If all else fails, read.

I broke my reading record in 2023, and always find solace in words, especially among independent bookstores.

With my kids at one of my favorite independent bookshops, manifesting something I’m not shy about.

Because I believe that books are magic, I recently made a pilgrimage to Brooklyn to visit author Emma Straub’s independent bookshop named just that. Whenever I’m traveling, whether it’s to visit old haunts or discover new nooks, I sprint to independent bookshops to measure a place’s pulse. I avoid chain bookstores and scout out those small book havens that smell like cinnamon toast, freshly-brewed coffee, and sharpened pencils.

Books Are Magic, located on Cobble Hill’s Smith Street (with a new sister shop on Montague Street), met all my criteria the moment I entered it. Like a bookworm with a crush on her librarian, I hoped, while casually browsing, to bump into the author who founded the shop with her husband. After I devoured This Time Tomorrow, Straub’s most recent novel based on her late father, I longed to hang out with the author and analyze her humorous characters. Since she was not on-site to chat on the very Boxing Day that I visited her shelves, I’m hoping she might take a break from reading the books she sells or from writing her own newsletter, and read mine here. I consoled myself by buying Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, another favorite author of mine who runs Parnassus Books, an independent bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee (which I hope to add to my summer’s itinerary).

Early on, books and foreign languages were my form of escapism, where I ventured on expeditions to unknown worlds in my imagination. My father’s home library of alphabetized academic texts, annotated novels, and rare books was the backbone of my childhood. While he graded papers of his college students, I often ran my fingers along his bookshelves’ spines. Whenever we visited a bookstore together, he always offered to buy me a book.

My first favorite independent bookshop was A Bunch of Grapes, still located on the main street of Vineyard Haven in Martha’s Vineyard. In the three years I lived in Manhattan after college, I’d find refuge in my favorite independent bookshop, Three Lives & Company, in the West Village. Whenever I visit my parents in New York’s Hudson Valley where I was raised, I have to stop by Merritt Bookstore, where its owner, Kira, never fails to recommend some of the best books I’ve read over the years. In all of these spots, those who shelve the books they sell have read them. I turn to all of them as my literary muses, and think of them as fortune tellers who know me not through spoken conversations but through silent readings.

Years ago, when I first moved to Rome, I found a piece of home in an independent bookshop, which still exists in Trastevere under a slightly-altered name, Almost Corner Bookshop. Recently, I wrote about my belief that, no matter your location or your zodiacal sign, bookstores somehow always make the stars line up. Zibby Owens, an author, publisher and founder of Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica, California, published this piece of mine two years ago presumably because she agrees.

At the end of each year when I’m reflecting on what I did or didn’t accomplish, I’m consoled that, at the very least, I read. As a writer, it’s half my job, as I like to think that reading both good and bad books can inspire better writing.

This year, I broke my record and read 41 books. I read in both English and in Italian. I read every morning in bed for about a half hour or until my mug of coffee is empty. I cannot live without My Nerd Light, an incomplete halo with two small spotlights at the end of each side that I wear around my neck to examine words as a dentist might examine molars.

My Nerd Light coupled with my book locket, a gift from a dear Italian, bookworm friend.

Here’s the list of books I read in 2023, and I recommend purchasing any of them through any of the independent bookstores I’ve listed above:

1. Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

2. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

3. What Comes After by JoAnne Tompkins

4. A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson

5. The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone

6. Assembly by Natasha Brown

7. La vita intima by Niccolò Ammaniti

8. Mio marito by Maud Ventura

9. A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum

10. Very Nice by Marcy Dermanksy

11. Hurricane Girl by Marcy Dermansky

12. The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky

13. Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes

14. When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole

15. Once Upon a Secret by Mimi Alford 

16. The Engineer’s Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood

17. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

18. Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

19. Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

20. Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

21. Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

22. What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo

23. Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley

24. The Whispers by Ashley Audrain

25. Grace by Cody Keenan

26. Come d’aria by Ada d’Adamo

27. Trust by Hernan Diaz

28. Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur

29. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

30. Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur

31. Everything All at Once by Steph Catudal

32. The Good Enough Job by Simone Stolzoff

33. Red Island House by Andrea Lee

34. Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

35. The Unexpected Spy by Tracy Walder

36. Marigold and Rose by Louise Gluck

37. The Art of Leaving by Ayelet Tsabari

38. No One Will Miss Her by Kat Rosenfield

39. Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin 

40. The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

41. Please Don’t Eat the Daisies by Jean Kerr

My favorite non-fiction book was Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America by Cody Keenan. My parents discovered it, and it’s one of the best slivers of American history I’ve read in a long time, written by Obama’s former chief speechwriter. At a time when many of us despair about the world’s state of affairs, and the lack of grace in humanity, this book gives hope.

My favorite memoir was The Art of Leaving as it reminded me of my years spent living in Tel Aviv. My two favorite books of personal essays are Please Don’t Eat the Daisies by Jean Kerr and Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin — they both made me laugh out loud. My two favorite novels were Big Swiss (weird but intriguing) and Romantic Comedy (a wonderful love story about a scriptwriter for a late night comedy show who falls in love with a guest musician). I don’t have any photos of these particular book covers because I read all them on the Libby app through an American library (which I cannot live without as it provides me free books in English immediately!). A newsletter about my passion for libraries will follow at a later point.

Here are the books in English that I hope to kick off reading in 2024:

And here are those I hope to read in Italian:

Vladimir Nabokov once wrote: “Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.” It’s becoming harder and harder to read as we all race around and claim we have no time. As Kira’s tote bag from Merritt Bookstore reminds us: “26 letters, Infinite Stories.” It’s amazing what an alphabet soup can do for our soul. May the reading list of 2024 begin — please feel free to share book suggestions here below in the comments’ section!