How Books Shaped My Year

I’ve fallen back in love with the written word, and now have a list of books to read longer than the list of long things I could compare it to.

It’s the end of another solar (as opposed to the Jewish lunar) year, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Sure, January 1 is no different than the day before it, and the arbitrary chunking of days into months and years doesn’t really mean anything. 

But it’s an opportunity. A chance to look backward and look forward (at the risk of sounding cliche) and if there’s ever a chance to stop and be mindful, to breathe and take stock, just for a minute, I’m going to take it.  

In terms of books, it’s been an amazing year. I’ve fallen back in love with the written word, and now have a list of books to read longer than the list of long things I could compare it to.

 I’ve read some amazing Jewish books, God in Search of Man, by Abraham Joshua Heschel led me to some of the most reflective moments I’ve had in years, and brought me to tears more than once. A Letter in the Scroll gave me a sense of what it means to be a Jew, in time and beyond it. Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg’s writing is a revelation, and maybe one of my best discoveries this year. 

Aside from Jewish books, Joan Didion’s work was an exciting find, and her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking is one of the most honest books about grief I’ve ever read. I love the way Carlo Rovelli’s There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness makes science accessible to non-science experts, and the way that he sneaks in a fair bit of philosophical thought into it as well. Daring Greatly by Brene Brown is a book that I’m already itching to read again; it’s an inspiring and empowering self-help book without being too self-help-y.

 I’m reading a lot of old classics for the first time and wow. Virginia Woolf. That woman knew how to write. 

From Mrs. Dalloway:

Beauty, the world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks—all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere.

The entire book is so quotable that choosing just one piece of her exquisite prose is difficult. 

I feel the same way about Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (aside from the antisemitic bits):

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

Reading beautiful words, beautiful and thought-provoking words makes my heart beat a little faster. There is a kind of rush when you find a perfect sentence, laid bare on the page, waiting to be caressed by yet another pair of admiring eyes. It’s been a year of many such moments. 

I haven’t finished all the books I’ve started. I still have not finished the very complex Gödel Escher Bach. This is the last page that I read:

So perhaps you can understand why I’m not rushing to return to it. (Or maybe that type of thing is your jam, who knows?) I will finish it though, mark my words. It might just take me a few more years. Or decades. 

Looking at a year in terms of books you’ve read is a great way to reflect on time well spent. Books accumulate inside a “self” in a way that no movies, TV shows, or TikTok videos ever can. When you’ve sat with a book and dedicated your focus and attention (one of the rarest and most precious things you can give these days) to it, you receive in return a bit of the book to keep within yourself. 

I remember books in a completely different way from the way that I remember other forms of media. I find myself drawing connections between books and remembering ideas, themes, and words from books that the fleeting in and outness of visual content can never replicate. 

Going into the new year I would like to resolve to spend more time reading books and less time on my phone, something that sadly, despite my enormous love for books, is still a struggle.

 I also want to focus more on time spent reading and less on the number of books that I read. Books are things to be savored, mulled over, enjoyed, not hastily stuffed down one’s gullet and added to a count. Reading causes time to slow, and slowing down is something that all who reside in our frenetic, frenzied, fast-paced world could benefit from.

Some end of year questions for you, my bookish friend:

1. What was your favorite read of 2023?

2. Which book would you not recommend from your 2023 reads?

3. Do you have any book-related resolutions?

I’ve sort of answered the first and third questions already (I can’t choose just one book), but here’s my answer to question number two:

The book that I would not recommend from my 2023 reads is Good Morning Monster, a book that came to me highly recommended, but which I ended up throwing across the room in tears after I began the second chapter. Some people enjoy reading about child abuse victims. I am not one of those people.

Here’s to a year of escaping into worlds yet unexplored, ideas yet unexamined, and stories yet unread. Here’s to 2024. 

Have a wonderful year, and, as always, keep reading,

Arty

---

What did you read over Shabbos?

A selection of shared Shabbos reads