Welcome to part two of my 2016 books of the year post. If you missed part one, please check back to my post on January 16 using this link.
Three books stood out from my reading list in 2016. I'm not going to bother ranking them, determining a book of the year, or even suggesting that these three books were 'superior' to the others. And definitely no chance of a bracket. This list was not really designed that way.
I just felt the positives each brought to my reading year were important enough to mention in their own posts. So, this will be the first of three posts to highlight these books and round off my recap of my 2016 reading.
Thank you for reading.
Tim
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Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed (June 2016)
"because i knew last year how powerful the writing was and how true the advice was. but i wasn't ready. like how someone healing from a leg injury can't exercise properly even though exercise is good for you or how someone recovering from food poisoning can't eat all their veggies yet. so a day, or a week, or a month goes by, and you lose a job and you end up knee deep in the same muck again. the only thing you know about healing is you got up and out, once, and that you know this will pass, too. i dig out book recommendations and i see an old email and this book is on the list- from years ago!- and i realize i already ignored the idea once and i'm about to do it again. so i picked up all of her books and here we are..."
Dear Tim,
It's always nice when you write- even if you failed to formulate a coherent question at any point in your email. Failing is OK.
And its great that you continue to utilize the basic rules of grammar and capitalization only when you see fit. Based on this evidence, you 'see fit' at a frequency one might call 'close to never'.
But life is too short to keep backspacing for the shift key, you know? Your email, your rules. Never change.
But even without the formal punctuation, I can see the question in your little i's. I know what's on your mind.
You've reached back out to this book you read a year ago- when you worried every morning about possibly losing your mother to cancer, spent the day trying to understand how to get help progressing your career, and fell asleep sick to your stomach about your inability to speak up and express the difficult things you were thinking or feeling.
And you're wondering why you should read it again now- when you haven't spoken Japanese in almost a year, you've been out of a job for months, and you have so little to say that sometimes you go an entire day without speaking more than ten syllables.
Plus, I bet your feet hurt, a lot, all the time, which is a problem because I know your only reliable coping mechanism is to run to Davis Square and back. Don't worry about how I know these things, trust me, I just do.
But even if you aren't hurt (yet), I can see that you have some kind of injury on the mind. Just because you aren't one of those losers who talks about ‘easy ten-milers’ doesn't mean you don't think it when you go for your third such run in a week.
So, give me a break. You need a break. What better idea than a couple of decent books?
I'm pretty sure the book you are talking about is Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. I know this author's written two other books, Wild and Torch, and it sounds like you might be considering giving those a try, too.
Well, I have some breaking news for you- you're gonna read those books. I suppose you can skip the rest of my reply now because it won't make a bit of difference.
Surprised, right? But when's the last time you checked out a book that you didn't read? If you should trust anything right now, trust your library card. It's never let you down before.
But if you do want my input, here it is. Start with Torch. It definitely isn't your kind of book. It's a novel. That's why it will surprise you how much you get out of it.
I think part of that is due to your having read Tiny Beautiful Things a year ago. You'll recognize the autobiographical parts of the novel and you'll marvel at the strength of true writing.
You'll understand what Strayed means when she writes about the power of merely acknowledging. The power of simply letting someone else know that you see what they do is unsettling. And you'll think back to your own best self and wonder what you need to do to bring him back. If you need a hint, I’d volunteer, but I know you prefer to figure it out for yourself.
Reading Torch will remind you of so many ideas from Tiny Beautiful Things that it will immediately become the next book in your queue, no ifs, ands, or rambling emails about it.
As soon as you start Steve Almond's introduction, the memories of reading this book will come flooding back. It's not a book, actually, and that's the first thing you'll remember, its a collection of articles published under the 'Dear Sugar' advice column that Strayed (anonymously) wrote for the online magazine The Rumpus.
So, in that sense, its not really a 'traditional' book, but that's OK, because most 'traditional' books merely pass the time, waiting patiently with you until you pick up the right book, the book that you really need to read, the book that's like the wise friend sitting for you at the airport, patient all the while through the layovers, delays, and circling of your journey.
Tim, it's this one. You read it in June 2015. So, in that sense, its not really a 2016 book. But you'll think back on it like it was.
In a lot of ways, you didn't read it at all in 2015. It was filled with insight and wisdom and you became familiar with it all, came to nodding terms with the ideas you recognized, but you weren't ready emotionally to do anything with it. Your tank was on 'E'. You did your best, of course, but it just wasn't the right time.
And that's OK. As Jane Kenyon once recommended, it's important to read good books just so you have good sentences in your ears. Many of the ideas in this book became those sentences in the latter half of 2015- that compassion first requires giving it all you got, that to suffer is to do God's work because you allow others to exhibit their goodness, that withholding makes the people around you question their perception of reality, that great things have birthdays unknown to you in the present, that destiny deals the cards and you just play your hand.
This time, you will properly read this collection of once-published pseudo-advice columns. You'll gain so much from each sentence. Throughout this fragmented memoir, you'll see how Strayed uses the letters addressed to her as prompts to share her stories and empathize with the letter-writer. There is advice here but its not an advice book. It will help you but its not a self-help book.
Rather, you’ll see that Strayed looks at the facts each writer gives her and tries to find a new angle to view it from. Perspective is often shaped by experience and Strayed holds little back in detailing how her personal history is influencing her nuanced point of view. But the view is always held steady by the support of a few basic truths- be kind, be magnanimous, be ready to suffer.
You are getting older now and perhaps that's why this approach will finally start making some sense. You don't get new privileges like you used to every December 28 but all that's overrated anyway. You don't drive and its expensive to drink.
What you get now as you grow older is there only if you take it. It is the chance to use your experience and your wisdom to make the best decisions in the present.
That's all that happens in this book, really, in each column. Her book is not about giving a hungry man a fish or even teaching that man to fish. It's more like leading the hungry to the water and saying "well, if you get hungry enough, you can ask someone for a fish, you can learn to fish, or you can find some other way to eat. You can even stay hungry. But I wouldn't recommend that. I know what it's like to be hungry, and I'm sorry because it's difficult. Here's something I did, once, when I was hungry."
Without ruining the book, I’ll tell you that sometimes she ate and sometimes she didn’t. That kind of approach doesn't lend itself to neat little proverbs. But it made for one heck of a book.
Do you remember this example of that approach? It comes right away, in those opening pages. If you start reading Tiny Beautiful Things but remain uncommitted about finishing, promise that you will at least read to this part. If you remain unconvinced after this column, you can return the book (though again, I know you won’t).
The letter writer’s opening sentences are very straightforward:
Dear Sugar,The heartbreaking response ends with what I consider a summary of Strayed's general approach to her responses:
WTF? WTF? WTF?
Ask better questions, sweet pea. The fuck is your life. Answer it.So, again, if you get that far and you want to stop, go ahead. I don't think you will. This book is too full of insight about the nature of life's most difficult moments. No one is ever fully ready emotionally to do anything with this kind of wisdom at any time, I suspect, but the time is at least ripe for you to try again.
Incremental improvement sometimes involves just holding steady. But if you can hold onto your minimal progress, you know you are somewhere above rock bottom. That's not much but sometimes, it'll do. Soon enough, you'll see some light and you'll realize that you were never really down so far at all.
You'll look back to what you learned from the past year and you'll recognize that you absorbed an awful lot. Perhaps, you learned more in that year than you did in any other year of your life. It will motivate you to try, to really try, to write something meaningful about it.
Your ears will continue to seek out those good sentences. But the ones that stick will be different. You'll know that real change comes from doing things differently than you did in the past. You'll work on reading your moral codes, practice expressing your emotions, and try to live in the ways truest to them. You'll recognize that people have lives, not careers. You’ll concede that there is no need to get over losses. You'll come to believe that the best way to find love is to be your best self, as often as possible.
And what about Wild? Wild isn't your kind of book, either, though perhaps not as far off the path as Torch. But if you read two of her books, might as well finish what you start, right? I say go for the gold.
Wild is not quite a travel memoir but I know your reacting to the idea of this book like it is. That's OK. You know that even when you travel halfway around the globe, you still have to bring yourself with you. You don't read to escape, you read to dig in and occupy and look closely around in those places within you, not around you, that need your eyes. Some people just do this on the Pacific Coast Trail and, lucky you, one of them wrote about it.
Even if you get nothing out of Wild, you really need to read the part about hiking boots. When your only coping mechanism is to walk from one end of the Pacific Coast Trail to the other, you realize pretty quickly that if your feet hurt, a lot, all the time, the only thing to blame is your boots that are a size too small.
So read the book, Tim, even if you only pay attention to that part. It'll be worth it. You'll get to make some silly puns about soles and sole-searching and I know you like that kind of thing. Making silly puns reminds you of speaking Japanese.
Once you get everyone around you to roll their eyes, go buy some new sneakers. Listen to your feet. Splurge a little. You won't need the money next year more than you need your runs into Davis Square, I can guarantee that.
Yours,
Tim
