In the days and weeks following the constitutional coup that put a puppet in the White House, books were one of the only things that made me feel better. I spent a weekend ganking kids’ chapter books from shelves in my parents’ house and crying over a sign in the window of their local independent bookstore. It read, “Keep going, stay civilized” in a friendly chalk scrawl, and accompanied a display of books about feminism, racial justice, and getting involved in politics and activism at the local and national levels. If you love books, you know how important they’re going to be as we face down the presidency of a man who has no understanding of why freedom of the press matters, much less any respect for the beauty of the written word and the delights of proper grammar and punctuation. Usually, when I reach out to local publishers, authors, and Mercury book critics for their year-end picks, it’s a gleeful thing. But this year, it’s something else: It’s more somber, but it’s also more important.
Here are the good books we read in a shitty year. Put them on your list.
Then: Keep going. Stay civilized. Don’t forget to read.