Read a Book, Bitch!

💁🏻‍♀️ Swap despair for delight with some of my favorite reads of 2024. 🎉 (Part 1)

And I mean that in the fondest way possible. Though, it should be noted: anytime I tell someone what to do an angel loses their wings and George Bailey has to be reincarnated in someone’s body for a do-over of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Maybe you are already a book lover like me, or maybe you just want more meaning in your life. Maybe you just realize, especially today, that you can’t go through another four years doomscrolling and hating people you want to love. Let me propose a little way forward. But to get there, first I need to share something silly I do.

In 2024, so many hailstorms of hard things pounded me and my friends that I began punching back. And let me tell you: some of the best punches are the tiny trades. For instance, in earnest, heartfelt texts to my closest friends about job losses or custody fights or my pesky dead bones, I began trading out “my friend” for “my bitch.” Five star results. Highly recommended behavior.

Here, let’s try it on for size!

Somehow, in a way perhaps Jenny Slate or maybe Dave Chappelle could elucidate, swapping out “my friend” for “my bitch” can give you miles of chuckles. It’s like the Toyota Corolla of friendship humor. The joke can run and run and run. Swap it in when they aren’t expecting it for maximum effect.

Little swaps can go a long way at lifting a heart.

And that, my bitches, is why I am taking the risk of having my email privileges revoked from about 9000 of you real life precious humans by titling a post in the way I did. Because one of the simplest swaps we all can make in our little lives is what we allow to pass through our brains as we rest or poop or drive.

One of the little habits that keeps my heart happy and my brain sparkly is a continual succession of great stories. Every year, I set a goal of reading 80 books. It’s what Sir Stephen King recommends in On Writing for authors taking the craft of writing seriously, but really, it’s just the magic number that seems to stimulate my mind enough to keep rising out of the repeated ruts of taking myself too seriously. I know of people who read 200 books a year. And I know others who read ten.

The number is not important. The choice to redirect your attention is where the magic lives.

I love swapping the compulsion to check my phone for stupid shit with picking up a book or making progress on an audiobook.¹ Five minutes of reading a story here. Fifteen minutes at night before my eyelids become closed curtains. Two or three poems while I sip black coffee and try to not be a morning-grinch. Twenty minutes of listening on the way to the doctor. Thirty minutes while I cook an edible dinner. It all adds up to a mind that can’t help but be curious and compassionate about the stories of the people around me.

Instead of searching the interwebs for that elusive, perfectly red beanie I still haven’t found or scrolling through Instagram and rolling my eyes at people who don’t deserve disdain, when I read or listen to a book, my soul gets shaped and reshaped toward empathy and kindness by letting others’ stories and perspectives light candles in the dark, cobwebbed corners of my mind and heart.

Swapping out a little bit of one not-so-lifegiving habit for a reading habit has the power of creating continual experiences of sonder.

Like the protagonist in my very favorite read of 2024 contemplates, sonder is “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.”²

And to me, sonder is a species of wonder, like the blue jays and little grey bushtits³ pecking seeds outside my window, sonder is something we can pay attention to and prepare to encounter as we go about our ordinary days to hold the wonder that every person we see is precious, worthy of love, and more valuable than they know.

Don’t you want more wonder and less worry? My apologies to George Bailey and angels everywhere: Read a book, my bitch.

Without further offending everyone, here are my favorite reads of 2024!

I’m horrible at anything involving rating scales—they break my neurospicy brain—so, you won’t see star ratings or rankings here, just some emotionally symbolic emojis and little snippets of why I loved what I loved. Perhaps you’ll find some gems. Part 1 includes my favorite fiction and short stories/kids books. Part 2 will include my favorite non-fiction and poetry.

And before you leave, I would love to hear what you absolutely loved reading in 2024!

—KJ

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