I don’t do a lot of “wrapping up the year” rituals. I used to, and while they had value for me then, I find it much more useful to do just a couple of things to put a bow on the current year and look forward to the next. One of those things is talking about the works which made an impact on me in some capacity.

Proclaiming anything the “best” feels like it puts a lot of pressure on whatever the thing in question is. My best is not your best, and what does “best” mean, anyway? Especially if you have not consumed every possible contender within a group, you can’t really measure best. Instead, I prefer to label these things favorites. They’re the things which stuck with me or that resonated in some way that, when I reach this time of year, I recall something from it, be it a message or story or feeling.

I’m offering up three categories of favorites this year. One is the roundup of my favorite personal works of writing, one is my roundup of favorite reads this year, and the last is my list of some favorite music I listened to this year.

My Favorite Writing in 2023

I took a break from doing as much freelance writing this year as I have in the past. School and parenting took some priority in my free time, as did doing a lot more presenting for groups.

• I wrote a pair of posts that connected with one another very early in 2023 that I linked to heavily throughout the year: When did YA paperback books become $15.99, to which way too many people responded that teenagers–those for whom YA is written–can just get those books at the library if they cannot afford to buy them. What those well-meaning commenters did not see or did not want to see is that those very books are often banned at the library or may never be purchased because of silent censorship.
• I did a deep dive into the mess that is the board of Elmwood Park Public Library in suburban Chicago. This piece was eye-opening, and I’m grateful I got to meet a couple of the folks instrumental in holding the library’s leadership accountable this fall.
• What does one decade of the New York Times YA Bestsellers list tell us about the changing landscape in YA literature?
• One of the pieces I’d been wanting to write for a long time finally came to fruition: Why don’t most library masters programs require an ethics course?
• A look back at the United Daughters of the Confederacy and their efforts to ban ad censor books they did not like–and how that history is repeated in today’s Moms for Liberty.
• I gave the microphone over to Central York High School students to talk about why they were organized in protest against book bans in their school…again.
• With the rise of book bans and protests agains drag queen story times at libraries, how did Pride Month stack up in public libraries?
• A peek behind the curtain of BookmarkED, a “solution” to banned books, which was created by someone who championed book ban legislation in Texas.
• I broke the story of how SkyTree Book Fairs are just a “clever” rebranding of Brave Books’s Book Fairs.
• The Prom was canceled at one of the local-to-me high schools by district administration, and this is the story of why–and how students fought back. The musical was reinstated and will go on in the spring.
• This piece about how YA continues to make Shakespeare fresh, relevant, and fun was one I loved writing.

My Favorite Books in 2023

Despite feeling like I didn’t read much this year, I sure did. Even with several months of reading only a book or two, I managed to finish 90, or about two per week. Not bad, given how much reading I did for school, too.

There is an interesting and odd trend to my favorites this year: water. There are a lot of books set in or near water.

I am not limiting my favorites list to just books published in 2023. Some of these will be backlist because I read a little bit of everything. These aren’t in any order. A * before a title means I listened on audio and recommend that format if you like to listen.

Chlorine by Jade Song follows a teen girl who is convinced she is a mermaid. This is a story of transformation and queerness and just how terrible high school can be–especially if you’re different in any capacity.

Whalefall by Daniel Kraus asks and answers one question: what would really happen if you got swallowed by a sperm whale (it is also very much a story of grief). This hard scifi read is fast paced and kept me wanting to talk about it.

A Death in Door County by Annelise Ryan is a cozy adventure mystery following Morgan, a 30-something who inherited her parents’ bookshop/metaphysical/magic store in Door County, Wisconsin. She’s a cryptozoologist and the story is about her recruitment to solve several mysterious deaths possibly tied to a lake monster. This is just fun–admittedly, the most boomer-esque 30-something you’ll read, but the premise is good enough to overlook that.

She Is A Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran is your read if you want a haunted house story that is also about colonialism. It’s genuinely creepy.

*How Far The Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler is an immersive memoir-cum-science nonfiction book that tells the story of growing up queer and biracial. You’ll learn about Imbler’s life, as well as ten fascinating sea creatures like the goldfish, the octopus who would kill herself to save her spawn, and more.

*What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo is a mental health memoir about life with complex post traumatic stress disorder. Foo’s story is so generous, and I appreciated how much was shared about what did–and did not–help in managing it.

*Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond should be required reading for understanding inequity in America. I cannot stop thinking about one of his points about how the left, even when their policies are passed, fail to keep up the momentum to ensure those policies remain and why that’s connected to so many quick actions to reverse course by the right.

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang is one of the buzziest books on this list and it earned that buzz. What happens when a rising Asian author dies and her white friend pretends to have written her manuscript? I am not usually one who cares for books about the book world, but this had me start to finish.

One’s Company by Ashley Hutson is a novel about obsession and specifically, Bonnie’s obsession with Three’s Company. We’re not talking just collecting memorabilia. We’re talking she’s constructed a house to live out the show in her real life. A wild and potent story of grief and loss.

*The Art Thief by Michael Finkel is one I’ve written about quite a bit, but this true crime story is about an art thief and the lengths gone to feed his obsession.

Just Do This One Thing For Me by Laura Zimmerman is the sophomore effort by a YA author who is easily on the top of my favorites list. This story follows a teen girl whose con-artist mother claims she’s traveling to a concert in Mexico but instead, accidentally dies. Now the girl needs to not only take care of her siblings alone, but she must cover for all of the lies her mother has live on. It’s set in Wisconsin, and even though it tackles some heavy stuff, it is also at times laught out loud funny. It’s midwest YA to a T.

Finally, *Conspirituality by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker is a must-read if you’re at all engaged in the wellness world. This is a book exposing the grifts within it, including some of the biggest players in the field. One of my major takeaways was how messed up International Yoga Day is, including its ties to far-right Indian Nationalism.

My Favorite Music in 2023

I made a goal this year to listen to one new-to-me and newer album per week. This was to grow my music catalog and knowledge. It was a very hard challenge, and I lost steam over the summer. I did end up listening to dozens of new things, though, and even if the exact challenge is going to look different, I’ll be doing something similar in 2024.

Like with books, some of these are 2023 albums, but some are older. I kept to listening to things released in the last 3 years. You can dig into the entire roundup of what I listened to on Spotify here. Some of the highlights include:

Love Your Face by Savoy Motel is for fans of 70s-ish groove pop.

Looking for pop punk that is a LOT OF FUN? Then you’ll dig past // present // future by meet me @ the altar.

A lot of folks may be familiar with hard rock band Maneskin from Eurovision but they were new to me. I really enjoy Rush!

If you like upbeat folk music, Dustbowl Revival’s Is It You, Is It Me is worth a listen.

Indie female solo with pop feels but a wide range of style? Dig into Blondshell’s self-title album. “Veronica Mars” is a killer lead song.

A friend recommend the band High Waisted to me after asking for music like that of The Hippos (ugh, so good). I was NOT disappointed with this surf rock album, Sick of Saying Sorry. It looks like there is a brand new album out this month I’m going to be listening to, too!

Of course, I’m going to tell you how great Matchbox 20’s Where The Light Goes is. It’s new, though the band is far from new to me. But a pop rock band still being this great so deep into their career is worth continuing to shout about. (A side note: several male-led bands or soloists I like have been in my years for decades, and it is so neat to see them go from angry young men to more mature, been-to-theapy-to-work-through-stuff in their later work).

 

No formal post today, as I’m in the midst of catching up on homework for school (I guess I never noted here that I’m going back to school for a second masters–this time in counseling). But last week I had the honor and privilege of being a guest on WNYC’s On The Media podcast as part of a show on book challenges and bans across the country.

You can tune in here.

If you’ve been looking for resources on managing book challenges and bans, I’ve been writing about tools, resources, and the state of the situation right now. I’ve pulled much of it into a handy and shareable Instagram carousel.

Happy season two day of The Baby-Sitters Club on Netflix. I’m so glad that this series got a second season, and I’m eager to see how the new sitters are introduced. The first season did such a tremendous service to the books and added so much to make the stories more contemporary, without ever once losing the spirit of what made the books special.

I’ve written quite a bit about The Baby-Sitters Club. This includes a couple of in-depth, longform pieces about the series and why it endures. I love looking at this series as a fan, but also as someone who doesn’t consider themselves as part of the fandom — this distinction didn’t quite click for me until I read We Are The Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers edited by Marisa Crawford and Megan Milks. There are people like me who loved the books and appreciate them both for their staying power and for the nostalgia they bring up, and then there are people who are deeply invested in the fandom, seeking out opportunities to connect with other fans, to create fan fiction or art work, and to dig into theories and ideas about who these characters would turn out to be (if they ever leave 8th grade!). The anthology is super thought-provoking and worth picking up if you have any interest in the books at all, and it made for a great refresher before the new season of the adaptation.

Whether you’re a fan or BSC-curious or you’ve got young readers in your life who are passionate about the books (or their rad modern comic adaptations), you likely know the original series has 131 entries, alternating perspectives among the various Club members. The series launched in 1986 and ran through 1999. Ann M. Martin wrote the first 35 original books, and afterward, many were ghostwritten; you can often figure out who the ghostwriter is by the dedication page.

There are more books than those, though, as well as a number of iterations from those first novels. Let’s take a peek at some of the spin-off series, the additional series, the comics, and the one-off titles that you may or may not know.

 

 

Baby-Sitters Club Series Books

The Super Specials — 15 Titles Between 1988 and 1998

One of the things that fans love about this series is that the sitters never age. They’re in eighth grade forever, so even though club members would have been well into their 20s by the time the series wraps up, they never actually age. This means they go on about a million jobs — and adventures — over the course of a year that never ends.

The Super Specials were longer books than the OG series titles, and rather than being told from a single viewpoint, they shifted. The books were typically set on a longer adventure, so there was more time and space dedicated to preserving the memories of whatever said adventure was. Some of the titles in the Super Specials included the time that Stoneybrook was hit by a massive snowstorm and everyone was trapped in their homes, the time when the sitters went with Mallory’s family to Sea Side for vacation, and when all of the babysitters went on an RV trip across the country.

These books are still available to purchase, including in ebook format, and they’ve taken on their new looks in paperback. It’s a more comic rendition, which should appeal to new readers (though forever the originals, with their white cover and image of the sitters on their adventure, are going to stay my favorites).

 

The Mysteries — 36 Titles Between 1991 and 1998

This may have been my first encounter with mystery as a genre, as I was in my prime BSC reading years when these titles emerged. As with the original books, these titles rotated among the sitters for whose point of view it came from, and these weren’t any longer or more “bonus” titles than the initial series. Instead, what was added was a minor mystery thread through the story.

What is amazing is how much was happening in Stoneybrook and how no one seemed to think there were bigger issues going on — lots of vandalism, a whole lot of suspicious folks who seemed like they were going to commit burglary, and a lot of ghosts and missing children. That these rag tag eighth graders were on it, well, it’s impressive is all. I suspect that was what made these books so appealing, the idea that young people could be the heroes (and, of course, we can attribute that and the Mysteries to Nancy Drew and similar sleuths in children’s literature throughout time).

You can definitely still pick up many of these books on Amazon, either via ebook where they’re really inexpensive at $2-$5 a pop or print, where they’re a little pricier.

 

The Super Mysteries — 4 Titles Between 1995 and 1997

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I can imagine the meeting that happened to make this short series of books happen. There’s a big round table at Scholastic headquarters and someone suggests melding the Super Specials books with the mystery books. Then you get a longer book, as well as a book that rotates narrators within the text, AND you can include a bigger, bolder mystery for the sitters to solve.

What makes the Super Mysteries stand out, too, is they’re all seasonally-themed. The first three are Halloween/creepy/horror-y mysteries, taking place at a haunted house; Salem, Massachusetts; and in Stoneybrook, where there’s been a series of “accidents.” The final title in the Super Mysteries series takes place at Christmas.

I don’t remember these books at all, but looking at the publication dates, it makes quite a bit of sense. I was in middle school during these years and while I sure didn’t avoid BSC books, I wasn’t actively seeking them out like I was in elementary school. You can snag these still in ebook and paperback.

 

The California Diaries — 16 Titles Between 1997 and 2000

One of the founding club members, Dawn — who I’ve always had a soft sport for and am especially enamored with in the Netflix take — was from California. This is a huge piece of her character development throughout the series and she travels back and forth because her parents are divorced. This series is a spin off, following Dawn and her California friends.

What makes this collection especially interesting is that it not only tackles darker topics than the originals, but it allows the characters to age. Martin noted that she loved writing the BSC books, and she loved that they could be appealing for younger readers. But what would happen as readers grew up and as the characters themselves magically could evolve beyond their 13-year-old selves? This series was the answer.

Dawn is the only OG sitter, and titles cycle through a number of new voices. You can still purchased these titles. This series hit well after my BSC years so I never looked at them, but I’m curious how they hold up now and more, how they might compare to the kinds of YA that began hitting shelves in these years, too (hello Speak and Monster and The Perks of Being a Wallflower).

Also, how great the cover is SO DIFFERENT from the other series? It’s clear this is a whole different flavor of story.

Friends Forever — 12 Titles in 1999 and 2000

In this series, we see the sitters preparing to graduate middle school finally! There are a ton of changes happening with each of the members, and the books cycle through each of their voices as they experience huge family changes, makeups and breakups, and what happens when you have to choose between a crush and a best friend.

These are an extension of the original series, offering readers a look at “and then what…”

You can still pick these books up in print or in digital formats. The covers are way different than the original series and I’m not a huge fan — they’re super dated because of the style the models are wearing.

Perhaps that adds to the nostalgia? Hard to say. These books were out when I was myself graduating junior high and in my freshman year in high school but I never picked them up.

 

 

Friends Forever: Special — 2 Titles in 1999 and 2000

But do the babysitters ever graduate middle school? They sure do, and it happens in the final entry in the Forever Friends: Special edition. There were only two of these and in the tradition of previous Super Specials, these were longer books and rotated among the characters. The first book explores the sitters who are leaving the club and what new adventures they’re destined for. The second and final has the team attending their big graduation day.

Again with the less-than-awesome covers on these two titles. Part of it might be in addition to the styles being dated that the models don’t look like middle schoolers. I think the Netflix adaptation really made clear when characters look the right age because they are the right age.

You can grab these as ebooks or if you want to, you can spend something like $900 on the original paperbacks, which seems a little wild given the ebooks are $3. But to each!

 

 

Special Edition: Readers’ Requests — 3 Titles Between 1992 and 1994

I’ve been purposeful in not using “the girls” or other gendered language to describe the babysitters in this post because not all of the members are girls. This short series features Logan, the male associate babysitter, as well as Shannon, another of the associate members. These books were requested by readers, since neither associate had their own titles within the original series.

Logan, apparently, did a lot of weird things in his books. He was teased by the football team first because of his work with the babysitters, but then in the following book, he apparently gets involved in a gang? I didn’t read these because I wasn’t interested at the time — and I do really remember that — so I can’t explain the big flex there.

Shannon’s story follows as her mom chaperones a school trip to Paris and discovers Shannon might not be the good girl her mom thinks she is.

You can snag these on Amazon in ebook format and in some used paperback editions at non-astronomical prices.

 

Portrait Collections — 6 Titles Between 1994 and 1998

Why is it books that were essentially scrapbooks from the perspective of characters were so big in the 90s and then disappeared and we don’t see them anymore? I know the answer is that we simply don’t have series in the same way we did then, but it seems like some of the mega-popular series today would do well to expand to these sorts of ephemeral books. Peeta could easily have had his own cookbook, for example.

This short series allowed each of the babysitters who took part to write their own autobiography. Talk about fandom heaven — you could really get to know the girls beyond the basic info at the beginning of each original title and see them outside the context of the club.

As someone who was a huge Abby fan when she entered the series, I don’t remember if I actually read her edition or not. I might need to do so, since these are all available as ebooks.

 

 

Graphic Novels — 11 Titles (so far) Between 2006 and 2022

The original graphic novel series, adapted by Raina Telgemeier, hit shelves when I was working in libraries and it made me wonder whether or not the series would still resonate with young readers. They were released in 2006 through 2008, and they were in black and white. I don’t remember if I ended up buying them or not, though it did make me wander down the catalog into what of the original series were available still in the library system.

Fast forward to 2015 and the same four graphic novels were re-released, this time in full color. After Telgemeier’s rereleased titles published, Gail Galligan took over, bringing the series titles into full-color comic format from 2017. There are books under contract still, with at least one more publishing in 2022. I suspect because of the growing popularity of the series, between Netflix and millennials like me who are introducing their kids to these books, it won’t be stopping any time soon. Hooray for a whole new format to experience the series.

While Gail Galligan has done most of the newer titles, Gabriela Epstein was the artist behind Claudia and the New Girl (2021) and Chan Chau for Kristy and the Snobs (also 2021).

 

Baby-Sitters Little Sister — 122 Titles Between 1988 and 2000

I really liked this series growing up, too, despite the fact I found Karen to be pretty obnoxious. I’d check out a huge stack and knock ’em out in a couple of hours, really bulking up my summer reading club numbers.

Karen is Kristy’s step sister, and she’s much younger than the sitters themselves.

In addition to the original series, the Little Sister series also had six Super Specials (longer books, of course), along with a couple of scrapbooks and activity book one-offs. How much Scholastic was able to create these extensions is pretty impressive, given the next series in this roundup.

There are new graphic novel adaptations of the Little Sister books, too, illustrated by Katy Farina. The first six books of the series were also reprinted this year with new, updated covers.

You can get all of the series on Amazon in ebook, and if you dig, you can find the original covers in used copies of the non-reissued first books in the series (at a price…). I won’t lie: the new illustrated covers for the reissues aren’t my favorite by any stretch of the imagination. But then again, these aren’t for me, so it’s likely they’re super appealing to elementary school readers!

 

The Kids in Ms Coleman’s Class — 12 Titles Between 1995 and 1998

Get this: they made an extension of the Little Sister series, making it a some-kind-of-cousin-removed from the original series and yet, still part of the extended universe. This short series follows the kids in Ms. Coleman’s class, aka: Karen Brewer’s classmates.

They go to a zoo! They have a spelling bee! They have a snow war! This second grade class had a lot of adventures, and the series follows the various characters, as opposed to being solely from Karen’s perspective.

These were reissued in 2016 in paperback, so you can get those still, but you’re also able to snap up the ebooks at an even cheaper price.

I have zero recollection of this series, and part of me wonders if this was purposeful on the part of Scholastic. They don’t look exactly like the Little Sister books, which may have made them more inviting for readers who weren’t interested in that series. For readers OF the series, it may never have even hit their radar (and also, by 1995, I was not in the Little Sister demographic for readers, which definitely is part of it).

 

Baby-Sitters Club Stand Alone Books

I did not read any of these and have zero memory of them — save The Summer Before, which I absolutely purchased with my budget as a librarian and put a hold on immediately.

So rather than try to flub my way through, I’m going to rely on Amazon descriptions. There aren’t too many, but all of these books were fun additions and extensions to the series, which are things we still don’t quite see today when it comes to series books. (If I were thinking about this in about 2018, I’d talk about the lack of BSC coloring books, since those were a popular extension in some series).

The Summer Before (2010)

The BSC returns in this fantastic prequel from Newbery Honor author Ann M. Martin.

Before there was the Baby-Sitters Club, there were four girls named Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, and Stacey McGill. As they start the summer before seventh grade (also before they start the BSC), each of them is on the cusp of a big change. Kristy is still hung up on hoping that her father will return to her family. Mary Anne has to prove to her father that she’s no longer a little girl who needs hundreds of rules. Claudia is navigating her first major crush on a boy. And Stacey is leaving her entire New York City life behind…

Postcard Book (1991)

Literally, a collection of Baby-Sitters Club postcards.

Ann M. Martin: The Story of the Author of The Baby-Sitters Club (1993)

A look at the life of the creator of “The Baby-Sitters Club” series discusses her childhood in Princeton, New Jersey, her own babysitting adventures, her first published book, and her family.

Baby-Sitters Guide to Baby-Sitting (1993)

The members of the Baby-sitters Club and real baby-sitters offer advice on starting a club, changing diapers, helping kids to bed, what to do in an emergency, and other topics. Original.

The Complete Guide to The Baby-Sitters Club (1996)

A guide to the popular series contains a map of Stoneybrook, along with eight sections of facts about the club, the club’s members, and the families of Stoneybrook

Secret Santa (1994)

Kristy, Claudia, and the rest of the Baby-sitters Club work hard to make one little girl’s Christmas holidays the best ever, in an entertaining package that includes a storybook, greeting cards, letters, and a friendship necklace.

Chain Letter (1993)

While Kristy is in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy, she receives a chain letter for telling secrets, which throughout the summer circulates around the United States to her fellow club members, who are having better summer vacations than Kristy.While Kristy is in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy, she receives a chain letter for telling secrets, which throughout the summer circulates around the United States to her fellow club members, who are having better summer vacations than Kristy

Trivia and Puzzle Fun Book by Adam and Kara Adamo (1992)

A collection of trivia questions and puzzles tests readers knowledge of the Baby-sitters Club books, asking for such information as the name of Stacey’s teddy bear, the principal of Stoneybrook Middle School, and more.

 

 

Did I miss any? Did you have any favorites growing up or as an adult? I’d also love to hear if you’re a parent or teacher or librarian, whether or not you’ve shared these with your young readers and their response! 

 

This is not really a book-related post.

If you’re a regular reader of Stacked (and if you are, thank you! At times I am not sure anyone reads book blogs anymore), you may have noticed that I haven’t written much here lately. This past twelve months my posts have often defaulted to book lists and short snippets of books I’m currently trying to read (books I usually don’t end up finishing). And in the past month or so, I’ve hardly blogged at all.

We’ve reached such a grim milestone with the pandemic – the United States has hit 500,000 deaths and we’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of my city largely shutting down. I know a lot of us will be taking stock of the ways our lives have changed in the past year. I remember a friend speculating in March 2020, when the focus was on “flattening the curve,” if the restaurants would be open and it would be safe enough for us to celebrate her birthday in May. There was some talk of taking bets on the question. Looking back on it now, that conversation seems laughable.

In the past year, I have taken no vacations and have traveled only once outside my immediate area, hopping a plane with an N-95 and a huge amount of trepidation in the fall to help take care of my grandmother for four days. Her 90th birthday celebration with her nearly 100-person family had been cancelled earlier in the year due to the pandemic. The year before the pandemic, I traveled to Michigan, Ireland, and Curacao, plus lots of trips across the huge and beautiful state of Texas. Since March 2020, I have been in to my work office a handful of times. I haven’t set foot inside a restaurant, something I used to do at least once a week. I have yet to meet my niece, who lives far away and will turn one year old soon. Sometimes these realities remind me of the joke I’ve seen across the internet – what are the people whose whole personality is to travel and go to restaurants going to do now that they can’t? Of course that’s not really my whole personality, but I’ve also found that I’m struggling to enjoy the other things I normally do that are pandemic-safe: reading, writing, running, playing video games. I worry how much the pandemic has affected me permanently.

And then there was last week. Texans often get some flak for our inability to withstand cold temperatures, but last week was beyond my imagination, both in terms of the weather and the failure of our infrastructure. It reached one degree Fahrenheit here (that’s -17 Celsius), and we received ice, topped with six inches of snow, topped with some more ice, over several days. As a result of a statewide failure to prioritize the health and safety of Texans by winterizing our power production and distribution systems, 4.5 million people in our state were without power and heat in their homes for up to five days. Many of those then lost water; all of us lost safe water and had to boil for days. People died.

Community members stepped up to help one another, including several of our stellar city councilmembers, and I’d like to say it was inspiring to witness, but it wasn’t really. It was just exhausting. And I’m one of the lucky ones – all my household endured was extreme conservation of energy, a boil water notice, and the constant, unending worry about everyone I know and love in Texas for a week straight. This last is something I have become accustomed to.

Recently, I found myself thinking about what a lie disaster movies are. I’ve had first-hand experience with two very different kinds of disasters recently, and the primary feeling during both is simply: boredom. There are no exciting action sequences featuring daring rescues or fiery showdowns with arch-villains responsible for the disasters. Instead, we just sit at home, many of us without even a job to occupy our time now, watching tv, scrolling twitter, worrying and waiting for the chance to see our loved ones again, to be safe again. Last week, lots of us didn’t even have the tv. For those with kids, the childcare routine has become all-consuming and stagnant at the same time, as this widely-read New York Times piece showed. The richness of life has faded.

What I miss most, at this moment, are the crowds. The appeal of a crowd is something I had only recently begun to appreciate before March 2020. A shy kid, I avoided them as a matter of course for much of my life. But a series of events a few years ago led me to venture out more; I met more people and tried more things and became more comfortable. And now a crowd is a shot of life: it’s the press of bodies at a concert, moving to the same music and mouthing the same words; it’s being with friends in a popular restaurant, picking up bits of interesting conversations at other tables in the midst of focusing on your own; it’s a standing room only comedy show where every time the person behind you laughs, you can feel a bit of their breath; it’s the glut of innertubes on an overcrowded river full of laughing people getting sunburned and a bit too drunk. It’s being able to see and hear and feel and belong with others. It’s knowing you’re part of the big human world and that you have a place in it, connected to everyone else.

The last time I felt that way was at Austin City Limits in October 2019. Lizzo was performing on a mid-sized stage, the planners having apparently missed the memo that she was huge now. I was lucky to get a pretty good spot to watch her perform, and she was fantastic. At times the crowd was so dense that it felt like my feet weren’t even on the ground. Everyone was dancing and screaming and jockeying for position. Everyone was in love. Moving through this crowd after the show ended to meet up with friends was almost impossible. In the midst of it, my phone was stolen, and it pretty much killed the rest of the night for me. But now, this moment feels like a privilege. I wonder how much longer it will be before an experience like this is safe again – but even more, I wonder how much longer before it will feel safe again.

I don’t have a whole lot of wisdom to share about a year of our lives gone to this. I just know that with each day we live like this, with each new disaster that piles on top of it, it feels less like a blip we must simply get through and more like something that is changing us. I think about how I’ll talk about this time to the next generation who didn’t live through it, whether they’ll be able to fully comprehend what it was like. That it was sameness, every day, with nothing new to distract us from the constant worry for our loved ones’ lives. I don’t know how quickly – or even if – I’ll feel like I’ve returned to normal at some point. I do know that I’ll be anticipating the next pandemic for the rest of my life, and that makes me feel old and sad. Perhaps these thoughts resonate with you too.

Above all, if you are reading this, I hope you are well, and safe, and warm. I hope you get to talk to the people you love. I hope you have maintained some connections or forged new ones. And I hope through this blog, you feel a connection with me.

A few things (some book-related and some not) that are sustaining me during the pandemic:

Nonfiction about human history

I’ve been finding it difficult to get into fiction right now, but I have found a niche within nonfiction that has hooked me: human history, specifically history of the human species itself, not individuals or small groups within it. I really enjoyed Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and Tribe by Sebastian Junger earlier this year, and I’m diving into Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature today.

 

Nonviolent, story-driven video games

I’m a mostly casual gamer – I succumbed to the lures of Candy Crush and Angry Birds during their heydays, and have kept one streak of Words With Friends going for 104 days so far. When I was a teen, I loved puzzle-based computer games like Myst. As an adult, I mostly stayed away from modern video games because they seemed really violent, and I’m becoming more and more like a senior citizen when it comes to violent media (no thank you). I decided to replay all the Myst games during the lockdown (they hold up!), and afterward, I went looking for similar games. Thanks to my partner, who is an avid gamer and plays extremely broadly, I discovered a treasure trove of modern games that I’ve loved playing, some for the Xbox and some for the computer.

The most Myst-like is Quern, which involves a mysterious story set in a beautiful land that unfolds as you solve various creative puzzles that build upon each other. As a fan of the Room games for mobile, I also really enjoyed The House of Da Vinci. And, most exciting of all, I found a treasure trove of interesting science fiction stories that play out in video games that involve no shooting, blood, or death (or scantily dressed women): The Talos Principle, Observation, Tacoma, and The Station. Other sci fi games that are a bit less story-driven but involve some really fun physics-based puzzles are Qube 2 and The Turing Test. These games stretch my mind with their puzzles, fire my imagination with their stories, and impress me with the graphics.

 

Vegetarian cooking

I’ve been thinking about the ethics of vegetarianism for the past few years, and after reading a brief snippet in Sapiens about the many harms caused by our dependence on meat (both environmentally and with regards to animal welfare), I decided it was a good time to try it out more seriously. I have more time to focus on cooking meals, even breakfast, and have tried out a number of vegetarian and vegan meal kits and recipes. I’m glad my tastes have expanded a lot in the past few years and I’ve found I enjoy bean, tofu, and chickpea-based meals just as much as I do many meat dishes – plus they’re easier for me to make well (I was never great at judging meat doneness), are generally cheaper, and often have more interesting flavor profiles (I’m using a much greater variety of spices, produce, and oils/vinegars than I ever did when I cooked with meat). I haven’t eliminated meat entirely, but I’ve settled into a pretty good rhythm of only eating meat when I order in or someone else cooks the meal.

 

Dogs, dogs, and more dogs

Within my immediate family, there is one dog (the light of my life and the cutest thing in the world). Within my partner’s immediate family, there are nine (seven near us and two about an hour away). Two of those nine are puppies just a few months old. The dogs are a variety of sizes and breeds; it’s like a potluck of the best dogs you’ll ever meet. Luckily, these dogs live in a house with a nice yard, so they get to run around and we get to visit them safely. They also get to visit us on occasion, and if you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see my feed is almost entirely dogs now. As it should be.

 

Schitt’s Creek

I think what I like best about this show (aside from how funny it is) is that it’s really hopeful about people’s ability to change. The Roses are selfish, lazy, entitled, and narrow-minded when they arrive in Schitt’s Creek, but by the end, they’re all more thoughtful and consciously trying to be better people. I love when stories show this happening in a believable way. I think non-fictional humans are capable of the same kind of transformation (I think I’m a much better person than I was ten years ago, for example), and it’s nice to see it play out so uncynically in a comedy.