everything I read in January

Ina Garten's memoir, which I was saving for a particularly gloomy week, was the highlight.

Lately: Last month, I ordered a ham for the sole purpose of acquiring a bone I could use for red beans and rice. That meant a week full of ham and cheese sandwiches and even more frozen ham squirreled away for later. One ham is so much ham for two people! But this week, it paid off. It was finally red beans and rice time, and the bone was key to the smoky, deep flavor of the beans and andouille. It was the perfect meal to eat (and eat again) over a few snowy days. … I made sourdough blondies for the Super Bowl, and they may be the best bar cookie I’ve ever pulled from my oven. No exaggeration. Somehow they’re crispy and gooey at the same time, and why are there not hazelnuts in more baked goods?

everything I read in January

My year of reading started off … fine. Inoffensive. Good, even. I didn’t hate anything I read, and I didn’t love anything, either — except, perhaps, Ina Garten’s memoir, which found its way into my heart with its inspirational, personal tone. Even so, it was hardly a great work of literature.

Stacked up against everything else that happened in January, though, these books were great escapes, and they kept me from scrolling even more than I already did. I set a reading goal of 50 books in 2025, and I’m already outpacing that by a lot, which is either a great thing or a sign I’m neglecting the rest of my life (writing, cooking, friends, my husband).

Here, then, are the books:

My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout: What a fast, contained, brilliant book this is. I’d never read Elizabeth Strout before, and now I’m determined to make my way through her entire canon eventually. I have the second book in her Amgash collection, Anything Is Possible, sitting on my bedside table waiting to be read.

The thing that struck me most about this story was the narrator’s voice, it maturity and immaturity so wholly on display. The action of the plot takes place when Lucy is in her 30s, a young mother who’s trying to launch her career as a writer. She’s hospitalized, and her somewhat estranged mother comes to visit, and over the days they spend in the same room, Lucy is at once reverting to her childhood self while also trying to assert the woman she’s become.

I sometimes have a difficult time reading and relating to female protagonists in my age range. They’re either fully realized adults — mothers, executives — or totally lost on the paths to finding themselves. But what about the women between those extremes, women like me and many (most) of my friends? “My Name Is Lucy Barton” conjures one of those women, and for that, I loved it.

The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen: I got this book for Christmas in 2023, lost it in my to-read pile for a while, and then it was springtime. When I mentioned to a friend that I really needed to get to it, she balked. “Save it for next winter. You want to read this in cold weather,” she told me.

She was right. “The End of Drum Time” is a distinctive piece of historical fiction, set in 19th-century Scandinavia, on the far side of the Arctic Circle. It’s a story of love and hate and religious fervor among the Sami people, and I learned so much about that culture and part of the world. And the writing was gorgeous. But the plot never grabbed me, and I never was able to care enough about any of the characters, many of whom seemed constantly on edge of alienating themselves from the people they love. Instead of hoping for reconciliation — or hoping for freedom, or hoping for anything — I found myself unable to care about what would happen to these people, which made for a satisfying ending only in the sense that I was happy to move on.

Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicenzio: I’d have loved this book for the pop culture references alone. It reeks of 2011, of being 22 in 2011. I was 23.

There’s something so gratifying about being dropped into a world so different from your own, into an experience you can in no way relate to — but look, there’s a fashion trend you remember, and listen to the music, and remember those headlines? Remember what it felt to be young and experience that snippet of culture the same way this protagonist is?

In a lot of ways, that’s all beside the point — but it’s what I keep coming back to when I think about the ways this book sucked me in and consumed me. “Catalina” is a story about what it was like to be undocumented in Barack Obama’s America, about how it feels to be among your family but also apart from it, left behind. It’s immersive and sad and hopeful, and I loved the way it felt to inhabit that world.

Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham: Speaking of Obama’s America, this autobiographical novel follows a young staffer on a presidential campaign leading up to the 2008 election. The staffer’s existence is a lot like Cunningham’s in real life, and the candidate is a lot like Obama. Okay, fine: The candidate definitely is Obama. The differences are nonexistent.

Was I willfully picking escape when I opened this novel mere days before the recent inauguration? At the time, no — but in retrospect, absolutely. Cunningham’s story feels like it was written in a different universe. Somehow, it’s escapism, even if its focus is mainly on the mundane of the campaign: dark bars in New Hampshire, staffers cramped in a car between here and there, the choice between the cheapest hotel room in L.A. and feeling like you’re bankrupting a cause you care about. I oscillated between loving this book and liking it, but I’m so glad I read it.

Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten: Okay, now it’s time to actually talk about escapism. I’d been saving this book for months, waiting for the perfect moment to disappear into Ina’s world. And this never-ending January was it.

I loved Ina before I started reading, and I love her even more now. I learned so much about her wild, at times impulsive career — and was pleasantly surprised to learn about her obsession with D.C. real estate. Ina, are we the same person? I hope so.

Good Material by Dolly Alderton: This is one of those books I saw over and over again on end-of-year lists and wondered how it got there. The plot summary seemed mundane: Guy mopes around after unexpected breakup, become obsessed with his ex. But it was on all those lists! And the list people have to know something!

Turns out, they do. Though I’m still not sure this book would rank in my top 10 of 2024 releases, it was very good. The characters are vivid, and Alderton’s observations of friendship and non-romantic love and support are spot-on. The last 40 or so pages of the story took it from good to excellent — so if you’re wind up mid-story, wondering if there’s a payoff: I promise, there is.

Marlena by Julie Buntin: In the fall, I took a fiction workshop class through One Story, and the author who taught the class recommended “Marlena” to me after I told her a bit about the novel I’m writing. This book, like mine, explores a teen friendship — though in the case of “Marlena,” it’s one that ends with some finality; the titular character dies. (I promise that’s not a spoiler.)

I won’t get into all the ways this book helped me think about my own; it’s enough to say that it did, in ways that surprised me. And I liked this story, particularly the way the author builds the bonds between the two girls at its center. They come together abruptly and completely, in the way only two teenagers can. Their connection was enough to keep me reading, even as the snippets set a decade into the future left me wanting more.