I’ve been listening to the Percy Jackson book series on audiobook and suddenly, I’m 14-year-old Kayley in love with 15-year-old Percy Jackson again.

2022 is over and I was nowhere near my reading goal for the year. I read 11 books last year, which isn’t great considering how many I read in 2020 and 2021, both linked below.

BUT, I also had a busy year, what with getting married, quitting a stressful job, starting a new job (that I love, btw), and traveling quite a bit. So I figured in addition to my 2022 booklist, I’d also include brief updates of what I did this year.

The Road is a deeply depressing book that still provides beacons of hope; the story bestows a heaviness that comes with a true understanding of brokenness. The burden is too much to bear.

I read Brian Moore’s essay “Going Home” earlier this year while finishing up my degree, and it’s been in the back of my mind since. I chose to annotate the essay for school because I think one day I’d like to emulate it and make the subject my old home in Kansas City, rather than Moore’s home in Connemara, Ireland.

Not having to read for school is wonderful.

I always forget this feeling until I have it again, and now that I’m finished with school for good (well, at least for the next few years...I’ve been floating the idea of seminary but I’m not fully sold just yet), the possibility of reading whatever I want, whenever I want, is both intoxicating and overwhelming. So. Much. To. Read.

A Short Review/Annotation of Blue Shoe by Anne Lamott

The only other book I’ve read by Anne Lamott was Bird by Bird, which is wonderful, but I had no idea how powerful, thought-provoking, and wonderful her fiction writing was.

I read 30 books in 2020, a large part in thanks to being quarantined for most of it, and here’s my list! Now I get to make a new one… :-)

A special thanks to all who helped me achieve this goal: