A Year in Reading: Jon Mooallem
The first book I finished this year was also one of my favorite things I read: Lydia Kiesling’s The Golden State, a novel that felt so vivid that I still occasionally flashback to moments in the story, as though they are memories of my actual life. (Lydia is the person at The Millions who asked me to write this, so this is awkward, but true.)
Toward the end of January, I started reading , ’s novel about the lives of early white settlers in the cold, dank, horrible forests of Washington State, where I live. But I brought on a family vacation to Hawaii, which felt climatologically wrong, so eventually I put it down and started reading the book my daughter brought on vacation instead: , a YA romance novel that—I really did, though maybe just as an expression of love for my daughter. ’s excellent biography of George Washington,
