At the beginning of last year, I posted the following picture & requested friends to submit their favorites. The only exclusion i implemented is that it couldn’t be one that I had already read. I enjoy recommendations & while only one ended up on my list of favorites this year, I’m reminded books impact us differently for a myriad of reasons.

1. Lessons In Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus

2. Listening In The Dark, Amber Tamblyn

3. The 100 Years of Lenni & Margot, Marianne Cronin

4. All The Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

5. In The Dream House: A Memoir, Carmen Maria Machado

6. Lucy By The Sea, Elizabeth Strout

7. What My Bones Know, Stephanie Woo

8. The Storyteller, Jodi Picoult

9. Erotic Stories For Punjabi Widows, Balli Kaur Jaswal

10. Ma Qui: The American Phantom of Vietnam, Len Hudson

11. We Are Not Like Them, Christine Pride & Jo Piazza

12. The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides

13. The Art of Racing In The Rain, Garth Stein

14. In The Wild Light, Jeff Zenner

15. All The Missing Girls, Megan Miranda

16. How To Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told, Harrison Scott Key

17. You Shouldn’t Have Come Here, Jeneva Rose

18. Good In Bed, Jennifer Weiner

19. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

20. Unmasking Autism, Devon Price, PhD

21. Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts

22. The Secret Life of Secrets, Michael Slepian

23. A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle

24. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

25. Nightcrawling, Leila Mottley

26. The Woman In Me, Britney Spears

27. The Grieving Brain, Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD

28. Finding Me, Viola Davis

29. The Guncle, Steve Rowley

30. Day, Michael Cunningham

31. I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death Maggie O’Farrell

32. Counting The Cost, Jill Duggar

33. The Body Farm, Patricia Cornwell

34. Group, Christie Tate

35. The Courage To Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness, Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga

36. The Gift: 12 Lessons To Save Your Life, Edith Eger.

My favorite five (in order of when I read):

Fiction

I found this book utterly delightful, lol funny, & a testament to how far we’ve come in sexism & glaringly how much more progress we have yet to make.

“Because while musical prodigies are always celebrated, early readers aren’t. And that’s because early readers are only good at something others will eventually be good at, too. So being first isn’t special – it’s just annoying.”

Fiction

This book also made me lol several times over. I enjoy learning about different cultures & practices & this book certainly opened my eyes to the Indian culture.

“It would be easier to be a criminal fairly prosecuted by the law than an Indian daughter who wronged her family. A crime would be punishable by a jail sentence of definite duration rather than this uncertain length of family guilt trips.”

Fiction

I started & ended this book the same: crying. A book narrated by the dog from his perspective. If you’ve ever had a connection to a dog, I’d be hard pressed to say you’ll make it through dry eyed.

“It’s so hard to communicate because there are so many moving parts. There’s presentation and there’s interpretation and they’re so dependent on each other it makes things very difficult. I didn’t want him to feel bad about this. I wanted him to see the obvious, that it’s okay for him to let me go. He’s been going through so much, and he’s finally through it. He needs to not have me around to worry about anymore. He needs me to free him to be brilliant.”

Memoir.

The only two people who know what goes on in the marriage is the two people in it & even then there are times you’re left wondering. So many quotes in this book, I couldn’t decide on just one.

“I used to think only the deviant or unlucky, addicts, swingers, abusers, drunks got to the tortured point in marriage where divorce obtains. Nobody ever told me that marriage comes to this cataract in the river many times over. That every marriage goes over the falls. The two of you go tumbling across the smooth mossy rocks of time & down you go & some couples die & some don’t, but everybody goes toppling.

“Love is never a bad call. It might seem impossible; it might even seem silly when every atom in your body screams for blood. But how else other than with love can a broken thing be made whole again. The book of Ezekiel says God likes to work on broken things, to build up the ruined places & plant the desolate land.”

“Whatever your feelings about Christ being the bridegroom & the church being the bride, here’s what I’ve come to see: Rome slaughtered Jesus & that’s what marriage will do. It will slay you. Crucify, and burn, and behead you & everything you thought you knew about yourself. And the thing that is left, after all is burned & plucked away, that is the real you.”

Memoir.

Powerful & gripping.

“It’s futile to ask why. Instead ask yourself, ‘What did I learn from this?’ What have I learned from all of it? There is absolutely no way whatsoever to get through this life without scars.”