Hi Darling Ones,

I’ve read 165 books so far this year. I even read a two of them twice (Jeff Tweedy’s memoir & the Sylvia Plath bio). In the olden days I would write about every single book I read. When I started reading more and more books that became kind of a burden. Plus, I read a lot of okayish books and have nothing to say about them.

Here are my ten favorite books of 2021. I think. I didn’t closely check the publication dates on these because I didn’t feel like it. I took the Tweedy memoir off the list because I knew it wasn’t published this year. Same goes for Lily King’s Writers & Lovers which was on the list until I remembered I re-read it this year. When you read a lot of books it’s hard to keep them straight.

If you’re wondering what to get readers in your life for presents or want to ask for these from Santa, you can’t go wrong with this list. Those who pay close attention will see that many of the favorites from earlier this year remained on the list despite some tough competition.

To keep this list interesting, I will be doing some tough literary math* to give you the vibe of each book in a way that amuses me.

FICTION

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

Music + Sexism + Racism/Stories told by a variety of media = Daisy Jones & The Six – sentimentality + a political conscience.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

That Sally Rooney alchemy¹⁰

The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

Angrboda + Loki + Norse mythology = my favorite novel of the year

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Hockey + Native American traditions + young adult narrator = unforgettable mystery that is rewarding to read on all levels.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

COVID in 2020 as it happened in Minneapolis = Haunted bookstore (a love letter to readers + Erdrich’s Native American magic)

NON-FICTION

Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by Phuc Tran

A wonderfully clever title = a book of love and abuse + how music can save us

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

Rage x Beauty + the feminine mystique of the 50s x 17 tons of anger at Ted Hughes = true love

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Food + Music – Mom = Book with the best final line of any I read this year. Also, that cover of Say it Ain’t So (which has nothing to do with the book but I just wanted to mention it again).

Blow Your House Down By Gina Frangello

Ferocity³ x Honesty + an unsparing look at your life = the bravest writing I’ve ever read.

A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

There is no mathematical equation, real or imaginary that can adequately convey the magnificence of this book, my favorite of 2021.

Happy reading, Darling Ones. I’d love to know what you read and loved this year,
Jodi

 
*I know very little about math and am just making this up, obviously. It’s kind of like dancing about architecture.

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Dear Darling Ones,

I turned all the rotten bananas chilling in my freezer into banana bread today. I needed the hit of smug superiority along with feelings of productivity and also taking care of myself.

Flossing and banana bread are the two things guaranteed to fill me with sanctimony. So does taking the high road in most situations, however I hate when my high road taking goes unrecognized so that one’s a little complicated.

I needed the hit because I’ve been feeling like pond scum. Today I finished Anita Hill’s book Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence. It was a lot. I actually thought about giving up halfway through, but then I thought if Anita Hill can carry all this for thirty years I can read one book about it.

That was not my best idea because, boy, am I down in a hole. The book is infuriating and frustrating, and Anita Hill is full of grace and hope which helped some. However, I have been remembering every shitty come on and scary incident and mistreatment of my body that’s ever happened. From the times was twelve up until 2015 when I had to scream at a man to get him to leave my house.

Then this morning I woke up sad from a sweet and confusing dream. It was sweet because in the dream one of my crushes liked me back and it felt really good. It was confusing because Sister #3, who unsubscribed from the Sister Club in March 2020, was in it. She was humiliating me under her usual guise of being funny/honest in front of the crush and the rest of our family. Thanks, subconscious.

So, I needed a win and that win took the form of banana bread. I might floss my teeth before bed so I can be the best person you know just for this one day.

Sanctimoniously yours,
Jodi

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Dear Darling Ones,

When Sister #2 was here in August I complained a little bit about the library. I do feel like a bit of a hypocrite about this, because I really do love the library more than any other institution on the planet.

However, within the last year or so, my teeny local Scott County Library eBook/audiobook app joined up with the larger Twin Cities Metro Library app. This has vastly expanded my book checking out options, which I appreciate. But it also means I have to compete with a vastly larger number of smarty pants to get the books I want. It was easier when I was only competing with a small pool of Scott County smarties to get the books.

Because of this I had to wait 159 days (thanks, Libby) to check out Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Little Devil in America: Notes on Praise of Black Performance. When I finished it today, I promptly ordered a hard copy because I need to own this book.

Okay, it wasn’t that prompt. A few paragraphs from the end of the book I had to put it down and spend sevenish minutes sitting on the edge of my bed, elbows on knees, head in hands crying. Like legit, full-on, can’t catch your breath crying. The tears came swiftly and unexpectedly.

I even said, out loud to my empty bedroom, “Oh boy, I didn’t expect this.”

This is what, in a book full of just lovely, lovely sentences and ideas, put me over the edge.

“I am thankful for what it is to grow up with a life fastened to another life. Even as you both age upward and outward from whatever paths you began on. I am thankful for how the fastening of those lives creates a type of understanding of the unspoken. And I am thankful for how the fastening of those lives creates a type of urgency around that unspoken.”

This passage makes me cry because Abdurraqib has eloquently put into words how I feel about Sister #2. I often think about how, and maybe I have written about it, Sister #2 is my tether to Earth. Without her I am sure I would have floated away a long, long time ago. She is, without a doubt, the person who cares about me the most.

Reading Abdurraqib’s writing describing that sibling bond was overwhelming not just because I could relate on a cellular level, but because it came in an essay where he was writing about gratitude, specifically the gratitude he had about still being alive and the people who kept him from the abyss.

This book has wrecked me in the best possible way art can wreck a person. It is joyful and poignant and filled with the very best kind of music writing that makes my pulse race and my heart zoom.

I can’t wait to get my physical copy so I can re-read “Nine Considerations of Black People in Space.” There is a bunch of Star Wars bullshit in it that I don’t care about, but there is also the way he writes about the moon that made me feel swoony right to my marrow. I want everyone to read it so I have someone to talk about it with.

Read the book and when you need someone to send heart-eye emojis to, I’ll be here for you.

Jodi

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Dear Darling Ones,

I finished reading book #99 in 2021. It was about menopause. I know slightly more about the mysterious biological happening than I did before, which isn’t saying much. To celebrate the milestone I re-read Jeff Tweedy’s memoir (more on that in a minute).

My goal for reading this year was to read widely and voraciously. I want to read about all kinds of things, which is why I’ve read a bunch about visual art and a crapton of author biographies. I should probably broaden my horizons by reading something about science or nature, but damn science is boring.

Anyway, if you’re looking for something to read you cannot go wrong with these nine books.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

I wrote about this one when I first finished reading it. It’s got all the things I love to read and thing about: rock & roll, racism, sexism, women who do what they want to do, and the story is told using all kinds of media, which is so much my jam.

Little Weirds by Jenny Slate

I was unprepared for the emotional gut punch that came with reading Slate’s essays about the end of her marriage and dating and being a woman in America in the right now. You can see what I had to say about this one earlier.

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw

I’ve gotten out of the habit of reading short story collections. For a long time they just haven’t done much for me, but Philyaw’s collection is a sparkling gem from front to back. I read the entire collection in one long, sleepless night and I do not regret one minute of the lost sleep.

Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) by Jeff Tweedy

I got the audio version of this bad boy from the library and spent all day listening to it while I prepared family dinner. Tweedy is so funny, which makes the audio version a little bit better than the print version (which I read a few months ago). Plus, his wife and one of his sons make an appearance. But what I love so much about this memoir is that he thinks about creating and creativity much the same way I do. And also, I could listen to him talk about what The Replacements mean to him for the rest of my life.*

The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

I still have plans of changing my name to Angrboda, bringer of sorrows and becoming the witch of Ironwood. If I didn’t have so much brand equity in my house being called Supergenius HQ, I would rebrand. Thinking about this one still makes my heart a little zoomy with joy because reading it was such a pleasure.

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

I’ve stopped reading YA for the most part because I find the voice of a lot of recent YA super cloying and kind of annoying. This one was neither of those things. A female hockey-playing protagonist who is a smarty smart smartie is trying to solve some mysterious drug-related deaths in her Michigan town and along the way teaches the reader so many things about Anishinaabe traditions.

Red Comet by Heather Clark

This biography of Sylvia Plath lit my brain on fire and became an obsession for a few weeks when all I wanted to do was read this book and wander around in Sylvia Plath’s world.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

This memoir by the lead singer of Japanese Breakfast is wonderful. Probably has the best last chapter of any book in a good long time. Also, I have extra special affection for this one because my niece read it on my suggestion (she also loved it). But the best thing was the book inspired Jaycie to go check out the H Mart in Portland and she texted me a bunch of pictures while she was there.

Blow Your House Down by Gina Frangello

Do you ever get zapped by art that makes you feel more alive after experiencing it than you did before? That’s how I felt after reading Frangello’s memoir about adultery, feminism, a dying marriage, and mothering through cancer and divorce and the death of her parents. This one is fierce and ferocious and so fucking brave. I aspire to write something so fucking alive and full of passion.

Your book reports are due in December, Darling Ones.

Love,
Jodi

 
*To be fair, I could listen to just about anyone talk about their favorite band forever — especially if their voice gets a little wobbly because they’re so full of emotion about the music. Fuckin’ a – that kind of thing slays me.

The post The 9 Best of the First 99 Books I Read this Year appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hi Darling Ones,

My brain is pretty much a never-ending jukebox. I sing songs I know, songs I don’t know,* songs I make up, and nonsense jibber-jabber constantly. I am the star of a very special musical in my mind.

The only time I turn it down is when I’m sleeping it off. Ha! I just wanted to get that line in because I love that song.

But for real, the only time I turn down the music in my head is when I’m reading a book. It’s nice, a little bit of quietness for a brain that never shuts the fuck up. Especially when I’m reading fiction I can get lost in the story and it stills all the chatter. It happens less so with non-fiction.

Occasionally, a book will get a song stuck in my head and it will drive me bananas. It happened when I read Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russel and my brain had to Weird-Al the title to the tune of “Angel in the Centerfold.” It happened when I read Freedom by Jonathan Franzen too, and let me tell you having that Wham! song stuck in your head for the entirety of a Franzen tome is zero fun.

This week I read Olympus, Texas by Stacey Swann which combined two of my favorite things: Cowboys + Greek Mythology. Yum! My one complaint is that all the characters live near or on the Brazos River in Texas. For people not afflicted with jukebox brain this is probably not a problem.

However, the jukebox brain in my head has been singing “Mineral Wells” by Amanda Shires nonstop for the last three days. This usually wouldn’t bother me because I think Shires’ is one of the most underrated songwriters working. She’s brilliant and I could make a really strong case for her being an even better writer than her husband, Jason Isbell. But when I’m trying to find all the Greek myth Easter eggs in the cowboy story, having at night I dream I’m in the Brazos river. . . on a loop in your head it makes it a little difficult to concentrate.

Thankfully, I finished the book today before my nap.

Your jukebox hero,
Jodi

P.S. I started a new gig today and due to technical difficulties I ended up having two hours of meetings in a row. Let me tell you, my body, my mouth, and my social muscles were not prepared for that. I’ve been freelancing for twelve years, if I have two one-hour meetings in a week I need to whine and bellyache about it for at least thirty-six hours.

After the meetings I had to lay down and take a short nap. The pandemic has made my already quick-draining social battery drain even more quickly. I’m legit afraid how I’m gonna cope when the Sister Club comes to town in a few weeks. It already takes me a day to recover from having The Olds & The Youths over for dinner.

How long does it take to rebuild those social muscles? Are there exercises I can do?

I remember in the way before times when I would work eight hours at an office, go to a class at The Loft, and then out to a bar. WHO WAS THAT PERSON? How did I even manage to do all that without shriveling up into an incoherent blob all the time?

Anyway, yay, new fun job!

 
*One time I had this weird song stuck in my head for like a week and I couldn’t find it at all. I sang it to my friend Adam and he went into super Google mode. A few hours later he comes back with, you’re singing two different songs, one is Ferry Cross the Mersey by Gerry and the Pacemakers and whatever the name of the other song was that I don’t remember. He only questioned me a little about how I was singing songs I barely knew.

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