What’s On My Nightstand Right Now

There’s a version of me that used to pick books for escape.

This is not that version.

Lately, the books I keep within arm’s reach feel less like entertainment and more like evidence. Like companions. Like mirrors I didn’t ask for but needed anyway.

Right now, my nightstand looks like this:

• Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

• Stag Dance by Torrey Peters

• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

• Leading with the Heart by Mike Krzyzewski

• Spinning by Tillie Walden

• Hunger by Roxane Gay

And the thing is, they’re all talking to each other.

Grief, but Not Quietly

Bad Cree sits heavy in the room. It’s grief, but not the kind that stays polite. It’s loud, it’s ancestral, it lingers. It reminds me that grief isn’t something you “get over”: it’s something that rearranges you.

And I think about how often grief has been minimized in my own life. How often it was reframed as something smaller, something manageable, something I should just move past.

This book doesn’t allow that.

Bodies, Identity, and Refusal

Then there’s Stag Dance.

This one feels like rupture. Like transformation that doesn’t ask for permission. It pushes at the edges of gender, desire, performance. What we’re allowed to be versus what we actually are.

It sits next to Hunger by Roxane Gay, which is quieter but cuts deeper.

Hunger isn’t just about the body. It’s about what happens when your body becomes a site of survival. A shield. A record of what was done to you.

Reading it, I don’t feel alone. But I do feel seen in a way that’s hard to shake.

Memory, Time, and Being Unseen

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue feels almost like a whisper compared to the others—but it lingers.

What does it mean to not be remembered?

To exist, fully, and still be erased?

There’s something about that question that hits differently when you’ve had experiences dismissed, minimized, or not believed. When your story feels… unverified.

That word keeps coming back to me lately.

Discipline, Control, and Structure

And then. unexpectedly: Coach K.

Leading with the Heart doesn’t “fit” with the others at first glance. It’s structured, strategic, almost clinical compared to everything else on this stack.

But maybe that’s why it’s here.

Because there’s something grounding about discipline. About systems. About leadership that doesn’t rely on chaos.

When everything else is asking big emotional questions, this one asks:

What do you do with all of it?

Girlhood, Art, and Survival

Spinning by Tillie Walden feels like a bridge between all of them.

It’s quiet. Observational. But underneath that softness is something else—control, pressure, identity, loneliness.

It reminds me that survival doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like showing up. Repeating motions. Keeping going.

Sometimes it looks like making art.

What This Stack Actually Is

If I’m being honest, this isn’t a random collection.

This is a snapshot of a moment where I’m:

• Processing grief

• Reclaiming my body

• Questioning identity

• Reframing memory

• Trying to build structure after chaos

• Turning all of it into art

These books aren’t distractions.

They’re part of the work.

And Maybe That’s the Point

I think there’s this idea that reading is passive. That it’s something soft.

But right now, it doesn’t feel soft.

It feels active. Confrontational, even.

Like each book is asking me:

What are you going to do with what you now understand?

And I don’t have a clean answer yet.

But I know this:

I’m not reaching for escape anymore.

I’m reaching for truth.

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