It was not easy for me to concentrate in 2024. I have been fairly obsessed with what has gone on in Israel since October 7, 2023, and it was hard to do what I preach: to settle down with a book and to just breathe, to sit quietly, to shut out the noise of the world. I took three courses towards the Certificate of Narrative Medicine (offered by Columbia University), and some of my reading was guided by readings from that program. Some of my reading also stemmed from a six-week Moral Injury workshop I offered to vets, and some was a way of trying to process the events of 10/7.
But the majority of my reading was just organic, or because I'd gone down a rabbit hole (new or old, like the Holocaust, especially because of my trip to Poland this summer), or in a couple instances because I had a craving to re-read something. Here's to a new year of reading…
Agmon, Yair and Mevorach, Oriya. One Day in October: Forty Heroes, Forty Stories
Akbar, Kaveh. Martyr!
Baldwin, James. Giovanni's Room
Banville, John. The Book of Evidence
Barnes, Julian. Sense of an Ending
Bartov, Omer. Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz
Butler, Blake. Molly
Cunningham, Michael. Traveling Light
Debreczeni, Jozsef. Cold Crematorium: Reporting From the Land of Auschwitz
Didi-Huberman, Georges. Bark
Dolan, Naoise. The Happy Couple
Dubus, Andre III. Such Kindness
Englander, Nathan. Kaddish.com
Ernaux, Annie. The Young Man
Ernaux, Annie. Happening
Erpenbeck, Jenny. Kairos
Everett, Percival. James
Gluck, Robert. Margery Kempe
Gunty, Tess. The Rabbit Hutch
Halevi, Yossi Klein. Letters to a Palestinian Friend
Hermann, Nellie. The Cure For Grief
July, Miranda. All Fours
Junger, Sebastian. In My Time Of Dying
Junger, Sebastian. Tribe
Kawakami, Mieko. Heaven
Kingsolver, Barbara. Demon Copperhead
Kingsnorth, Paul. Savage Gods
Korazim, Rachel, Ed. Shiva: Poems of October 7
Lerner, Betsy. Shred Sisters
Levy, Bernard-Henri. Israel Alone
Long Soldier, Layli. Whereas
Louis, Édouard. History of Violence
McCann, Colum. Let the Great World Spin
McCann, Colum. American Mother
McCann, Colum. This Side of Brightness
Machado, Carmen Maria. In the Dream House
Malamud, Bernard. The Fixer
NDiaye, Marie. Self Portrait in Green
Nolan, Megan. Acts of Desperation
November, Yehoshua. The Concealment of Endless Light
O'Brien, Tim. America Fantastica
O'Connell, Mark. A Thread of Violence
Pastan, Linda. Traveling Light
Rankine, Claudia. Don't Let Me Be Lonely
Susann, Jacqueline. Valley of the Dolls
Toibin, Colm. Long Island
Turner, Brian. Here Bullet
Turner, Brian. Phantom Noise
Turner, Brian. My Life As a Foreign Country
Van Der Wouden, Yael. The Safekeep
Yaron, Lee. 10/7: 100 Human Stories