34/365

books loved in twenty eighteen (sure to be revisited again and again):

sing, unburied, sing (jesmyn ward) (the way she puts words together makes me want to lie down on the floor and cry like a baby)

the shell collector (anthony doerr) (an extraordinary book filled with extraordinary short stories that had me underlining words and sentences and entire passages right and left)

half of a yellow sun (chimamanda ngozi adichie) (I fall deep into her stories, her characters, deep, deep)

catalog of unabashed gratitude (ross gay) (if I could wear his poems like perfume, I would)

there there (tommy orange) (polyphonic and beautiful and so incredibly important)

diane arbus: in the beginning (diane arbus, jeff rosenheim) (I saw this exhibit back in the summer of 2016-- it left me speechless and I wanted the exhibit book for all the reasons you want an exhibit book after you've just experienced an exhibit that leaves you speechless. but really, I wanted the book for one photograph and one photograph only. I couldn't afford it, I can never afford the exhibit books. that's just the way it is. I've never forgotten that photograph, though. and then I was recently gifted this book by my better half and when I opened it up, there it was-- that photograph-- and it still moves me just as much as it ever did. but what I love more than anything, maybe even more than that one photograph, if I'm honest, are the lists. diane arbus made lists. messes of words scribbled in pencil. and they live on the pages of this book and I can't stop looking at them, I cannot)