All The Books I Haven't Reviewed

Last week, my friends’ typically varied Instagram stories – full of babies and airplane wings and Alison Roman recipes – were replaced overnight by one thing: Spotify Year in Review posts.

And though my initial curiosity was quickly replaced by “You like Billie Eilish, so what?” cynicism, I initially found these factoids about listening habits fascinating. My cousin plays alt-country albums on repeat? My cool co-worker’s most-listened-to artist is Post Malone? A college acquaintance I never thought much of loves SZA as much as I do?

I often wish there was a similarly viral round up of books, a way to voyeuristically view the reading material of the people I know. I’ve spent my whole life judging people by the books they read, but the older I get, the fewer chances I have to do it. As leisure time has been lost, as my friend group narrows, and as paperbacks have been replaced by Kindle Paperwhites, there just aren’t that many opportunities to steal glances at cracked spines and draw crazy conclusions based on what I see.

Recently, a friend told me this blog is like that – a way for people to sneak a peek at what’s in my bag, on my shelves, and atop my nightstand. But, though I hate to admit it, it isn’t really. Or isn’t anymore. 2019 was the year that my book reading radically outpaced my book writing. I have a to-review pile so tall that my son toppled it over last week.

So what’s my problem?

Certainly not lack of passion for the books I’ve been reading. I devoured Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women in about three days, stopping only to work, parent, and give my brain an occasional break from the crushing disappointments and injustices the women at the heart of this non-fiction book suffer.

Nor is it lack of things to say. I took nearly ten pages of notes about Sheila Heti’s Motherhood, a book I hated for its navel-gazing self-indulgence but loved for its self-awareness, its beauty, and for the sheer mass of smart observations that Heti’s ostensibly-fictitious-but-not-really narrator makes as she grapples with the question of whether or not to have children. Some of my favorite examples include these anecdotes:

“It’s easy to reward someone for having a child – the meaning of their life is so apparent in its solidness and worth. The course of their future is so clear. To have a child is like being a city with a mountain in the middle. Everyone sees the mountain. Everyone in the city is proud of the mountain. The city is built around it. A mountain, like a child, displays something real about the value of that town. In a life in which there is no child, no one knows anything about your life’s meaning. They might suspect it doesn’t have one – no center it is built around. Your life’s value is invisible.”

“There is a kind of sadness in not wanting the things that give so many other people their life’s meaning. There can be sadness at not living out a more universal story – the supposed life cycle – how out of one life cycle another cycle is supposed to come. But when out of your life, no new cycle comes, what does that feel like?”

“My mother told me, when I was a child, You know that in my family the women were always the brains. So I also wanted to be the brains: to be nothing but words on a page.”

Nor is it lack of thematic connection that’s stopping me. Sayaka Murata’s beautiful and strange Convenience Store Woman, for example, is a novel in which a woman so fully fuses with the 24-hour Japanese convenience store where she works that it becomes hard to know where the person ends and the place begins. It’s about as perfect a fit for a blog about writing and traveling as possible, particularly considering I once spent several weeks in Japan, and much of that time walking from my hotel to the local Lawson to buy onigiri and chicken karaage.

What’s stopped me, rather, is partly practical and partly philosophical. Practically speaking, I packed this year with so many priorities other than this blog. I took a writing class and penned hundreds of pages. I went back to work after having a child and then watched both that child and my career grow – he turned one in September, and I got promoted in October. And philosophically, I finally got comfortable with the idea that not everything has to become content. I ate great meals without photographing them, took great trips without journaling about them, and read great books without the ulterior motive of mining my thoughts on them for blog posts.

So will the reviews come? Probably not. This post is the literary equivalent of Marie Kondo thanking the clothes that brought her joy before she moves on.

Thank you Conversations with Friends.

Thank you to its follow-up, Normal People.

Thank you Your Art Will Save Your Life.

Thank you Look How Happy I’m Making You.

And thank you Heavy (really, thank you, you were so excellent)

And so, if you too are feeling a bit listless in this downtime between Spotify best-of lists and the inevitable Instagram Top 9s, I recommend any of these joy-sparking books to fill the void. You may even feel compelled to thank me by letting me snoop around the reading material in your bag, on your bookshelves, and atop your nightstand someday.