It's a Wrap!

I’ve been sitting here thinking about how I always feel obligated to spend at least part of every New Years Eve writing about what the year was like. Why? It was what it was. It’s over. Here’s how I (pretty much always) feel at the end of a year—though not nearly as well dressed

The good thing is, every January 1^st we get to start again.

Well, we have the illusion of starting again.

But before I drag myself and get going, here are some books I loved in 2024 but didn’t get around to writing about.

And what the hell! Why not a few quotes I copied down over the year, too!

(I do love a good quote!)

‘Literature is the question minus the answer.” Roland Barthes

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with the pain.” James Baldwin

“I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Flannery O’Connor

“But where is what I started for so long ago? And why is it yet unfound?” Walt Whitman

“I’m here to tell you whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful.” Halya Alyan

“When a writer has a problem, the reader feels it, and then, when the writer identifies and addresses that problem—this feels like originality and innovation.” George Saunders

“Only when I was young did I believe that it was important to remember what happened in every novel I read. Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described. They should teach you this in school, but they don’t.” Sigrid Nunez in The Vulnerables

“Zero plus anything is a world.” Jane Hirshfield.

Happy, Happy New Year to all of you and THANK YOU for reading Book Pilgrim.