My 2016 in Books

Three years ago, I had a lofty reading goal: to finish 50 books by year's end. I knew I wanted to spend 2014 perpetually behind the pages of a book. I was working at Whole Foods with mostly immigrant adults and teens with no clue as to what LinkedIn is. Every day on my lunch break, I'd rip through novel after novel. I was failing an attempt at grad school, which was mostly to compensate for the fact that I was a degree-holding Whole Foods cashier. So, in retrospect, maybe I read so many books because I wanted to escape, but mostly, I wanted to be better than I was. I have always been a writer, and the best way to improve your writing (other than writing, of course) is to read other writers' writing. 

A far cry from my grand total of reading 30 of 50 books in 2014, I completed a whopping TWO in 2016. That was down from five the year before. Furthermore, it's taken me months to write about them. 

These were both great books. 'But What If We're Wrong?' by Chuck Klosterman came at a great time for me. Sparing you the mind-blowing details, in the past year I've changed my outlook almost entirely. Outlook on what? Politics, religion, entertainment, news media, LIFE. I've experienced enough cognitive dissonance to fill a possibly simulated Grand Canyon. Basically, I am now open to the possibility that a huge chunk of what I thought I knew (about everything) is actually wrong. The least interesting section was about music, but Klosterman writes about a little bit of everything, so you'll no doubt be entertained by something he says. 

'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' by Rebecca Skloot is actually a book I was assigned to read in my Science and Environmental Journalism class five years ago. I never read it until late last year, and it was so much more captivating than I expected. It is about a black woman from 1950s Baltimore named Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer cells were taken from her by a doctor and used to make medical history and financial gain that was never extended to her living family. The books raises lots of questions about modern medical practices and the racist, often unethical foundation from which they sprang. If you know anything about the beginnings of modern day gynecology, you have some idea of what I'm talking about. Skloot is a great writer, and spent many years of her life researching for this book and spending time with the Lacks family, which is apparent when reading. 

My 2016 in books was a special one, because I wrote and published my first. 

'Men' was my way of wrapping eight years of love and relationships into a slim yellow booklet of passionate prose. I have read it four or five times since it came out last April. I don't want to read too closely because I'm afraid I may find a typo. I'm also scared for the time I read it and my feelings have changed, or I feel stupid for putting something in writing that no longer holds true. The book isn't like a blog I can rescind or switch to private. Nope, it is much more bold and immovable than that. It is print! It is my attempt at timeless while being utterly bound by time. I have gotten uplifting feedback from the people who have read it, and using that momentum to create my next book, which should happen in 2017. 

Stay tuned!