Happy Birthday to Me

During my 36th year of life, I read 65 books—more books than I have ever read in one year before – and the more I read, the less certain I am that truths exist outside of an individual and the less tethered I am to identity and history and religion and rules; it seems strange that the more perspectives I step into, the less certainty I hold.

Interestingly, the more books free me from the words that bind me, the more curious and awed I become with words and texts. It’s like the letters that line up beside each other to make words that are separated by spaces that create the sentences that become stories in my mind are breaking down my barriers and building an understanding that barriers are nothing but words. Stories create and undo us over and over.

Here are my top eleven books for the year, some are in my top ten books of my life: