using reading to calm my anxious mind: america you disappointment

There aren't enough words to describe how heartbroken I am with what is happening in the United States right now.  Anxiety has had me watching TV shows (I don't even like television), eating snacks (I am not normally a snack eater), and staying up late (and normally I love my sleep).

I love reading and I have to use this wellness practice to get me through the tough times that America is facing and will surely face in the future. 

Sitting in my reading chair and making a cup of tea has been a nightly meditation for me. It is a form of active resistance that allows me to calmly approach the end of my day. I won't give my every waking thought to doomscrolling, news, media information that just reminds me of how far the entire world has to go in making equitable change for all. enough of that...

an ambience room I love

How I'm anticipating reading being a saving grace

1. Setting an alarm to stop working/cleaning/cooking/caregiving as I can for the day and making a cup of tea.
2. Preparing a stack of books and e-readers to go through
3. Sitting for no less than an hour or two in that position and read
4. Book journal and record my thoughts from what I'm reading
5. Read what my heart calls for even if it is another year of re-reading

busy nightstand

Teas that I love at nighttime 

1. Chamomile
2. Peppermint
3. Lavender
4. Cinnamon
5. Ginger

a novel im considering purchasing

Books I'm considering purchasing

1. Wintering by Katherine May (link to description at author's website)
2. Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women's Speculative Fiction by Samantha Dawn Schalk (link to description at Duke University Press)

im excited to get this one
i love sami schalk

I am going to go into February with a new clear mind. I'm focused on prioritizing my well-being and mental health. That includes lots of reading and focus on slowing down.

Sending warmth and healing energy to all who need it.

Happy peaceful reading ☕️ 

favorite read of january

 

I absolutely loved these stories. I felt Not only is this a beautiful book and edition, I found myself stopping to just stare at the wall as I read through the stories. 

I wasn't a huge fan of The Premonition- because I am never a fan of reading about adult/child relationships (be forewarned), but I can't deny that her writing is phenomenal. 

As I read through the stories, I was reminded of how the most simple stories of lived experiences become so deeply emotional when described in a deep way. 

"I felt that I was being handed the perspective that had been borne of his experience". (p. 98)

Yoshimoto has a way of writing that speaks to something intangible, but it shows us how we are capable of truly feeling our way into our stories. Her writing makes me want to write. They make me want to consider how I remember. It reminds me of how inspired I was when I finished all 7 volumes of Proust's The Search. I wanted to pay more attention to my life in order to remember it better.

my book journal

Banana Yoshimoto remains one of my favorite authors, and this set of stories is described perfectly by Brandon Taylor as, "Strange. Melancholy and Beautiful".

Happy reading. ☕️ 

poetry pause: a lover's song:: audre lorde

 

source: stock

A Lover's Song

Give me fire and I will sing you morning

Finding you heart

And a birth of fruit

For you, a flame that will stay beauty

Song will take us by the hand

And lead us back to light.

Give me fire and I will sing you evening

Asking you water

And quick breath

No farewell wind like a willow switch

Against my body

But a voice to speak

In a dark room.

2025 author focus: clarice lispector

 

photographer: Paulo Gurgel Valente

Reasons I chose Clarice Lispector for 2025

I've written about how 2025 has to be a reading of deep, intense literature because I've returned to two graduate programs. I'm the sole caregiver for my family members and I need literature to help me heal. Clarice Lispector is an author that wrote from the marrow of her bones. There are sentences that I have had to read 5 times in order to process and understand and inhabit. Either you love her or hate her. I love love her. 

I didn't get on with her short stories very much, but it was because the collection was of seemingly ordinary stories without the witchcraft storytelling that she normally writes with. It felt like the stories of the upper class having ordinary experiences, and I loathe that lens. 

I am hopeful that my focus on Lispector this year will not disappoint and will open up a new world for me inside of Brazilian literature.

beginnings of my author focus page in my simple book journal

Author summary from Goodreads:

Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, she was brought to Brazil as an infant, amidst the disasters engulfing her native land following the First World War.

She grew up in northeastern Brazil, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when she was in her teens. While in law school in Rio she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at age 23 with the publication of her first novel, 'Near to the Wild Heart' (Perto do Coração Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.

She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. Upon return to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Laços de Família), the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixão Segundo G.H.), and the novel many consider to be her masterpiece, Água Viva. Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.

She has been the subject of numerous books and references to her, and her works are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films, one being 'Hour of the Star' and she was the subject of a recent biography, Why This World, by Benjamin Moser.

Novels

I hope that if you have time for an author focus this year that you chose someone who calls to your heart. I find it to be so immersive, and don't forget... if you start with one author and the project isn't providing what you are seeking... just pic a new author focus. 

No rules. All freedom. Read what calls you to it.

Happy reading ☕️ 

Classics I Want to Read in 2025

in light of the current affairs in america, i've made a plethora of changing to my reading plans for 2025.

 I will post these changes in another tab. This list can remain still.

classics for 2025

I, of course, am bringing some classics over from 2024. 2024 was a really hard year for me. I did deep reading, but I re-read as much or more as I read new-to-me novels. 

So, did I read all the classics I listed for 2024? No. Is that okay? Of course it is.

Classics I Want to Read in 2025

1. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe ✔️ 
2. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
3. Another Country by James Baldwin
4. Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
1. The Fellowship of the Ring ✔️ 
2. The Two Towers
3. The Return of the King
5. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes ✔️ 
6. Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas
7. Candide by Voltaire
8. The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin

Contemporary Novels to Read in 2025

1. Remains of the Day by  Kazuo Ishiguro ✔️ 
2. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
3. Ghost Mountain by Rónán Hession
4. Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai ✔️ 
5. Dead Flowers by Osamu Dazai
6. Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami 
7. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami 

Author Focus for 2025: Clarice Lispector

1. Hour of the Star 
2. The Chandelier 
3. An Apple in the Dark
4. A Breath of Life

winter 2025 poet focus: Audre Lorde + poetry pause

This year I will do a seasonal poet focus and I will kick the year off with the powerful intersectional feminist Audre Lorde. 

This seems apt considering that Audre Lorde is known for her powerful critiques of social injustice and in 2025 where differences are being ignored and sadness and hurt regarding injustice loom ahead, focuses on the words and works of this powerful legendary goddess feels right.

source: nytimes

Born: February 18, 1934, Harlem, New York, NY

Died: November 17, 1992 (age 58 years), Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

Intersectional feminist, poet, scholar, professor, civil rights activist

if you come softly

If you come as softly

As win within the trees

You may hear what I hear

See what sorrow sees.

If you come as lightly 

As threading dew

I will take you gladly

Nor ask more of you.

You may sit beside me

Silent as a breath

Only those who stay dead

Shall remember death.

And if you come I will be silent 

Nor speak harsh words to you.

I will not ask you why, now.

Or how, or what you do.

We shall sit here, softly

Beneath two different years

And the rich earth between us

Shall drink our tears.

-Audre Lorde

 

how my reading will change in 2025

 

january reads

Book lover, coffee drinker, kindle owner- a few phrases that describe me... now I'll add graduate student in two universities to this mix. This means that my focus will be divided and reading time will be curtailed for non-academic works.

I need fiction like some people need cream in their coffee so I won't make any loud, "I won't be reading fiction in 2025" statements. What I will say is that 2025 will be an even more selective  reading year than years past. 

I'm already a huge re-reader and so I don't seek to have high numbers of "books read" or anything like that. I just pick up what my soul leans towards and sink deeply into it. 

I read to access certain emotions and therefore reading is a therapeutic practice for me. I don't expect others to understand that, but it's true. This catalyst for reading makes it easy to ignore the trends and chase the Goodreads goal. It's really entertaining and fun to see others do it, and I enjoy watching that content, but alas that will also have to take a backseat in 2025.

Changes I'm anticipating making:

1. Reading less novels
2. Reading more poetry and short stories
3. Watching less BookTube (to keep FOMO at bay)
4. 5 total books purchased by the end of 2025
5. Keep a physical book journal (very simple- will post photos as I create it)
6. Return to BookTube for sprints

As the first day of my second university approaches, I have dnfed my first book of 2025. The highly selective lens that I must apply to my leisure literature is already in full swing. 

In summation

Reading lights up my soul. I read to heal myself... to access emotions that lie latent because my life is so stressful I can't keep my hand on the pulse of those intense emotions and remain functional. For this season of my life, I am focusing on reading what my soul craves and what entertains me.

I highly recommend that if you are struggling with your reading choices, you do a BookTube fast, listen to some calming music and then scroll your physical or digital shelves for any and all titles that call out to your heart. If you're the type of reader for whom that is too "touchy feely", I still implore you to seek the novels that you desire. Push against the trend to purchase tons more than you can read, and return (or enter) a slow, deep reading year. 

All the best in 2025 ☕️ 

novels that i loved / changed me in 2024

 

i enjoyed every one of these titles immensely

traveling with this physical novel
started so many conversations in nyc
this summer. awesome memories

What I learned in 2024 was that re-reading continues to save me. I love the comfort of returning to characters that I know very well. 

Read in one sitting:

Cried while reading:

Couldn't put down:

Reminded me of intense emotions:

Sent me down the biggest rabbit hole:

Austen of the year: 
(theme: if at first you don't succeed...)

Re-read that I journaled 

the most around:

Travel physical re-read that 
I was asked the most about:

As I begin my reading for 2025 my one true focus is to read what changes or truly entertains me. All else will be ignored. :)

Happy reading ☕️