A year in reading: Sophia Stewart

A mortifying admission to the light of my essay on reading 2023 years: this year, I fell in love with a man. I also fell in love with music. The two developments have changed my priorities and modified my reading practice (I read more during transit, towards and from dates or practice). Consequently, I certainly read less for the pleasure than I would have liked. But I managed to hug in extraordinary books: here are my out -of -competition readings of 2024 – including my three Favorites – Without particular order.

At the beginning of 2024, in my mother’s courtyard in Los Angeles, I devoured Sheila Heti‘s Alphabetical newspapersA captivating portrait of the non -comparmented mind. He captures consciousness better than any other book I have read: all in one time, shaken like a snow globe, banal complaints coming with deep concerns, meditations on art and love and life dispersed among everyday life, frivolus, tactics.

Feeling that my relationship with ambition changed the form, I read Jenny Offill‘s How to do nothingFirst in the lush and sunny backyard of a local coffee, then, at lunch time, in a burrito location at the corner of the street. For a book with “How To” in the title, it was a little less usable than I had planned it, but I still appreciated it. Later, in one seated in bed, I read Charlotte Shane‘s An honest woman And admired his candor and his narrative approach: stable and somewhat deleted, observer without trying too hard to extrapolate.

I read Becca Rothfeld‘s Everything is too small In the park, on the train and on the shore of CONEY Island. It is an invigorating and formidable reading – even when I did not agree with the arguments – and particularly convincing (for me) for his explorations of sex, love and romance, as in the tests “Les Dames pending” and “Only mercy: sex after consent”. Rothfeld is one of our best work reviews, and I hope it is the first of many collections that it offers us.

After more than a year of departures and stops (not for lack of interest!), I finally finished Rachel Cusk‘s OutlineWhich was exactly what I was hoping for: intelligent and elegant and elegant. Cusk writes with an authority and fluidity to which I aspire. I am delighted to read the rest of the trilogy, although nervous they will pale in relation to such an achievement.

Elisa Gabbert‘s Everyone is the only one brought me a lot of joy on a sunny and noisy coffee patio. The best tests, I believe, are the product of the obsession: this thing you cannot stop thinking, for which you feed an endless curiosity. Gabbert obtains this intuitively, and that is why his tests are so consistent. Another writer I have a lot to learn.

I came across Michelle Mercer2009 Do you want to take me as I am: Joni Mitchell Blue Period In the second-hand book / record store above Tarrytown Music Hall, which I still travel before seeing a show. I started reading it on my birthday, on the patio of a sushi restaurant, and I finished it in a week. It was one of my favorite books of the year – one of my favorite books, by the way; A gem that I will link often. Fun anecdote: When Mitchell played for the first time Blue For some friends of the male songwriter, the room is silent, with the exception of Kris Kristofferson, who has just said: “Jesus, Joni. Save something for yourself.” (“Jesus Joni” is now a common chorus in my house with two songs.)

My other favorite books this year, I inhaled back to back: Naomi Klein‘s Doppelganger (late, I know!) And Leigh Eric Schmidt2010 Heaven’s Bride: The non -printable life of Ida C. Craddock, American mystical, scholar, sexologist, martyr and crazy– Both are now also favorites of all time. The first is a master’s class in the kind of rigor with clear eyes and interpretative insight which are intrinsic to great non-fiction; I push Doppelganger In the hands of my parents, friends, whoever wanted to understand why everything feels so stupid now. The latter is a fascinating and indelible portrait of Ida Craddock (who first drew my attention Amy Sohn‘s The man who hated womenThat I read last year), a 19th century visionary who has not left my mind since I read Schmidt’s book – a master class in biography and history – in the summer in a cabin in Canada.

I completed the year with exceptionally nourishing non-fiction: Rachel Avivis shiny Foreigners to us,, Annie Earnaux‘S lithe The young man (Translated by Alison L. Strayer),, Oliver Burkemanrejoiced Meditations for mortalsAnd Rachel Wiseman And Anastasia Bergis intelligent and ambitious What are children for?

Currently, I’m halfway Han kang‘s Greek lessons (Translated by Deborah Smith And e. yaewon) And Mr. Leona Godin‘s Plant eyes: a personal and cultural story of blindness. The two are research for a book project on which I work on speech and disability, to which I hope to devote even more of my reading and my time in 2025.

More than a year in 2024 reading