I was once a voracious reader.  I could suck down a 500-page book in a day if I didn’t have anything else to do.  I loved it.  Then Life got in the way in the form of a baby and then later, severe mental illness and the treatments for it.  Until I rekindled the reading habit, the last thing I had read was the Harry Potter series in 2003 when my son was alternately power-nursing for 45 minutes at a time and clinging to me while he napped in between feedings.  I propped myself up on the couch for weeks with the baby on one side and a book on the other.

Between parenting, my mental health, and the drugs I was given to treat it, reading became out of the question for over a decade.  Not for lack of trying.  It was like my brain was made of stone and the words just wouldn’t penetrate.  I struggled to process the syntax of even the simplest sentences.  Even books I had read before and loved proved too difficult to read.

Finally, I got off the bad cocktail of drugs and “woke up” after microdosing LSD.  I discovered I had a working brain again that could actually process information.  It was wonderful.  I wouldn’t get back into reading again for another couple of years after waking up because I was focused on other things, but the stage was set for me to resume reading following the episode that sent me to the hospital in 2019.

I didn’t read a lot at first.  It took practice to ‘remember’ how to process information in such a manner.  My first book was The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist who works in trauma.  It blew my mind from a therapeutic standpoint and greased the mental cogs in my brain responsible for reading, making me want to do it more.  I only read a few more books that year (2020), but at least I was doing it.

Fast forward to 2022, and I had joined a spiritual book club at the UU church my husband and I attend.  Each month, we read a new spiritually-oriented book and discussed it, which means I have gotten quite a bit of reading done this year on a wide variety of topics.  I was also reading on my own, which means that I read 17 books this year, a feat I’m quite proud of after going so long without doing it much at all.

I was always good at book reviews, even if they’re short, so I want to give a brief synopsis of each of the books I’ve read this year.  I got a great deal out of most of them, maybe you will too.

Thich Nhat Hanh: The Joy of Full Consciousness by Rachel Cartier

I wrote a whole blog post about this book, so I’ll leave you to read that for the most part.  The title of the book explains its topic: it’s about how to live a fully conscious life that leads to joyfulness.  I found it a wonderfully refreshing take on many of the things that trouble all people in life and was just the thing for me to read at the time.

The Book of Jones by Ralph Steadman

A short book filled with scrappy illustrations and tales of the inimitable Jones, cat of Hunter S. Thompson.  A must for any cat lover.

Islam: What Non-Muslims Should Know by John Kaltner

The title of the book says what it is, and it delivers.  As an American, I knew extremely little about Islam other than what was on the news, and I knew that was a false picture.  Therefore it was very enlightening to read this book written for non-Muslims.  I had a much better understanding of the important elements of Islam, something I think is vitally important in our increasingly global culture.  This is a worthy read for any non-Muslim wanting to learn more about Islam.

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

This is another book I felt compelled to write an entire blog post about, I was so moved by it.  I felt as though she were observing my own life and recording it via her thoughts and writing, and I know many who have read this book feel the same way.  I will read this book again and again for the rest of my life, it is so inspiring (probably every winter).

The Seven Sermons to the Dead by C.G. Jung

This is the shortest book I read this year, but is perhaps the densest subject matter to digest.  It is deeply mystical in nature, reading at times as though Jung were channeling rather than merely writing.  I have read it twice and will have to read it again many times in order to glean the multiple meanings from the writings.  Jung was a visionary of the human psyche and soul, and these “sermons” contain important nuggets of his wisdom.

Carl Jung: A Little Book of Essential Quotes by Little Books of Wisdom

This is exactly what it says it is: a small collection of Carl Jung’s essential quotes.  While the book is short, as are most of the quotes, the profundity and depth contained within Jung’s words cannot be overstated.  If you are a collector of profound quotes, this is a worthy addition to your collection.

The Buddha and the Borderline by Kiera Van Gelder

Ms. Gelder tells a frank and harrowing tale of her struggle with borderline personality disorder and how she ultimately came to bring that disorder under more control through following Buddhist techniques.  While I myself do not have BPD, I display some of its characteristics at times, and so I found myself relating to the subject matter quite frequently.  I’m also Buddhist, so that was a point of relation as well.  The book was written before the modern era of traumatic content and trigger warnings, and so it doesn’t have one when it really needs one, but it was still an excellent read, one that I would recommend to anyone with severe mental health problems.

At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past by A. Roger Ekirch

This book was fascinating!  It is an overview of night life before the time of electrically-generated light in the Industrial Revolution.  Reaching as far back as the so-called Dark Ages and Medieval Times, this book uses multiple references to tell the story of how people lived after the Sun set in all areas of life before Edison lit our world.  Did you know it was once possible to see by starlight?  It is also a call to be aware of the dangers of a world that is increasingly lit 24-hours a day.  It isn’t just bad for birds and wildlife, it’s bad for us, too.  This was a very interesting and worthy, thought-provoking read.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

I get a lump in my throat when I think and talk about this book, it’s so beautiful and so important for everyone to read right now, as the Life of our Earth hangs in the balance.  GoodReads tells me this is the highest-rated book amongst its readers of the ones I read this year, and I couldn’t agree more.  Ms. Kimmerer is a Native American scientist, and as such she has a very unique vision of the scientific world that is far more inclusive of the mystery of the Natural world than strict science often has.  Like myself, she sees no conflict between the spiritual world of her Native ancestors and the scientific world she finds such fascination in.  In fact, they can inform and support one another when practiced properly.  It is people and views like this that will be humanity’s salvation as we attempt to rectify the damage we have done to our planet.

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher is a very special person to me, Goddess rest her soul.  I was 5 years old when I first saw Star Wars, and so she is etched upon my psyche as the living archetype of a Princess in the form of Leia.  Later in life after I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I felt even more of a kinship with her, knowing that she also suffered from it.  It wasn’t until years after she died that I finally read Wishful Drinking, and I don’t know why it took me so long.  It was a quick read: less than three hours.  But they were three jam-packed hours filled with tears and laughter, sometimes at the same time, so much so that it was a cathartic read that left me feeling better about my disorder.  Who else could couch being involuntarily committed to a psych ward as having been “invited” to the mental hospital (“Well you don’t want to be rude, so you go!”).  I laughed and cried for five solid minutes at that one.  Definitely a keeper.

The Spiritual Awakening Guide by Mary Mueller Shutan

I had been meaning to read this book for a couple of years, ever since it was recommended to me by a friend who is also a spiritual healer.  He thought it would be helpful for me in understanding my own awakening experience.  It was definitely that.  In fact, it was incredibly eye-opening and validating to see so much of my own experience described on the pages.  I was able to stop feeling “crazy” or “freakish”, though I know that I can appear that way to people who simply don’t understand me.  I found a great deal of overlap between the information in this book and things I’ve read from other authors, most notably Carl Jung and other Jungian scholars.  I will use this book as a reference again and again.

Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

It took me about four years to finish this book, so rich and dense with information it is.  Ms. Estes conveys the power of story, myth, and archetype as almost no one else can, making it clear how important these things are, especially to women in the world today.  Now more than ever, we need connection to our “wild self” and to feed it, or else it suffers and causes us to suffer.  Much of the unhappiness of women in our culture stems from a lack of nurturing of this “wild woman” we all have deep inside us.  This book is about how to honor our wildness.  It’s chewy but good: take it slow, it’s worth the time.

The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

I am not above using children’s storytelling in order to understand a complex adult topic, which makes this book perfect.  Mr. Hoff noticed a lot of parallels between Pooh Bear’s rather simplistic and seemingly bumbling way of life and the religion of Taoism, so he set out to explain the principles of Taoism via the life methods of Pooh Bear and his friends.  Despite its simplicity, Taoism is actually really hard to understand, so having it all put into the context of something childish I was already familiar with was great.  I’ve been reading Pooh Bear stories since I was 3, so it was a perfect gateway.  It’s another mystical book that will have to be read multiple times in order to be truly understood, but all great books are like that.

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

I have probably been reading Stephen King books longer than I have been reading books by any other author.  My first King book was The Stand at around age 13, a Doubleday paperback that I eventually read so many times the spine became unreadable.  My own life was something of a horror show, so I took strange comfort in reading his books, in part because  there was frequently a resolution to the horror (but not always).  I loved his writing because it painted pictures in my head.  Castle Rock, Maine was a real place to me, its streets and houses all laid out.  Stephen King became one of my best friends during very troubled times.

So it was with some happiness that I noticed he had a new book out which I snatched up on sale from Costco.  I settled down with it, and it was like sitting down with an old friend I had not seen in a very long time.  I could almost hear his New England drawl in my mind.  I hadn’t read one of his books in quite some time, and it was a nice dose of nostalgia.  The book itself was great, a testament to his usual expertise at storytelling, and in true King style, genuinely creepy and scary in parts.  It is what it says it is: a classic fairy tale, and a really good one, too.  If you like King’s books, you’ll probably like this one.

Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh

This book is a good companion to The Joy of Full Consciousness because they both talk about a lot of the same principles.  It’s about how to use mindfulness to find peace in everyday life tasks, from driving to work to washing the dishes.  Our world moves so fast that we often don’t or can’t take the time to really notice what we’re doing from one moment to the next.  We are neither mindful nor conscious of our actions, essentially sleepwalking through life.  This causes a lot of problems that can be alleviated by living a more mindful, slow life whenever possible.  Thich Nhat Hanh’s particular brand of extraordinarily kind and non-judgmental Zen Buddhism is very gentle, something that is sorely needed in our world.

Zen Masters of China: The First Step East by Richard Bryan McDaniel

I am particularly proud of finishing this book this year for the simple reason that it took me five years to read.  Women Who Run With the Wolves was nothing compared to this book in terms of chewiness.  I would read a couple of paragraphs, have my mind either blown or completely scrambled, and then put it down, sometimes for months.  It’s a book that invites a great deal of thought.  It and its two follow-ups tell the chronological story of Zen (aka Chan Buddhism) beginning with its journey out of India and up through various parts of China, then across to Japan (book two) and ultimately the United States (book three).  This story is told via the smaller stories contained within Buddhist teachings about the various teachers of Zen over the centuries.  It’s a worthy read full of wisdom (and confusion).

Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula K. LeGuin

I love reading something mystical that is as close to the source material as I can get.  Since I cannot read Chinese in this case, I have to do with translations of said source material.  Ms. LeGuin’s translation of the Tao Te Ching is as masterful as her works of fiction, containing a  great deal of insight and depth, not to mention explanations as to why she chose to translate certain words the way she did.  Her commentary on Lao Tzu’s words is spare and only serves to illuminate truths that might otherwise remain obscure.  I still find Taoism to be about as difficult to understand consciously as Zen, but like Zen, I understand it on a wordless, subconscious level.  I read the words and they resonate inside me, telling me they are True.  There are many metaphorical concepts within Taoism meant to teach what it is, but the only one I’ve been able to grasp is “do by not doing”.  Somehow this makes sense to me.  I translate this to myself as “achieve goals by abandoning plans”, and it works.  This along with Zen Masters of China probably comprise the greatest repository of Eastern thought that I’ve crammed into my brain this year, and ones I will forever be contemplating.

I’m really proud of myself for getting so much reading done this year, and these are just the books I finished.  I have quite a stack of books that I started but haven’t finished yet, but I’ve become one of those people that is reading several books at a time.  I used to be a “one book at a time” person, but apparently that’s a trait of Old Me.  New Me gets bored and likes to jump around.  I still have some books from the spiritual book club that I didn’t finish, including one on Celtic shamanism and another on general Celtic spirituality.  I am of Celtic ancestry and have taken an interest in my roots, so these books are right up my alley currently.  I’m also reading a lot of gardening books right now as I prepare for the spring planting season in an unfamiliar place.

Honestly, I don’t care what I’m reading, as long as I’m reading.  There was something about the inability to read that made me feel more than just stupid: I felt deficient, as though I had lost something very precious.  Now that I have it back, I’m very protective of it.  I take notice of how long it’s been since I read anything, and of why I’m not reading if I’m not.  Do my meds need tweaking?  Am I anxious about something?  Reading has become a bellwether for my mental health, alerting me if something is amiss.

I’m looking forward to another year of reading.  I set my goal at 25 books for 2023 and didn’t quite make it, but that’s okay.  A couple of those books were worth two or three.  One of my reading goals this year is to read more fiction for pleasure.  I have a tendency to restrict my reading to non-fiction reading “for a purpose”, and sometimes tend to study books more than merely read them, even getting out the highlighters.   This is all well and good, depending on the subject matter, but there’s also something to be said for just falling into a good story.  You’ll notice Fairy Tale was the only fiction book I read all year, and even that wasn’t read continuously: I read it in chunks, mostly because I can’t relax.  That’s this year’s goal: reading for relaxation, because it’s good for me.