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Usually my year-end books become a top 10 list, but this year it was hard to narrow the books down, and also I kept discovering books that paired beautifully together. So, instead, let me offer my list of paired books for 2024.

The Dean’s Watch/Holiness Here
The Dean’s Watch by Elizabeth Goudge was first published in 1960. The book is largely set in the 1870s in a British town dominated by a massive cathedral. The story takes place around the lives of those who live in the shadow of the cathedral, and most particularly in the relationship between a timid watchmaker and the towering dean of the cathedral. This book is all Christian fiction has ever wanted to be, truly inspiring the reader to want to be a better person with the help of God. I didn’t want this book to end, and I gave it to a friend afterwards, who in turn passed it on. It’s heartwarming and interesting and has no religious sentimentality. It’s a holy book about holy people who are anything but prissy and lifeless.

That brings me to Karen Stiller’s latest book, Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life. Karen writes beautifully and with a great deal of humanity about a topic that may seem dusty and even outdated. There are matters she sees as pertaining to holiness that I never thought of in that light. I read this book when it was still a manuscript, and then again, devotionally, a chapter a day, allowing its poetic, holy words to seep into my life.

I, Julian/ For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain
Many years ago, I put a signature line at the bottom of my emails where it has stayed ever since. It’s a line from the writing of 14th century Christian mystic Julian of Norwich to whom God said: “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.�� It’s a message Julian needed to hear; it’s a message I need to hear often. I was, therefore, delighted to see two novels come out this year, imagining Julian’s life.

The two books merge in my mind, along with Julian’s original writings, but both are very strong. For Thy Great Pain is not just Julian’s story but goes back and forth between Julian and another narrator, Margery Kempe, a highly unusual, real-life contemporary of Julian, who was believed in her time to be either mad or very close to God. I, Julian is written by Claire Gilbert who is the director of the Westminster Abbey Institute and a Julian expert. Gilbert’s writing is luminous as she fully inhabits Julian. I recommend both books highly.

The Big Sleep/Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
Over the last number of years, when my husband and I have gone on road trips, we try to find a book to listen to that is set in the place we’re visiting. This spring, we visited our son in California, driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco. These were the two books we listened to. The Big Sleep was the first Raymond Chandler book—what’s called noir fiction, about a hard-boiled detective investigating a crime. It’s set in and around Los Angeles. What delighted me about this book is that Chandler is the absolute master of the metaphor—to the point of excess. We laughed at his fantastic descriptions.

The other book (Mr. Penumbra) is set at a magical bookstore in San Francisco. It’s a wild ride with a 500-year old secret society and its ongoing challenge between books and new forms of technology.

I’m not certain you will love these books, but I highly recommend reading books set in the places you visit (or live!). I should also mention that we visited the famous Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, just outside San Francisco, so in advance of the trip, I read a biography of its founder, Alice Waters. It added to my enjoyment of the trip.

Us/The Art and Science of Connection
Here’s some non-fiction I highly recommend. Terrence Real is a therapist who has brought many couples back from the brink of divorce, but his approach is one that any relationship could benefit from. Rather than pointing fingers (or allowing couples to point fingers at one another), in Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, Real blames our modern, individualistic, patriarchal society and both encourages people to take responsibility for themselves and to come to a deeper place of intimacy. An excellent read.

As is The Art and Science of Connection: Why Social Health Is the Missing Key to Living Longer, Healthier, and Happier  by social health expert, Kasley Killam. If Us is about marital relationships, this book is about developing a wider range of connected relationships. This is a very readable book that recognizes we aren’t all extroverts, and emphasizes that wellbeing is not only mental, physical and spiritual but also social. This practical book has been described as an antidote to the loneliness epidemic.

The Gentle Art of Death Cleaning/A Room of One’s Own
This pairing might seem like a bit of a stretch, but bear with me as both of these books are essentially about creating space and time.

Several months after my father died last winter, my mom providentially found a condominium. This meant clearing out the large house in which my parents had lived for nearly 30 years. It was a group project, and a massive one. As a consequence, I began looking around my own home and seeing what’s no longer necessary. It’s a different approach to living more with less, finding new homes for still-good stuff. We’ve taken many carloads to the thrift store, some my parents�� belongings and some ours. In the midst of this process, I heard about the concept of Swedish death cleaning and realized that was exactly what we were doing. This book, The Gentle Art of Death Cleaning, written by Margareta Magnusson, an elderly woman (“somewhere between 80 and 100��), encourages its readers to tackle this process before it is a necessity or becomes someone else’s task. Magnusson paints a picture of joy at sharing beloved possessions with beloved people, and shows that having fewer possessions can lead to a freer, healthier life. (I do regret giving away the red towels, though��)

A Room of One’s Own is a phrase often used by women seeking space and time to write. This year I decided it was time to read the book itself. It turned out to be a series of lectures given by Virginia Woolf. It was charming. It was insightful. It made me realize that people a hundred years ago were struggling with many of the same challenges. A worthwhile read.

Longbourn/ Snobbery with Violence
I read 71 books this year, and lots of them were either detective fiction or historical fiction. The first one here is historical fiction, and the second is both. They are the cream of the crop.

Longbourn, as the title will suggest to the most avid Jane Austen fan, is the name of the house in Pride and Prejudice. There is a trend among contemporary authors to find a minor character in a major novel and to tell their story. This is done with varying degrees of success. I’m pleased to say that Longbourn is highly successful, taking the point of view of the servants of the Bennet family. This was a fascinating reversal of expectations for this reader, recognizing the challenges and the very real lives of those whose chief purpose among the Main Characters is to serve and not be seen. Many “fan fiction�� novels have a tendency to try to recreate the tone of voice of the original author. Not with Longbourn. Its author, Jo Baker, creates an absolutely new and strong tone that suggests nothing of Austen at all, while still inhabiting the P&P universe. A wonderful read.

I picked up Snobbery with Violence in a Little Library, and quickly realized I was in the hands of a strong writer, M.C. Beaton, who wrote 79 books in her lifetime, including four books in this series. Though the books are Edwardian mysteries with a pair of (male and female) adversarial detectives, there’s nothing silly or dated about the novels. They are well-told mysteries with compelling characters. A delightful find.

The Signature of All Things/The Great Divide
These books need at least a PG rating and perhaps they aren’t for everyone, but they really were among my favourites of the year. There is also a certain similarity between them: both feature tropical locations where plants and newcomers in a foreign land play significant roles. Both also feature large casts of characters. Both tell highly ambitious, sweeping stories.

I never thought I would recommend an Elizabeth Gilbert book after I gritted my teeth through Eat, Pray, Love. But The Signature of All Things is a successful foray into fiction for Gilbert. The book follows a family of botanists and plant collectors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, their ambitions, desires and quest for knowledge driving them. It is also very appropriately critical of the colonial empire-building impulses.

So too is The Great Divide, a novel about the creation of the Panama Canal. This book explores the intersecting stories of those whose lives were utterly changed by the construction of the canal. The book is not so much informative about canal building, as about recognizing the impact of such a project. It was hard to put this book down, and I loved the way the stories came together. A really great new book.

And now, tell me: what books, or pairs of books, would you recommend from the year?

There once lived an ancient Persian by the name of Ali Hafed who owned a large farm with orchards, fields, and gardens. He was a wealthy and contented man. One day, someone told Al Hafed about diamonds, saying they were congealed raindrops, that a single large diamond could purchase the county, that if he had a mine of diamonds, Ali Hafed could place his children upon thrones. Ali Hafed went to bed that night poor because he was discontented. The next day, he sold his farm, collected his money, left his family in charge of a neighbour, and felt off in search of diamonds. He searched and searched until his money was all spent and he was in rags. Eventually he died. One day as the man who had purchased Ali Hafed’s farm led his camel to the stream in his garden to drink, he noticed a curious flash of light from the sands of the stream. He picked up a stone reflecting all the hues of the rainbow. When he began to dig, every acre of that farm, and in fact every shovelful, revealed acres of diamonds.

I tell you this story because there’s definitely a diamond in my backyard.

Years ago I inherited a ring from my grandmother’s estate that had a diamond, then an emerald, and then another diamond. One evening this month, I was weeding out Virginia Creeper from the back of my garden when I realized the ring now had a diamond, then an emerald, and then an empty claw.

I cried. We searched. We searched with flashlights and sieves. We ripped out healthy tall grasses. I realized how small a diamond is. I recognized I really should have worn gardening gloves for the last eleven years of wearing this ring. It never turned up. And least not yet. I live in hopes that it will appear this fall. I wonder whether someday it will appear long after I’ve moved away. I hope it hasn’t just gone back into the ground or into a yard waste bag, never to be seen again, or if it is found that it won’t just be dismissed as a piece of glass. Its greatest value to me is sentimental �� I wouldn’t sell it �� so I don’t mind so much replacing the gem with a cheap imitation crystal.

Let me tell you another story. Last month I did what I always tell writers to do, what I always do: I hired an editor to assess a novel I wrote a few years ago. What I didn’t do was to be careful enough about who I hired. What I got back left my mouth hanging open because the review was��hateful. An editor needs to be able to stand on the side of the story. The editor also must find a way to tell the writer when a story isn’t what they think it is, and to suggest ways of making it stronger. When I edit books for clients, it really is an exercise in integrity and nerve to be able to say hard things in service to the story, but in a way that the writer can receive them without feeling like they’ve been flogged. The same week I got this edit, I had another reader challenge some matters in the same piece of writing, but that reader did stand on the side of the story, and I had no problem at all receiving the hard words.

I had to figure out what to do with the dreadful review, and I decided I would do what you do when your house is on fire �� run around quickly and grab anything valuable, and then get out and let the rest burn. I spent two hours with the scathing review, taking the diamonds I could out of it, and then then leaving the rest behind.

In her book Big Magic, author Elizabeth Gilbert says:

“Recognizing this reality �� that the reaction doesn’t belong to you �� is the only sane way to create, If people enjoy what you’ve created, terrific. If people ignore what you’ve created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you’ve created, don’t sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you’ve created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol and insult your intelligence and malign your motives and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest �� as politely as you possibly can �� that they go make this own [expletive deleted] art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.��

I also had some glorious writing feedback this month, someone who said of Renaissance that “it ended up resonating deeply�� and another reader saying of one of my unpublished novels, “It was charming and meaningful, stirring and profound.�� But the goal can’t simply be praise. The painter Georgia O’Keefe knew that, wisely saying, “I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free. Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing–and keeping the unknown always beyond you.��

And that, I think, is the twist. I needed to search for the diamonds among the rocks of that first editor, but the diamonds aren’t actually the praise. You’ll notice if you go back to the Ali Hafed story that he became poor not when he had spent all his riches, but when he lost his contentment in what he had.

“Acres of Diamonds�� was part of a talk given more than 5000 times in the late 19th and early 20th century by motivational speaker Russell H. Conwell. Apparently Conwell meant it nearly literally, encouraging his listeners that opportunities for wealth were always in their reach. I guess I can agree with that, although more in the metaphorical sense.

Elizabeth Gilbert tells of a musician whose well-intended sister said to her, ‘What if you never succeed? What if you never get a record deal or become a big star?�� Gilbert says, “In normal life, if you’re good at something and you work hard at it, you will likely succeed. In creative endeavours, maybe not.�� The musician agreed with Gilbert, saying to her sister, “If you can’t see what I’m already getting out of this, then I’ll never be able to explain it to you.��

There’s a diamond in my backyard �� both literally and metaphorically. There’s the tiny missing stone but there’s also the joy of creating, the enjoyment of the creative life that has nothing to do with commercial success or even praise. By that standard, even a brutal review can be a diamond. Not long ago I read a short that talked about not just running from rejection but “going out there and seeking the Nos.�� That writer said they had both had fun that way as well as some meaningful experiences. I wouldn’t describe the review as either fun or meaningful but I wasn’t going to go through that without squeezing every bit of good I could from it �� and do remember what diamonds are, coals under pressure.

Today I am here to write because it is my joy, because late last night I sat in a parked car on the side of a country road for the express purpose of watching the sky grow dark at the end of May, to note when �� if �� the sunset ever faded, to listen for sounds, to anticipate animals making sounds in the night before the pigs in the barn started dreaming loudly of slaughter, to feel the lights of the passing cars turn to waves that shake my car into shuddering as they brush past, keeping my body straight in case they hit us in the dark that is not the dark, and then a star, and then I leaned my head and shoulders out the open window though the night was cold and frost in the forecast to see the sky’s face grow freckled in the dark, tiny points of light, to watch trees and barns become silhouettes then shapes, to see the grasses tall as fenceposts turn white in the glare of headlights, to inhale the good smells of hay and manure and grasses all exhaling into the cool drink of water that is evening.

My hands grew cold but still I jotted notes on my phone and observed �� I don’t know exactly what a prayer is, Mary Oliver said. Though I do know how to pay attention and did so, I did not fall into the grass, kneel in the grass, stroll through the field as she did: when I checked the temperature on my phone, there was an article about tick nests. But I did sit idle and blessed as the traffic settled and the pigs too and the whole day under the thick blanket of night.

I intend to use these observations as I do strawberries �� picking them for jam and smoothies and pie and fiction �� but like when I pick strawberries for preserving, I take one perfect berry and bite into it in the moment, seeing its brilliant colours glisten, feeling its plump cool ripeness, smelling the fragrance that candy can never truly imitate, feeling the rasp of its seeds against my tongue, savouring its sweetness.

It is nearly 10:30 when it is definitely night, when all that remains of the day is a slight bleaching in the west. I’ve picked enough to preserve in my writing this morning. I turn on the car and with it my heated seats and I turn toward the city, my home, my bed, but also toward this moment when the sun has climbed back up after its brief nap and I wake early myself to turn the night to the dark sweet jam of story, to words I can spread on toast to share with you.

As I said in my last , there are many internal and external challenges to our motivation to read or write. But certainly finding time to write (or read) is one of them.

The good news is it doesn’t require finding a massive block of time. As I’ve mentioned in my monthly newsletter (You can ), I’m writing my current novel in exactly 25-minute chunks. I’ve never worked with such a routine before. Usually I write every day but I work on fiction when I feel like it. Now I show up every weekday morning whether I feel like it or not. Sometimes (like yesterday), the writing sings. Other times (like the day before), it falls flat.  It’s been hard to predict when the writing will be good �� I’ve written surprisingly well when I’m not in the mood, and vice versa.

All this makes me think of the book with Its central principle: pay yourself first. Although this might be (or at least seem like) a luxury, there is something to it too, especially when it comes to time. When I wrote my first novel, I had three children under the age of five. The way I did it was to stop watching television. The way I do this now is to limit my scrolling online to carve out those daily minutes.

I have to say that on the days I’ve used the time to journal, to make a list or a lament, the writing always feels flat. Because what I love about this time is getting immersed in another world, just for a few minutes. In 25 minutes, if you’re ready and if it works, you can write a scene. A short scene, mind you, but a scene, a small waking dream. That’s what reading a fantasy novel on a summer’s day did for me. That’s what the chance to do the deep dive into my novel did in May.

Most of us rarely have the time or energy to do a deep dive, but we do have the time �� if we protect it and plan for it �� for a quick plunge into the cool waters of our writing or that of someone else. And just as we are profoundly refreshed by a real dip into water on a hot summer day, the act of jumping into writing or reading can make us feel alive and energized for the rest of the day.

On one level, this adds another commitment to our lives but I apply to writing and reading what a meditation app says about taking a few minutes to breathe deeply: “Don’t think of this as another responsibility. Think of it as a moment to be free from responsibility.��

My novel-in-progress involves a character who cultivates lilacs. My schedule was full on the May long weekend, but it was lilac season and so I woke up early and drove to the , home to one of the most extensive lilac collections in the world. I did my 25 minutes of writing in the garden, a plein air session. My writing that morning wasn’t great but I was so glad I had seized the day as I did because lilac season and the whole summer will pass whether we take such moments or not. After I wrote, I wandered and took photographs and then came home…and mowed the lawn.

When we create these small pockets of time, they expand within us, making the time count. At the end of May, exactly six months after I started writing this novel, I have 50K words written. And I have the memory of a garden filled with lilacs stored away too.

Where might you uncover small pockets of time for writing or reading? How is time a challenge for you?

I’ve been talking about writing with a lot of people lately. Maybe one of them sounds like you.

One person said he was trying to land upon a new hobby. Over the years, this person has written gorgeous social media posts and when I’ve said, dang, you can write, he has expressed a desire to write fiction. In our conversation, I asked whether writing might be the hobby and he said that, just the day before, he had been imagining a scene at the start of a story.

A second person had found herself looking for a good book to read, realizing exactly what kind of book that was, and struggling to find it. One day she said to herself: Maybe I need to write that book to put it out into the world. She has started writing it.

A third writer recently had her first novel published, a novel I edited. To my knowledge, this book is fiction but it closely connects with this author’s life experience, following the principle of Write What You Know. We were chatting because she wants to write more but doesn’t feel she has another obvious story to tell.

Then I had a conversation with a writer whose book I edited last year, a book hasn’t found a publisher yet. This person said that the rejections and the continued desire and effort to put the book out into the world have been among the hardest things they’ve faced in their life.

Finally I talked with an elderly friend who isn’t a fan of contemporary books and who said that clearly everyone and their brother spent Covid lockdowns writing a book.

To which I say more power to them. All of them.

I don’t believe the adage that “everyone has a book in them,�� but I do want to encourage people who want to write to write.

The problem is that’s easier said than done.

In her book A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf famously said, “It is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry.”��

But the challenges are more than material ones. For most of us, it comes down to motivation. A book is built one word upon another just as a house is built brick by brick but rarely will anyone hire you to write a book as they will a house. In fact, as Woolf says, here’s what’s more likely to happen:

 “The work of genius is almost always a feat of prodigious difficulty. Everything is against the likelihood that it will come from the writer’s mind whole and entire. Generally material circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark, people will interrupt, money must be made, health will break down. Further, accentuating all these difficulties and making them harder to bear is the world’s notorious indifference. It does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories. It does not need them.�� (Woolf adds that, for women writers, hostility is sometimes added to indifference.)

There are market realities we can’t control. The odds of getting a traditional publisher, I’ve been told, are about the same as being a starting quarterback in the NFL or opening on Broadway. We can’t control for market vagaries: maybe a book doesn’t sell because vampire fiction is so 2015. Or because small stories are so 2027. Or because we don’t have 1M followers on our podcast or aren’t already a household name. I believe the cream does rise to the top but often publishing is a question of writing the right book on the right topic at the right time. Not long ago I saw someone say of any kind of art, if you can do something else, do it because rejection comes with the territory. (I once had a hard-won publishing contract fall through because the publisher died.)

That hostility and indifference can also be internal. When I first began writing fiction, there was a voice inside my head (well, there were many voices of characters but I’m talking about a different kind of voice.) This voice said: Who do you think you are? Maybe this stinks. Maybe it’s garbage.

So the question is: why should we write? Why should any of the people I’ve been talking with write?

Let me start with how I answered that voice in my head. Maybe that’s all true, I replied to that voice, but at least it’s a better use of my time than watching television. I still think that’s the case although I’d now substitute doomscrolling for tv.

Telling stories is good for writers. I have heard it said (fine, by my husband) that writers are happier when they are writing. I recently watched a in which an artist talked about his angst about his lack of commercial success. He said the only time he didn’t feel that way was when he was actually making art. The writer I talked with who was feeling discouraged is on this path too �� rather than sitting around waiting for her book to sell, she’s embarked on a whole new writing project.

Some people also have stories we need to tell. I am thrilled for my client who turned her fascinating life experiences into a fascinating novel. I’m not a big bucket list person but this seems like something that’s worth doing �� if you have a story you want to tell, make time to tell it. Many people have ideas of stories they’d like to have told.  I’m also so glad the person looking for a book she wanted to read has decided to write the story herself. I hope the hobby-searching friend makes the time to write the story he wants to tell.

My own goal is to put something beautiful into the world, to write stories that help readers connect with themselves, others, God and nature. I hope that people come away from reading my books feeling enriched, that life in all its complexity is still hopeful. I often recall what the writer James Michener said, that stories need to be published, but publication can mean reading them aloud at a nursing home or giving copies to friends and family.

I’m curious which of these writers you identify with most: the one considering writing? the one starting to write the book they’d like to read? the one who has written what they fear might be their one and only book? the one whose book hasn’t found a home. Or maybe you’re a writer who is finding your way.

I’m also wondering what motivates you: what’s your why? And how do you deal with the internal and external challenges that make your “work of genius”…”a feat of prodigious difficulty��?

This summer I’m going to address these challenges. I don’t want to be the voice of the barking dog or the health breakdown or the money worries or the world’s indifference. I want to help you tell the story you want to tell. I’m going to include some practical how to get writing strategies I’ve shared with many writers, ones I use in my own writing. So help me to help you: send me your challenges. And check back here.

This month, my husband and I spent ten days on holiday in California, visiting our son, getting an awards (my husband, that is), and soaking in beauty of all sorts. On our flight home, I wrote down some reminders to myself and thought later that I should share them with you.

The world is bigger and wilder than I often think. I imagined the sequoias to be five minutes inside the park.* I didn’t imagine the folds of LA canyons.

There’s so much glorious natural diversity in this world

Follow what catches your imagination

Go lightly in the world

Be flexible: make a plan but flex with it when the road falls into the sea.

Know your limits �� the cliffs, the sketchy neighbourhoods, the unmasking

Know your desires

Trust your partner. Be grateful for those in it with you

Try new things �� hot pot, tea ceremonies, hot pepper toast, burritos

Go to the local places—The Little Chicken, the Casa Burrito place, the Turkish breakfast café, the pick-your-own ranunculus farm you read about in the local paper

Use what you brought with you �� your bike helmet, your poles, your hiking boots

Splurge in the right places (Chez Panisse) and not the wrong ones (Carmel by the Sea)

Push yourself harder than you think, but know your limits

Get onto the local time zone the first day even if it hurts

Make littlewhile friends sometimes but not always

Listen to books and music set in the local area (We listened to The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler as we drove through and from Los Angeles and then Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore as we entered San Francisco.)

Cut loose

Take the good tours and learn from those who know

Climb the mountain early in the day

Bring good footwear

Have reverence for nature

Be very present

Notice the dandelion in the botanical garden

Soak in the ocean air and smells but know it will never be enough, that you can never capture it

Waste some time

Know when you’re in over your head

Be as cheerful as you can be. Don’t be like cranky dad on the SF streetcar, demanding an outside seat, ordering his children to “Look!�� and getting off in a huff

Spend time savouring a trip once it’s done. We ruminate over bad things, but we’re much happier if we reflect on the beautiful ones too.

*Instead we had to rent and carry snow chains as we ascended switchbacks up the mountain for an hour and more than 6000 feet into the High Sierras with their new-fallen two feet of snow, and there weren’t always even lips to the road as we navigated our way up to where the sequoias grow.

One of the best gigs I ever had was reviewing books for our local newspaper although I was not paid a cent for my reviews. Each week, the Books Editor would send out a list of new releases to the stable of reviewers who could ask for the books we wanted to review on a first-come-first-served basis. We would make our way to the newspaper office where we would pick up whichever books we had chosen. I called it The Book of the Month Club although some months I read far more than one book. Given the free nature of the books, I was willing to take a chance on books or genres I might not otherwise read—and in so doing discovered some amazing gems.

This month I had a similar experience: when my literary agent suggested I give the fiction bestseller list a try, I was introduced to a whole new group of writers and titles.

One thing I think made me a good book reviewer is being both a writer and a reader. I know how much work and passion goes into writing any book. It might only take two or three hours to read a book that might easily have taken months or years to write. A reviewer’s words can stab like a knife between the ribs. (I’ve been there. For all the “Reading this book was a special experience�� comments, I’ll always remember the person who said of one of my novels, “Where’s the drama, the scandal, the thrill? I suppose I am used to fantasy and drama in the books I read.�� A friend describes this phenomenon as “it would have been better with zombies.��) At the same time, books aren’t cheap and a reader’s time is valuable so a good reviewer has an obligation to tell the truth to help potential readers make their choices.

I came at this reading the bestsellers project with both reader and writer hats on, too. I’m no snob when it comes to reading�� I think people should read the kinds of books they most enjoy and that life is too short to finish bad books and to start books that don’t appeal—but the bestseller list is just never where I start finding books to read. Aside from algorithms on book-selling sites (“If you liked x, you might like y��), I tend to find books from like-minded readers online and in person.

When it comes to writing, however, I have to admit I might be more of a snob. I like the words of the novelist Toni Morrison who said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.�� That’s how I’ve always written: the books I want to read rather than ones written to the market.

My agent once told me what was selling best was what’s known as bonnet fiction �� gentle fiction about the Amish—and wondered whether I might want to take a stab at it myself, to write to the market. I live in an area that has many Amish and Mennonite people within it but proximity didn’t give me the right to write about a culture that wasn’t my own, I thought. I wasn’t sure I could pull it off in a way that had integrity. (Interestingly, now after finishing a theology degree at a Mennonite university, I am writing a book where the narrator is a young conservative Mennonite woman. My heart is in my throat knowing that the cultural concerns remain. I will get sensitivity readers for this novel.)

But this reading experiment put my writing prejudices to the test. It was a way of asking: what do people enjoy reading? Is there overlap between that and what I write? What can I learn from what is selling like hotcakes? Is it integrity or is it ignorance on my part? Am I making the assumption that bestsellers are the literary equivalent of junk food?

I would find out.

What I will say about the first book I read is that Oprah liked it. But even Oprah described it as escapist. As I read the romance, although the characters are not in high school, it reminded me of how I felt about romance and boys at that age. It also was about characters who’ve been through hard things and experience healing and restored relationships and a true happily ever after. But what struck me most about the book was the dialogue and descriptions, both of which seemed to be blow by blow. The effect was to feel like I was hearing every single word and seeing every single thing that happened. It felt like I was being invited to enter an alternative reality, a fantasy world. It was a big ah-ha for me who writes books about characters who wrestle with tough questions and their own interior life to remember that sometimes readers have challenging lives and they just want a little escape, a little fantasy, the hot guy from years ago to come back, seasoned like fine wine. I didn’t love the book but it was a nice escape in the same way that perhaps a Hallmark Christmas movie is a nice escape. And people need a break. That was a good reminder.

The second book I read was The Maid by Nita Prose. This was much more up my alley. I loved the premise �� a hotel maid is essentially an invisible person who can thus see and do things under the radar. The author works as an editor and created fabulous quirky characters. It was no A Gentleman in Moscow (a glorious novel set in a hotel) and no Eloise (a delightful children’s series about a hotel-dwelling child) but it had a terrific narrator’s voice, a wonderful pace, and great techniques for revealing and concealing plot. I was really sad, therefore, when this book didn’t stick the landing. Instead it made some shocking moves plot-wise and shifted into fantasy territory in a way that lessened the book for me. Still I gobbled it up like popcorn and found myself reading chapters in spare moments because it was just that compelling. I haven’t read the sequel yet but despite my reservations I still think this was a worthwhile read and I will likely look for the next in the series. What I take away from it as a writer is a reminder of bringing bright energy to pacing, voice and plotting. I believe the author had fun writing this one and the reader has that fun in the discovery too.

The third book I embarked on is Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. Oprah is also a fan of this novel and author. It’s a story with multiple overlapping voices who take turns telling a story much the way family members might tell a well-known legend from their past. This makes sense because the book is about a tight-knit group of four sisters and the people in their immediate circle. One character new to the cirlce says of them, “they conducted a kind of love that seemed voluminous. It required talking over one another and living on top of each other and it was a force that appeared to include people both present and absent, alive and dead.�� The story takes place over decades although there are a few jumps in time, and it mostly takes place in a neighbourhood in Chicago. The sisters reference their love for the novel, Little Women, and I feared that this might be yet another modern-day retelling of another work of fiction, but Napolitano avoids that for the most part. Like the first book I read in this experiment, the experience of Hello Beautiful is immersive so that I did feel I was living in the small details and large events of the family’s life. This book is strong all the way through with patterns emerging and plot lines converging in ways that surprised me but also had a beautiful sense of inevitability. I came away feeling tender toward the world, kinder and softer. I did not cry and I did not laugh out loud but this book did get me in my feelings. In hindsight I can be a bit more critical—there is a token friend who is a person of colour, 9/11 and its aftermath is entirely omitted by characters who live in NYC at the time, and there is a fairy tale-like quality to the lives of the characters—but I loved how the author took a quite formulaic story, broke it open and then found a way to repair it that reminded me of kintsugi �� the art of mending broken pottery with gold. In this book, quite explicitly, the gold is love, and loving people for who they are.

I intended to read more from the bestseller list (I have a Kristin Hannah novel on my Kindle waiting) but the books were not short and in between reading them, I got sidetracked by reading Woman, Watching, a fascinating genre-defying book by Merilyn Simonds that is mostly a memoir of a woman named Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, a birder who lived in northern Ontario through the 20th century. I also read two books by Laurie R. King �� Back to the Garden and The Lantern’s Dance. The second of these grew on me as it is one of her Sherlock Holmes-and-his-wife mysteries but neither of them were as readable as the popular books nor as interesting as the quirky Woman, Watching.

So what do I learn as a writer from this experiment? Or as a reader? I remember what Louise Penny about how she began writing. In 1996, she walked away from an 18-year career as a journalist and radio host, convinced she was going “to write the best book ever.�� Five years later, the historical novel she was writing was utterly stalled and instead she was “watching a lot of Oprah and eating a lot of gummy bears.�� (Three mentions of Oprah in one essay!) She said her breakthrough came when she decided to start writing the kind of books she loves to read: mysteries. She describes the process as one of relaxing into being herself.

I’m not sure any of these books are ones that are likely the type to sit on my bedside table or to be the kinds of books I’d like to read. But Penny’s words remind me of a line from a song that often comes back to me. The song is called by the duo Frou-Frou. The line is “too busy writing your tragedy.�� The tone of the song is gently, kindly ironic and it’s one I need to hear. The chorus says instead,

“Let go, yeah let go, just get in
Oh, it’s so amazing here, it’s alright
‘Cause there’s beauty in the breakdown.��

The reading experiment showed me that in a challenging world what many readers are looking for is less a mirror to their tragedy and more of a comedy in the broadest sense of the word. I also think there’s escape and then there’s escape: such books can be written well or they can be a kind of teenage fantasy.

Many of my books have some really fun secondary characters—think Honey in Renaissance. In my daily life �� in the voices I create for my two dogs, for instance �� I have a lot of humour. When I sit down to write, I never think I need to write tragey or even Serious Fiction. But I am reminded of a couple of experiences.

Lectio divina is an exercise where a person reads a small portion of text (usually a piece of a sacred text) multiple times, listening first for what jumps out, then for what memory is evoked, third for what invitation is given and finally to simply rest in the awareness of the words and the process. Nearly always what jumps out for me is the tragedy, the gloomy, the hard, but then what follows is surprisingly (to me) joyful. Many people start with a “fine thanks�� surface and then go into the hard stuff, but it’s almost always reversed for me. I’m happier than I think I am.

I also recall being part of a painting class during a tough time in my life and at the end of a particularly hard week. I grimly laughed, saying I would paint my canvas black because that would express my mood. And I did. But then I found myself adding a little purple and a little navy and by the end, I had painted a firebird of a woman emerging out of the darkness, all the colours aflame and a mysterious moon above her. I could not stay in the tragedy any more than the readers of popular fiction seem to be able to.

How do I bring this awareness to my writing? If I sit here and ponder the question, I�� ‘llslip back into the tragic introspective energy rather than the energy of the opening lines: “I am your maid. I’m the one who cleans your hotel room, who enters like a phantom when you’re out gallivanting for the day, no care at all about what you’ve left behind, the mess or what I might see when you’re gone.��

I don’t imagine I’ll be Louise Penny discovering a whole new genre and I can’t quite see myself writing escapist books but I suspect there might be something in moving toward the witty voices, the imagined plotlines, the fun energy and the love of these books…and of my imagined versions of my dogs.

As the younger of my dogs says about being good, “It isn’t as easy as it looks.�� She’d agree with Frou Frou too, though �� whatcha waiting for? Jump in.

I just might.

This week is Holy Week in the Christian calendar. Last week I needed to do a fasting blood test and the woman who drew my blood is Muslim: she was practising Ramadan. We talked about how she had risen at five to get caffeine into her system, how fasting is challenging. Through Lent this year, my husband and I have given up meat other than on Sundays. It has been an excellent discipline but not as hard as fasting from caffeine or from eating and drinking during daylight hours.

Lent is part of my practice and I need to tell you a secret: my book is a Lenten book. I once wrote a Christmas-themed book () and this one is a book that travels through the challenging days of Lent, the season when we give up things that aren’t bad for us but might have a hold on us. It isn’t stated explicitly in the book �� although early on the main character does see people wearing ashen crosses on their foreheads and stays in Italy for fifty days.

What is clear is that the main character flies home on my favourite day of the year, Holy Saturday. It’s my favourite day in the same way that Thursday is my favourite day of the week and March is my favourite month: it’s the moment when everything good is ahead. But it is also a vulnerable moment, a moment when we have been through the depths of Good Friday and when we don’t always know that Easter Sunday is coming. That’s why the physics concept of Schrodingers Cat makes it into the book too �� the thought experiment that says two things can be true simultaneously until the situation is observed. We poise on the equinox, the days and nights of equal length. At the winter solstice, people traditionally gathered around their desire that the sun would not continue to disappear. The equinox, tied into Passover and Easter, is that moment when we believe the minor chords will resolve into major but we just aren’t certain.

(This morning in church �� Palm Sunday �� I had the opposite experience. Palm Sunday begins with what looks like the start of the happy ending �� that the man on the donkey is being recognized for his true identity, being proclaimed king. We were given palm branches to wave and wave I did, joyfully after several palmless Covid years. Then we were asked to put our palm branches on the altar, and something shifted �� not a continuous move toward the light and the happy ending but a shadow that said we don’t just get to celebrate. We have to go through Good Friday and the cross first. Then, the service concluded with the singing of hosannas I’ve only ever heard as a jubilant hymn, reset to a familiar Good Friday tune of lament. The juxtaposition took my breath away: here we go.)

I once attended a Good Friday service that attempted to imagine the disciples on Holy Saturday, clever people who didn’t resemble the bumblers and betrayers of the Bible accounts and who instead said things like, “Hey, remember when Jesus said x. I wonder whether maybe he meant that he will come back to life.�� That’s not Holy Saturday, not as I understand it.

Holy Saturday is the longing for light and life and for death not to be the final word, mingled with the fear that it might be. It’s Princess Kate’s cancer diagnosis. It’s the child in the hospital, the marriage on the rocks, the being passed over for a job, the heavy snow on the first day of spring. In my book, it’s the flight home where the main character does not know what will lie ahead.

This week I will be traveling. Though I have gone on the Lenten journey and though I have gorgeous plans for Easter Sunday in California’s sequoias, my Good Friday and my Holy Saturday will be messed up. I cringe as I admit to you that there is a possibility that at the moment when the church recalls Jesus saying “It is finished,�� I may well be on a Hollywood Tour of the Stars open-air bus. What I want to say about that is to echo Walt Whitman’s words: I contain multitudes. (That doesn’t make it better, does it?) But Holy Saturday contains multitudes too, or at least paradoxes: hope/despair, light/darkness, heads/tails, alive/dead.

This week I invite you to read Renaissance in this light but even more than that, I invite you to sit in the paradoxes of your life and the world. As Christine Valters Painter writes in her Holy Week blessing (from a forthcoming book of blessings due to be published in spring 2026):

Travel with us into 
the border spaces of unknowing
holding death and life, 
the liminal realm of in-between��
Bring us into communion 
with all those who suffer
from poverty, hunger, war, abuse,
climate crisis, pollution, clearcutting, 
the whole of creation groaning
together in labor, 
birthing a new possibility,
one only dimly seen
in quiet moments, 
a glimmer in the eyes
a song in the throat. 

My dad loved a good story and he was a great storyteller. Every night before bed he would tell us a bedtime story about an elephant named Elmer. My dad also listened to us and encouraged us to become who we are. My dad never made me feel restricted because I was a girl and before anyone else recognized my writing, I always felt that my dad was proud of me. He died on January 12, 2024 after a long journey with dementia. I wrote a new Elmer story to honour him and read it at his funeral for all of us. You can honour him by sharing this story with someone else.

Once upon a time not too long ago but very far away in the deep dark jungles of Africa there lived an elephant and his name was Elmer.

One day Elmer was walking through the jungle on his way to school when up ahead he spotted his friend, the missionary. They had been friends for many years so Elmer hurried to catch up to the missionary on the path.

“Good morning,�� Elmer said. “Where are you going?��

The missionary looked up at him in surprise. “Oh, it’s you, Elmer. I’m headed out to the clearing on the other side of the jungle.��

“Without me?�� Elmer said.

“You can meet me there later,�� the missionary said.

“But I like walking with you,�� Elmer said. “We have such interesting conversations and we watch out for each other and we find beautiful birds and fragrant flowers along the way �� I point them out with my trunk or you point them out with your finger. I don’t want to walk without you.��

“I know,�� the missionary said. “Walking through the jungle together with you is my favourite thing to do. But this time we just can’t. I need to go ahead of you.��

Elmer stamped his foot so hard a monkey fell out of a tree.

The missionary laughed. “That won’t help,�� he said. “You’re on your way to school and other people are depending on you. I need to get going sooner than I thought.��

Now Elmer felt sad. “But what will I do if I see a beautiful flower or a scary snake and you aren’t there with me?��

The missionary looked right at Elmer. Elmer saw that the missionary’s eyes were filled with love and that the missionary’s eyelashes were almost as long as elephant eyelashes.

“Smell the flowers,�� the missionary said. “If someone else is with you, point out the flowers for them to smell too. And as for the scary snakes, I need to tell you a secret: I’ve never been able to protect you from danger. We only made each other feel braver together. You do need to keep an eye out for dangers but we never came across as many as you might think given that we were walking through a jungle.��

Elmer thought for a moment: every single day there were beautiful flowers and funny monkeys. There was sunlight coming through the leaves of the trees and raindrops dancing on spiderwebs. There were other friends to meet on the path and snacks to eat along the way. They always kept their eyes out for danger, but dangers didn’t come every day. Maybe the jungle wasn’t so scary after all.

“But am I big enough to walk on my own without you?�� Elmer said. His voice wobbled a little.

The missionary laughed again. “Elmer. You’re an elephant. You’re the biggest thing in the jungle. But anytime you don’t feel big, you can always find someone who will walk with you.��

Elmer felt a little bit bigger and a little bit better.

“And on this walk, you can know that I will be waiting for you in the clearing ahead. When you catch up to me, we can tell each other about all the beautiful things we’ve seen.��

Elmer nodded slowly. He suddenly remembered the day he had first met the missionary, the day they first walked through the jungle together.

“What does missionary even mean?�� Elmer had asked him then.

“It means sent,�� the missionary explained.

“Like a letter?�� Elmer said.

“Exactly. Like a letter full of good news.��

Now Elmer looked at the missionary. “I thought it was bad news when you told me you were going ahead without me but maybe it’s a letter full of good news being sent ahead for me to read later.��

“Exactly,�� the missionary said.

Elmer looked again at the missionary, his best friend. “You look tired,�� he said.

“I am tired,�� the missionary said. “That’s why I need to get going soon. Sometimes people are as fragile and delicate as flowers. I like that it says in the Bible: ‘if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for you?’��

“I will try to remember that,�� Elmer said.

“I’m sure you will remember,�� the missionary said with a smile. “Fragile people sometimes even lose their memories, but as you know, elephants never forget.��

Elmer smiled too. Then he realized he also had to get going. He waved to the missionary and they headed off down their different paths. Then Elmer remembered something he wanted to say to the missionary. He turned around but the missionary had already gone around a bend in the path. It would be okay, Elmer thought. He would tell him when they met again and they would all live happily ever after.

The final year of my undergraduate degree I had to read more than fifty novels for school which, as I recall, put me off reading for a couple of years. Now I am older and my reading muscles are more built up, I kept reading even after I finished my master’s degree last year. This year I read fluffy murder mysteries and weighty tomes. I read books made of paper, books made of bits and bytes on the Kindle app on my phone, and books made of sounds—audiobooks. Audiobooks are my least favourite way to read but they are my husband’s preferred way. I’m no snob –whatever works for you! I counted and I read more books than I did in that last year of university but I didn’t have to report on any of them �� actually that’s not strictly true: I ended up leading a book discussion about one of the books.

I do like looking back over the books I read in the year. As I go, whenever I finish reading a book I write it at the bottom of the day’s page in my journal. If the book is really good and really worse than I expected it would be, I will add a few notes to remind myself at the end of the year. I do want to say that there were a couple of disappointments this year, books I had eagerly anticipated that just didn’t live up to the hype, mine or their publicist’s. Because I also released a book this year and I hope no one would say that about mine, I won’t draw attention to them. When I look at the books I most enjoyed this year, I would say that the common denominator is that they are inventive, making the reader look at the world, literature and themselves in fresh ways.

Are you ready? Here, without further ado, is my top 10 list for 2023:

10. by Melinda Taub.  I’m beginning with a fun and fantastical book. Later in this list you will see a retelling of the lives of the Brontes and this is a retelling of the Pride and Prejudice crew. I’ve encountered a reimagining of that story once before in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a book I highly enjoyed for its reimagining of Lady Catherine De Bourgh as a zombie with an unhinged jaw and its explanation for why the militia was hanging about (to combat the zombie hordes). This book brings a very different addition to Austen’s world, one in which Lydia and a number of other characters are actually and secretly witches but few know it. The book is told by Lydia as a retelling of her running off with George Wickham for very different reasons than supposed by the narrator or characters of the original P&P. Some of the reviews of this book suggest it will be of interest to readers of Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell (a book I liked but did not loooove as some did) and it is definitely fantastical and good fun with layer upon layer of plot and intrigue.

9. by Bill McKibben. I know Bill McKibben primarily as an environmentalist but in this memoir he examines America form his childhood to today through three lenses, patriotism, the church and the American Dream as exemplified by the station wagon. For me, the section on the flag was a particularly strong section as McKibben revisits his childhood beliefs first as he recalls them and then as he reexamines them. At this time as the American Empire is fraying, such a reexamination of how we got there is a thoughtful and instructive exercise. It’s also probably one that any of us would benefit from undertaking �� checking what we believe and how we got here.

8. by Erica Berry. This book came to me at the right moment. I am well acquainted with fear and for Berry some of the fear comes from men who pursue her in ways we might consider wolfish, something that happened to me one day this fall. At the same time, she questions that description, wondering whether wolves themselves are actually wolfish or whether they �� or the men �� are products of our own cultural and personal fears. She does a deep dive into the history and cultural references for wolves and intersperses stories of the real-life relocation and tracking of wolves in the north-eastern US where she is from with her own stories of her own fear. At times this book becomes a bit self-absorbed but that is exactly what fear and anxiety do, is it not?

7. by Kim Thúy. I think I first heard about this book on the radio where the word play of the title was especially evident. Thúy is a Quebec-based writer who came to Canada from Vietnam as a refugee child with her family. The title of this book which was originally written in French is a word play �� aime is French for to love, while em in Vietnamese is the pronoun used to address a younger person (sort of the inversion of sir or ma’am). This is a book of interconnected stories and people around the US-Vietnam war that lead from one to another to another. At first the stories and the people seem connected in a straight line with the original ones dropping off, but it is not as straightforward as it appears and eventually people and connections reemerge in ways that make us hope for the characters. While the characters are fictional, the book also gives insight into real life Vietnamese-American culture and events that shape the Vietnamese diaspora including Operation Babylift after the Vietnam war and the rise of Vietnamese-American nail salons around the world. The book is told in short, fragmentary chapters �� Thúy writes, ‘In this book, truth is fragmented, incomplete, unfinished, in both time and space.�� Awful things happen in this book but as �� Thúy says, “in every conflict zone, good steals in and edges its way right into the cracks of evil.�� This book is ultimately beautiful and hopeful and was nominated for a variety of illustrious prizes for both its author and its translator, Sheila Fischman.

6. by Emily Urquhart. I don’t know Emily but she lives in my city and is the daughter of writer Jane Urquhart and painter Tony Urquhart whose journey into dementia she chronicled in a moving book I rated highly a couple of years ago. I heard she had a new collection of essays out and so was eager to read it and it exceeded my expectations. Emily Urquhart holds a PhD in folklore and she draws beautifully on this way of seeing people and their lives and their stories. In one of the essays she captures perfectly how writers come up with ideas for stories with a bit of this and a bit of that. This collection teaches the reader to notice the wonder and magic in everything going on around us, but not in a fanciful way so much as in an observant and caring way. I definitely recommend this one.

5. Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I said I was going to avoid listing the books I didn’t enjoy but thought I would but here I need to say something about one of them. Let me back up first. During the height of the pandemic, I did a Master’s degree in theology and my husband and I undertook a self-guided degree in classic films we had never seen. We made our own “curriculum�� based on lists of the best films of all time and every Friday night we rented a movie that filled in our education. I know what Rosebud means, what Soylent Green really is, and that Hitchcock really liked icy blondes. There are similar gaps in my reading history so when I heard that Barbara Kingsolver had written a 21st century Appalachian version of David Copperfield that involved the opiate crisis, I decided I would fill in the gap and read the OG version by Charles Dickens. I read the book while sick in bed last winter but it was captivating from start to finish/. It was written as a serial story published in newspapers in installments in 1849 and 1850, and was apparently written without an outline and was Dickens�� own favourite book. It is described as a bildungsroman, a story that follows the growth and development of its hero from childhood to adulthood. Dickens—or David Copperfield who narrates his own life story—takes this very seriously: the first chapter is entitled, “I am born�� and begins with the moment of his birth: Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously. This is a book that stands the test of time because it is a compelling series of adventures and misadventures.  I loved reading it and was sorry when it ended. I mention Barbara Kingsolver’s version which is brilliantly entitled Demon Copperhead. I started it and put it down. I suspect if I had read the Dickens version many years ago, I might have enjoyed the new one more but I felt like I had just read the story and so I wasn’t terribly interested in a version where the addiction and economic issues felt dangerously too real. I think the Kingsolver book is likely excellent and as important as Dickens�� book was in his time and perhaps even more so, but I really enjoyed the original this year.

4. by Rachel Cantor. I have a young relative who has nicknamed herself Bronte. She asked me not long ago if I knew anyone else by that name and I had to say I did not. Somehow at the age of 7 she had heard of the Yorkshire sisters who wrote the books Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and more. She asked me to tell her the stories of those sisters and the stories they told. There was some consternation on both our parts about the first Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre (“But why would he��?�� “It’s a good question…��) If my young relative was a bit older I might point her to this fascinating book by Rachel Cantor. The book has a terrible title. It really does. But it is a wonder, a creative imagining of the inner life of the Bronte family starting in childhood and all the way until the final sibling dies. But the book does not even attempt historical accuracy although it is very evident that Cantor knows the Brontes inside out and backwards. Instead it is a reinterpretation of the family in a more or less contemporary context, one that gets right at the intimacy and creativity and small lives and enormous genius of this group of siblings. It’s a strange book but the playfulness of it and the willingness to transpose the family into other contexts while still keeping them every bit themselves actually gave me a closer sense of who they might have been �� or at least I believed in Cantor’s versions of the characters. The addiction of the one brother and the love of his sisters and father is heartbreaking, as are the lost loves and deaths that the family experienced. I know I said that I didn’t love Demon Copperfield and you might think this is contradictory of me to like this one and not that one but, as Walt Whitman famously said, “I contain multitudes.�� I also wonder whether it makes a difference that Cantor was imagining biographies while Kingsolver was drawing on a particular text. In any event, if you’re a Bronte fan, give this one a try. It is interpretation and not every part succeeds �� it is written in a wide variety of genres including lists and play scripts �� but on the whole it really is satisfying in the way the best dreams satisfy even if the walls and floors don’t all line up the way they would in real life.

3. by Jenny Odell. This book has a beautiful cover, covered with brilliant flowers. It has a compelling title that scratches the itch we all have to take a little break, a rest, or at least to put our phones down for a minute. But it isn’t at all what you think. It isn’t a book about self-care and while it is non-fiction it really is not a how-to book at all. It is a book that will make you feel smart at times and really dumb at other times (or is that just me? It might just be me.) I did have the feeling that Odell is smarter than me throughout and that she thinks even more than I do. But this book is also not a book that encourages the reader to stay in their heads, their neck bent forward, their thumbs typing away. No, to give a fair bit of the premise away, Odell’s idea is that we can’t simply refrain from giving our attention to the virtual world but instead we need to give it to the world around us, to the plants and animals and waterways that surround us. She encourages the reader to reenter their senses and their neighbourhoods, and to recognize the revolutionary, anti-capitalist stance that this is in today’s world. She doesn’t suggest withdrawal from contemporary life but she suggests participation on our own terms rather than on the terms of those marketing to our attention. This book is a bit heady and I did feel overwhelmed at times but it changed the way I move and pay attention in the world and that was very much worth it. (This is the book I led a book discussion about, with other writers who work with my literary agent. We are all encouraged to be active on social media and to build a platform so that people can hear about our books. This book did not deny that but encouraged us to have a self that is part of a human and more than human community from which to write and tweet.)

2. by Alessandro Manzoni, translated by Michael F. Moore. One of my children has Aslan for a middle name, taken from the Narnia books because my husband and I were big fans. One of my siblings, by contrast, went to a summer camp where Narnia was shoved down their throats for every single activity and that sib developed a resulting aversion to Narnia. Apparently a similar thing happens with kids in Italy who are forced to read two classic books over and over and over again. One of those books is Dante’s Divine Comedy while the other is apparently I Promessi Sposi, a book that didn’t make the jump outside Italy much. Until now with a new translation, The Betrothed, by Michael F. Moore (who is not the filmmaker but a lover of Manzoni and the Italian language). This book is considered a classic of world literature. The book is set in the 17th century but was written in 1821 and then was revised and revised and rewritten until 1840. It’s a long book at more than 700 pages but it’s just a good story told well. There’s love and betrayal and plague and war and corruption and innocence and faithfulness and betrayal and social issues and more. This is apparently the first English translation in fifty years and it is eminently readable. I highly recommend it.

1. by Ann Patchett. I simply adored this book for many reasons. I am hit and miss when it comes to Ann Patchett. She is a treasure in the book industry as both a writer and a store owner. Some of her writing has taken me to my knees while other books of hers leave me cold. This was neither. This was a wonderful warm hug of a book. I will tell you reasons why I loved it based on the story but I will say first that one of the reasons I loved it so was because of how I experienced it. I think I have mentioned before in my top 10 lists that I really like choosing books to match my holiday locales, something like a wine pairing with a meal. Our first trip to Lake Superior a few years back was accompanied by the chilling brilliance of Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow which is set in northern Ontario. The next year we listened to Mary Lawson’s Crow Lake. We tried to listen to The Namesake on a trip to Boston where it is set but as much as I loved the film based on that book, the book wasn’t especially listen-able. But Tom Lake. The audiobook of Tom Lake was read by the inimitable Meryl Streep. (As an aside someone once told me Meryl Streep was my celebrity doppelganger, especially her hands, and so I always try to see her hands when I watch her in any film.) Audiobooks are always better when read by an actor than by anyone else, including the author �� there’s a lovely voice actor who reads my book �� but while Meryl Streep could probably make the phonebook sound delightful, the thing is that she is utterly believable and entirely submerged into the main character of this book. And the main character is a woman who lives and works on a cherry farm on the west coast of Michigan. Which was exactly where we were headed on a trip this summer. The pairing was…chef’s kiss. We drove along past rolling hills covered with fruit trees, wondering why some had been upended—and then the book mentioned in passing why this was so. We were immersed in the landscape we were listening to �� something I can’t recommend enough. We stopped at a cherry store and bought cherry wine, dried Michigan cherries, and cherry concentrate as we listened to what had brought this woman and her family to the farm from very different lives at Tom Lake. Another aspect of my enjoyment of this book is that it is framed during a time when colleges close and migrant workers are hard to find and adult children come home �� the reason is obvious to anyone who lived through 2020 and beyond but it is not specifically mentioned. What is mentioned is how much the narrator, the mother, exults in having this found time with her adult daughters, how this time of global upset is also a beautiful gift for some. Like the narrator, this was my own experience. The book skirts very close to the line of sentimentality but I think it avoids it. It’s funny and lovely. It’s well crafted with its revelations being perfectly timed. I don’t know whether you need to drive across to the dunes and the cherry trees of Lake Michigan to enjoy it, but honestly I’d recommend you do that trip anyhow and I’d recommend you read the book either way. Especially if it’s read by Meryl Streep. (One last word on the audiobook question. I mentioned that Ann Patchett owns a small bookstore. Most people tend to buy audiobooks through Amazon and Audible which are the natural predators of small bookstores so you might think that Patchett would choose a lousy voice actor to read the book to support small bookstores. Instead she recommends listening to the book and also recommends a site that was new to me libro.fm which is an audiobook site that allows the purchaser to send the profits to the small bookstore of their choice. Many books �� including mine �� are available this way. The formatting and price are similar. It just benefits the little store. I recommend it highly if you’re an audiobook reader/listener.)

Oh��.and I have a bonus book for you. It is a treasure written by a friend. by Erin Bow might be my favourite of all her books. I had the privilege of doing some editing on it before it went out to find a home. It was longlisted for the National Book Award (which is a big deal) and is rumoured to be at least a nominee for the Newbery Prize. It’s sensitive and laugh-out-loud funny and quirky—and it takes place in the aftermath of a major major school-related trauma. But it’s about recovery from the trauma with the help of great new friends and loving weirdo parents and a puppy and a distinct lack of the Internet for scientific reasons. This is a middle grade novel but this well-past-middle-grade reader adored it and highly recommends it to you and yours. If you want a second bonus book, let me point you toward my own newly released novel. I won’t say too much about it except that it’s set in Italy, and it is a really good book for moms and for bookclubs. by Susan Fish: I’d love it if you checked it out.

Happy reading! And do tell me your favourites from 2023!