{"id":3863,"date":"2019-12-31T18:45:50","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T23:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/?p=3863"},"modified":"2019-12-31T18:45:50","modified_gmt":"2019-12-31T23:45:50","slug":"my-year-in-books-and-podcasts-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/2019\/12\/31\/my-year-in-books-and-podcasts-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"My year in books (and podcasts) 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was a pretty good year for me. Nothing particularly amazing\u00a0or wonderful or eventful happened to me, though my son has been such a source of pride and light for me that I sometimes can’t believe I’m his mom. I still live in the same messed up world we all do. My migraines have actually gotten worse and more frequent, which sucks. I’ve been working to fight off burnout at work, but I am really pleased with the fact that it hasn’t bled into my out-of-worklife as much as it would have a few years ago. It was a good year because I felt my mindset change for the better. I feel like I started on a journey to develop better healthier relationships\u00a0with work, with social media, with family, and with myself. I am still working on all those things (and probably will forever — are we ever there?<\/em>), but it feels good to know I’m moving in a positive direction\u00a0and that I can make micro-improvements in my life over time and see that as enough.<\/p>\n

Here’s a list of books that inspired, distracted, provoked, entertained, and sustained me this year. For those of you who read my\u00a0essays on mid-career, mindfulness, enoughness, the attention economy, and ambition<\/a>, you’ve already seen some of these books listed at the end of the series.\u00a0Books that I really loved are bolded and books that I didn’t read in their entirety are marked with an asterisk. I gave up on a lot of books this year, which is hard for a recovering completionist. It used to be that I’d suffer through books I hated because I’d heard they were supposed to be great (and clearly if I didn’t like it something was wrong with me), but I didn’t do that this year, though some I still did read for way longer than I should have. A book can be considered\u00a0amazing by lots of people and not be good for me. I’m not letting myself feel shame or punish myself when I just don’t connect with a “great work” anymore. And that feels freeing.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Power<\/em> by Naomi Alderman<\/li>\n
  2. Mostly Dead Things<\/em><\/strong> by Kristen Arnett<\/li>\n
  3. All This Could Be Yours<\/em> by Jami Attenberg<\/li>\n
  4. Fix Her Up<\/em> by Tessa Bailey (I do not recommend this)<\/li>\n
  5. The Immortalists<\/em> by Chloe Benjamin*<\/li>\n
  6. Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved<\/em><\/strong> by Kate Bowler<\/li>\n
  7. Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel<\/em><\/strong> by Taffy Brodesser-Akner<\/li>\n
  8. The Wild Robot Escapes<\/em><\/strong> by Peter Brown<\/li>\n
  9. Lives Other Than My Own: A Memoir<\/em> by Emmanuel Carr\u00e8re<\/li>\n
  10. Aru Shah and the End of Time<\/em> by Roshani Chokshi<\/li>\n
  11. All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir<\/em><\/strong> by Nicole Chung<\/li>\n
  12. Thick: And Other Essays<\/em><\/strong> by Tressie McMillan Cottom<\/li>\n
  13. A Visit from the Goon Squad<\/em> by Jennifer Egan*<\/li>\n
  14. The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore<\/em> by Kim Fu<\/li>\n
  15. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed<\/em> by Lori Gottlieb<\/li>\n
  16. Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library<\/em> by Chris Grabenstein<\/li>\n
  17. The Proposal<\/em><\/strong> by Jasmine Guillory<\/li>\n
  18. The Wedding Party<\/em><\/strong> by Jasmine Guillory<\/li>\n
  19. Florida<\/em> by Lauren Groff* (I didn’t finish this one not because I didn’t like it, but I ran out of time on my overdrive check out. So far, I really enjoyed the stories)<\/li>\n
  20. Homegoing<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Yaa Gyasi<\/li>\n
  21. P.S. I Still Love You<\/em> by Jenny Han<\/li>\n
  22. Plainsong<\/em><\/strong> by Kent Haruf (a re-read of one of my favorite books)<\/li>\n
  23. What If This Were Enough?: Essays<\/em> by Heather Havrilesky<\/li>\n
  24. An American Marriage<\/em><\/strong> by Tayari Jones<\/li>\n
  25. The Leavers<\/em> by Lisa Ko<\/li>\n
  26. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts<\/em> by Jaron Lanier<\/li>\n
  27. Lost Children Archive<\/em> by Varleria Luiselli*<\/li>\n
  28. Mindful Tech: How to Bring Balance to Our Digital Lives<\/em> by David Levy<\/li>\n
  29. The Ark Plan: Edge of Extinction<\/em>\u00a0by Laura Martin<\/li>\n
  30. Save the Date<\/em> by Morgan Matson<\/li>\n
  31. My Ex-Life<\/em> by Stephen McCauley*<\/li>\n
  32. American Royals<\/em> by Katharine McGee<\/li>\n
  33. Red, White & Royal Blue: A Novel<\/em><\/strong> by Casey McQuiston<\/li>\n
  34. My Year of Rest and Relaxation<\/em>\u00a0by Ottessa Moshfegh*<\/li>\n
  35. Fablehaven<\/em> by Brandon Mull<\/li>\n
  36. Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle<\/em> by Emily and Amelia Nagoski<\/li>\n
  37. Becoming<\/em> by Michelle Obama<\/li>\n
  38. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy<\/em><\/strong> by Jenny Odell<\/li>\n
  39. I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death<\/em> by Maggie O’Farrell<\/li>\n
  40. The Double Bind: Women on Ambition<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Robin Romm<\/li>\n
  41. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter<\/em> by Erika Sanchez*<\/li>\n
  42. Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage<\/em> by Dani Shapiro<\/li>\n
  43. Feel Free: Essays<\/em> by Zadie Smith*\u00a0(I didn’t finish this one not because I didn’t like it, but I ran out of time on my overdrive check out. I was really enjoying the essays and hope to come back to it)<\/li>\n
  44. Permanent Record<\/em> by Edward Snowden<\/li>\n
  45. Guts<\/em><\/strong> by Raina Telgemeier<\/li>\n
  46. Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion<\/em><\/strong> by Jia Tolentino<\/li>\n
  47. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous<\/em><\/strong> by Ocean Vuong<\/li>\n
  48. Happily Ali After<\/em> by Ali Wentworth<\/li>\n
  49. Waiting\u00a0for Tom Hanks<\/em> by Kerry Winfrey<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This year, I’m not making a list of books I hope to read in 2020, because I want to leave myself more open to serendipity and how I feel in a particular moment. There are times that I can read something searing, painful, and beautiful like Homegoing<\/em> or On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous<\/em>, but there are also times that I need\u00a0a royal romance or a\u00a0sweet, funny, and satisfying\u00a0Jasmine Guillory tale. I think I’ve spent too much of my life seeing one of those types of books as good and the other as junk food, and I think that’s incredibly reductive and unhelpful. “Guilty pleasures” is a problematic term. We don’t have to feel guilty about the\u00a0the things that give us pleasure (so long as\u00a0they\u00a0don’t\u00a0harm anyone else).<\/p>\n

    This year I got really into listening to podcasts, which had long been a content format I didn’t quite understand the appeal of. Here is a list of podcasts I really enjoyed this year:<\/p>\n