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Dec 28

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2018 Book List

Screen Shot 2018-12-28 at 12.21.57 PMSo many books, so little time! Reading is one of the greatest pleasures in my life—and one of the few things I can do indefinitely without feeling like I “ought” to be doing something else. Reading supports many of my personal values and is one of the few forms of recreation I embrace wholeheartedly. I read widely, as I like to know what’s happening in various genres, and I listen to audiobooks daily—while walking, driving, folding laundry, exercising—while doing most anything physical that doesn’t require concentration or conversation.

Each year I set a target number of books to read and track my titles on Goodreads. Typically my target is 50 books. This year I hit 53, although the year isn’t over yet (I hope to finish Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness before 2019; thus far I’m not liking it nearly as much as The God of Small Things, which is one of my all-time favorites).

I read a lot of books pertaining to racial justice this year, which is a primary area of interest. I also did some catching up on often-taught classics (such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Wuthering Heights) that I’ve long wanted to read or wanted to read more closely.

What_to_Remember_When_WakingOne of my favorite discoveries of 2018 is the poet David Whyte, who writes what I would call poetry-based self-development. Whyte lives in Washington State, and I had the opportunity to attend one of his live events last month. Believe it or not, poetry can actually be a seriously inspiring shot in the arm.

As a category, the very best books I read this year were memoir. I highly recommend all six of the titles in the category below. Below, I’ve segmented my 53 reads into categories and marked all of my favorites with an asterisk; books by friends or in-person teachers are marked with (RL) for real life, meaning that these books have an extra layer of personal relevance. I added a few “meh” tags to the books I struggled to get through.

If you’re a book freak like I am, please leave a comment with a few of your personal favorites of the year and any thoughts on the titles below!

HeavyMemoir

  • Educated, Tara Westover*
  • Heavy: An American Memoir, Kiese Laymon*
  • The Only Girl in the World, Maude Julien*
  • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou*
  • A Second Chance: For You, For Me, And For The Rest Of Us, Catherine Hoke*
  • Open, Andre Agassi*

Nonfiction

  • The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump, Michiko Kakutani*
  • Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
  • Me and My House: James Baldwin’s Last Decade in France, Magdalena J. Zaborowska
  • The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Steven Pinker

Self-DevelopmentAtomic_Habits

  • Atomic Habits, James Clear*
  • What to Remember When Waking: The Disciplines of an Everyday Life, David Whyte*
  • Midlife and the Great Unknown: Finding Courage and Clarity Through Poetry, David Whyte*
  • Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, David Whyte*
  • The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Alan Watts*
  • Your Best Year Ever, Michael Hyatt*
  • Living Forward, Michael Hyatt*
  • A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, William B. Irvine
  • Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Jaron Lanier
  • The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone
  • You Are a Badass Every Day, Jen Sincero
  • How to Stop Feeling Like Sh*t, Andrea Owen
  • Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, Sam Harris
  • The Introvert’s Way, Sophia Dembling
  • The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, Haemin Sunim
  • Quiet, Susan Cain*
  • Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, Henry Cloud (meh)

BarracoonRacial Justice

  • What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America, Michael Eric Dyson*
  • Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”, Zora Neale Hurston*
  • I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, Austin Channing Brown
  • So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo
  • The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin*
  • James Baldwin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations, James Baldwin

Books on Writing

  • Story Genius, Lisa Cron*
  • Writing to Change the World, Mary Pipher*
  • Lifelong Writing Habit: The Secret to Writing Every Day, Chris Fox (RL)

Eleanor_OliphantFiction

  • Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman*
  • Self-Help: Short Stories, Lorrie Moore*
  • Germinal, Émile Zola*
  • Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin*
  • Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, James Baldwin*
  • If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin*
  • The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, Robert Dugoni (RL)
  • The Nest, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (RL)
  • Hot Head, Damon Suede (RL)
  • Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
  • The Great Gatsby, F. Scott FitzgeraldSam_Hell
  • The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah
  • The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas
  • Still Me, Jojo Moyes
  • The Hating Game, Sally Thorne
  • Less, Andrew Sean Greer (meh)
  • The Summer Before the War, Helen Simonson (meh)

I look forward to learning your faves!

 

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Dec 4

11 Comments

Find Your Voice, Change the World (Giveaway!)

We’re celebrating the launch of Moods of Motherhood by giving away three copies! Enjoy this beautiful guest post from author Lucy Pearce – and leave a comment below in order to enter our giveaway contest. Three winners will be selected at 10:00 pm eastern time Saturday, December 6, 2014. Good luck!

As a new mother I was told how I felt.
Or rather, how I should feel.

Lucy PearceI wasn’t expected to be creative. Instead I was told what to do, in often entirely contradictory missives, from elders and professionals, and to do it well for the fear of what if. The motherland was a strange new territory. I felt myself lost and at sea. Uneasy in my own skin. I didn’t belong here.

I knew what a mother was supposed to be like, and spent many years trying to fit myself into this mold. But it was always an uncomfortable squeeze. Too many hard edges for my squishy body and big feelings. There wasn’t enough space for the “me” that I was in the mold that was motherhood. There were too many should and oughts constricting me. I was always too opinionated, too messy, too self-centered, too introverted, too overwhelmed…too contradictory. I was too much…or not enough.

As I could see it two ways lay ahead – keep it in – which is what mothers are supposed to do – martyr themselves to motherhood.

Or let it out.

Moods of MotherhoodLet it consume me…or let my roller-coaster of deep contradictory feelings find form and expression to ignite a fire that might light the way for others in the same position.

And so emerged my creative renaissance: painting, writing, blogging, crafting, editing, and every other form of self-expression I could find. It was entirely fueled by the intensity of motherhood – the tumult of love, joy, despair, grief, exhaustion, feelings of failure and glory, depression, and elation that filled my days and that I could find no other way of voicing.

For generations women have been shut down, and shut up. All that was required was the illusion of the perfect wife, the all-loving mother, the angel of the house. Not her inner reality. Simply a pleasant veneer which glossed over the contradictions, appetites, desires, heart breaks, yearnings, exhaustion and confusion of a woman’s inner life.

But things are shifting and changing. The veil of silence is lifting. As women’s voices, lives, emotions, creativity are being seen en masse for perhaps the first time in humanity, expressing the inner worlds which for so long have been hidden.

Moods of MotherhoodAnd from these broken places, these hidden places, from the darkness a new light shines – one of truth, of a more vibrant reality. These models of self-expression act as beacons for other women who had not fully seen or felt or dared voice their own inner worlds, suddenly find themselves seen and heard, often for the first time. And they in turn begin growing into their own skins a little more, filling their own forms, finding self-expression.

It is the end of an ice age, where women have been frozen, stunted, silenced, are beginning to thaw – their innate creativity blooming in the new warmth. Where will it lead us? What impact will it have on the next generation who are growing up in this new era? Only time will tell. But silence and shame are being cast aside. And surely we will all benefit.

Lucy H. Pearce
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Lucy’s most recent book, Moods of Motherhood: The Inner Journey of Mothering charts the inner journey of motherhood, giving voice to the often nebulous, unspoken tumble of emotions that motherhood evokes: tenderness, frustration, joy, grief, anger, depression and love. She explores the taboo subjects of maternal ambiguity, competitiveness, and the quest for perfection, offering support, acceptance, and hope to mothers everywhere. This is a book full of Lucy’s trademark searing honesty and raw emotions, which have brought such a global following of mothers to her work. Click here and Lucy will send you a FREE SAMPLE right away!

Lucy is the author of four life-changing non-fiction books for women including the #1 Amazon bestsellers: The Rainbow Way: Cultivating Creativity in the Midst of Motherhood and Moon Time: A Guide to Celebrating Your Menstrual Cycle.

Former co-editor of JUNO magazine, she is the founder of Womancraft Publishing, which publishes transformational books by women, for women. She is passionate about sharing empowering women’s resources on The Happy Womb.com. She blogs on creativity, mindfulness, motherhood, and world changing over on Dreaming Aloud.net.

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