I have been thinking lately of writing a list. A long list of all the women who have influenced me. My mother, certainly, and my sisters. My daughter. My best friend from high school who I don't see often enough but who knows me. Teachers, both those who taught me and those who taught with me. Gymnastic coaches and ballet instructors. So many librarians, both now and once-upon-a-time. Friends from my childhood and friends from my neighborhood and friends I met online. My nieces; my cousins. My aunts, but long ago. My grandmothers in entirely different ways. My great grandmothers who I never met.

In fact, the list would have many women on it who I never met. Sylvia Plath, Anne Stevenson, Marge Piercy. Tori Amos and Kate Bush and yes: Olivia Newton John. Georgia O'Keefe, Frida Kahlo, Mary Cassatt. Poets, musicians, artists, politicians, women in history. Even some imagined women.

High on that list would be Ursula K. Le Guin, whose books and ideas and fierceness have been a part of my thinking since I discovered her via her short story “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas” in one of my literature courses at BYU. That child in the dungeon…it still comes to my mind often, reminding me that my life is built, on many invisible ways, on the misery of someone else.

When I was teaching, one of the first things I had my sophomores read was Le Guin’s short story “Texts.” It is a very short story, about a woman who starts seeing words in everything, the foam the waves leave behind on the sand, a piece of manufactured lace. It ends with the haunting refrain “sister, sister, sister, light the light,” which is another bit of Le Guin’s writing that stays with me. As does the first sentence of the story, “Messages came, Johanna thought, usually years too late, or years before one could crack their code or had even learned the language they were in.” It is the same truth from a poem that also shapes me, “We go by going where we have to go.” It is the same thing that life has taught me: you can look back and understand but when you are in the present it’s hard (if not impossible) to decipher meaning. I started my students with this story as an introduction to what my goal was as a teacher: not just learning grammar and how to write well and some things about literature, but how reading—how someone else’s written words in many forms, and we did read many forms—can inform your life with knowledge, compassion, understanding, and little hints at how to go.

A few years ago, for our citywide reading experience, we read A Wizard of Earthsea. And for a few days, I knew that one of the librarians who runs all the programs was working on bringing the author to our library. Ursula K. Le Guin! At my library! Those were some of my hopefullest days. Alas, she didn’t come—I don’t remember if it was just too expensive to bring her, or if she had some other thing planned, but the thought of meeting her! (I am, I confess, still disappointed that didn’t happen.) It’s a little bit like the emotion you see in those old videos of the crowds of girls waiting to catch a glimpse of the Beatles. Except, you know. A bit more librarian-ish.

Why would I get so excited over meeting a writer? I think most people are most excited over meeting someone truly famous, a rock star or a movie star. For me, though, it’s not the level of fame, but the level of impact the person has had on my life.

And le Guin has impacted me.

It’s hard to classify her writing; you could use the “fantasy” label or the “science fiction” one, but it doesn’t exactly fit or follow all the genre expectations. She didn’t follow genre rules or the snobbery of Literary Fiction. Instead, she just wrote. She wrote so well. Her Earthsea series is the only Tolkien-informed fantasy I can stand to read, because while there is something of Gandalf in Ged, the writing is so good, the striving for self-control and retribution as well as understanding and knowledge, that I don’t care. (And if you know me, you know how picky I am about my fantasy.) Her ideas about women, gender, and social influences were astounding to me when I first read them, not because they are entirely revolutionary but because of how skillfully she takes a theoretical idea and turns it into a story and, in doing so, makes the theory into a possibility.  She is unequivocally feminist, not in that man-hating way that the media and the uninformed think that feminism displays itself, but in real, practical, living-your-life sorts of ways.

It’s not only her novels and short stories, a few of her poems (the non-rhyming ones) and a whole lot of her essays. It is her perspective on life, a sort of no-bullshit approach to the world’s bullshit. She harbors no fools. She was unafraid to speak her mind on many topics: literature, yes, but also women’s rights, abortion, the book industry. Amazon. One of my favorite pieces she wrote was a critique of Margaret Atwood’s objection to her books being labeled as “science fiction.” I mean…Atwood is possibly my favorite writer, but followed closely by le Guin, so the two of them in the same room (metaphorically)? Magic for me. Possibly because I think Atwood’s protest is actually bullshit. As does le Guin.

Her last novel for adults, Lavinia, is on my top-ten-favorite-novels-of-all-time list. Not only because it does one of my favorite things that novels can do—takes a marginal character mentioned in someone else’s work and turns it into a character with a believable story within the structure of the existing work—but because it is powerful. It tells Lavinia’s story (from Virgil’s The Aenid) in a historical context (le Guin learned Latin before she wrote it, so as to bring more authenticity), imagining the early Italians within the context of their mythologies, bringing to life the society’s morals and ideals. But it is also a story about power, and how women, who rarely have any, try to work within power structures. At its heart it is a story about men and women, not just in the romantic sense but in the real, living struggle of abuse, trust, misunderstanding, affection, social roles and personal roles and the push-and-pull of relationships. There is also an edge of tired frustration in the story: this happened so long ago, and yet so little has changed. “Women are born cynics,” Lavinia understand. “Men have to learn cynicism. Infant girls could teach it to them.” As we still could. Finally, it is a story about story itself, how it endures, how it shapes both individuals and civilizations.

I’ve read Lavinia three times since it was released, and each time I finish it I think “Oh how I wish she’d write one more novel.” She did say that Lavinia would be her last book. But I kept hoping that she’d surprise us with another one anyway. Alas: that is no longer a possibility. Nor is meeting her or having her sign my books or just telling her thank you in person. Because Ursula K. le Guin passed away this week. There will be no more new books from her.

But that is also the magic and durability of writing. She’s gone but I can still revisit her creations. They will last as long as people last, perhaps. At least far longer than her one human life. I realized when I put this post together that I don’t have my own copies of most of her novels. I think I need to remedy that. I think I’m going to go in search of some cool copies of her works, and reread them. And I am going to reengage with the process of writing—not blogging, but writing, all of it, but especially the submitting, the act of asking to be noticed. I am remembering her words:

I am sick of the silence of women. I want to hear you speaking all the languages, offering your experience as your truth, as human truth, talking about working, about making, about unmaking, about eating, about cooking, about feeding, about taking in seed and giving out life, about killing, about feeling, about thinking; about what women do; about what men do; about war, about peace; about who presses the buttons and what buttons get pressed and whether pressing buttons is in the long run a fit occupation for human beings. There’s a lot of things I want to hear you talk about… We can all talk mother tongue, we can all talk father tongue, and together we can try to hear and speak that language which may be our truest way of being in the world, we who speak for a world that has no words but ours. I know that many men and even women are afraid and angry when women do speak, because in this barbaric society, when women speak truly they speak subversively—they can’t help it: if you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you subvert. We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.

That’s what I want—to hear you erupting. You young Mount St. Helenses who don’t know the power in you—I want to hear you. I want to listen to you talking to each other and to us all: whether you’re writing an article or a poem or a letter or teaching a class or talking with friends or reading a novel or making a speech or proposing a law or giving a judgment or singing the baby to sleep or discussing the fate of nations, I want to hear you. Speak with a woman’s tongue. Come out and tell us what time of night it is! Don’t let us sink back into silence. If we don’t tell our truth, who will?

I am not young anymore. I don’t know if I have the power of any volcano. But maybe there is a bit of magma left. Right now, so much of my life is about change. I am coming up against the difference between what I hoped my life would look like when I was here—45 years old, my children no longer small but going out into the world—and what it actually is. I am working on letting go of what I hoped for and embracing what I have. And I am also learning something new and exciting: If it will not be what I wanted, what I hoped for, there is a freedom here in what is. I can choose. I can make it what I want it, shape it how I will. I still have paths to follow and choices to make. I still have a voice. It’s not just le Guin’s death that is sparking me. But she is right: my experience as my truth is something to share, to create from, to let influence more than just my own life. This is why I admire writers the most, and why I get excited about meeting them: because they make things that influence other people. That drop little hints about the way to go. I don’t know of any other higher praise than, at the end of a life, to have someone say “I want to be like you.” And that is what I would have said to her if I had ever met her: “I want to be a person who influences others with words. Like you did.”

I’ve always tried to keep a record of some sort of the scrapbook layouts I make. This started back when I used Creative Memories albums, which have a strap-hinge binding and front-to-back pages. I made a table to keep track of what came next, chronologically, so I didn’t accidentally skip something or make a layout on the wrong side of a page.

When I switched to post-bound albums in 2002, I stopped scrapbooking chronologically. Now I do some layouts seasonally: Christmas layouts in January, at least a handful of Halloween layouts in October, birthday layouts in the summer (which is either weird or makes total sense, considering we don’t have any summer birthdays in my family), vacation layouts in August. Mostly, though, I make layouts by which stories I’m feeling inspired to tell. Then I (eventually) organize them chronologically into albums. (I have a HUGE pile of layouts right now, and I need to reorganize my albums, but when I have scrappy time I want to make scrapbook layouts, not put layouts into albums, even though that pile is driving me nuts AND I still haven’t moved the albums from my old scrappy space to my new one.) This change in my process has been very freeing for me, but sometimes it creates a problem: Scrapbooking the same stories or photos more than once.

So for the past few years, I’ve made sure to photograph or scan every layout I make, and I created a spreadsheet to keep track of what I’ve made. I call this spreadsheet “scrapbook maps”; there is a workbook for each of my kids and one for me (I confess: I have never made a scrapbook layout explicitly for my husband), and the entries are sorted chronologically. So if I’m not sure if I’ve scrapbooked, say, Christmas 2005, I can look it up in my spreadsheet. (I don’t have scans/photos of all the layouts I’ve ever made, because I only started photographing layouts, except for the ones I made for my Big Picture classes, in 2014.)

In 2017, I set a goal of also keeping a yearly spreadsheet (it’s called “yearly scrappy stats”). Is this overkill? Probably. Is it nerdy? Absolutely! Does the data make me happy? Yes! The scrapbook maps spreadsheet is just about layout details, but the yearly one is more about numbers. This year I kept track of a lot of number-based data (you can see a breakdown below), and this morning I did some calculations so I could see what I might learn. Here’s what I discovered:

Total layouts: 95. I’m not sure if this is a lot or not very many, as I haven’t ever kept really detailed yearly records.

One page layouts: 77% of my layouts (74/95) are one-page layouts. Of those, 32% have one photo; 28% have two and 26% have three. The most photos I fit onto one single-page layout was seven.

Two page layouts: 23% of my layouts (21/95) are two-page layouts. Of those, 42% have seven photos; 33% have eight and 14% have ten. The most photos I fit onto one double-page layout was eleven.

I scrapbooked a total of 339 photos.

I try to make about the same amount of layouts for each of my kids every year. I failed at that pretty dismally. I’m not going to share those stats, but that did make me think about why I feel inspired to scrap about certain topics. It is more than just about wanting to use a specific supply, but about how connected I am feeling to the person. In some ways, the less connected I feel, the more I want to scrapbook about that person, because through telling that person’s stories I feel less distance. This is one of my goals, then, for 2018: to catch up on the person I scrapbooked about the least in 2017, and keep it even for everyone else.

I made ten layouts about myself, which is the most I’ve ever done. I am trying to tell more of my own stories, both about current experiences and older memories. I’m the only person who’s going to do this, and maybe no one will care if these layouts exist, but it brings me a certain type of happiness to get my own stories matched up with photos.

I did a lot of holiday scrapbooking in 2017: 13 Christmas layouts and 14 Easter layouts. I always scrapbook Christmas layouts, but I realized one day early last spring that I’ve done very few layouts about Easter. So I rectified that! I used a lot of older supplies I’ve been hanging on to for spring-ish layouts and rediscovered some photos I just love. I only made three birthday layouts and one vacation layout.

Most of my layouts were made in the first third of the year. I made 50 layouts before May 1, but spread out the rest through the year. I make the fewest layouts in the summer. The thing that influences how many layouts I’m making? Vacations. During the month before our two big vacations I made almost no layouts, as I was busy planning trips instead.

A surprise from the data: I tend to think of myself as a 50/50 scrapbooker: that my layouts are half single-page, half double-page. Or at most 66/33. So I was surprised to see that only 25% were double pages. I’m not opposed to single-photo layouts; I think they are an opportunity to really dig deeply into a story as well as giving space to a lovely image. I also tend to think of myself as someone who almost always uses more than one photo, and while most of my pages do have more than one, 25% are one-photo layouts.

I’m still thinking about how this record-keeping experience might change my scrapbooking. It has helped me see my approach more clearly, but I think I need a few years of data before a bigger picture can start to be seen. So I intended on continuing on with my scrapbooking data gathering in 2018 and beyond.

Influence by my spreadsheets, here are my scrapbooking goals for 2018:

1. Even up how many layouts I make for each kid and catch up the kid with the fewest layouts last year.
2. Be more thoughtful in my photo-selection process. Am I doing single-photo layouts because they are easier or because they are the best way to tell the story?
3. Make more layouts about vacations and birthdays. I think I will also write a blog post about why these are difficult for me to make.
4. Keep on making “Life Right Now” style layouts. I made about 15 of these in 2017 and they are, to me, a good way to summarize a bunch of memories into one place.
5. Continue working on my monthly family album. Again, this deserves its own blog post, but to sum up: Since July I’ve being making one double-page layout about our family each month. I keep these super-simple, using the same font for the title and journaling for each layout. This has influenced how I think about taking photos during the month and I want to keep doing it.
6. Give myself permission to not feel guilty or weird about scrapbooking about myself. Will I have too many layouts about me at the end of my life? Who knows. Will it matter? Not sure.
7. Start using my Canon more. (Which means I need to get it serviced, as it is not focusing properly. Or maybe I will just sell all of my equipment and start over.) Cell phone cameras are awesome but I really do love my DSLR photos more.

Here’s to telling many more stories in 2018! If you are a scrapbooker, do you keep track of your layouts?

Last night I stayed up late, waiting until Nathan’s curfew and finishing the book I was reading, Far from the Tree by Robin Benway. It tells the story of three teenagers: Grace, who has recently given birth to a baby she placed for adoption; Maya, whose parents’ arguments are beginning to escalate as her mom continues to drink too much, and Joaquin, a kid in foster care whose current foster parents have just asked him if they could adopt him. In the weeks following the birth of her daughter, Grace, who is also adopted, decides to look for her birth mom. Who she finds instead are her brother and sister, Joaquin and Maya.

I have a special place in my heart for novels about adoption. I don’t think it’s a topic that authors always get right—sometimes it’s too sweet, sometimes it swings the other way to crazy. But Benway’s story does a fantastic job at telling a truth about adoption that sometimes gets overlooked: it doesn’t automatically create a perfect life with a perfect family and perfect parents who never make mistakes. Families with adopted kids go through the same struggles as those built solely with biological kids, and the characters in this novel illustrate that.

I loved the structure of this novel. The chapters alternate between Grace, Maya, and Joaquin, which works well with the plot. This isn’t (really) a story about an adopted child finding her birth mom; instead, it is about three teenagers learning that family can take many shapes. The characters are each able to learn something important about their parents—in one shape or another, they each learn that adults can and do make mistakes, but those mistakes don’t have to damage or destroy the family. (I feel like this is one of the most important thing that teenagers have to learn: that their parents are people, for good and bad, and then to decide if they can love them anyway.) The way their relationship builds slowly, first between Grace and Maya and then to Joaquin, then outward to their siblings and parents, feels authentic: it’s awkward at first, but also so good at capturing the awkwardness of the beginnings of such a relationship. Aside from sharing a birth mother, who are they to each other? They get to decide and to shape the relationship.

This is one of my favorite young adult novels I’ve read in a while. The thing that pushed it over the top for me, into “I didn’t just like this book but LOVED IT”? The importance of photographs. Each of the characters’ story arcs are influenced by photos in one way or another; for Joaquin especially, photos are a turning point. Sometimes I feel a little bit kooky about how much time I devote to photos and family stories…but books like this one remind me that it’s not kooky. Eventually some photos will be all that is left of us, a way to tell our stories when we’re not here. That matters in all families, no matter their shape.

Highly recommended!

This post has taken me FOR.EV.ER to put together. Which is why I'm posting it so late! But I love looking back on such things so I'm putting it out here anyway.

12 Favorite pictures from 2017:

1: The start of running selfies

Because I was a Skirt Sports ambassador this year, I took a lot of running selfies. This is one of my first ones and also still one of my favorites (even though you can't tell what I'm wearing!).

2: Easter afternoon

Jake went through some real struggles this year. This photo, taken on Easter, represents so much to me, but mostly the feeling I had when I saw him that afternoon: that he would be OK.

3: Palm tree reflections

At Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park in Hawaii. (See 11 memories for more details!)

4: Soccer

Maybe my favorite soccer photo I've ever taken!

5: Does this photo make my hair look grey?

Kendell grew a beard for awhile this spring. I made him take a selfie with me before he shaved and it's one of my favorite pictures of us.

6: Cute boys

All the boys on Father's Day.

7: Before she drove home

A scruffy snapshot before Haley left to go back to school one weekend after she'd been here to visit.

8: Central Park

A passerby offered to take this for us. I wish I'd moved the Lindt Store bag out of the frame! We didn't see this part of Central Park when we went there last year.

9: Playing catch

Before school on spring mornings, sometimes Kaleb and I would hang out and play catch while we waited for his carpool. Lots of good conversations while tossing the ball.

10: Bryce Canyon hike

Another photo taken by a passerby! Kendell and me in Bryce Canyon.

11: The lovely Green Sands Beach

(Before things got terrifying!) I hiked up to this ledge overlooking the beach while the kids & Kendell started swimming. It was so colorful there, even if the "green" sand isn't really super green. 

12: Family pic

From Thanksgiving day. Usually I get everyone to wear something that sort-of matches. This time I didn't have the energy. I still think it's a great pic!

11 Favorite memories (in no particular order):

1. Snorkeling with dolphins. We took all of the kids to Hawaii this year, and I wanted to do something adventurous while we were there. So I signed us up for a snorkeling excursion. Part of it was at Captain Cook, but before we got to that harbor we snorkeled with dolphins. It was…well, words like “amazing” and “magical” can’t begin to describe it. The blue, blue water and the dolphins swimming past, so close some of us actually touched them…at one point I looked around and realized all of my family was right in front of me, swimming with their hands drifting down towards the dolphins and I was filled with so much love for each of them.
2. Walking on the Provo River Trail in February after a big snow storm. It was a turning point for me in my depression. I had the trail entirely to myself and it was so cold and peaceful and snowy, with birds landing on trees every now & then, making snow drift down as if it were still falling. Like walking in a snow globe!
3. Helping Haley finish the clean out of her dorm last April. She was the RA and so responsible to get it really clean. We went up and helped her pack up her room and then get out ALL of the stuff the students had left behind (there was a TON of stuff). We all laughed a lot and it was, despite the boxing and carrying, a really fun experience.
4. Eating lunch with my nieces. One day in late winter I was thinking about cousins and aunts and nieces & nephews…extended family. I wish I had a relationship with my cousins but aside from Facebook likes, I really don’t. I also wish I were closer to my nieces and nephews and to their kids. So I organized a lunch with everyone. We met up at Café Rio and just ate together. The coolest thing was that my niece who lives in Arizona surprised us and also came, and I got to meet her new baby. My vision of doing that once a month or so didn’t come to pass (yet!), but I’m glad I got it put together.
5. Running my half marathon. In August when Kendell and I were tossing around the idea of going back to New York in the fall, he suggested I find a race to run while we were there. After many switching of the dates we’d actually be going, I picked the Brooklyn Fall Half. It wasn’t my best half marathon time, as I didn’t have enough weeks to train, but even though I was tired it was such a fun experience. It’s the first race I’ve run outside of Utah, the first one that was made up of laps (four circles around Prospect Park in Brooklyn), the first race I road the subway to the start, and the first race I actually placed in (second in my age group…I still get a little giggle about that!).
6. Wrapping presents this Christmas. I did almost all of my Christmas shopping fairly early, right around black Friday, so I got everything wrapped about December 18^th or so. While I wrapped I got caught up on Call the Midwife. Nathan got home from school when I was almost done, so he came in and helped me finish up.
7. Playing “What’s in Your Purse?” with Becky & Suzette. My mom went in to the hospital on December 9 with intense stomach pain. She had diverticulitis and ended up having two surgeries (she’s still in the hospital; it’s been a difficult time!). During the second surgery, which happened on extreme short notice and started at about 11:30 p.m., Becky asked me if I had any nail clippers in my purse. I was feeling punchy and tired so I went through the entire contents of my purse. (I need to clean it out!) (I did have clippers.) Suzette and Becky also shared what was in their bags (Becky, oddly enough, had a paper cutter!). Even though we were scared, tired, and worried, it was so lovely to laugh together.
8. Hiking in Bryce Canyon. Kendell and I decided to take a detour on our trip to California and spend a day hiking in Bryce Canyon (we also camped overnight). After much discussion, we decided to hike the Fairyland trail, which we’ve hiked once before, but this time we did it clockwise. Just as we got on the trail, the clouds bunched together and it started raining. It wasn’t pouring…just a gentle rain, and it was magical. Bryce is one of my favorite places to go, but Bryce in the rain, with the dramatic clouds and the thunder echoing off the canyon walls? It was just incredible. We never got entirely soaked, just damp, so we were never really cold, just a little bit chilly. It was one of my favorite hikes ever.
9. Sorry, another Hawaii moment. I wanted to walk around Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, or Place of Refuge. This is a national historic park that is a sacred place in Hawaiian history. The kids didn’t really want to go (and Haley had already seen it), so Kendell took them snorkeling on the other side of the bay and I wandered around the park. It was almost closing time so there was almost no one else there—I only saw two other people. I followed the path and stopped at every marker and listened to the information, then looked at the items at each place. At first I was kind of annoyed that no one wanted to come with me, but very quickly I realized that being by myself meant I could really savor it.
10. Reading my first published essay. I have an essay in the anthology Baring Witness: 36 Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage. In February I went to a reading, along with several other contributors. We ate dinner together first (slightly terrifying to just show up for a meal with people I didn’t know) and then walked in the rain to the book store where the reading was held. I was slightly nervous…but only for a second. When I started reading, I quickly got to a spot in my essay where it feels like I’m saying something funny but it turns into something dark, and I managed to vocalize it just right so that the audience went around the curve with me, right into the tension of the essay. It felt like…a performance, somehow, in the best sense of the word.
11. Finding Kaleb. OK, I guess one more Hawaii memory. We hiked to the Green Sand beach, and due to miscommunication we lost Kaleb on the way back. I ran all of the 3+ miles back to the car, desperately hoping to find him, but I got to the car and he wasn’t there. So then I started pacing back and forth along the paved part of the trail that goes from the parking lot to the beach, absolutely terrified and not sure what to do. When I saw my family in the distance and counted—five of them!—I burst into tears. I was so relieved he was OK. (This is actually both my worst memory of 2017 and one of my favorites. Horrible because that was a terrifying half hour of not knowing if he was safe or not. But the feeling when I saw him!)

10 Hikes we hiked in 2017 (I set myself the goal of blogging about every hike I did this year. I blogged about none of them…but I took lots of photos just in case. Maybe I should make a goal to blog about them all before spring gets here!?):

1. Kilauea Iki Trail in Volcano National Park with all the kids.
2. Red Lake Trail in Nebo Canyon with Kendell.
3. Squaw Peak Trail with Kendell.
4. Stewart Falls with my friend Wendy.
5. Rock Canyon to the campground with Kendell.
6. Primrose Cirque overlook with Kendell.
7. Fairyland Trail in Bryce with Kendell. (Every time we go hiking, I try to take a good selfie with Kendell. This one is finally a good one!)
8. Red Rock trail in Los Padres National Forest with Kendell.
9. Potato Harbor and Scorpion Canyon loop trails on Santa Cruz island (please note that Kendell and I did the Scorpion Canyon loop the opposite way than is recommended, which means we went UP the steepest part, instead of down. I love steep trails and wow: there was a lot to love!)
10. Battle Creek Canyon overlook with Kendell (I learned after that this point is also called Brush Mountain. It snowed—very lightly, but still snow—while we hiked, but it hasn’t snowed there since).

9 Holiday highlights:

1. Anniversary: our 25^th. We ate dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant. I wanted to plan a trip somewhere—maybe Florida? just a weekend in San Diego?—but we ended up not being able to get away in February. Which is fine because we “celebrated” all year. Trip to Hawaii? Totally a 25^th anniversary trip! California this summer? We should eat somewhere nice for our 25^th anniversary! etc.
2. Valentine’s Day: we made sugar cookies and had homemade pizza for dinner.
3. President’s Day: It’s become a tradition to eat at a local Chinese restaurant. It was just me, Kendell, and Kaleb this year, which was a little bit lonely for Kaleb, but still delicious.
4. Easter: The first one with only Kaleb and Nathan at home in the morning (which was sad but instead of focusing on sadness I just enjoyed the difference of it). Also our first one at my mom’s new house. I look forward to our Easter dinner all winter…it’s when it feels like spring is really, really here. I wasn’t sure if it would be disappointing at the new house, but I loved it.
5. Memorial Day: Kendell and I went to the cemetery and put flowers on my dad’s grave. I’m so glad he’s close so I can visit!
6. Fourth of July: this was our last family party at my sister Suzette’s pool, as she sold her house this year. We swam, we barbequed, we made sure no one drowned. I’ll be sad next summer to not have her pool for our parties. Later, Kaleb and I went outside and did fireworks with our neighbors.
7. Halloween: Kaleb did not love Halloween this year. He wanted to do something seventh-grade-ish and grown up, but all the plans fell through. So, he helped me pass out candy for a while, and then went downstairs to watch TV and be annoyed. Nathan went to a party with his girlfriend Bailey. I finished reading It.
8. Thanksgiving: held at our house, and I made the meal by myself. This is my second try at doing this and it went much better this time (ie: we ate by 4:30, not at 7:30 like the first time!) Pies were perfect, everyone got along, Haley liked her tofurkey. The turkey was a little bit dry and the potatoes, which I cooked in the crock pot, were a little bit gummy. But it was a great meal!
9. Christmas: All of the kids slept at home on Christmas Eve. I could say something about the fabulousness of the gifts and the fantastic-ness of the meals or whatever…but that is what meant the most to me. Everyone slept at home.

8 Songs that will always remind me of 2017:

1. “Something Just Like This” by the Chainsmokers & Coldplay, definitely one of my favorite songs to run to.
2. “Allison Road” by The Gin Blossoms. When we drove to & from Seattle, I heard this song at almost every gas station we stopped at. Which was strange…what are the odds, especially considering we stopped at stations in Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington? I was super frustrated by the time we got home because each time I only heard part of it, and I didn’t have it on my phone. (I don’t know why I didn’t think to just, you know. Buy it and download it from my phone, except I always buy music on my computer.)
3. “Cloudbusting” by Kate Bush. This song brought me a sense of peace during my Narnia winter. “I just know that something good is going to happen, I don’t know when” was a refrain I sang to myself when things were especially dark.
4. “Footloose” by Kenny Loggins. Because Kendell and I listened to it on repeat three times in a row driving through the California desert.
5. “Let the Music Play” by Shannon. Someone mentioned this song on Facebook and I thought, hmmmmm, that would be fun to run to, so I bought it and yep: Great running song.
6. “Piece of My Heart” by Big Brother & The Holding Company + Janis Joplin. When Kendell and I were in New York, this song came on one night when we were drinking peppermint hot chocolate at the Starbucks on Roosevelt Island. Sometimes a song is part of your psyche except you don’t really pay attention to it because you’ve heard it a million times. But then you do listen. It will now always take me back to NYC, which was far colder than we planned for, and that long first day when we just had to stay awake a little bit longer. (Surviving the red eye is not for wimps, let me tell you!)
7. “Something to Say” by the Connells. We have a newish radio station here that plays nothing but alternative 80s music. I’ve been reunited with tons of songs I forgot I loved. This one has stuck with me especially. “Once you believed you had something to say and it’s so deceiving…”
8. “Sober Up” by AJR. I listened to this song three times in a row when I was running my half marathon. It’s one of those songs that I don’t relate to the lyrics very much but it’s super fun to run to. That violin bridge!

7 Favorite runs:

1. Running with Becky this fall on a path by her house. The sunflowers were blooming; it was cold and windy but lovely.
2. Running on the coastal trail in Ventura. Beach running is the best, and this was especially nice because there is a paved path.
3. The day I found a new trail, which winds through what used to be a golf course. The hills were awesome and it was a perfect day.
4. My last long run before my half marathon. I did it on the Murdock Canal Trail through Pleasant Grove and American Fork. I had the path almost to myself and it was one of those runs that felt effortless, like running in a dream.
5. Running with my scrapbook friends when I went to the Scrap Gals retreat in April.
6. The 10k I ran on the 4^th of July with my sister Becky and my niece Kayci. It was so fun to run a race with people I know!
7. My half marathon. I ran the Brooklyn Half, which was four laps around Prospect Park, when we were in New York. I wasn’t fully trained for it (my longest run before it was only 8 miles) and I am still doing a run/walk combo. But I finished! I decided that I want to find a race to run every time I travel somewhere. It made the trip so much more fun and meaningful to me. After the race we wandered through Prospect Park, which is gorgeous.

6 Family accomplishments:

1. Kendell had NO SURGERIES. That is a miracle!
2. I didn’t fall all year. I did pull my popliteus muscles (both of them!) during my mad dash across the Hawaiian coast, but I didn’t sprain my ankle in 2017!
3. Haley really found her groove this year. She impressed professors, got papers published, got great grades. 2017 was her last full year of undergrad!
4. Jake went through some really tough things in the winter. He is still trying to figure stuff out but I am proud of him for not giving up. He’ll find his way!
5. Nathan discovered a new sport. He made the basketball team during his freshman and sophomore year, but he just was not loving it. He didn’t feel like he fit into the team and the coach had nothing but disdain for him (the last straw was when he sprained his ankle during a practice and the coach didn’t even come over to check on him, so his teammates had to help him up and over to the bleachers). Instead of getting gloomy or frustrated, he switched sports, to volleyball. And he loves it! When I went to his first volleyball game it was like watching an entirely different kid. He plays volleyball with happiness, unlikely the anxiety that swirled around him during basketball games.
6. Kaleb took control of his body. He’s been going through that pre-pubescent weight gain and it was making him miserable. So all fall, he’s been working on exercise and eating healthier foods. And he is losing weight. I’m proud of him, not exactly for losing weight, but for working so hard to gain control (if that makes sense).

5 Things we bought in 2017:

1. A new car (and we sold our minivan, which was a sad day for me!)
2. A dishwasher (which I HATE; whomever designed it has apparently not ever actually put dishes into a dishwasher)
3. Boots. These were all for me…my 14-year-old Dr. Martens had to be replaced, and I might’ve “replaced” them with 4 pair (but if you know me you know I wear the heck out of my boots, so it’s not like they’ll just sit on a shelf)
4. A new roof. My favorite way to spend a whole bunch of money!
5. New cell phones. When Kendell switched jobs he had to get a new phone…and as they were buy one, get one free, I got a new one too!

4 Favorite Albums from 2017:

1. Re-Covered by Dan Wilson. The song “Closing Time” by Semisonic was written by Dan Wilson (who was the lead singer), but he wrote a ton of other popular songs, too, that were first sung by other bands or singers. On this album, he sings songs he wrote for other artists. I LOVE this album; I knew all the songs, even though they’re from all sorts of musical genres, and hearing them remade gave me a deeper appreciation for them.
2. Gone Now by the Bleachers. My favorite song on the album is “Don’t Take the Money” (I love the line “’till I saw your face and hands covered in sun and then I think I understand”) but the whole thing is pretty damn good!
3. Colors by Beck. I haven’t liked a Beck album for a long time, but I like this one!
4. Signs of Light by The Head and the Heart. This feels like a very 80s-inspired album to me. It just makes me happy.

3 Vacations we took:

1. Hawaii in May. This was a long-promised reward for Jake’s 4.0 during his senior year. All six of us went. We haven’t done a family trip with everyone since we went to Yellowstone in 2011. (We’ve done other trips…just not with everyone.) I was a little bit nervous about how it might turn out, but it was fantastic. We snorkeled, we swam, we saw the volcano. Everyone got along. It was fantastic. My only complaint is that we didn’t stay long enough. We stayed on the Big Island, and if I were to do it again, I’d plan a few days sleeping in Hilo instead of spending all the time in Kona. There was so much we saw but still so much we didn’t get to see.
2. California in July. I wanted to take a vacation with me, Kendell, Nathan, and Kaleb. So I planned a trip to California…and then Nathan didn’t want to come because he had a volleyball tournament, and Kaleb didn’t want to come if Nathan wasn’t going. So I shifted the plans around a bit and turned it into a hiking vacation for me and Kendell. We visited Bryce Canyon on the way, and then drove to Ventura the next day, where we hiked in the Los Padres mountains and on Santa Cruz island. I missed having the kids along, but it would’ve been a different trip if they came (much less hiking!). It was lovely to have some time alone.
3. New York City in November. This was our second autumn trip to NYC. We just didn’t feel like we saw everything we wanted to when we went last year. It was a fantastic trip, aside from the cold; we went to Staten Island, saw two Broadway plays (The School of Rock and The Lion King), wandered around Brooklyn (including into the Brooklyn library), walked around Queens looking at murals, wandered around the Bronx. The highlight was touring the Basilica of St. Patrick’s cathedral, but the best part was getting to spend time with our friends the McAlisters.

2 Medical Things: (This was SUCH a light year for us!):

1. Nathan’s hernia surgery
2. WARTS. Kaleb had one that would NOT go away, after every treatment the dermo tried. We finally made him switch shoes (he is the kind of kid who likes to just have one pair of shoes and then just wear them out) and as of January 8, he is finally wart free. Jake’s hands are covered with warts and he’s being doing a bi-weekly wart treatment since June. It’s taking forever, but can I confess: the wart appointments are a great reason to see him!

1 big change:

Kendell got a new job! He’d been at his previous job since 1991. 1991! He’s still adjusting to the newness. But it’s been great for him.

And that's probably a wrap on my 2017-recap posts!

A little-known story about me: When I was 17, to ensure the possibility of graduating from high school, I had to do something to make up my citizenship grade (because, you know...sluffing three out of four school terms has consequences). There were choices to make, but I don't remember what my non-chosen options were. And I rarely think about the choice I did make, even though it impacted me in ways that still resonate in my life today.

I chose to go on a ten-day survival adventure in Escalante canyon.

When I think about it now I almost have to laugh, as it feels sort of like a movie cliche to me, the possibility that they could send my gothy little soul out into Nature and have me come home as a changed person, finally good, finally wanting to wear some color other than black. Finally no one's problem, my malaise worn away by hiking.

It didn't really happen. I went out in shorts and a t-shirt, my dad's sweaty trucker hat because my mom made me take it and my favorite black leather, mid-calf lace-up boots with spikes and silver toes. I came home with fresh blisters and a sunburned forehead (because I didn't wear the hat) and I still loved my boots. I made up my citizenship grade but I don't think I was noticeably different. (At least not at first. And not on the outside except for that sunburn.)

The wilderness didn't save me or redeem me or make me normal. There would be another year of my bad behavior before things changed.

I think it must've made my parents despair that nothing ever really would make me normal.

But that experience in the Escalante did change me. It created an awareness in me of how, when you push yourself to your physical limits in the wilderness, you find a new part of yourself. I'd been a gymnast for more than a decade, so I understood pushing to the end of physical limits. I understood continuing on despite blisters. But I'd done that all in a chalky gym. Those days in the desert of Utah taught me that in nature I could gain a clearer understanding; I could see things in new light. Or even that there was a different light to see with. It took me years to put that knowledge to use—more than a decade, in fact—but when I felt it again I recognized it immediately. It's why I run and why I hike, and those two things have changed me. Have saved my life, many times over.

So when one of my librarian friends told me she hated Wendelin Van Draanen's new YA novel, Wild Bird, because of how it depicted wilderness survival camps as a way to help troubled teens, I was intrigued. Especially as it is set in the Utah desert. I read it quickly, in only a couple of days, and now I am continuing to think about it. As my experiences with desert survival are different than my librarian friend's, I had a different response:

I actually really enjoyed it. (Even though the ending felt a little bit too pat and​ the author did something that makes me nuts: using the word "nauseous" instead of "nauseated.")

The novel's protagonist is Wren, who is failing her freshman year of high school and causing all sorts of trouble. The wilderness survival camp her parents send her to is different than what I went to. For one, she didn't get a choice; one of the camp's employees simply comes to her house in the middle of the night, tells her to get dressed, and takes her to the airport. And Wren's experience was eight weeks long, not one like mine. There are psychologists and biology teachers and Native American storytellers, solitary Quests and lessons on interpreting scat, none of which I had. Her experience is immersive and, ultimately, transformative. 

I enjoyed watching Wren transform and the way her story was told, memories of her usual life—where she drinks alcohol and smokes pot and flunks her classes and shoplifts—brought on by experiences in the desert. Back home, she steals money from her parents, fights with her sister, wrecks havoc. As well as running "errands" for her boyfriend, who sells heroin. In the desert, she has to put up a tent and figure out how to find water and learn the process of making a fire.

When she arrives in the desert, she's angry that she has to be there at all, and starts out completely not participating in anything. But as the days go by and she gets to the end of the supplies she started out with, she has to start learning how to survive in the wild, and then how to work with the other girls in the camp. Slowly she starts to change, to find remorse for her actions, to learn how to name her own needs and control her own emotions.

While I did enjoy the reading experience of Wild Bird, it also left me troubled. Because my library friend sort of is right: It makes a great (albeit novel-length) marketing pamphlet for the magical healing powers of survival adventure camps. I do think they might be able to help some troubled kids, but not all of them, and I do think the potential for creating more harm (a group of girls away from their parents in the desert could spell, for example, trouble for any unscrupulous male councilor) is great.

On the other hand, I do think they have the potential to be helpful. I just don't think it happens in the way it's portrayed in the novel.

What I pondered most seriously, as I read the book, was my friend's question: What kind of parents would allow their (already-troubled) child to basically be kidnapped and then forced to live in a tent for months on end? I've been thinking a lot, anyway, about what makes a good parent (especially a good parent to teenagers) and about the mistakes I made and what I might've done well. (I almost really wanted to read more about Wren's parents' experiences and how it felt to deal with their daughter's problems in such a way). I think it boils down to two types of parents: lazy ones who don't want to deal with their kids' problems or desperate ones who no longer know how to deal with their kids' problems.

The latter, obviously, is who I have compassion for. None of my kids have gone off the rails in the way that Wren does (or that I did), but we have had our own struggles. Parenting teenagers is hard. Even when you have the best of intentions, you cannot be the perfect parent. You make mistakes. You don't always have answers. What do you do, when you've tried therapy and talking and changing schools and consequences and everything else, but your kid still keeps involving herself in dangerous behaviors?

I think that desperate parents might send their kids to such a place because they are out of ideas. Because they feel like the risk of continuing the dangerous behaviors is greater than whatever might happen in the wilderness.

I'm not sure that this is a book that everyone will love. It spoke to me and to my experiences, but I am not exactly sure if teenagers would enjoy it. Would a "troubled teen" read this and be changed, or is it only the actual (not literary) desert that could accomplish such a thing? Would a "normal" teen read it and think...what? Man those wacked out chicks are exhausting? Or could any teen read it just for the story? I'm not sure.

But I am glad I read it, as it gave me a sort of grace. I still carry a lot of guilt for my adolescent shenanigans, for what I put my parents and my sisters through. A book like this one reminds me that I wasn't really a bad person but a person in a bad place. More than anything, though, I'm glad I read it because it brought back such vivid memories of those days in the Utah desert, when I discovered truths about friendship, when I learned how to make pancakes on a fire-warmed stone, when I spent a night sleeping in solitude under the stars. The place and time when my love for hiking and running and being outside began.

As I was putting together my list of 2017 books, I kept thinking of reading experiences that didn’t exactly fit into a list of titles, so tonight I’m writing a post about some of my memories of reading (rather than the books themselves, if that makes sense). I’m listening to Will Schwalbe’s new book, Books for Living, during my time at the gym this month, and there was something that stuck with me this morning. Summing up because I don’t have the print book to refer to, he says something like “the person I am when I finish a book is different from the person I was when I started it.” This struck me because I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about it exactly that way—but still find it completely true. Books change us, if we let them. They give us scraps of wisdom we can use in wider ways than the story might’ve intended. They help us become better people: more compassionate, more kind, gentler, more empathetic to situations outside of our own lives. They sometimes put into words what we cannot yet express by ourselves, and by doing so they bring us peace, understanding, the relief of knowing we are not alone in the world with our sorrows and our joys.

This blog post is about that—about how my life has been changed by books in 2017.

1. I loved the movie The Arrival so much that I sought out the book that includes the short story the movie is based on, The Story of Your Life. It’s a sad, amazing, lonely and lovely story, but what really influenced me was the first story in the collection, “The Tower of Babel.” In it, the novelist imagines what might’ve been the process of building the actual tower of Babel, and why the people would do such a thing, and what God would think about people doing such a thing. This short story broke my heart. It was a powerful reminder to me that God must value, perhaps above all else, our freedom to choose, even if what we choose is foolish or dangerous or pointless. This knowledge has become a bitter truth in my life; it isn’t exactly comforting but it is because it helps me understand why some of my choices have had the consequences they did. I finished the story reading at my kitchen table and when it was done I had to put my head down and weep. I don’t know if all of the other stories in the collection are as powerful as that one—but I needed that one.
2. One thing I miss about having little kids is reading lots of picture books. I mean…I can still check them out and read them to myself, and there is still the pleasure of a sweet story and condensed language and amazing images. But it doesn’t feel the same without a small little someone snuggled in at your side enjoying those things with you. But I couldn’t resist checking out Dave Eggers’s picture book, Her Right Foot. I checked this one out because even though I don't have a little one to read to anymore, I wanted to read it. It's about the Statue of Liberty and an often-overlooked part: her right foot is in motion. I read it one afternoon when I was covering the children's desk and that is one reason I try not to read at the desk: maybe I am more open-hearted at the library, but anything that is vaguely moving makes me cry. And I don't like crying at the desk. But the illustrations made me cry, and this made me cry: "Liberty and freedom from oppression are not things you get or grant by standing around like some kind of statue. No! These are things that require action. Courage. An unwillingness to rest." Hopefully the young generation is learning this, and maybe they will be able to repair the many ugly things that are happening in our country right now. But it also inspired me: I need to be courageous, too. I need to act, to move forward, to try to make change happen even if my actions feel small and pointless.
3. For work, I am on the committee that chooses the children’s poetry long list nominees for the Beehive Award. I had so much fun reading almost 30 different junior poetry books. Some were, of course, better than others, and I’m pretty picky about what I will accept as far as rhyming goes (forced rhyming being a cardinal writing sin in my view). But I was reminded that there are so many excellent writers writing excellent poetry. I remembered, as I did this, the first time I discovered that there even was such a thing as “children’s poetry,” at least anything beyond Shel Silverstein, and how from that moment—when Haley was still going to the library with me in her stroller, so 1996 or ’97—I read poetry to my kids. I hope it is a thing that lingers in their memories and shapes their psyches in beautiful ways.
4. One book I forgot to put on my list is called Poetry in Motion. Actually, I haven’t finished it yet, as I am savoring it, so I think it will go on my 2018 list. It is a collection of poems, both typeset and as images, of the work that’s been displayed in the subway trains in New York City. I’ve only seen a few in person (and, come to think of it, I saw exactly zero during our second trip to NYC last fall), but just the fact that someone puts poetry in the subway makes me happy. I bought my own copy of this, after seeing the library’s copy (which I also ordered!), and I read it here and there when I have a few minutes for a poem. It makes me think of one of our non-subway experiences in New York, strangely enough, when Kendell and I walked around Astoria looking at murals and then walked across the Robert F. Kennedy bridge to Randall’s Island. My feet were killing me and once we got to the island I’m not sure why I wanted to go there so we got on a bus and rode into Harlem. Maybe the book reminds me of that experience because it felt like a poem, both difficult and beautiful all at once. I don’t know. But every time I pick up the book, I’m back there to that early afternoon.
5. Every week, I almost always read the new issue of The New Yorker. Not cover to cover, but I always read the poems and flip through to see the comics and drawings. A few weeks ago, I also read a short story (even though I’m really not, technically, supposed to read at the desk at work). It was titled “Cat Person,” which caught my eye when I was looking at the table of contents, so I flipped to it and read it. It was an engrossing story about a woman trying to make a relationship work with a man who turns out to be entirely not for her. It is uncomfortably true in its handling of their experiences. What I loved best about it was how it described the way we try to make peace with someone’s problematic behaviors; I have made those same excuses for others. But what really turned this short story into one of my memorable reading experiences that the very next day, when I checked my social media, “Cat Person” was all over my feed. Tons of other people had read it and were talking about it. It’s not often that I manage to be right in the middle of a cultural literary experience, so this felt pretty cool to me.
6. But, speaking of being in the middle of a cultural literary experience. Do you know that the novel The Handmaid’s Tale was one of the country’s best sellers in 2017? Even though it is more than thirty years old? And that everyone is reading it? And that I am completely bugged by this? I know…that’s a strange reaction. But this is a book I’ve loved since I first read it in 1990. It’s a book that literally changed my life, because when I read it I wanted to learn both how to write like Margaret Atwood and how to find more books like it, which influenced my education choices in a dramatic way. In theory I should be thrilled that everyone is loving something I have loved for so long. But…I don’t. Instead, I’m annoyed because everyone’s like “oh, it’s prescient!” and “how did she know?” and “this is so good” and I’m like…yes, I know. I’ve known for a long time! (For what it’s worth: I have not watched the TV adaptation. Many people have told me it’s excellent. But The Handmaid’s Tale is definitely one of my top-five favorite books of all time…and I don’t want it reinterpreted for the screen. I don’t want someone’s vision of it. I just want my own. Is that crazy?) This all has something to do with the fact that I like liking things that everyone else hasn’t ever heard of. Does that make me a snob? Perhaps. But it’s a thing about me that hasn’t changed in decades. If everyone likes something, it feels less important, somehow. Less meaningful. So I really have not enjoyed having one of my favorite books becoming diluted throughout the culture. I know, it sounds lame. But it’s bothered me all year.
7. Reading in Hawaii. Dare I confess that I don’t really love the beach. If I’m there by myself or with other adults, I’m OK. But when I’m at the beach with my kids, I’m always terrified that someone will drown. When we were in Hawaii this spring, we went to the beach every day. The kids swam and wandered and snorkeled. And I happily volunteered to sit with the towels and keep everything safe, when really what I was doing was trying to trick my heart to stop beating so hard and my head to stop filling up with worries. And I was also performing that mom mindtrip thing, which is that if I’m thinking very hard about my kids, I’m literally keeping them safe with my mind, right? So, in Hawaii I sat on lots of beaches, covered in sunscreen, worrying about my kids, and reading. (Yes, one can perform the mom mindtrip while simultaneously reading. Obviously, as I read and no one drowned.) My carefully-chosen books were the first two novels in N. K. Jemisin’s series The Broken Earth These books are so good. They give me exactly what I want from a fantasy series: excellent & beautiful writing, characters who are deeply human despite whatever magic system exists within the world, a magic system that makes literary sense (even if not scientific) and is not used as a deux-ex-machina for every problem, a plot that isn’t derivative of Tolkein or C. S. Lewis or George R. R. Martin. A strong female protagonist whose strength is also not a deux-ex-machina. Companion characters who are equally intriguing as the main ones. And, if I am fully completing my wish list, some women’s issues dealt with in unique ways. These books had all of that and an expansive underground tunnel/cave system that I will never completely erase from my psyche. They would’ve been great reads anywhere, but in Hawaii? On the Big Island under sun, on sand, under the shade of our rented umbrella? They were perfect. I was happy.

I feel like 7 is the perfect number of memorable reading experiences for one year. Did you have any? How have books changed you over the past year? 

This is the fourth year I've put together a list of all of the books I read. I don't always manage to write a blog post about every book (although it's my goal every year!) but I do keep a list of everything I read. 

I use these lists a lot at the library. Sometimes I have to write an annotation and revisiting my thoughts on a book helps quite a bit with that. Sometimes I remember the plot of a book but not a title, and the yearly lists are an easier way to find the title.

Sometimes I just like to remind myself of what I've read!

I didn't read as much in 2017 as I usually do. I think this is because I've spent too much time putzing around on social media. In fact, "spend less time putzing around on social media" is one of my goals this year. I'm not sure if this is an attribute of or a contributor to my depression last year; I do know it's mostly a waste of time. Here's to more reading in 2018! (links to the reviews I wrote)

The Bees by Laline Paull. A dystopia set in a bee colony. A little bit Watership Down, a little bit Daughters of the North. Perfectly strange!

Blackacre by Monica Yoon. "A life is not this supple." These words literally kept me going when I was in my darkest part of the year. 

The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch. I both loved and did not love this end-of-the-world retelling of the story of Joan of Arc. Clever and moving but also frustratingly vague on some of the ending details. 

Bright Dead Things: Poems by Ada Limon. This book of poetry, along with Blackacre, got me through my Narnia Winter. Click HERE to read one of my favorites (as if this big/dangerous animal is also a part of me).

The Broken Earth Trilogy books 1 and 2 (The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate) by N. K. Jemisin. These are the books I read in Hawaii. I will write about them when I finish the third book, The Stone Sky, which I bought myself for Christmas. I will say this: I LOVE N. K. JEMISIN. Such great fantasy!

Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks, a Librarian’s Love Letters and Break Up Notes to the Books in Her Life by Annie Spence. This is seriously hilarious, which is high praise coming from someone who is rarely amused, and I think all librarians and/or book lovers will also love it. But especially librarians! These are actual letters addressed to different books. 

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller. This was my choice for the library's February book club meeting in 2017. This is the Fuller's memoir of her childhood growing up as a white person in central Africa. I learned quite a bit about Africa that I didn't clearly understand before, as well as gained a better understanding of racism's impact upon individuals.

The End of the World Running Club by Adrian J. Walker. Man tries to run across England, which has been devastated by asteroids. Another 2017 favorite.

Gem and Dixie by Sara Zarr. Sadly, didn't love this young adult novel by one of my favorite young adult writers. It was fine, but not amazing like Zarr's novels usually are. 

Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow. A YA novel that helped me understand some parts of my adolescence experience a little bit better. 

Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York by Roz Chast. I used to get really annoyed at people who wrote or talked about how much they love New York. Now that I've been there (twice!) I am starting to get it more. I still don't want to live in New York, but I completely understand its appeal. Plus, I almost automatically love anything by Roz Chast; her illustrations are just so good.  

Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton. This post-apocalyptic novel felt like a cross between The Martian and Station Eleven. It was lonely and haunting and cold and beautiful and I loved it. 

Grendel's Guide to Love and War by A. E. Kaplan. An entire novel I read on my cell phone. I hate reading digital books so that's how much I loved this retelling of Beowulf.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. This was a re-read for me and dare I confess I liked it perhaps even more the second time? Since I knew how the book ended, I could see how the structure came together more clearly. 

House of Names by Colm Toibin. A telling of the death of Iphigenia at her father's hand and of her mother's revenge. So, so good. Reimaginings of Greek legends are one of my favorite speculative fiction subgenres. I read this in the car on our drive to Seattle in May (we went to Hawaii via Seattle), my first trip to that city, which I loved and would like to return to. 

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay. A book I liked so much I wrote two separate blog posts about it!

It by Stephen King. When I started seeing previews for the movie, I started wanting to re-read the book. But I resisted because it is 1,000+ pages long. But after I saw the movie I couldn't resist; I went out and bought myself a copy and read it during October; I finished it while passing out candy on Halloween. It took up a ton of my reading time. I still intend on blogging about this reading experience. 

The Last Neanderthal by Claire Cameron. I loved the pre-history part of this novel but the thread set in current times was less satisfying (and, honestly, a little bit frustrating!). Girl still sneaks into my thoughts now and then. 

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney. Probably my favorite novel I read this year. 

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America edited by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding. Essays about resisting, obviously. A wide swath of writerly ideas about how we can survive trump's presidency. 

Poetry Will Save Your Life by Jill Bialosky. I swear I wrote a review of this book, but I can't find it anywhere. It's a memoir/poetry anthology, in which the author writes about how different poems changed her life. I loved it because poetry! but I also felt a little bit disappointed by it, as I wanted her to go deeper into how the poems actually saved her life.

The Promise of Shadows by Justina Ireland. A half-human, half-harpy girl must save herself from Hades' realm. Not exactly a retelling of a myth, but a story set in the Greek mythological kingdoms. 

The Reader by Stephanie Chee. A YA fantasy about a world where books aren't invented yet, except for the secret (and very powerful) one in the protagonist's back pack. I had a great time reading this, but then later this fall when the sequel came out, I had no desire to read it. Thus reinforcing my idea that reading trilogies before they're finished just isn't for me. Also: I sat in a little restaurant eating breakfast all by myself and reading this book on the first day that all of my kids were back at school and Kendell was back at work after recuperating from (another) heart surgery. So it's deeply associated with a deep sense of peaceful solitude mixed with guilt over feeling so happy to be by myself for a little while and, you know. Scrambled eggs and avocado toast. 

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. I willingly broke my "no unfinished trilogies" for this book. Let's just say I'll break almost any rule to read Laini Taylor's writing! This one did not disappoint!

This Must be The Place by Maggie O'Farrell. Rapidly becoming one of my favorite writers, Maggie O'Farrell can't seem to write a book I don't love. To prove it: I generally detest novels about movie stars, but I loved this one, despite it being about a movie star. Also: I just ordered her memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am, even though it's not out yet in the U.S. It's OK. I love British editions!

Warcross by Marie Lu. I read this for work. I don't really love books about video games, and this is a book about video games, so maybe I was pre-conditioned to not love it. I had to skim the video-game parts as they are just so boring to me. And I guessed the twist at the end about halfway through. But, I think that teenagers will love this book. Which is perfect because they are the target audience! A mix of The Hunger Games and Ready Player One. I liked Lu's previous trilogy, Legend, and the voice here reminded me quite a bit of that early series. 

We Are OK by Nina LaCour. When I finished writing my review of this young-adult novel I thought I would never really think about the book again. But it has actually stuck with me in surprising ways. 

Women Who Read Are Dangerous by Stefan Bollman. An art history book with paintings of women reading. This is my favorite way to learn about art history, a thematic approach that introduces a wide variety of paintings and artists. I read the library's copy of this book (I actually requested that the library buy it!) but I will be getting my own copy. It's lovely. 

Zen Pencils: Cartoon Quotes from Inspirational Folks by Gavin Aung Than. The other graphic-novel-esque book I read this year (Going into Town was the other), this book is a collection of illustrated quotes. It was instrumental in helping me start to blog again, especially the illustration of the Neil Gaiman quote: make good art. It reminded me that I do have a perspective to share, a thing that might be art and might not be art, but is still my voice against the silence of eternity. 

What did you read and love in 2017?