The last few pages can feel like a kind of death (a sense of foreboding, a final ending), which is why I often sequentially, and sometimes obsessively, read the works of a writer I like.
So when I tried to choose my top recommendations among the books I read in 2017 that will make you a better writer in 2018 … well, it was agony.
The best books lend themselves to rediscovery: Over and over you can re-read what’s old … and stumble into worlds that feel brand new.
Roz’s book is painful, honest, and (often darkly) hilarious. It’s a great read even if you aren’t dealing with aging parents or grandparents—and I’m not; my parents died decades ago.
You might also like: Caring for Red tackles a similar subject. It’s written by my friend Mindy Fried, a sociologist who writes about caring for her 97-year-old father in the final year of his life, with a political backdrop (her father was an actor, writer and a labor organizer who was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee).
What writers can learn: How to write about ordinary stuff in an unordinary way (b-to-b content writers, I’m looking at you). Each of these books documents ordinary moments in ordinary lives—but with a perspective and treatment that make the stories anything but prosaic.
This series of short stories by Lucia Berlin was published posthumously. I bought it on a whim in the Oslo airport only because I had 200 kroner I needed to spend. (I bought a packet of nuts, too.) It turned out to be one of the more important books I read in 2017.
This book makes prose crackle like poetry. Yet it always feels as accessible and grounded as a newspaper article.
It wasn’t always a pleasant read. Some of the 40-odd stories are disturbing and brutal. But Lucia’s use of language, the pacing of her prose, the unorthodoxy of the grammar and the intensity of the characters stuck with me long after I finished it. Sometimes, I’ll be driving down the road, mechanically, and suddenly I realize I’m thinking of a Lucia Berlin story.
Ann Handley is chief content officer of MarketingProfs and author of Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content.