Issue 100: On boredom as growth

My 2024 in reading

Last night I counted seventy-six books on the back of my planner. The list is there in blue ink, black ink, whatever I had in hand at the moment of completion. Coffee stains mark some of the pages. Some entries are rushed, barely legible.

I keep a paper planner because I maintain certain affectations about how life should be lived. The analog nature of this record matters to me in ways I don't fully understand.

Here is what I do know: in 2024 I read obsessively about women on the verge. Women writing about themselves, through themselves, against themselves:

Miranda July's All Fours. The life of the mind by Christine Smallwood. Sara Manguso's Liars. Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding. Rachel Cusk's A Life’s Work and Aftermath. Constance Debré's Playboy and Love me tender. Eve Baltasar's Boulder.

The pattern was not immediately apparent to me. One of the most persistent stories I tell about myself is that I read by mood, by chance, by whim, by whatever happens to catch my eye. For some reason, that story lets me sleep at night. Turns out the truth is more complicated. Far for random, I spent most of the year in a fairly cohesive conversation with women pushing against conventional expectations, women examining motherhood with clinical precision, women refusing to apologize for their own existence. Each book felt distinct, vital, necessary at the time of reading. Only in retrospect did I see the thread that connected them, the conversation I was having with myself through their pages.

I should have just relaxed about it, named it, called it, lingered in it without guilt. But I couldn’t let myself do that… I kept thinking that I should read more… widely, differently, diversely, etc. There's always that subtle pressure, isn't there? The weight of books one ought to read, the conversations one should be able to join, the cultural moments one must not miss. I've never kept proper TBR lists, but their absence doesn't free me from their ghosts. Yet here I was, drawn again and again to these raw, experimental voices. Miranda July oiling her bottom (on a now deleted video??) in her Substack subscriber chat. Rachel Cusk coolly dissecting her marriage. Constance Debré abandoning everything for desire. These were my companions in 2024: challenging and frustrating and essential all at once. At this point as I look back, I am so so glad that this is how I spent my time.

By late autumn, however, I started to feel a whiff of something different settling in. Not boredom exactly, but something like it. Maybe… a sense of completion. Not rejection, but evolution. I found myself drawn to different voices alongside the familiar ones. I was completely charmed by Ali Smith's Autumn. Helene Hanff's 84, Charing Cross Road was the biggest delight that I did not see coming.¹ These books are about connection rather than isolation, about reaching out rather than turning inward.

The shift was not conscious. It never is. The narratives of female experience that kept me company through such a big chunk of the year remain vital to me, even as my reading expands beyond them. They are not a phase to be outgrown but a foundation upon which something else is being built. What exactly? I'm not yet sure. But I trust the process more than I once did.

In 2025, I plan to keep writing down the books I’ve read into the back of my planner. I also plan to switch my journaling practice from Morning Pages to keeping a Commonplace Book². I want to keep trusting the pull toward what moves me, even when - especially when - it defies the invisible syllabus we all carry within us. Some people might call this growth. I call it coming home to myself and I am so thankful to so many of you for being such good friends along this journey.

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1. I listened to it on audiobook last Sunday (after

Kate Jones

wrote about it) and then promptly went on and ordered 5 copies — to keep and to give as Christmas gifts to some of the readers in my life. I also plan to watch the movie per

Donald Neil Leitch

’s recommendation.

2. I will be participating in

Jillian Hess

’s Commonplace Bookclub January project and trying to figure out how I can make commonplacing work for me.