The Best Books I Read This Year

This year’s reading felt like a long conversation about voice, power, identity, and survival—how people make meaning out of their lives, and how culture gets written in the process.

One of the most compelling reads of the year was Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik, a dual portrait of two women who shaped California mythology in radically different ways. The book traces the tension between Joan Didion’s disciplined, cerebral restraint and Eve Babitz’s sensuous, unapologetic immersion in pleasure and visibility—revealing how ambition, gender, power, and self-invention collided in their parallel lives. Reading it felt like watching the cultural DNA of Los Angeles being written in real time.

I also spent time with Tehrangeles, a book that expands the idea of place and diaspora, tracing identity through exile, memory, and reinvention. It felt especially resonant this year, when so much of life seems defined by displacement—physical, political, emotional.

Another standout was 107 Days by Kamala Harris. More than a political memoir, it’s a study in endurance, visibility, and what it costs to stand in public power while navigating constant scrutiny.

For balance, I loved getting swept up in the wit and warmth of Lessons in Chemistry—a smart, funny, and quietly radical novel about intelligence, sexism, and insisting on being taken seriously in a world determined to underestimate you.

I also reread Crucial Conversations, which remains one of the most useful books I own. Every reread lands differently depending on where I am in life—and this time it felt especially relevant.

Currently on my nightstand is Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Giuffre. It’s heavy, necessary reading—one I’m approaching slowly and intentionally.

Taken together, this year’s books offered clarity, friction, and perspective. They reminded me that reading isn’t just escape—it’s a way of understanding how stories shape us, and how we choose to tell our own.