with a series of narrow “teeth,” and are connected with a spring. A wearer can twist her hair into a ponytail, pull the ponytail up alongside the back of her head, and then close the clip over the pulled-up hair. It’s a cute and easy look.

On Christmas day, Amelia had me re-attach her clip several times, both loving the “teen” look and worrying that it wouldn’t look just right. She wore one of the clips as we drove to my parents’ house yesterday and was eager to show it off to the family. Last night, after some ooh-ing and aah-ing, Aunt Kathleen brought out a butterfly clip of her own, and we took turns trying the clips out on everyone. Amelia put up Kathleen’s hair; I put up Clara’s hair; Clara put up Emily’s hair; and so on. We even tried on Caitlin’s far-too-short hair. Everyone was giggling on the basement couch.

Amelia wore one of the clips again today, and she also wore the cheapest gift that I got her for Christmas, as it came from my local Buy Nothing Group. It’s a grey sweatshirt that reads “S’mores, Campfires, & Lattes.” I thought it was absurd—why make a sweatshirt about lattes in a kid’s size? I wasn’t sure what Amelia would think, but I think it’s grown to be one of her other favorite gifts. Like her butterfly clips, it’s a piece to show off, to start a conversation. 

I never did “girl” culture. I didn’t wear makeup or think about fashion or put any thought into my shoes. In fact, I prided myself on what I perceived as my lack of vanity. Yet during my sister’s bachelorette party, when all her friends gathered in the bathroom for several hours to “get ready,” I realized for the first time that I’d missed out on something meaningful. I wonder if that’s why I find Amelia’s interest in fashion more endearing than eye-rolling. Before we left for my parents’, we sat down together and watched several TikToks looking for new uses for the butterfly clip. I love complimenting her when she’s thought carefully about how to put together an outfit. It’s something simple and fun that we can share.

Essay #30: Christmas

For the first time in my entire life, I celebrated Christmas not at my parents’ home or at the home of Jeremy’s parents, but at my home. It was a far quieter day with just the four of us, but not too quiet. Clara woke us up at 6:11—and then again at 6:30, when she was allowed to wake us up. She roused Amelia, and we went downstairs where the girls explored their gifts from Santa and emptied their stockings. We delayed present opening as long as possible, so we were finished by 8:00am, when Jeremy got the french toast casserole going in the oven. The girls explored their gifts: unpackaging the Chelsea Barbie festival, complete with ferris wheel; trying out the new butterfly clips in Amelia’s hair; eating half the candy in a couple-hour period.

I feared a long day of restlessness, but the girls were content and occupied, and though I felt some anxiety about the mess (okay, a lot of anxiety by the end of the day), everything was nice. It helped that I escaped for a quick four-mile hike midday, and that I got some texts from friends far away. It also helped that we saw the movie Wonka at four. I didn’t mind Timothee Chalamet singing about candy even though my kids had consumed several pounds of it that day.

It's hard to know how to feel about Christmas now that I’m an adult. I enjoy seeing the magic of it through my kids’ eyes, but I’m personally ambivalent. I find it easy to feel stressed and anxious and hard to appreciate the present. Still, by any account, it was a successful day. I went to bed with a full belly, a clean house, and happy kids. 

Plus I got a soil moisture-level reader for my plants!

Essay #29: Bad Movies

"So-bad-they're-good" movies are having a heyday, what with long-running podcasts like How Did This Get Made and The Flophouse. I'll enjoy the podcasts occasionally myself, but I rarely watch movies of this ilk (Cliffhanger was a worthy exception).

Last night we had the neighbors over and celebrated Christmas Eve by watching Family Switch, a potential contender for "so-bad-it's-good." The movie is a blatant rip-off of Freaky Friday--this time the dad and son switch too!--with a shoehorned Christmas theme that appears to have been added at the last minute. Freaky Friday has plenty of charm, and its own narrative logic once you accept the basic premise. Family Switch has relatively little charm, unless you find Jennifer Garner's existence charming, and no internal logic. Bizarre choices are made solely for narrative convenience, and a superfluous CGI-baby is only creepy. The resolution is so pat and perfect that by the time there's full snow in L.A. on Christmas Day you just shrug.

So is it "so-bad-it's-good"? If we'd been watching just the four of us, maybe not. But with eight of us and the Christmas spirit, I loved every stupid minute. We talked at the movie the entire time, and got overly excited at its cliché turns. We might have screamed when we saw that the fortune teller's (?) license plate read "SLAY." Clara and Katie danced during the "spontaneous" choreographed number at the teen party. Amelia and Clara took turns flopping into my lap and then racing into the living room to eat popcorn. Even Joe, a proper teenager, stayed for the entire time. 

There's been numerous movies (and books, restaurants, places, etc.) in my life that weren't objectively good but were perfect for the moment, and I'll declare that this was one of them. 

Essay #28: Piano

Clara's been asking for weeks to learn piano. I've been hesitant, mostly because it went so poorly when I tried to teach Amelia a few years ago. We carried along for several months, but she became frustrated once the pieces got slightly challenging, and soon our lessons turned into her screaming and refusing to play. Now she remembers only one song, the plodding "Cowboy Joe," which she plays at far-too-regular intervals.

I've taught seven of the neighborhood kids, so I'm reasonably confident in my ability to teach (even if none of my former students still play). I played for most of my childhood and also taught younger students when I was a senior in high school. Still, my own relationship with the piano has been uneven. I started playing young, but I hated the teacher I had through elementary school, and I became lazy, refusing to improve with the excuse of disliking him. I quit for a few years and then picked it up in high school, but my new teacher had reasonably high expectations that I wasn't prepared to meet. My former teacher hadn't held me to account on accurately playing the beat, and so I'd mostly ignore it. I eventually quit on my new teacher too, but I restarted with my boyfriend's teacher during my senior year of high school. She was honestly a good fit--not too exacting, but not too lenient, and I eventually taught some of her youngest students--but my graduation was the end of my piano career.

Soon it became embarrassing to tell other people that I had played piano for most of my childhood. I wasn't any good, particularly given the number of years I had devoted. I couldn't name any great composers or pianists. I could sight-read basic music, but I didn't even know how to count out the beat for more complex pieces.

Once we moved to Cincinnati, my parents had my childhood piano sent down, and it resides in my office. I still have vague memories of choosing the piano at the store alongside one of my first piano teachers. I've thought about trying to learn again as an adult, and I find some pleasure in picking out a song, but I don't think I'll ever really return.

Nonetheless, I hope both girls will play. So, today, I reluctantly agreed to give Clara her first lesson. She was eager and attentive, listening carefully to my instructions. By the end of the thirty minutes, she could play "In the Jungle," an easy three-finger piece. 

I don't know if her enthusiasm will last. Maybe she'll end up in the same place as Amelia within a few weeks. But it was a good thirty minutes. I got to appreciate my thirty-year-old piano again. I got to appreciate Clara, who can wear me down with her "Mommy, will you...", again.