Many of the novels that stayed with me hijacked my expectations of what a novel is or can do.

I'm reminded of the Nora Ephron quote: “Whenever I read a book I love, I start to remember all the other books that have sent me into rapture..."

The majority of it was probably to offset the noise around me—but a not-insignificant minority was for inspiration, and for optimism.

Year after year, I read to understand, knowing that it’s a futile exercise—limitless in both the exhausting and reassuring ways.

I've looked for the light of underground things burst open. I've reached for what dispelled my feelings of singularity, of arrested numbness.

Here are some of the books that made me feel joy and wonder and hurt and left me feeling reminded of the magic in the world.

I read a mixture of books that I had to for review, and others I felt a sudden compulsion to pick up to postpone reading with a deadline attached to it.

I lean on books about California or the American West or the “frontier” — that confused, cruel place! — and often resort to rereading a select few.

All year, in response, I held on tight to books I love, remembering not only specific words, but the moments of real comfort I found in these books.

Apparently it is a truth universally acknowledged that not even the end of the world will quench our libidos.

I suspect many of us slipped in and out of fugue states in order to cope this year, but survival depends on getting out of it to fight the powers that be.

What a year this has been. Do I mean it was really good or bad? It can’t just have been one of those. I just mean it was crazy.

I sat my son back down and turned the compressor back on and we both turned back inward, to our screens filled with other people’s words.

Sadly, Denis Johnson is no longer my favorite living author. But he knew death was coming, and left us with his best work since Jesus’ Son.

I wanted to figure some things out, and surrounded myself with books that I thought would help. Instead of reading them, I got distracted.

The fact that this isn’t recognized for what it is, a magisterial work and a 20th-century masterpiece, makes me even more anxious about our times.

I've been often distracted, dismayed by political outcomes this year, but I've remained blissfully absorbed in the thing that matters the most to me—books.

At some point I realized that it was entirely female writers in translation. I trust their work and their taste, and I let that dictate my reading.