A Year in Reading: Ella Baxter

December 6, 2021 | 12 books mentioned 4 min read

I read widely but abandon books quickly unless they captivate me. The lowest standard I hold for a book is that I want it to be so psychedelic, so completely discombobulating, that I am torn asunder. I want to read words that turn my bones to dust. I want to be unravelled, drowned, absolutely smote by a book. I wish I wasn’t like this. I wish I could just learn to relax, but those days are over, they are dead. Every day I am grateful that books exist and if you were to cut me open, I would bleed all the words I have banked inside, from all the books that have destroyed me, eyeballs first. 

At the start of the year I was given a copy of How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie, a book on shamanism, and a copy of something else, perhaps a story about Tibet. I moved house so the books are still in tall stacks along one wall, and I can’t seem to find the titles to tell you their serious names.

covercoverTo distract myself from all of the fame and fortune that releasing a debut novel usually brings, I spent the last of my publishing advance on some books, a haircut, and a pair of cowboy boots. I read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius to ground myself in stoicism, Living with the Gods by Neil MacGregor for perspective, and Things I Didn’t Expect (When I Was Expecting) by Monica Dux because I was also very pregnant and quite terrified.

covercovercoverThroughout my life I have tried—at times, desperately—to become a better person, and nothing triggered me to act on this more than becoming a mother. In the first months of pregnancy, I listened to the audio recording of The Secret of Secrets: The Secret of the Golden Flower by Osho. I played it while I did my leg, butt, and thigh exercises in a bid to double down on self improvement. I also read The Dance of Intimacy by Harriet Goldhor Lerner, and How to Do the Work by Nicole LePera. If I am honest with myself, which I am always trying to be, I have remained fundamentally the same.

covercovercoverI live in Melbourne, which has been in lock down for a total of 262 days since the pandemic began. Regularly, I have felt the need to escape my body and my house by inhabiting fictional worlds. I read In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, which was profoundly bruising. Outlawed by Anna North was a wonderful feminist Western. In Moonland by Miles Allison was enjoyably bizarre and illuminating. Gunk Baby by Jaime Marina Lau threw me into a suburban consumerist fever dream. I also read Motherhood and How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti, which I loved dearly and plan to reread. And, Death in Her Hands and Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh, and the incomparable, edible, stratospheric Luster by Raven Leilani.

covercovercoverI enjoy nonfiction as much as fiction and this year I listened and wept through both Girlhood and Abandon Me by Melissa Febos. Her voice is so calming, and so full of honey, that I would drift off and then come to and have to rewind to listen again. I also read The Believer by Sarah Krasnostein, which left me with a resounding curiosity about gods and ghosts. How to End a Story by Helen Garner was so well written that I wanted to weep. Eating with My Mouth Open by Sam Van Zweden contained some of the most perfect food and family writing I have encountered. Aftermath by Rachel Cusk because there is nothing like a brilliantly perceptive book about a fractured marriage to end the day.

covercovercoverI’m currently working on my second novel, which is about feminine rage and vengeance, which means I am doing a lot of research into the art of revenge. For now, it’s all I read and write about. Fatal Women by Lynda Hart lit the fire in my belly, and then in quick succession there was On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche, A Madman’s Manifesto by August Strindberg, and Dirty Weekend by Helen Zahavi, which is one of the most hilarious and genius books out there. I have also read a lot of court documents and forensic profiles and watched an ungodly amount of CCTV footage. I am obsessed with revenge, and I keep finding myself asking people whether they feel it is necessary or not, and to no-one’s surprise, most of us are in favor of it.

In order to learn how to write beautiful sentences, I read Plath. “Aquatic Nocturne,” “A Lesson in Vengeance,” and “Brasilia.” I am also reading poetry by Warsan Shire. Her poem “The House” reveals something new each time I revisit it, and there is another favorite of hers that begins with a father walking backwards into a room. Her poems are alchemical; I promise if you read a poem of hers you might levitate, at the very least you will be changed.

covercovercoverTo prepare to give birth I read Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin and Birth with Confidence by Rhea Dempsey. I also read Birth Skills by Juju Sundin and The Art of War by Sun Tzu to help develop my focus and rigor. I bought a blow up pool and some stress balls, oiled my perineum, and performed some grounding lunges, but I shouldn’t have bothered with any of it because my baby was so big that he got stuck in my pelvis, and even though I labored for three days, in the end I was cut in twain and he was hauled out of my body unceremoniously. Perhaps what I have been expecting of books was achieved though having my beautiful baby. Perhaps I should use this as a learning exercise.

covercoverBirth obliterated me spiritually, physically, and mentally and when I came home from hospital I didn’t want to read or think anymore. I just needed to sit on the couch and look out the big old window for a very long time. A friend told me to read something regularly, even if it was just a sentence or two, so I slowly read smaller pieces. A sentence each day from Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier, which was a gloriously snappy novella. The short stories of Paige Clarke’s She Is Haunted, and some snippets of poetry from Keats, Dorothy Porter, and Rumi. I believe only now, four months on, that I am ready to think again.

More from A Year in Reading 2021 (opens in a new tab)

Do you love Year in Reading and the amazing books and arts content that The Millions produces year round? We are asking readers for support to ensure that The Millions can stay vibrant for years to come. Please click here to learn about several simple ways you can support The Millions now.

Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2020,  20192018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005

is a writer and artist. Her debut novel, New Animal, was released in March 2021 through Allen & Unwin. In 2022, it will be released in the U.K. through Picador, and in the U.S. through Two Dollar Radio. New Animal is also being developed into a television series by Lingo Pictures. Baxter is currently writing her second novel, Woo Woo, while working towards a new collection of death shrouds to exhibit.