My Favorite Books of the Year: A Journey Through Nature and Community

As I sit down to write this article, I am filled with excitement and gratitude for the incredible books that have shaped my year. This time around, I want to share with you my favorite books that have left an indelible mark on my heart and mind. These books are not just mere recommendations, but a testament to the power of storytelling, poetry, and science in weaving together the intricate tapestry of human experience.

One of my absolute favorites is this incredible book about the natural world. Her writing is incredibly beautiful, transporting me to the very essence of the earth and its ecosystems. She narrates the audiobook with such depth and passion, bringing to life the stories of scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding the intricate web of relationships between humans and the environment. I was particularly struck by her exploration of sweetgrass, a plant that holds deep cultural significance in many communities. Through scientific study and research, she shows us that human beings are not separate from the earth, but are an integral part of its ecosystems. This realization is both humbling and empowering, reminding us of our stewardship as caretakers of this precious planet.

This book is a must-read for anyone who loves nature, environmentalism, or simply wants to deepen their understanding of the world around them. Her writing is evocative and accessible, making complex scientific concepts feel like a gentle breeze on a summer's day. As I listened to her narration, I felt like I was walking alongside her on this journey through the natural world, discovering hidden wonders and marvels at every turn. The sheer beauty of her prose is a gift, allowing us to see the world in all its glory.

Of course, no year would be complete without mentioning a book that has captured my heart with its unique blend of poetry and prose. Crystal Wilkinson's "The Birds of Opulence" is a masterclass in storytelling, weaving together the intricate threads of family, community, and identity with a deft touch. Her background as an Affrilachian poet shines through in every sentence, imbuing this book with a depth and richness that is simply stunning.

I was particularly struck by the way Wilkinson explores the complexities of life in Black communities in Kentucky, where generations of women have lived and thrived amidst the rolling hills and rustling leaves of rural America. Her characters are so well-crafted, I felt like I knew them intimately, their joys and struggles, triumphs and heartbreaks playing out before my eyes like a vivid tapestry. The way she combines her skill as a poet with her prose is nothing short of genius, creating a narrative that feels both deeply personal and universally relatable.

For anyone who loved Deesha Philyaw's "The Secret Lives of Church Ladies," I highly recommend adding "The Birds of Opulence" to your reading list. Both books share a deep commitment to exploring the complexities of women's lives in rural America, where community, family, and identity are woven together like the threads of a rich tapestry.

As I close this article, I want to express my gratitude for the incredible world of books that surrounds us. These stories have not only shaped my year but have also reminded me of the power of language to transform, inspire, and uplift us. Whether you're a bookworm, an environmentalist, or simply someone who loves to learn, there's a story out there waiting for you – and I'm so excited to see what the future holds.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enHello, friends! Welcome back to my channel!And today is the day! Five years ago,  My first video ever on my channel was my top 10 books, and that was five years ago and I'm just ...I yeah I just have no words. Gwenllian has all the words though. All of them. All of them. All right, so  I'm going to be talking about my top 10 books and kind of my reading experience, I suppose  of them. So my first book that I want to talk to you about number 10 is English Lit by Bernard  Clay. He is an Affrilachian poet who has been a member of the Affrilachian Poets collective for  a while now. And i really loved his collection. It's out from Old Cove / Swallow Press.Gwenlian agrees. It's a great book. So I really love his poems and the way that he  talks about being an urban Appalachian and what that means for him moving from Louisville—over  from on the west side of Kentucky to the east to eastern Kentucky. And really appreciated  what he does and his work. And I'm not sure if you've ever  heard of Bernard Clay or watched him read his poetry, but it's amazing. So I'm gonna link  a instagram live show I did with him for 100 Days in Appalachia. He reads his own poetry and the way  he talks about his poetry is just phenomenal. This is his debut full-length collection  I just love it. I love it so much. I have so many tabs in it. And yeah I don't know  if this is because it's a personal book for me as someone from Appalachia who has Kentucky roots or  what. But yeah, it's a great book. One of my favorite books is by Elissa Washuta, coming  in at number nine White Magic. I love this essay collection. It is my favorite essay collection by  a single author this year. I loved what she does with this idea of white magic. Elissa  Washuta is an Indigenous woman. She is a member of the Cowlitz Nation, and so she talks about  what it means White Magic how often times a lot of the more occult white witch kind of things  involve more Indigenous ceremony and objects that are sacred to Indigenous folks. But like white sage  and how white people will culturally appropriate that into their more witch-like wiccan  beliefs. And so that was a really interesting take because she also identifies as a witch  as well. So she's also going into this as like. . .Oh this is kind of like, what am I finding?One of the great things about her work is that she will take one to three, maybe four, ideas  and run with them. And then you're like, how how do these things connect? But by the end of the essay  collection they do and you are completely blown away by how amazing this writer is in the way that  she pulls all these ideas together. One of the things I also love, which I didn't know  until I interviewed her for Reading Women was that she's also a spoonie like me. She has Shrogen's  disease... Sjogren's? And so she and Italked about that after I stopped recording, and  she was just so encouraging um and wonderful to talk to. I love talking to other disabled  writers, and she talks about some of her health kind of struggles and journey in this book,  mental health and physical health. And Ijust really appreciate that about her work.  So definitely check it out. All right, so the next book kind of snuck up on me. I didn't  realize how much I was thinking about this book or how much I really loved it until I did  a feature with Shawn of the Book Maniac. We recorded this thing about it, and I was like  gushing about it on the recording. And I was like wait I really love this book. And I think that's because win me something by Kyle Lucia Wu. It is so quiet but in the best way.  It's so intricate and well crafted, but it's not flashy. So you have to like sit and you're  like—oh wow—that was that was really well done .And this is the debut novel. I was out from Tin House,  and I really loved just the experience of following our main character who's a biracial  Chinese American whose parents divorced and got remarried. So she never feels like she's part  of either family, and she feels caught in between. And so she starts naming for this affluent white  couple in Manhattan, and it really looks at a lot of the microaggressions she experiences  on a daily basis while still trying to make them her family, as it were. ai love this book.  I interviewed her for Reading Women, so I'll link that in the description box as well. All right,  number seven is Growing Up Disabled in Australia edited by Carly Findlay. I ordered this copy from  Australia, but you can get the audiobook here in the U.S., and that's what I listened to. I listened  to all of these books except for the poetry book, English Lit, so I really love Carly Findlay's  narration. This is an anthology that includes a wide range of disabled writers, and so I really  appreciated her careful construction of this book to include so many different kinds of disabled  authors. I feel like, so like I feel like that could be so difficult to do, but I feel like she did  a great job of that because not you know a lot of disabled people can't write in a traditional  fashion (whatever that means). And so there's all kinds of mediums that she then pulls together  and puts into a book. And that's definitely a process, so I really appreciate that and also  the ideas that are discussed. There's one where an autistic person who is reviewing this play,  and their really offended by the portrayal of an autistic person in the play. But then,  they have a dialogue with the director and the producers and then they realize that  you know it's a much there's much bigger picture here than they originally thought. And it's them  interrogating their own biases as well, and it's just a really fascinating process and each essay  kind of has that in it of processing what it's like to be disabled in Australia. Thank you, Carly! So definitely check this out if you haven't already. I really really like it. The next book  is one that was super buzzy earlier this year, and that's the Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters.  So this book follows Reese who is a trans woman and her ex-girlfriend then detransitioned.  And he now goes by Ames, and Ames has a girlfriend named Katrina, and  that is a very complicated relationship because he wants to come out to her as queer in his way but  he's not entirely sure. And then you have Reese, who is just it's just very very sad after her  breakup with Ames before he detransitioned. and so there's a lot of discussion about Reese  and Amy, and you get those flashbacks to their relationships then you also get the present  where Katrina and Ames end up conceiving a baby, and Katrina is deciding she wants to keep the baby.  And then Ames goes and asks Reese if she wants to be part of this baby's life as another mother. So  it's a look at what it means to be queer and be in a queer relationship and what does that look  like. It really is interrogating all of these ideas the conversations between the characters  are so insightful and the characters themselves jump off the page, and I have not stopped thinking  about this book since I finished it. There was a great interview between Adam Vitcavage and Torrey Peters on the podcast called  Debeautiful. I will link that down below, but I  just really appreciate the conversations that this book has started as well as the craft of the book.  I will now read anything Torrey Peters puts out to the universe. Also this titleis perfection, right? Anyway, so the next book I have is sort of a duo because I  think they're they both sit in the same place in my mind and that will make sense here in a  second. So my next half of my next book is Empire of Pain the Secret History of the Sackler dynasty  by Patrick Radden Keefe. Now this looks at the opioid crisis from the perspective of the family  that helped create it, the Sacklers, and kind of it gives you a history of them in the first half and  the second half looks at their development of oxycontin and what that looks like. I finished this book probably in like 48 hours on audio. I found it to be an incredible page turner,  but part of that is because this is something I've been reading about and keeping up with  since I was in my early to mid 20s. I grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio, which is one of the ground zeroes  for the opioid crisis. There are many. There's not a singular place because it all was happening at the  same time. But in a book called Dreamland by Sam Quinones. He talks about Portsmouth specifically,  and then you have like Dopesick by Beth Macy, which looks at a place in Virginia and West Virginia.  And then you have the other half of this kind of book for me is Death in Mudlick: A Coal  Country's Fight Against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic by Eric Eyre. And  he is a journalist from Charleston, and he's won a Pulitzer and he did a great job. and He also has  Parkinson's Disease as well, so being a disabled writer he adds a lot of perspective  to how opioids are disabling people in in that way and what that looks like  and how it looks like specifically in West Virginia. I think a lot of people . . . what I've seen  of this book is a lot of people really love it but it does focus on those who caused harm rather  than centering the people suffering from opioid addiction and what that has looked like and how  Appalachia specifically was just so heavily hit by this. And they aren't the only ones, obviously, but  this is that topic of Appalachia specifically. And so I really appreciated this  because he focuses on the characters of the people in appalachia in West Virginia, so I think these  two go together in my mind. I know technically that's not that's not how it's supposed to work,  but this is how it's going to work today so would recommend would recommend both of these  for you to go check that out and get a better wider perspective on the opioid crisis.  I'm also going to link a post I did on Read Appalachia down in the description box that  has a like reading list for the opioid crisis so you'll be able to take a look at that as well if  that's something you're interested in reading more about. The next book is O Beautiful by Jung Yun. I  love LOVE Jung Yun's writing. I love Jung Yoon's writing. Shelter, her debut novel, was the very first  Reading Women award winner for fiction. And so I've been waiting for this book so long. I am so excited.  Ao this book focuses on Eleanor who's a biracial Korean American woman who's a former model. She's  now in her 40s went back to school and is now a journalist. Her first big break comes when  her professor slash ex-boyfriend gives her this opportunity to report from her hometown  in North Dakota. So she goes back to where there's like been this like oil boom and she tries to  figure out like what's going on there but also she has to confront demons like from her childhood.  This character—Eleanor—you just want to be like, oh honey, what are you doing?  Like I just want to shake her sometimes, but the way that she delves into Eleanor's life and  her perspective and the characterization is just phenomenal as only Jung Yun can. I really just love  the way that she tells the story. Oh my goodness, I also am kind of annoyed that more people haven't  picked it up because it's so good. It's so good. And it came out in November so i feel like it  kind of missed some of the best book of the year lists and like all this stuff it look just go pick  it up read it come back we can talk about i.t I interviewed Jung Yun for the Miami Book Fair, so if  I can I'll put that link down in the description box. But also i would recommend the interview that  Joce of Squibbles Reads did for Reading Women with Jung Yun, which is on our podcast feed. So I'll put  that down the description box as well and so you can go check that out. I think Joce did such an  amazing job. So good. Jung Yun did send me this book ,and she signed it and addressed it and  like personalized it to me. And I'm just I'm just gonna hold it forever. It's gonna hold it forever.  Okay, next is from one of my favorite authors  that I just I just love and that is Lauren Groff.  Her latest book matrix is a very slim novel about a nun who is supposed to be  sort of related to Eleanor Aquitaine it's a whole thing. But basically this woman who is  illegitimate is still related to the queen at the time, or possibly the king.  I can't actually remember tif she's related to the king and through marriage she's related to the  queen. I don't remember. Let's just be honest, plus it's it's like a historical  fiction so anyway. This woman is kind of forced into this convent and then she becomes the  leader of this convent at some point. And she really wants to create this environment away  from the world and atmosphere. And there's just something about it that i can't even describe of  how Lauren Groff gets into these women's heads. How she will give you an entire description  of the character's life in a couple sentences, but yet you still know that character so well.  I don't even remember what I said when I talked to her for the podcast, but like i was just blown  away by how Lauren Groff has such range how this book a book i would never really pick up normally.  I'm not really into nuns. I am now, but I'm really into nuns per se. And so I'm just like, Okay, I trust  you, Lauren. Where are you gonna take me now? And it's great. I love it. There's so many  descriptions of their way of life on an everyday basis, but also like there's this, you know,  queer undercurrent in the convent and all sorts of shenanigans go down. It's so good. I feel  like it takes that skill to like tease that all of that out. We are down to the last  two books from my favorite books of the year, and at number two is Braiding Sweet Grass by Robin  Wall kKimmerer. The subtitle is Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants.  And so I love this book, and it took me a very long time to get through it this year  because I was slowly going through each chapter. And I really love how beautiful this book is.  There is an incredible amount of gorgeous nature writing, and nature writing always goes back to  some sort of greater principle typically. And she just takes that to a whole new level she talks  about her Indigenous culture and heritage and also the other nations that she interacts with  and their culture around certain kinds of plants and their traditions. And she just takes you on  this journey through this book her writing is incredible. It's so incredibly beautiful in the  way that she describes it to the point where you can just see it in your mind. She narrates  the audiobook as well, and so you can hear all of the feeling and depth of love she has for the  earth and for being a custodian of the earth, but also as a scientists. And there's so much going on in  her work and the way that she describes you know researching sweetgrass, for example.And showing through science and scientific study that human beings are not separate  from the earth and the earth's ecosystems. That we are very much part of it we are part of nature  it means that we have a stewardship that to live alongside our environment. And she looks at  sweetgrass and how the sweetgrass that was plucked in a certain way and harvested in a certain way  did actually better than the sweetgrass that was left on its own. And so I think that's really  important important lesson for us to learn. So if you like books about nature environmentalism,  this is for you. It's so good! And she just brings so much to the table.  My favorite book is one that I have been waiting for to come out on audio and it  did and the person reading audio doesn't quite get the dialect correct per se, but I feel like  they did a good job with the tools that they had. And so I can't stop thinking about it and the way  that Crystal Wilkinson writes the characters in The Birds of Opulence. This is a book looks at women  from a community, these generations of women living in Kentucky and how these women live in these  in Black communities in Kentucky and what their life is like. And there's so many intricate  details that she weaves into this story and the way that we have these really intimate scenes  with these generations of women and how they interact and how that impacts their life of how  their mothers treat them versus other friends and just the different situations going on  with this community and what that looks like over time. I was so so impressed. I really love  that Crystal Wilkinson brings to this book, her background in poetry. She's an Affrilachian poet.  In fact her first full-length collection PerfectBlack came out earlier this year, which i also  loved, but i felt like I had to pick one of them. And this one is my favorite because it combines  to her skill and prose and her skill in poetry. It kind of combines them in this beautiful way.  The prose itself is just phenomenal, and, you know, this book is pretty slim. But i felt like I knew  all of these women so well. So I feel like if you love The Secret Lives of Church Ladies  by Deesha Philyaw, which is my favorite book last year, you'll definitely love this one.  It has a lot of the same themes around women and family and community particularly as Black  women living in the South or rural America. Oh, it's so good. I just I love this book.  I love this book. I'm just gonna gush about it forever, and then I feel like I never do it justice. So  if you want to learn more about the The Birds of Opulence, I did interview Crystal Wilkinson  for Reading Women, which I will link down below. Well, this is it. These are my favorite books  of the year. Thank you so much for watching. This is always my favorite video to do,  because I love it. It's just a great time of the year on booktubes with everyone's favorites. And  so thank you so much for watching. And I will see you in the next one. Bye, friends!\n"