Early spring is soaked in wistfulness for me; it's like a more upbeat version of early autumn when summer and winter mesh together in a dreamy hazy liminal space that tightens the distance between past and present.
I listen to the most wistful songs I know, heralding a summer's early sway. It's all tremendously nostalgic.
So, now seems like a good season to answer a nostalgic question I get all the time:
What are my all-time favorite books?
I've listed them below, but rest assured I will definitely forget a few. In fact, I have no doubt that one hour after I post this, I will realize that I forgot the best and most meaningful book I've ever read. This is inevitable. So, consider this an incomplete, flawed list:
Writing Influences:
1. My favorite book and greatest influence is Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I vividly remember the sunny day I serendipitously found it at a labyrinthine bookstore in Chicago, and I spent the remainder of the afternoon at a coffee shop gulping up every word.
Amy is a hero of mine for her rapt attention to every mundane detail of life, which is why her death from cancer made me furious: such an existence-adoring person should get a luxuriously long time on earth. (If you haven't read her essay You May Want to Marry My Husband and you're up for a good cry, I highly recommend spending time with it.)
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life led me to the realization that you can just...write about your life! I didn't know that. Amy knew that. Thank goodness Amy knew that.
2. She herself was heavily influenced by The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, another one of my favorites. It's a collection of musings, lists, memories, and funny observations from a Japanese courtesan in the year 1002, with brilliant notes like “A man who has nothing in particular to recommend discusses all sorts of subjects at random as if he knew everything." She records such pleasures as looking into a mirror that "is a little clouded," and lists the best times of day for each season (spring: dawn, summer: nights).
Both she and Amy intuited that the more specific your experience, the more universal it feels to the reader. I am a student of their courage to invite others into their inner sanctum.
3. I've never taken a writing class, but I HAVE read High Fidelity dozens of times, which feels like the same thing. I've learned so much from Nick Hornby's playful wordsmithing that makes it seem like he actually had FUN while working on his manuscript. A big turning point in my life was when I let a friend borrow my marked-up copy of High Fidelity, and he noted "You underline like a writer." I'd never been called a writer before, and my stomach fluttered in response. I had underlined all the juicy phrases that struck me as marvelous ways to put things. Oh, to put things like Nick.
4. My hope and dream is that it is abundantly clear how much I've been influenced by Anne Lamott in my writing (Can I please take this opportunity to say that she once told me that my writing reminded her of her own?? Please?!). Anne Lamott mythologizes her pains and doubts so well that even the saddest stories feel like cozy blankets, affirming that we are all so broken and isn't that all so lovable? I've read all her books many times, but I most often return to Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.
Career and Creativity:
1. Blood Bones and Butter is my favorite answer to What should I do with my life? I read it when I was deep in the "What am I doing" terror of my mid-20s, working as a barista by day, cooking by evening, and blogging by night, but feeling too aimless to put any of my passions to work and too young to wisely live the questions. Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir of her meandering path to opening one of my favorite restaurants in NYC empowered me to look at all the 'scraps' of my own life—all the years and jobs that didn't make sense together—and see the bigger picture of how they could work together to form an unusual but fully personal career.
2. Whenever I am in the depths of creative sludge (that is, dragging myself around my sticky mind as though it's filled with molasses rather than ideas) and I don't know if I have anything left to say or draw, I return to Principles of Uncertainty, by New York's beloved Maira Kalman. If you're familiar with my handwriting, you can easily see how much sway Maira had on my art.
This particular book of hers is just lovely, a stream of consciousness going in and out of poignant and charming:
Self-Help and Psychology:
1. Intimacy and Solitude by Stephanie Dowrick is the first psychology book I ever read and it made sense of my seemingly competing desires to be alone and intimately relational. I see it as an essential manual for being a person who has the freedom to be both fully independent and fully in community.
2. The bravest thing I’ve ever done is admit here that my life was changed by a book called Facing Love Addiction. The title is not particularly…flattering (I read it on the subway tucked into a biography about Picasso) but I’d recommend it to anyone, even if you don't particularly identify as a, ehghh... love addict. Pia Mellody's wisdom extends far beyond romantic relationships and shows those of us who are more hyper-attuned to others around us find grounding in our own experience. She addresses how to keep expectations reasonable, how to navigate arguments without self-abandoning, and how not to elevate others' needs above our own.
3. Next up, my general stance on personality tests and even personality signifiers (see: introvert, extrovert) can be too often used to put ourselves in boxes, or pre-determine how we understand strangers before we get to know them. (I can't tell you how many messages I've received that say "Oh, I finally realized why I relate to your work: Because you're an only child/an INFP/highly sensitive person/you have OCD!"
The Self is complex beyond our wildest dreams and no Myers-Briggs type or personality disorder is ever going to explain another person to us; we could generally benefit from a lot less labeling and a lot more question-asking (I'm reminding myself of this as I write.)
Ahem, THAT SAID: I've found that the tools given by Elaine Aron in The Highly Sensitive Person and the ancient wisdom of the Enneagram have been more liberating than stifling. Neither paradigm concludes with "Here's who you are, good luck!" but instead gives us markers on the path to navigate the world as our full selves, with ways to become healthier in our self-expression.
4. The most valuable lesson from my study of the Enneagram (The Sacred Enneagram is my favorite book about it) is that I've learned how to stop saying "Why would she do that? I would NEVER do that!" because it's taught me that everyone has different motivations and distinct values. This is ultimately a beautiful thing, even when I secretly believe that a world full of Maris would simply run smoother!
Religion and Spirituality:
My spiritual path is undefinable and label-less, and "seeker" feels like a most appropriate identifier. But given my lineage and philosophical interests, I resonate most with Christian theology, particularly the Inklings and Mystics.
1. There was a period of my life where I felt very distant from the Divine, who had always been my closest companion. I was depressed, and wondered how a God who loved me could allow me (and others) to ever feel this way. That's when I first discovered Henri Nouwen, whose masterpiece The Inner Voice of Love was written during his own period of depression. I clung to it like driftwood in a river, words like:
Wherever there is real love for you, take it and be strengthened by it. As your body, heart, and mind come to know that you are loved, your weakest part will feel attracted to that love. What has remained separated and unreachable will let itself be drawn into the love you have been able to receive. One day you will discover that your anguish is gone. It will leave you because your weakest self let itself be embraced by your love.
This was the only book I ever read that affirmed my identity as someone Beloved, and it populated my inner landscape with soft valleys and gardens full of growing, wild, unearned Divine love.
2. I am also a forever fan of Frederick Buechner, the most imaginative and playful theologian. I love all his books for their wisdom and humor, but Listening to Your Life is his greatest hits in one place.
The book includes my all-time favorite quote, which is my mission statement and my dream legacy:
Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
3. I fell in love with God through the words of the Sufi (Islamic mystic) poets Rumi and Hafiz (The Gift is a well-worn jewel on my bookshelf), and the writings of Teresa of Avila. Their words ignite the fireplace of my heart when it's been left cold for too long.
4. I meditate daily on the teachings of Ram Dass and Richard Rohr, and Still Here and Falling Upward are my two favorite works of theirs. I think a lot about the arc of my life, how I began and where I'm going. Ram Dass and Rohr are both divinely gifted in zooming way out and seeing life as an artwork to create, and death as an easeful release. A favorite quote from Ram Dass:
I encourage to make peace with death. To see it as a culminating adventure of this adventure of life. It is not an error, it is not a failure. It is taking off a tight shoe that you've worn well.
History:
My first love is history, but a lot of books have a habit of zapping all the intrigue out of it! That's why I'd prefer to go to an art museum rather than the history section of the bookstore to learn about a time period I'm interested in, but there are brilliant exceptions:
1. The Warmth of Other Suns is the most interesting book I've ever read. Isabel Wilkerson (author of Caste) wrote about the specific experiences of a few individuals during the largest movement of people in United States history, when six million Black people moved from the American South to the North/West/Midwest starting in the 1910s. Every paragraph brimmed with brand new information for me, as well as captivating personal details that would shake me from sleep.
2. I've read every book by education activist Jonathan Kozol, but The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America is quintessential Kozol, and a powerful recent historic narrative about how America failed to deliver on the promise of Brown v. Board of Education. I started reading Kozol's books at 14, and credit his confronting works as my introduction to social justice.
3. Becoming a Human by Charles Foster is where I've learned most about the evolution of human emotion (a lot of which I talk about in this newsletter!). The book focuses mostly on the Upper Paleolithic period, which is where we get such fabulous human triumphs as cave drawings and storytelling by the fire. Simple facts about ancient humans (particularly their 'discovery' of the soul) moved me to tears.
Just Gorgeous Writing:
1. I had never heard of Audre Lorde before reading Zami: A New Spelling of My Name while I was living in South America and wolfing through books as I had no phone, limited internet, and tons of free time to feel utterly and gloriously alone. My friend let me borrow this one as I was running low on English reading material, and I never ended up giving it back. I was transfixed by Lorde's storytelling, but more so her evocative descriptions; I'd never read anything remotely like it. Oh, to live and write so sensuously!! A favorite passage below:
2. While the subject matter of Four Seasons in Rome didn't particularly grab me at first (Anthony Doerr's account of his year-long attempt to write a novel that would eventually become All the Light We Cannot See while living in Rome with baby twins), his sentences are so precise they're like little marble sculptures, carved with affection and mastery. This is a book to ooze into, not to consume.
3. I Am I Am I Am by Maggie O'Farrell stole my breath in every chapter. Nobody paces herself quite like O'Farrell; like a virtuoso composer, she leads you slowly and steadily to the crescendo when she knows it will erupt in your heart with the greatest effect. I literally hugged this book when it was finished, as I missed the world the stories built when they ended.
4. Brian Doyle is my favorite essayist, and essays are my favorite genre. If I could describe Doyle in a word, it would be "reverent." He revered every tiny thing in life: muddy paw prints, spatulas, jazz, newts, and the world's many flaws. His writing style is chatty and joyful, but his themes are necessary and life-reshaping. A short intro to his work could be Osama Bin Laden's Wasted Life. Doyle's posthumous collection One Long River Song: Notes on Wonder is the best book I read in 2020.
5. I had to laugh when I read a Good Reads review of Open City by Teju Cole:
It's so funny because these are all the things I love to read about most: New York, birds, descriptions, and random conversations with random people about nothing! So if you read that and think "I'm in!" you'll be dazzled by this gorgeous book, mostly about the recently-heartbroken Nigerian immigrant narrator walking around the city thinking to himself. My ideal novel!
Food:
In one of my many alternate lives, I'm either working in a restaurant kitchen or in food justice. Following a totally whack relationship with food in my teens, I transformed the obsession into one of the happiest parts of my life: eating with wonder, adoration, thanksgiving, curiosity, ritual, and abundance.
1. The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters is a very special cookbook that reads like a novel, and first introduced me to the splendors of curly kale and fennel. After reading this cookbook, I became so much more attentive to the foraging and consuming of my food, always beginning my meals with a prayer for all the hands and animals who gave so much for my nourishment. If you want a more joyful and appreciative relationship with food, I suggest reading one of Alice Water's recipes every night.
2. Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver had a similar effect on me, but in memoir form (pairs gorgeously with my all-time favorite podcast episode). It challenged me, delighted me, made me think, and me feel more alive: and isn't that what any favorite book should do?