She Likes Purple

My Top Ten Favorite Books from 2015

First, moment of silence, because I did not finish the 52 books I set out to read in 2015 (I finished 44), so this post is clouded in a thin layer of shame. BUT, beyond that, it was not my best reading year. I read QUITE a few books I was not a fan of, that I actively eye-rolled my way through, and even more books I was just so-so about that once I got to the last page, I wanted to streamline a Netflix show instead of seeking out my next book to read. 2016, let's improve on all THAT, okay?

Regardless I read some real gems. Here are all the books I finished in 2015 and below are my top ten. These ten I either loved, really liked, could not put down until I finished, or just could not stop thinking about once I had.

(Spoiler note: I've included some top-level spoilers and favorite passages below, although I tried to be careful about spoiling the actual reading experience or specific plot points, of course, but if you're a reading purist, maybe tread lightly?)

Anyway! In no particular order, except for the last two, here we go:

10. You.

I could not believe this book. It was INSANE and, in fact, I read a part of it while sharing a hotel room with a colleague on a work trip, and I kept saying aloud to her while reading it, "ADRIENNE, THIS IS INSANE." But, I also couldn't put it down. The writing was engrossing, and somehow the author created a main character that you hated but then didn't? It's hard to explain, other than to say terribly unsympathetic characters that an author somehow makes sympathetic (under, again, INSANE circumstances) interest me. I'm all in for interesting. 

The sequel comes out this spring, and I've already pre-ordered it.

9. Lucky Us.

This was an unexpected gem, as it started pretty quiet. The writing was just lovely, though, and the story was so sad and uplifting, all at the same time. It's such a human book, telling stories of people who you feel actually lived out there somewhere, with real loves and losses. It's one of the books I've started gifting the readers in my life, which is always a sign of a book that really grabbed me. And while I loved so many of the book's passages (read some top ones here), I particularly loved this:

You know, the crisis passes, the crucible cools, and there we are, slightly improved, not much altered.

I read this basically in one sitting, on a plane ride back from California, and I cried as it ended and turned to Mike as I cried to say, "I just love when a book makes me feel like this."

(Don't worry. He's QUITE used to what weird things and in what weird places his wife is capable of crying at/in.)

8. The Girl on the Train.

I feel like it might be no longer cool to admit how much I enjoyed this book -- okay, not enjoyed, the book was supremely depressing, but was enthralled by? -- because it was THE book of 2015, in a lot of ways. (Goodreads agrees!) But, damn, I could not put this book down, and I cannot wait to see it as a movie.

Personal vent: I've softened on Gone Girl as time's gone by (I had big ole' issues with it after first reading), especially after seeing the movie and after thinking about Amy in these terms, making the book all the more interesting to me. All said, this is no slight on Gone Girl, I swear, but can we please stop comparing every single modern mystery with a flawed female main character to it? I get it, keyword search is big, but this book was solid all on its own, no need to compare it to a book in the same genre but otherwise completely different.

7. Station Eleven. 

Hell is the absence of the people you long for. 

This quote, from this book, is just one of those things that grabs you at just the right moment. I caught my breath on the plane, as I read this (I apparently read a lot of favorite books on planes; more trips for me, I guess). 

And the book itself was just downright wonderful. Terrifying but hopeful, and I loved the parts of the book that gave us a look into the characters' backstories. 

A book that felt not a far throw from what could actually happen to us, or what might actually happen to us, but a book surprisingly brimming with hope and heart and humanity.

I loved it.

6. P.S. I Still Love You.

To All the Boys I Loved Before was on my list last year, and the follow-up was just as charming and lovable. I really would read a dozen more books about Lara Jean.

These two books are everything I love about YA -- sweet and romantic and a little eye-rolly, sure, but mostly just refreshingly optimistic and lovely.

I feel like the CW should make this into a show. Or hire me to make it into a show. 

 

5. Blue Lily, Lily Blue.

I read the whole Raven Boys series this year and loved it all, but the third book (this one) was my favorite. I swooned over this book. It's certainly a different YA series. It's weird and supernatural-y and fantastical but also ... beautiful and real and pure. 

I fell so in love with these characters, these friendships, the love stories weaved throughout all the characters, that I'm almost NERVOUS about reading the last book. Ohhhhh please let that book -- not end well, no way it's ending well -- end right. Just let it end right.

I've already briefly spoken (very bottom of that post, by the way!) about the beautiful scene that inspired my next tattoo, but it should also be said there's a scene in a car that's basically two characters touching fingers that was written with more sexual tension and believable feeling than 75% of the actual sex scenes I have read in my day. So if you're into straight-up ROMANCE that is not packaged as romance in the slightest, this weird series (and this particular book) might be for you.

4. Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda.

This book. It was realistic, romantic, sweet, awful, sad, funny, and I ended the book being the characters' biggest cheerleaders because they could have been people you actually wanted to know and love and root for 15-20 years ago (hold me, I'm old). 

Please more books about actual teenagers dealing with actual things like navigating relationships as a boy who just happens to be gay, with the focus on the teenager, not the issue. Let it be this inclusive moving forward, those out there who love to write books, and let us pick these books up and celebrate them as often as we can, those of us who love to read. 

3. The Royal We.

I put off reading this book because a zillion years into being an active reader and I still think I know what I'll think of a book before I read it. SELF, YOU CAN BE DENSE. I thought, ohhhh I dunno, I'm not a huge Royals person (like, is Royals supposed to be capitalized? Not sure) and it sounds a little too fluffy for me.

I WATCH THE CW RELIGIOUSLY BUT SURE, THIS WAS SURE TO BE TOO FLUFFY.

It was long but only because it was so good I wanted to know how it ended 15 pages into it. I would have read 17 more books about Bex and Nick after it ended.

Look, if you don't enjoy romantic fiction, you probably won't enjoy this book but if you don't like the Royals and know little about William and Kate and THAT'S keeping you from reading this, read it immediately, let my idiocy be your teacher. 

2. Between the World & Me.

I don't know how to talk about this book. And I honestly don't know how to talk about the countless race issues facing our country today. Because they feel so big, and I feel so inadequately small, and I want to say a million things, and I fear they'll all be wrong.

But that's what this book gifted me, the desire to talk about all of this even if my words are messy and clunky and wrong. Because the only way to better anything so broken, like our country and our country's collective conversation and view on racism and racial issues is for people who care to keep on talking.

This should be required reading for all humans, front to back. There are endless quotes that should be studied, written on post-its, tattooed on bodies, because that's how important I feel this book will become to us one day, but here are a couple that I cried my way through reading (keeping in mind that this book was about race in America but also a letter to the author's son):

My wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.

It is not necessary that you believe that the officer who choked Eric Garner set out that day to destroy a body. All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.

Read this and read it immediately. 

1. A Little Life.

(Trigger warnings are important, and I wish we had a better way to communicate them as I personally understand their worth. So please know this book is potentially full of triggers for physical and sexual abuse and also self-harm, and I encourage you to research the book further if you're considering reading it but are someone who struggles to read about those topics, in any way.)

Where the last book should change all of us, this book changed me. I read it, all 700+ pages of it, with a sob lodged in my throat. And I had to put it down so many times so I could give the sobs the time they needed. That sounds like a terrible endorsement for a book -- who really wants to sob their way through any book, let alone such a long one -- but don't misunderstand me. I am better and kinder and more open and more alert to other human beings because I read this book. 

It's a masterpiece. It's unbelievably written. It's painful and terrible and horrible and you might ask yourself while reading, "Come now, are we expected to believe any one person could suffer so much?" and then you drop the book on your lap when you realize how silly that question is because, come now, how privileged are we to ever think this book captures the worst suffering a single person might endure.

And yet it still manages to be a beautiful love story, full of mighty love that can light up the darkest of hearts. This book showed me what it means to be loved for all our broken parts, in a way all the hundreds of books I've read before never did. Love is not an eraser but love sure doesn't know that. And seeing it try so desperately to fix, no matter how futile, is beautiful even if it's also tragic, and this book captured all of that.

I know this may sound silly, to anyone who doesn't fall in love with books and stories and words the way that I do, but I carry Jude with me every day, as fictional as he might be. Because, ultimately, I know that he isn't fictional at all.

His ghosts are out there, walking around, unnamed, and they need us to see them. 

My 2015

(2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. Inspired all these years by Linda) 

Dusting off this space to write my annual year-in-review. Mostly because I really enjoying looking back on these, and I'd be sad not to have 2015's among the rest.

1. What did you do in 2015 that you'd never done before? 

I love firsts.

Watched my kiddo graduate Kindergarten; ate at the number-one rated restaurant in all of DFW; listened to jazz on Bourbon Street; celebrated working somewhere for an entire decade; welcomed someone at the airport with a life-size, cardboard cut-out of a fictional character (no regrets); took Kyle to a Lil' Ninja gym; traveled as far south as I've ever been; attended/exhibited at the Texas Veggie Fair; crossed a river IN A CAR (and then did it sevens more times that same day, MIKE); toured a coffee plantation; witnessed the beautiful Supreme Court ruling that every single state has to acknowledge same-sex marriages; FINISHED MY NOSTALGIA WALL; tried escargot; walked the Brooklyn Bridge; celebrated my bronze wedding anniversary; took Kyle to his first Aggie baseball game; tried dim sum; walked the steps at Point Reyes Lighthouse; drove to the Headlands; visited Broken Bow, Oklahoma; took a ferry to Sausalito; took Kyle on Muni; and probably a million other things too.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? 

I only finished 27 of 76 things on my to-do list. That's fairly unimpressive. I listen to The Lively Show podcast, and either the host or a guest recently said on an episode that intentions are more effective than goals because (paraphrasing a bit) intentions are about the why of wanting to do or change something and not about the act of crossing something off a list. Anyway, it's got my wheels turning on exactly what I want out of 2016.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

I didn't get to snuggle new babies this year nearly as much as I would have liked! Kristie had sweet Gabe, and some internet friends had smooshable babies too.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Mike's grandmother unfortunately passed away this fall. 

5. What countries did you visit?

I went to Costa Rica and these states: Oklahoma, Louisiana, California, New York (3x), Mississippi, Illinois, Washington, and all over Texas.

6. What would you like to have in 2016 that you didn't have in 2015? 

I'd like to find a wonderful friend who I can be my entire, insane self with who also lives in walking distance (ideally) or at least a short drive away. Like, short enough so I can stop in for wine on a random Wednesday night. I have wonderful, amazing, deep friendships. They're unfortunately all with people scattered too far and too wide.

7. What dates from 2015 will be etched upon your memory, and why? 

I'm never very good at answering this one. Our lives are fairly ordinary these days, so it's just the usual holidays/birthdays/etc.

8. What was your biggest achievement of this year?

I assume watching Arrow five times all the way through isn't exactly what anyone would consider an achievement, although let's become fast friends if you do consider it one, so I think I'll keep it nice and vague and say I discovered some important things about friendships this year that felt very big to me.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I'm going to leave last year's answer here: I'm hard on myself, so the (mental) list is long. Giving those failures a voice is toxic.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nothing out of the ordinary, thankfully.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

We splurged on a couple nights at a fancy Costa Rican hot springs resort (Tabacon, FYI), and whenever you splurge on hotels, at least whenever I splurge on hotels, I've found it's easy to be underwhelmed. But, oh boy, were those two days some of the best of the entire year, and I'd make it rain money in that hotel's lobby to show just how VERY WORTH the cost really was.

Also our farmhouse sink. HEART EYES EMOJI. 

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

This will sound silly but Brandon Stanton, the creator of Humans of New York. He has created this beautiful, inspiring, educational space, and I think he's doing truly great work. I also got the opportunity to see him speak at a work conference, and he is motivated (at least seemingly) by real integrity and purpose. His Facebook page was sometimes the only place I could restore my faith in humanity during what felt like a terrible news year.

Also Mike remodeled our kitchen in three weeks, and while I'm always a fan of him, that DOES deserve an extra little shout-out.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

An unfortunately high number of people, but let's sum them all up with Donald Trump.

14. Where did most your money go?

Thankfully, nothing too remarkable. Bills, travel, SOCCER, debt, etc. 

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Well, there was that one time Stephen Amell said my name (!!), but also every single trip we took. And Kyle graduating Kindergarten, starting first grade, and just continuing to be a thriving school-aged kiddo. 

And finally getting to see my brother TWICE in one year.  

16. What song will always remind you of 2015?

I'll think of the songs Kyle loved the most, and he was a BIG fan of Uptown Funk this year.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?

I don't actually like this question, so skipping it this year.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

I had a goal of reading 52 books this year, and I'll end up being seven shy of that. OHHHHH, I wish I had put my phone down and read a little more, to hit that goal. I'm coming for you, 2016.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Sat in traffic, and I say that because I may not have do nearly as much of it in 2016. 

20. How did you spend Christmas?

It was a quiet holiday, but also really nice. We spent Christmas Eve at my mom's house, eating dinner, opening gifts, and looking at lights. Then we hosted our parents at our house on Christmas night. 

21. Did you fall in love in 2015?

I feel like falling in love with new people and new things and new places is a constant, or should be, so yes. But I will specifically say that Costa Rica was magical, and I fell deeply in love with every inch of the country we got to explore during our trip in August. After Belize in 2014, I'm officially fond of Central America. And if we come into enough money one day, I'd like to own property somewhere down there.

22. What was your favorite TV program?

Arrow (shocker), but also iZombie and Jessica Jones. 

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

Laurel Lance. 1% of you will understand.

24. What was the best book you read?

Post to come with my favorites from 2015, but I'll spoil that post by saying my two favorites of the year were A Little Life and Between the World & Me. 

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

I'm so bad at discovering new music. Did I discover the Weeknd? That was just me, right?

26. What did you want and get?

Time with my brother, a just-Mike-and-me trip AND a couple family trips, a new kitchen, a trip to College Station, hammock time, lazy Sundays, great friendships.

27. What did you want and not get?

Same answer as the past two years: there will always be something, so let's not dwell. Although every year I wish for a Texas A&M National Championship, and I'll probably continue to wish for that for many, many years to come.

Oh, and a trip with just Natalie and me, so I'm forcing her to take one in 2016. HEAR THAT, NATTY.

28. What was your favorite film of 2015?

I'm watching FAR more movies in 2016, mark my words (A MOVIE THEATER OPENED IN WALKING DISTANCE FROM OUR HOUSE THIS YEAR), but I did just see and love Creed. 

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 33 way back on January 3rd and Mike and I celebrated by driving to Broken Bow, Oklahoma for a long weekend. It was wonderful, though really cold, but I had the best pizza of my life and Mike let me read and drink wine for a majority of the weekend and it was also beautiful there, so more of that weekend in my life, please.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

The ability to move all my favorite people right onto my block. SCIENCE, BE BETTER.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept of 2015?

Text Elizabeth for her to pick things out for me. 

32. What kept you sane?

My boys, my best girls, podcasts, books, funny animal gifs, wine, silly TV shows I care too much about, kindness from wherever I could get it, tacos, naps, Stephen Amell's abs, pretty shoes, and a million other little things that made me happy over the last 365 days.

33. What political issue stirred you the most?

KEEPING THIS ANSWER FROM LAST YEAR: Lack of humanity, is that a political issue? Sure felt like one this year, and it gutted me, often.

34. Who did you miss?

Almost everyone I love, at some point.

35. Who was the best new person you met?

Ames. 

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2015.

So, spoiler alert, I'm getting a tattoo in 2016 that says "They had run." and it's a line from Blue Lily, Lily Blue (exact passage here), and I'll sum up the scene to say that a character realized his friends had shown up for him, when he hadn't asked them to, when he didn't expect them to, and they had run to do it. It was this beautiful moment of realizing that you may like a million people in this world, but just a few will run for you, and those are the ones you pour your time and energy into. And to make sure the people you would run for know it, and know it always. Showing up is easy and it's hard, and you should never stop trying to be better at it.

Happy last day of 2015, friends, and maybe I'll find my way back to this space more in 2016.

Happy new year, too.

At Long Last: My Nostalgia Wall

You can find gallery walls all over Pinterest. They look one trillion times better than anything I could ever put together, but they inspired me all the same. I kept calling the wall I was putting together in my head a nostalgia wall, not a gallery wall, because it wasn't really about pictures for me. It was about memories. 

To show you just how skilled I am at things like this, I started putting this wall together in 2013. It's like a 6x8 wall. I finished over Christmas. In 2014.

HGTV, call me!

In case you care about this kind of thing, here are some up-close shots of what I chose for the wall.

Bottom left: A post-it from our early dating days. Happy sigh. 

Top left: A picture of the villa we stayed in, during our honeymoon on St. John, VI. You could see the villa from a winding road nearby, where I snapped this picture.

Top middle: A card from Etsy, that I bought for Mike for Valentine's Day a couple years ago and then immediately took from him to frame. I'm fun to be married to. Of all the things in this world I like, Mike and naps are #1 and #3. A certain six-year-old falls between. (The rest of this Etsy store is pretty great, too, and here's a perfect card for your favorite work friend.)

Bottom right-middle: An old picture of my great-grandmonther, my mom's grandmother. She was a special part of my mom's life, so I like to think I knew her without ever having met her. You might not be able to tell, but she's on a beach here, laughing. She looks like the kind of lady who would love to share a bottle of champagne with me. 

Bottom left-middle: I took maternity photos in a shirt I can't even remember buying. I knew I wouldn't wear it again, but I hated the idea of getting rid of it. So, I cut it up and framed it instead. (As you do.)

Bottom right: I loved this frame so much, for months and months, but I couldn't rationalize spending nearly $40 on it. Then Elizabeth, my constant shopping voice of reason, said something like "if you love something so much you're thinking about it for months, JUST BUY IT." So I did. And I have no regrets. I framed a photo of our paper lantern tradition, which makes me smile every time I think about.

Middle right: I found this pin on Pinterest ages ago, about creating a watercolor map, so I made one, took a screenshot, and printed it via Shutterfly. The map I made was from College Station. When I was 17, the summer before my senior year of high school, I walked into Texas A&M's on-campus bookstore and felt something indescribable. As sappy as it sounds, I had come home, even though it was my first time there. When I was 18, I walked into our football stadium for the first time (Kyle Field) and thought to myself, "I'd love to marry an Aggie and name our son Kyle. But that'll never happen." (More on that memory here.) This map includes both the book store and the stadium, and it's one of my favorites from the entire wall. So many dreams come true in one unique picture.

Middle: A canvas print of a picture the talented Natalie took of Kyle when he was two. This remains my mother-in-law's favorite picture of Kyle, and I don't blame her. It's amazing. (I print my canvases at CanvasPeople. Very affordable, and I've been pleased with them to date.)

Top right: A lovely picture of Mike's mom, his sister, and Mike from many Christmases ago. I'd guess 1980 or so.

Bottom right: A commissioned print that says "Sting rays don't bite, my ass." (Though the comma is missing, I know, and it drives me as bananas as you might suspect.) It's something Mike said when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of SeaWorld, just two months after we started dating. Anyway, it's a long, really-only-funny-to-us story, but I laugh every time I think of it. 

Middle left: Oh, this one. An Avett Brothers' lyric: "Always remember there was nothing worth sharing like the love that let us share our name." I bought the print from this Etsy shop.

Top middle: A picture of Kyle, one of my favorites, from our family road trip in 2011. In a frame I love, that I randomly found at Target. 

Middle: A picture I love of Mike and me from our 2011 Vegas trip. Vegas is also one of the few places we regularly travel to, so it felt right to have a picture from there on the wall.

Middle right: We gave Kyle a quarter a couple years ago to buy a piece of candy from a machine, at a restaurant one night, and he bought me this ring instead. He was so proud to give it to me, and I wore it for a while before realizing I was terrified to lose it. So I hung it on a piece of string and taped the string to an empty frame. My most prized possession, hanging on the wall, for me to see every single day.

Top right: A picture I took of Mike on his motorcycle. I've always loved this picture of Mike doing something he loves so much.

Bottom right, 1: One of our sonogram pictures of Kyle, from about 22 weeks. 

Bottom right, 2: A map-covered "C" from Anthropologie. Or maybe Urban Outfitters. I honestly can't remember.

Middle: A picture of my mom holding me, when I was a baby. I've always loved it.

Top right: This picture of Kyle face-planting in the sand, when he was six months old. Mike and I still just laugh and laugh over it. (Back story, in case you might be judging a wee bit: It was Kyle's first time to the beach, he had just started sitting up on his own. Mike put him in the sand, and I just held down the shutter to take a dozen pictures of the milestone. Kyle then toppled over and I caught this exact one. He was rescued seconds later! Accidental capture! STILL SO FUNNY.)

Bottom right: A picture I love of Kyle and me.

I bought a blank canvas at Michael's, some number stencils from I don't even remember (Amazon, I'd guess), and I used a pencil and then about 10 Sharpies to create this one. It stands for June 10, 2008. The day we found out I was pregnant.

Middle left: A picture from the MotoGP race we took Kyle to last year.

Top left: A family picture of Mike's parents, Mike's sister and her family, and our family, from Christmas 2013.

Top right, letters: I bought these cheap letters from Michael's (like $1 each). Mike and I used to end all our emails with "loves" but one time Mike typed it so quickly he just typed lvs. I emailed back, laughing so hard on my end, that loves forgot to buy its vowels and, eight years later, we've signed off with LVS ever since. It's engraved in my wedding band.

Top right, picture: A picture of the cherry blossoms, from our Washington DC trip in 2013.

Bottom, middle: A picture of Kyle and his cousin Ella, from our beach trip in 2013.

Left: A picture Kyle drew years ago, and one of the first times he wrote his name. (I wanted to especially remember how he wrote his "e"s back then, with about a dozen lines.)

Top right: A picture of Mike and his sister, as kids. He had this picture framed on his desk when I met him, and I remember thinking that any man who loved his sister enough to frame a picture of her on his desk was a man I wanted to spend time with. I can't remember where I found this yellow frame, but I love it.

Top picture is of Mike with Molly behind him, hiking in 2005. Bottom picture is Mike with Kyle behind him, hiking in 2013. 

Left: A framed In N Out Max Wanger print. Mike and I had our rehearsal dinner at In N Out (a $200 rehearsal dinner for 40 people!), so this felt like a small piece of art that had real meaning. 

Right: We bought this beautiful hand-carved stone in Caye Caulker, Belize, with a map of the country on it.

Phew, that's a lot more information about each individual thing we framed and hung on this wall than any one person probably cares to know, but in case we ever change these up, I'll remember what once hung there.