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The 2019 book and music mashup extravaganza

December 15, 2019

Remember those cologne machines in truck stop bathrooms where you could buy cheap imitations of the real thing? “If you like Obsession, you’ll love Desperate Measures.” “If you love Chanel No. 5, might as well try Channel 42.” “Love Polo Sport? Welp, here’s Fantasy Football.”

This post is like that, but in a good way. And when it’s over, you won’t smell like a quarter’s worth of sadness.

Here’s how it works: I’ve mashed together my favorite books that I read in 2019 (though not necessarily published this year) and my favorite 2019 songs. Each tune has some kind of tenuous connection with the book I paired it with, so if you like a book on this list, you’ll probably like the song too. And vice versa. So if you like Carmen Maria Machado, you’ll love Mallrat! Maybe.

Let’s get this party started!

Good Talk • Mira Jacob

A graphic novel-style memoir about American identity, race, sex, relationships, and raising a brown child in the Trump era, all told in conversations. Jacob goes to uncomfortable places and tackles the things we should be talking about but aren’t.

Mashed with: Truth Hurts • Lizzo

My Sister the Serial Killer • Oyinkan Braithwaite

A darkly funny novel about a young, beautiful Nigerian woman who can’t stop murdering her boyfriends and the exasperated but reliable sister who bails her out of trouble. Until the serial killer falls for the sister’s crush …

Mashed with: Glad He’s Gone • Tove Lo

Lost Children Archive • Valeria Luiselli

A fractured family on a road trip out west, set against the backdrop of an immigration crisis as children crossing the southern U.S. border are detained or dying in the desert. This novel was so stunning and gutting, I think I highlighted something on every page.

Mashed with: Texas Sun • Khruangbin & Leon Bridges

Red, White & Royal Blue • Casey McQuiston

A romance in which America’s First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales. I was clawing my way through a particularly low point when a friend recommended this book. Turned out a fun, flirty, escapist read was exactly what I needed.

Mashed with: boyfriend • Ariana Grande

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls • T Kira Madden

A queer coming-of-age memoir in essays that instantly became one of my all-time favorite books. As soon as I finished, I went right back to the beginning and read it a second time to figure out how she did it.

Mashed with: Sister Sister • Palm Springsteen

Heavy • Kiese Laymon

I listened to Heavy, which is read by the author, and then I bought a print copy to hold in my hands and see the words on the page. This memoir is about the emotional and physical burden of growing up black in America, examining the secrets Laymon spent a lifetime avoiding.

Mashed with: Water Me Down • Vagabon

Once More We Saw Stars • Jayson Greene

Greene’s two-year-old daughter was sitting on a park bench in Manhattan when a brick fell from a nearby windowsill and killed her. This memoir opens with that incident and follows Greene and his wife through their journey of grief. I don’t know how he managed to craft such a wonder out of true horror, but I’m grateful he did.

Mashed with: Thank You • Quincy Mumford

In the Dream House • Carmen Maria Machado

In this memoir, Machado explores an abusive same-sex relationship through dozens of different lenses, like horror tropes, fairytales, and a devastating Choose-Your-Own-Adventure sequence. This book blew my figurative house down.

Mashed with: Groceries • Mallrat

Daisy Jones & the Six • Taylor Jenkins Reid

A romance written as an oral history of a Fleetwood Mac-ish band in the late seventies? God, just take my money already.

I devoured this book, and then I ripped through a bunch of other TJR books for good measure.

Mashed with: Van Horn • Saint Motel (which includes my favorite lyric of 2019: “Hold it steady, drill it in like you’re J. Paul Getty.”)

Kindred • Octavia Butler

Hi. I’m the one person who never read Octavia Butler before this year, and I don’t know what took me so long. This historical fiction/fantasy novel about an African-American woman in 1976 California who travels through time to antebellum Maryland is considered to be the first science fiction written by a black woman, and it’s a true classic.

Mashed with: Turn the Light • Karen O & Danger Mouse

Convenience Store Woman • Sayaka Murata

A slim novel about a woman who has no friends, no boyfriend, and no real life outside of the soothing structure of the convenience store where she has spent her entire career.

Mashed with: Class Historian • BRONCHO

The Book of Delights • Ross Gay

Ross Gay has written micro-essays about moments of delight. Some of them are guilty pleasures, some are natural joys, but most show how we are always just a few inches away from sorrow – and it can be a radical act to feel joy and gratitude in a sad world.

Speaking of guilty pleasures, I think I like Harry Styles now? And I definitely find joy in watermelon, my favorite food. So this song here is my Tune of Delights.

Mashed with: Watermelon Sugar • Harry Styles

Dreyer’s English • Benjamin Dreyer

This is a funny, clever grammar book that I tore through like a juicy novel.

I’ve paired it here with Goth Babe, which has been my favorite writing music lately.

Mashed with: Weekend Friend • Goth Babe

How to Stay Human in a Fucked-Up World • Tim Desmond

Finally a mindfulness book that doesn’t feel like it was written by a blissful, solitary monk on a mountaintop. This is real talk and real meditation exercises for the real (fucked-up) world.

I Feel Emotion • Operators

Of course I have more favorites that didn’t make it into this smashup. For the books I read this year, peep my Goodreads and to see other 2019 songs I loved, here’s my playlist.

Wanna see lists from previous years? Here’s 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011.

NOTE: There are affiliate links in this post. So if you click through and buy something, it doesn’t change anything on your end; it just means Amazon gives me a few pennies, which I use to help pay for this site because I am happy to take their money.

I will always remember this place

February 16, 2019

This is my view when my dad’s cancer diagnosis is confirmed. My body is rigid, pressed up against a frosty window, unable to move or else I’ll lose the phone signal.

I don’t have much to say about it yet, but I can tell you he is hopeful, and he is angry.

“I have things to do,” he says. “I don’t have time for this crap.”

Long after the call ends, I keep my cheek against the window. It is cold, and it gives me something to feel other than scared. The drizzle is steady, and I hear the groan of snow as it is pelted with raindrops.

I should get back to writing, but first I need to listen to the snow’s complaints for a while.

42 things I’ve learned

August 6, 2018

I recently celebrated a birthday, and it’s weird. Even though I’m officially middle-aged, I still feel like I’m arriving late to my own life. There are so many things I wanted to have accomplished by now and places I imagined I’d be. At the very least, I thought I’d be the benevolent but firm dictator of a tiny country.

So I’m still trying to catch up, but I did figure out some stuff along the way. Here are 42 of them:

1. Creating a network, whether it’s professional or more personal, is a matter of quality over quantity.

2. Floss every day.

3. You will smoke like you are invincible, because that’s how young people smoke. It is something you are successful at: puffing, dragging, clicking and flipping a Zippo, lighting cigarettes in the wind. And when you quit, you will miss it. So just don’t start.

4. If you work best in the mornings, stop trying to be a night owl. And vice versa.

5. People who dance at parties almost always have more fun than people who don’t.

6. Wear what makes you feel good.

7. But not jumpsuits.

8. Imposter syndrome is a real beast. The only way to fight through is to “fake it ’til you make it,” which is a cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason.

9. If given a choice in a public restroom, never use the first stall (it’s overused) or the last stall (where people hide to poop). Go middle stall or go home.

10. There’s no shame in making money or asking for what you’re worth.

11. Put something beautiful and something strange on every page. That’s writing advice from Megan Mayhew Bergman, but it easily expands to become something more like a lifestyle. Be purposeful in finding something beautiful and something strange in each day.

12. You had that one friend who split dinner checks down to the penny. (Everyone had that friend. Emphasis on the had part.) Don’t be that person.

13. Stop apologizing for what you want, for the space you take up, for living your life, for what you enjoy, for what you know to be true. You are not sorry. There’s nothing sorry about you.

14. You cannot understand the place you come from until you leave it.

15. Try everything. At least one bite.

16. You’ll never heal in the same environment that made you sick. (I either read this in a tweet or on a teabag. Either way, it’s true.)

17. Take your ego out of the equation.

18. But maintain a tiny bit of ego. You’re great.

19. Push yourself until it’s impossible to turn back and there’s no other option but to move forward. (This lesson comes courtesy of day three on your four-day hike to Machu Picchu.)

20. There is no better bean than a chickpea.

21. If you have the opportunity to be selfless, take it. Remember that extending care to others is really a form of caring for yourself.

22. Comfort kills creativity.

23. Walk until you find the answer. Author Jenny Offill rattled off the Greek phrase for this, which you can’t remember and can’t find with any amount of Googling, but anyway that’s not the point. The point is to take a hike whenever you can’t figure something out, and keep walking until the solution surfaces.

24. Self-consciousness wastes valuable energy that could be better used for dancing.

25. Say yes more often.

26. Own your mistakes. Like, if you’re in spin class and your shoelace gets tangled with the pedal and you fall off the bike, it’s better to throw your hands in the air and pretend you just did a fancy dismount than to slink away in shame. NOT THAT IT’S EVER HAPPENED TO YOU.

27. Treat everyone you meet like it’s their birthday.

28. A few things to carry because you’ll never know when you’ll need them: A packet of tissues, chewable Pepto tablets, plastic bags. If you’re traveling, also bring a wedge-shaped door stopper, a whistle, and a flat rubber sink stopper.

29. Follow your curiosity. It will drive you to weird places.

30. Indulge the weird.

31. Set fair, realistic goals. And when I say “fair,” I mean fair to yourself. You’re probably never going to be a champion surfer. But you could take a surf class.

32. Take notes.

33. Let go of your expectations. They inevitably lead to disappointment. That’s not to say you should minimize your hope or anticipation — those are great things to have. But whenever you expect a location or an event or a person to be something epic, something soul-shattering, it can’t possibly live up to the hype. Kind of like prom. Prom is built up to be the most magical moment of a young person’s life, and it actually kind of sucks.

34. Vote in every election.

35. Just take the leap. Back when you were a skydiver, only one part of the jump frightened you — getting out of the aircraft. You had to play mental games with yourself and pretend you were Angelina Jolie’s stunt double, that kind of thing. But once you were in the air, you relaxed into it and let the sky hold you up, which is the most glorious feeling in the world. So do whatever it takes to get out of the plane. You’ll be happy you did.

36. Nobody cares how your thighs look.

37. Decisions made purely out of fear only lead to more chaos and upheaval.

38. Almost nothing is meant to last forever. Not material goods, not relationships, not a perfect trip. Let things go before holding on to them suffocates you.

39. Have a map. Literally and figuratively. You’re guilty of wandering around until you get yourself lost, which is fine — sometimes it’s actually the best. But often things would have been easier if you’d have just carried a map. This goes beyond travel and into your personal and professional life, where your wise, knowledgable friends would be happy to help guide you.

40. Whenever you feel the most frightened, you’re on the brink of something amazing.

41. Every scary thing prepares you for the next scary thing.

42. There is more good in the world than bad. This is the absolute truth.

A confession: The biggest mistake I’ve made as a parent (so far)

June 28, 2018

If I’d just purchased pretzel twists instead of pretzel sticks, we never would have had a problem.

Here’s what happened instead.

Everest whined for a snack, and I tossed a bag of pretzel sticks to him in the backseat. Not the healthiest snack, to be sure. Also maybe not the safest to have in the car. But it was a 40-minute drive from our house to the child care facility, and that can feel like 40 days when a child is profoundly unhappy.

“Mommy, look!” he called to me from the backseat.

I didn’t want to look because I was driving.

“Look,” he urged. “It’s our savior.”

At that point, I LOOKED.

Everest held two pretzel sticks in the air, arranged like a lopsided X, more like a cross.

“Our savior,” he said again.

You know when you get a migraine and your vision sparkles and blurs at the edges, and the world becomes sharp and throbbing? It was like that, but rage. A ragegraine.

“Our savior?” I said. “Where did you learn that?”

“At school.”

White hot rage with a little bit of blue fire at the center.

I want my child to learn about Christianity eventually — I believe it’s a necessary foundation to understand a lot of literature, art, history, so on — but I want him to learn it in the context of other world religions.

“Our savior,” Everest repeated. “I like our savior.”

Honestly, I had hoped to delay this part of parenting. I don’t feel equipped to teach my child about religion, because I continue to struggle with spirituality myself. My own belief system is constantly in flux — currently a bizarre Buddhist Hindu Quaker amalgam, informed by a childhood steeped in the Lutheran church, plus a dash of Catholicism. And I was furious that someone forced me into that situation when I wasn’t ready.

“What do it mean?” Everest asked, and I didn’t have any answers.

Just a few months earlier, our beloved cat passed away. Everest struggled with the concept of death and continued to ask about Kung Pao Kitten daily. How could I possibly explain what the cross symbolizes without having another difficult conversation about what it means to suffer and die?

From the school parking lot, I contacted a few parents who also had children in that class, and I told them about the “our savior” thing. They were shocked — but they insisted their children never said anything even remotely similar.

Then I tried to casually discuss it with the teacher: “Everest said the funniest thing today … do you know where he could have picked that up?”

After the teacher denied having any religious discussions in the classroom, I had a meeting with the school director, who also assured me that the facility is religion-free.

He must have learned it from another kid, I decided.

“I bet it was that asshole Beckett*,” I texted to a friend.

On the way home that afternoon, Everest said it again. And again, I stewed.

I brought my child to school the following day, but it was only to gather his things. We’d had enough. There were other issues, so it wasn’t entirely about “our savior” — when Everest moved from the toddler ladybug room to the older geckos, he never really warmed up to his new teacher. Several items of his clothing went missing. Twice he came home wearing some other kid’s underwear. And once that asshole Beckett called me a “sick pervert” for giving Everest a kiss goodbye.

So I pulled Everest from the school.

We found a new school, one that’s only a 7-minute drive away, not 40. He’s happy there. The place doesn’t have an enormous outdoor play area or a garden like his former school, but it makes up for that with a terrific staff, a great program, and some really wonderful families. I’m grateful we were able to find a spot there.

It’s been about 9 or 10 months since Everest switched facilities — long enough that the current place isn’t his new school anymore, it’s just school. He’s bigger now and more developed. He’s learned so much. His vocabulary is expansive, and he can enunciate far more clearly.

Recently, I gave Everest pretzel sticks as a snack.

“Mommy, look!” he said. Again, he had the two sticks positioned like a cross.

Not again, I thought.

“It’s an X,” he said. “Like my friend at my old school. Xavier.”

That’s when the reality of what I’d done hit me with a gut punch. I pulled my child from his school for saying the name of his friend. X-avier.

Not our savior.

*Name has been changed to protect the real a-hole toddler

This vacation I will wear white

June 12, 2018

My life as a backpacker was a lot of things. Exhilarating. Challenging. Sometimes lonely.

But not clean.

I was a very dirty backpacker — like, actual filth — and not by choice.

Basic hygiene can be hard to come by when you’re sleeping on overnight buses, bus station benches, or saggy mattresses in moldy hostels. It’s even more difficult if you visit some of the places where I traveled, where water was precious.

I became a master of the bucket bath, which involves the same kind of bucket you’d use to build a sandcastle at the beach, plus just enough water to fill that bucket, and a small ladle or measuring cup. Here’s how it works: Dump a cup of water over your body, soap yourself, then rinse with another cup of water.

It's like a day at the spa, if that day were portioned out one cup at a time.

It’s like a day at the spa, if that day was portioned out one cup at a time.

Some towns were simply out of water, so bathing wasn’t an option at all. By the time I arrived in Villa Tunari, Bolivia, the town hadn’t had flowing water for weeks. In Arba Minch, Ethiopia, the townspeople said they hoped to see water any day. Two days later, I looked like Pigpen in a Peanuts strip and lost all hope.

When showers were available, they often weren’t comfortable. Some were cold enough that my lips turned purple and my body shook; others were so hot I thought my skin would blister.

Laundry became the height of luxury. About once a month I brought my dirty clothes to a real laundromat, but in between I rinsed my clothes in sinks. As I dunked, soaked, and swirled the fabric, the water turned a murky brown, like making mud tea.

If you travel slow enough, you take on a bit of each place you visit, and the things I wore were proof.

Sink laundry in Luang Prabang.

I didn’t really envy the tourists I encountered — the ones who stepped out of air conditioned vehicles, took selfies and trotted through museum tours before they were whisked to another location — but I admired how they looked.

They were crisp. They were clean. I bet they smelled nice. They wore WHITE.

My clothes were dingy, dark tees and khaki hiking pants, clothes designed to camouflage grime as I absorbed the world. But those tourists were confident in their fuck-it-all white. They moved through the world as though nothing could soil them, as though there was laundry service waiting for them at the end of each day (because … well, there was).

Sometimes they even wore linen, which is a fabric I just don’t understand. Some people can pull it off. Me? I look like a crumpled Kleenex.

White clothing is something I always notice when I look at travel photos now, and I say that as someone who stalks a lot of travel accounts on Instagram. More than a magnificent hotel backdrop or a gorgeous cocktail hoisted in the air, a white shirt screams opulence. You’ve achieved a level of travel luxury that I never have.

Fine. You guys are enjoying your champers and a hilarious joke at a hotel. I’ll let these white clothes pass.

But you. How are you not covered in dirt?

Gurrrl. You are about to get dusty.

But wait. All of this is about to change.

This summer I’m taking another journey. I’ve worked very hard and saved to be able to take my son to Southeast Asia.

When I traveled through Thailand and Cambodia before as a solo backpacker, I daydreamed about what it would be like to make that same trip as a mother. I was curious how it would shift the dynamic when I met people, how they would respond to me as a mom, how my child would respond to them. So it’s not an exaggeration to say this is a trip I dreamt about long before I ever gave birth.

I’m going to bring my son to the elephant sanctuary where I volunteered. I’m going to show him how to kneel and pray in the temples that made me weep. I’m going to give him bowls of slurpy noodles and let monkeys jump on his head. We are going to get filthy.

This time around I’ve budgeted enough to pay for laundry service as we go. And you can bet the first thing I’m packing is a crisp, white shirt. (And a white dress. And a white bikini.) I want to travel in white just this once, to have a taste of something I’ve never had before.

But not linen. Screw linen.

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The 2019 book and music mashup extravaganza

I will always remember this place

A confession: The biggest mistake I’ve made as a parent (so far)

This vacation I will wear white

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