January Reading List
From My Bookshelves…Essay Collections
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race edited by Jesmyn Ward
I’m Black, I’m Christian, I’m Methodist edited by Rudy Rasmus
Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown’s Cult Classic edited by Eliza Smith & Haley Swanson
Thick & Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
Sometimes I trip on How Happy We Could Be by Nichole Perkins
Black Love Matters: Real Talk on Romance, Being Seen and Happily Ever Afters edited by Jessica Pryde
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
Find the complete list at Bookshop.
It’s a new year! As 2025 begins, I’m doing something a bit different with reading lists, and bringing you lists of books from my shelves. Some of these I’ve read, but for the ones that I haven’t, I’ll be sharing with you why I bought them in the first place. (Hopefully this encourages me to read more books I own lol.)
Each reading list I bring you seven curated picks based on the month’s theme, but this time I could easily have brought you 10 or 12. I love essay collections, both anthologies by a variety of authors on a single topic, and a series of essays on differing topics by the same writer. I think the essay is such a powerful medium for writing because it’s short enough to be manageable, but long enough to say something important and dive into a topic.
I read The Fire This Time paired with James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time several years ago, and it was amazing to see Black writers of a different generation tackle writing about race in America in so many ways. Similarly, I got the Sex and the Single Girl collection of essays to pair with the original book by Helen Gurley Brown, which was fascinating as a cultural and historical document. I’m very interested in what today’s writers have to say on the same topic.
The upside of being chronically online is learning about people who I’d likely never come across in my daily life. This is how I heard of Mc Millan Cottom’s and Perkins’ work. I actually bought Thick because one of the essays in the book had been published online and I loved it and the way she thoughtfully tackled the topic. I know of Nichole Perkins more as a podcaster, but even in audio her ability to tell stories comes through, so I was excited to dive into her essay collection.
Speaking of podcasts, Jessica Pryde is the host of a romance reading podcast, which is how I first heard of the collection of essays that she edited. Many of the writers in this collection are familiar names to me as a person who reads quite a bit of romance. Familiar voices is also how I ended up with a copy of I’m Black, edited by Rudy Rasmus too, including at least one contributor who I know in real life.
Leslie Jamison’s book is my wild card here, because I don’t remember at all what it’s about or why I bought it, other than hearing that it was amazing. I guess I have to read it and find out!
Happy reading!
