They are profoundly powerful not only in their observations and stories, but in how courageously and carefully they speak to our present moment.

When I finished the book, I immediately called a friend and said 'this book is precisely why I do the work I do.'

Let’s face it. 2016 sucked. It will go down as one of the cruddiest years in the 50 or so that I’ve walked the earth.

These are the books I spent the most time with, the ones I was able to get seriously and satisfyingly intimate with.

I spent a lot of 2016 feeling outraged. Too many black bodies killed. Too much intolerance and fear, too many acquittals, too little justice.

If you liked 'The Argonauts' by Maggie Nelson, you’ll love 'Abandon Me' by Melissa Febos.

I became so at ease with the modest pleasures of non-writer life in our bucolic corner of the world that I left town, like, only twice. And get this: I barely read any books.

In a world of constant connection, who hasn’t wanted to disappear and start over?

Because they are not in opposition to each other, the exchanges are revealing rather than combative, peeling back layers and circling topics from different angles.

The book that stuck with me most is 'The Big Con' by David Maurer, a social anthropology of grifters, swindlers, and confidence artists that provided me an unexpectedly useful lens to view Donald Trump.

The best books I’ve read this year are themselves a prescient compilation, a kind of personalized, serial guidebook for the new world order we now inhabit.

I believe that words are swords. For my purposes, swords against injustice, a voice to the marginalized. Words are power that come from our lips, or are read from our pages.

It’s shocking, beautifully written, and, with white supremacy knocking on the White House door, more important than ever. Some books are great, some books are essential. 'White Rage' is the latter.

What a relief to be reminded of the vital importance of books when it feels like the world around is crumbling. Worth remembering as we stumble together into 2017.

It was the stuff I read online, in magazines, or poems I heard in person that made my heart quake this year.

How does one reconcile the impossibility of making a difference in the world while attempting to live as if you still can?

These are poems I wish for my younger self to read. The arc, told over four parts -- the hurting, the loving, the breaking, the healing -- is different to the world I knew, especially the healing part. It is not a story about fitting into someone else’s world, but about how to imagine your own.

We read and write for largely the same principal reason the ancients did: because, good Lord, we’re a damn mess. If 2016 hasn’t convinced you, I’m not sure what it will take.