Things to Read - 10 Books I Want to Read This Winter

So I read some bad books in 2016, but this year will be different. I think. Here's the list. Fingers crossed it is a good one!

1. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets - Because the Nobel Prize. And Russia.

2. Pond - Because unusual. From Buzzfeed, "Pond provides one of the great pleasures of fiction: really getting into someone else’s mind and finding it both mundane and weirder than imaginable. Narrated by a woman living alone in a small, bucolic town, Pond concerns itself with the stuff of daily life—gardening, oven knobs, dinner parties, neighbors — yet renders these things strange, new, and bewitching through the fascinating perspective of the narrator."

3. Blankets - Because this graphic novel looks so so pretty.

4. The Bitch Is Back: Older, Wiser, and (Getting) Happier - Because "25 women discussing love, sex, work, family, independence, body-image, health, and aging" sounds incredible!

5. The Vegetarian - Because weird. From Amazon, "Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself."

6. Walk Through Walls: A Memoir - Because Marina Abramović's performance art is so unique (have you seen the documentary about her on Netflix?)

7. The Mothers - Because several critics listed this as one of the best books of the year. Plus, my friend Deb said it was good and her recommendations are always the best.

8. Between the World and Me - Because I'm embarrassed I haven't read this yet.

9. Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq - Because I loved Jerusalem so I want to read more graphic novels about far away places.

10. An Association of Small Bombs - Because critics loved it. And hopefully they're right.