My Year-Changing Books
Fiction and non-fiction that changed my outlook, behaviour, and creative direction
It’s mid-December and Bestof has become a single, meaningless word. Favourites and bests and books of the year. So to find a little space for myself as a list-maker, instead of picking favourites when I took stock of my reading, I only sought books that have been catalysts for change.
In a year of personal shock, grief and new responsibilities, professional milestones and stage-of-life wrestling, here are the books that altered my year.
If you never want to write a newsletter, skip this bit
My first post for Voracious was called I Can’t Promise Anything — cautious to say the least but over the course of the year I’ve devoted time to studying what makes a readable publication. The single most useful piece was Write Less, Please from Sarah Fay’s Substack Writers at Work. It contains sobering information such as “Most of your subscribers stop reading after about 118 words” — which has encouraged me to edit ruthlessly — as well as the reminder that allowing someone to send you a newsletter is a privilege, inboxes being what they are.
