The Best Novels I Read In The Past Decade

This is the time of year that it seems like everyone makes a resolution to read more. People ask me for recommendations pretty frequently, and my recommendations are very tailored to each individual. But there are some book that I think everyone should read (I say this with caution--some of these have ALL the trigger warnings, and I'd only recommend one of these for anyone younger than late high school.). I've probably read somewhere around 600 books in the last ten years. (I've only kept track electronically for the past 7 years, so this is my best guess.) It's nearly impossible to name the best books I read this decade, so I've tried to narrow it down to make it easier. These are the ten best novels (because at least 75% of what I read is fiction) that I read (AND that were published) between 2010 and 2019 (in order of publication date). 

Eleanor and Park – Rainbow Rowell (2012)

There have been a lot of wonderful young adult books this decade (which I still read and love), but this is probably my favorite. Rainbow Rowell is an expert observer of relationships and teenagers, and she got everything about this exactly right. John Green wrote a review of it in 2013 saying he’d never seen anything quite like it, and though many people have tried to replicate it since then, I haven’t found a book that’s come close. This is what we want teenagers to be reading. 

The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt (2013)

Donna Tartt has a cult following that obsessively awaits each of her books (which she publishes about once every 10 years. There have only been 3 so far, and one of them, The Secret History, is an all-time favorite. I don't know how she functions under this pressure.). I’m an unashamed member of this cult, and though I was thrilled to hear that she was publishing a new book for the first time in 11 years, I was also worried about how it would hold up against the anticipation and expectations the reading world put on it. It turns out that it held up well enough to win the Pulitzer Prize. It’s a nearly 800 page cinder block of a novel that feels very much like it took all 11 years to write, and it’s been one of the most polarizing books of the decade because of the debates that sparked between those who loved it and those who hated it. One thing I’ve learned about writing/reading is that if everyone is content with what you’re doing, then you’re doing something wrong. I think she’s one of the most brilliant writers alive. (And please don’t watch the movie first. Or maybe ever.) 

Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel (2014)

It’s difficult to find words to describe a book that I care about the way I care about this one. There have been only a handful of books in my life that made me cry (including two of the Harry Potter books, which made everyone alive cry and should therefore not count). This was one of them. But I didn’t cry because the book is tragic (though it absolutely is)—I cried because of the the way the characters never let go of hope in spite of their tragedy, and no other writer has ever caused me to cry those kind of tears. This book horrified me (warning to all my fellow hypochondriacs who may also panic at the thought of a seemingly realistic pandemic—read cautiously), shocked me, and filled me with wonder. I can’t name a book that was more affecting or that I think about more frequently than this one. This decade has been overcrowded with dystopian fiction (though Mandel doesn’t like to classify her book that way)—but none of them compare to this. This is one of my all-time favorites. 

A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara (2015)

I must have read at least 20 books this decade about friends living in NYC after college, and there are certainly dozens more that I haven’t read yet. (To be clear, I like these books and think they’re great fun, so carry on, Millennial Authors.) Somehow, I missed all the hype around this book when it was published. At more than 700 pages, I thought this would be more of the same, but perhaps a particularly pretentious version of it. Though this book is, technically, about friends in NYC after college, it does not belong in that category of books at all. Yanagihara fills a devastating story with the most beautiful examples of friendship so that even though this may be the most tragic book I read this decade, it’s not without hope. I’ve never read an author who is more merciless to her characters while still depicting them beautifully. Do not read this for a good time. But absolutely read it if you want to think harder about trauma, friendships, love, time, mental health, and the 21^st century, and if you want to be consumed by a story long, long after it’s over. (This book has a major cult following that you should prepare to unintentionally join.) 

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things – Bryn Greenwood (2016) 

This book is astonishing because based on the synopsis alone, this story should be a terribly disturbing modern-day Lolita but in rural America and with more damaged characters. This is a story that would appear in news headlines and elicit disgust from the nation. But Greenwood somehow managed to write these characters in a way that make us root for them when we never, ever imagined we could. This is a love story unlike any I’ve ever read, and it will make you question the morals and assumptions you thought you had. This was one of the boldest books of the decade, and her daring paid off in a huge way. 

Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi (2016) 

I believe this is one of the most important books of the decade. This is the extraordinary journey of two families through seven generations, from the mid-1700s in West Africa to present day America. This was an absurdly ambitious project, especially considering it was Gyasi’s first novel and she was 26(!!!!), but she got it right. She got it exactly right. A woman at the Mississippi Book Festival the following year whispered to me, “I don’t know why this didn’t win the National Book Award.” I hadn’t read it at the time, but I wish I could find that woman now and tell her that I don’t understand how it didn’t win, either. 

My Absolute Darling – Gabriel Tallent (2017) 

I knew nothing about this book before reading it except that Stephen King loved it, and since he and I have bizarrely similar tastes, that was enough reason for me to buy it. I was entirely unprepared for everything about this book. Tallent is a genius who somehow wrote one of the most deeply disturbing books I’ve ever read while at the same time one of the most gorgeous. It was shocking and daring and every form of horrific—it’s a sort of coming of age story about an abusive father and his teenage daughter who comes to understand the nightmare she’s living in. It’s hard to read, but it’s also important. Masterpiece is the word King used, and I think it’s the right one. This is one of the most affecting books I've ever read, and I think Tallent deserves every literary award there is.

The Immortalists – Chloe Benjamin (2018) 

This is a story that makes you think hard about fate and determinism and free will and belief and also teaches you to NEVER go to a fortune teller because what good can possibly come of that?? It begins with four siblings who see a fortune teller as children and are each told the date they will die, and the rest of the book is about how they choose to live either believing or choosing not to believe what they were told. The questions this story asks you to consider will haunt you even longer than these characters do. 

The Book of M – Peng Shepherd (2018) 

The Book of M shouldn’t make sense. How do you cram a love story, a dystopian thriller, a fantasy, zombie creatures, a study of memories and shadows, an odyssey, suspense, beauty, and elephants in one book with any degree of success? You can’t, unless you’re Peng Shepherd, who is a sorceress and can apparently do anything. I’ve never read a book like this, and I’m still astonished by this story. 

The Witch Elm – Tana French (2018) 

I’m obsessed with Tana French, and I have not awaited individual books in a series so eagerly since Harry Potter. It was a huge test when she decided to publish her first novel that wasn’t in the Dublin Murder series. She passed the test. She proved with The Witch Elm that she can write a stand-alone novel that’s just as good as anything in her series and better than any mystery I've read this decade. I picked this one for my list, but she published 4 of her Dublin Murder books this decade that could just as easily be here in its place. I think she’s the best mystery author writing right now. 

Turning 30 (and 30 Things I’d Tell My 20-Year-Old Self)

I turned 30 last month. Exactly a week later, I left for a three week trip to Morocco and Portugal, and while I didn’t plan that trip as a birthday celebration (it was actually because it the cheapest week of the year for the tour, and I got days off work for Thanksgiving), I must say that a quick jaunt over to the Sahara dessert is about the best celebration I can imagine. I had a lot of thoughts about turning 30, or maybe more accurately I THOUGHT I should have a lot of thoughts about turning 30. The truth is that as of now, 30 feels about the same at 29 and 28 and 25. But when I think about all that’s happened since I turned 20 (in my grad center dorm room sophomore year with my roommates and a Paul’s Pastry king cake), I think about all the things I didn’t know yet and didn’t know that I didn’t know. I made a list of some of the things I’d tell my 20-year-old self, which are also the things I’d tell my college students now if they had any desire to hear me give them unsolicited opinions for way too long. And since no one should be subjected to that against their will, I decided to share them here.

20th birthday

30th birthday

30 Things I’d Tell My 20-Year-Old Self 

(Or 30 Things I Would Tell My Students If They Wanted To Hear Me Talk At Them For An Hour) 

1. You really do need to make sure you get your passport stamped when arriving in a foreign country. Even if it’s totally not your fault that the international airport is incompetent and doesn’t care if you pass through customs or not, track down someone to stamp the thing. Otherwise you might end up stuck for a nerve-wrackingly long time in the airport in Amsterdam being questioned about how you snuck into Italy for 2 months without any documentation—which is a fair and good question. 

2. Never stop deliberately learning things. Read a book about a subject you know nothing about. Take a dance class in a style you've never heard of, just for fun. Learn to play chess or the piano or how to do a handstand. Sit down with the camel handler and ask him questions for half an hour about camels. Ask to sit in the cockpit of the plane to learn about turbulence from the pilot before take-off. It doesn't really matter what you decide to learn, just learn something. Don't let your life become boring to you. 

3. Adopt a senior dog. Find the one you know in your heart might not have a chance at a home if not for you, and bring him home and love him fiercely. You’ll never regret it for a second. But do first make sure you have enough money for his medical expenses, and be prepared to accept help with him when it’s offered. (And never, ever take for granted the loved ones who will keep him while you’re riding camels in the desert for 3 weeks.) 

4. Do NOT buy a dog from a fancy breeder and spend an entire month’s salary on him before you even meet him, even if he is adorable. (I learned this the hard way, and it will never not be a sore subject.)

5. Get to know your doctor(s) (and your pet’s doctor). Tell them things that are important and relevant to knowing you. For example, don’t be afraid to tell them that you’re a severe hypochondriac and that 90% of the time you come in you’ll be looking for reassurance that you don’t have some obscure illness that you may or may not be imagining the symptoms for. They will not judge you for this, and it will save you a lot of money in superfluous lab work. 

Never stop learning things 

6. But also, if something hurts or feels wrong, don’t let doctors (especially male doctors) shrug it off immediately and tell you it’s only anxiety. It very well may be, but it also may take a year, 8 doctors, and 2 physical therapists to find someone with the good sense to realize that you had a severe vitamin deficiency that no one bothered to address. 

7. Do not use Web MD or any similar site. Ever. Block them all. 

8. Write letters. On paper. With your hand. Put them in the actual mail. You will shock and delight someone. 

9. In my experience, fear and phobias tend to get worse instead of fade. Don’t wait to address and deal with them, and don’t put off doing things you want to do because you assume one day you’ll be braver. This is something you get to decide instead of something that is decided for you. 

10. Exercise truly does help with stress and anxiety. It’s not just a thing doctors say. In my experience, it helps as much or more than medication. 

11. Go to reunions! I went to my 10 year high school reunion and my 5 year college reunion in my 20s. I know a lot of people who were bitter and negative about going back to a place where they did not have a positive experience (high school), but I don’t know one person who went and regretted being there. Both of those experiences were two of my favorite memories of the past decade. 

12. Hold onto old friends. If you’re lucky enough to still have friends from childhood, recognize how rare and special that is. New friends are wonderful, but no one else will ever be able to reminisce with you about the time you were voted “most dependable” by the 8th grade class and were forced to go to the Valentine’s Dance to pose for a photo with the court, but how you fled before the music started for fear you might be expected to dance. And it would be a tragedy to not be able to reminisce about that with someone. 

About 65 cumulative years of friendship in this photo 

13. Ignore all the negativity you hear from your peers about about physically aging. The consensus I hear seems to be that after about 25, everything all of a sudden hurts and you gain half your body weight overnight and your days of athleticism are over, and it’s basically all downhill from here. When I was between 22 and 25, I was in the worst shape of my life. By the time I was almost 29, I started aerial circus classes, and at 29 and a half I started tango dancing. Ignore arbitrary timelines that don’t have to apply to you. Also, know that my friend Robert is 93 years old and goes tango dancing until midnight every Friday night. He started dancing when he was 90. And if you take away one thing from this post, please let it be that fact. 

14. People have a lot of very strong opinions about travel that they get from the media. A lot of people were horrified that I lived near Harlem, horrified when I lived in DC, and most horrified of all when I moved to New Orleans. I consistently got comments like, “You’re not going to LIVE there, are you??” in the same tone of voice they might use if I casually told them I was moving to Syria. It was so persistent that it freaked me out for a long time. Ignore those people. Use common sense. Don’t walk around alone on dark streets at 2:00am. Lock your car doors. And recognize that the people who say these things are people who developed these fears while sitting at home in front of their TVs instead of experiencing the place they’re afraid of. (This is especially true in regard to different countries and cultures.) Politely ignore them. You cannot be afraid to merely exist in the world. 

15. I’ve blogged about this before, but it is worth saying again—don’t let being alone prevent you from doing anything. Never let not having company be a reason you don’t go to that restaurant or do that hike or take that road trip or move to a new city. It’s nice if people want to join you and if they are as excited as you are, but do not let their apathy hinder you. This is especially true for travel. If I’d waited for friends or family or a significant other to travel with me, I would have never left Mississippi. You do not need other people to enjoy traveling. In fact, I’d encourage you to deliberately travel alone sometimes even if you could choose to have company. There are few things more inspiring, more confidence boosting, or more freeing. And you’ll meet plenty of people on the way. 

16. This is specific to my artist friends—be sure you support your fellow artists. As many conflicting opinions as there are about MFA programs and whether they are worth the money, one thing I truly loved about my MFA program is that it felt like I gained a team of support, and there is no price tag for that. Buy your writing pals’ books! Tell the world to buy their books! Even if their writing is not your preferred genre or your favorite thing you read this year, it will be for someone else. Few people in the world understand the work that goes into creating a book (or film or art exhibit or album or even just a published essay)—as someone who does understand, make sure you show them the support and recognition they deserve and the kind you’d hope to receive yourself. Be inspired by people’s success, not jealous of it. 

Reasons to get an MFA: every one of these people 

17. On the subject of jealousy, that’s easier said than done, of course. Something I struggled with for a long time after college (and sometime still) was being jealous of people who I perceived had an easier time than I did financially. Going to an extremely wealthy college meant that money was not a concern for most of my friends, and hardly any of them graduated with students loans. I pay A LOT each month in loans, and it used to make me feel bitter to see groups of my former classmates casually traveling the world together before they even had jobs. (How does one take 3 huge international trips each year when they are in grad school and getting paid, at best, a small stipend??) I couldn’t help but think about how much nicer my apartment would be, the car I could buy to replace the one I got in high school, all the travel I could do, and all the money I could save if I didn’t have to pay my student loans. BUT at the same time, there is no amount of money I would trade for my undergrad and graduate experiences. None. (And truthfully, Brown was so generous with financial aid that I went there cheaper than I could have gone to any Mississippi state school.) I will never regret the choices I made about school, and it will forever be one of the greatest gifts of my life that I had the chance to go to them. I cannot help that I wasn’t born into a wealthy family, just like my parents can’t help that they weren’t either, but I can choose how to think about money now. I can choose to pursue a career where I earn lots of money, or I can choose to pursue a career I really care about (I’ll let you guess which I picked). I can figure out how to make money work, and I can recognize how incredibly lucky I am to be able to do that and how lucky I was to grow up with the things I had. I can also recognize that I will never take for granted the things that I might have if money had always been easy. 

Easily one of the top 5 most memorable moments of my 20s

18. Don’t let a lack of money make you believe that you can’t travel. There’s always a way. Start a side hustle. (I tutor, edit, and do audio transcribing on the side for extra money. I have profiles on a handful of tutoring websites and freelancing websites, advertise on craigslist, and hang physical flyers around town.) I also recently discovered credit card reward points. I got a travel credit card specifically for my big trip back in the summer and asked for help from all my my family and friends to reach the $3,000 in 3 months spending requirement. They sent me money through Venmo, then I paid their bills, and by the end of the three months, I had enough points to get my nearly $800 roundtrip ticket from New Orleans to Lisbon for less than $200. If you tell me you don’t have the money for international travel, I’m happy to tell you how you can take an international trip for cheaper than you can go to Disney World. 

19. Try your best to not hold grudges. When someone treats you badly, it’s easy to turn a cold shoulder and refuse to talk to them until they reach out to you. And that’s okay. If you need to cut off communication with someone who is bad for you, certainly do that. But if doing that ends up feeling like you’re in sixth grade and giving someone the silent treatment when you’d rather feel like being the bigger person and reaching out to acknowledge the issue, that’s fine, too. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. 

20. There is sometimes such thing as too much honesty. As a general rule, I think most people should be more direct and honest than they have the nerve to be, as long as they are sensitive in the way they deliver their honesty. If your friend asks what you think of her new boyfriend, there are so many appropriate layers of honesty between a lie (He’s so great!) and the bluntest form of truth (He seems like a  boring loser, what’s wrong with you?). It is still honest to say, “You know, I’m not sure how much I can base on a first impression, but I worry that he didn’t seem to make you very happy—what makes you interested in him?” But when it’s something unsolicited  that serves no purpose except to make someone feel self-conscious, rethink saying it. Telling your friend, “I heard a stranger at the Christmas party say that your muffins tasted like sawdust and also that your tights don’t match your dress” is not productive to anyone, and think hard about why you have an impulse to share it. 

21. Take pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. Even when people get annoyed at you for taking the time to take pictures. Still take pictures. You will never regret having photos later, but you definitely might regret not having them. Also, make sure you’re in some photos—that it’s not always you behind the camera. There are very few picture that exist of me from middle school through early college because I was always the one taking the photos and felt too self-conscious to include myself in any pictures. It wasn’t until my early 20s that I realized I’d want to be included in those visual memories when looking back later, no matter how self-conscious I felt in the moment. But also, don’t take ONLY photos of yourself. One day you might want to remember what the holiday lights in NYC looked like on your first visit to the city and not just what your makeup looked like that day. 

22. Also, get some headshots. There will be a time when you need a professional photograph of yourself for a publication bio or work website or Linkedin profile, and if you don’t have headshots ready, you’ll find yourself trying to crop your baby niece out of photos, even though she is in your arms and this is an impossible task. (This became increasingly difficult for me as I got more things published because every photo of myself was of me and my niece, or me in an owl hat, or me hugging a stuffed llama.) My sister always told me to be sure to get some headshots in my twenties before the wrinkles, and I suppose that’s a fair reason to get them, as well. I asked a photographer friend to do some for me a couple months ago, so I just made the cut. 

Example of "a photo you cannot crop for publication" 

23. You’ve heard this 4 million times, but you really should unfollow anyone on social media who makes you feel badly about yourself. I used to interpret that to mean if the person was doing something intentionally harmful or negative, but really, someone doesn’t have to be doing something malicious or bad at all for it to simply not be what you need to see right now. 

24. You do not need to find a spouse in your twenties or have children or even think about children or ever have children if you don’t want to. Ignore everyone who has an opinion about this that they think you need to hear. 

25. Make sacrifices for people that matter. Remember friends birthdays. Show them that they matter. Show up for people, even if it’s inconvenient for you. But also keep a healthy perspective about what you’re physically able to give. Visit your friend in the hospital after surgery. Buy their kid a birthday present. Feed their cat while they’re out of town. But if you can’t afford to go to Bali for their wedding even though you’d love to, don’t feed badly or like you’re wronged them (Sorry Frances!!). 

Sam made this for me 8 years ago when I was applying to grad school I didn't think I'd get into

26. Learn another language. Or at least learn the basics. I don’t speak another language, but I wish I did. I spent years occasionally and sporadically trying to teach myself some Spanish with Rosetta Stone and Duolingo, but last year I finally took my first Spanish class since high school. It meant skipping lunch 4 days a week and sitting in a classroom with my own students, but I was so glad I did it. Even if you don’t have a goal of fluency, you will always benefit from being able to communicate with more people than you currently can. 

27. Read books. I believe books make people more curious, more emotionally intelligent, more observant, more generally knowledgeable, and more inspired. It can feel hard to make time to read, but everyone can read more than they actually do. I used to be opposed to E-readers, and I still vastly prefer real books, but getting a Kindle last Christmas drastically affected how much I’m able to read (I use it on machines at the gym and while on public transportation and when it’s too dark to see a real book). Always keep a book or kindle in your purse so you can read in waiting rooms, while you’re on hold with the electric company, while you’re waiting in line to get on the bus, and while you wait for your take-out order. Have an audiobook downloaded to listen to in the car and at the gym. One of the best discoveries I made in the past few years is the Overdrive (or Libby) app. All you need is a library card from your local library (which, if you haven’t had a library card since you were in elementary school, I’ll go ahead and remind is still FREE), and you can access all of the library’s Ebooks and audiobooks. You can check out like 15 at a time and there are no late feeds because they are automatically returned online once you’re done with them. It’s the absolute best and most under appreciated invention. 

28. Learn how to make baked goods that are not from a box. Even though you’ll still make them from a box 95% of the time. But that other 5% of the time you might win an award at the baking competition at work, and what title could you ever want other than winner of the “weird and wild” category of baked goods? 

29. Don’t be afraid of failing. What is the actual worst that can happen if you apply to that school/job that you don’t think you’re qualified for or submit to that magazine that you’re certain won’t accept your story? What do you have to lose? 

30. Don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t make an Instagram for your dog(/cat/guinea pig/possum).  

When I think about my 20s, I’ll think about how they were saturated fall colors and ghost stories. They were snow storms that felt endless and warm socks and 2:00am subway rides. They were 8 different bedrooms in 6 different states and 7 cross-country moves. They were 2 graduations and over 500 books read and more pages than I’ll ever know written and around 600 students who had to listen to me talk about said books and words. They were magical summers on Aventine Hill and in Castile and Leon, endless hours of walking to Wickenden Street, Saturday morning coffee shops in Nashville, bike rides every weekend from Bethesda to Georgetown, rooftop parties in Manhattan, and doing circus tricks and dancing around churches in New Orleans. They were waiting rooms and hospitals and new family members and sad goodbyes and a handful of places and people who felt like home. 

Mountains

When I was in elementary school, there was always that day during fall semester when I’d be in the hallway and the double-doors would be open and I’d feel the outside air and realize immediately that it felt different than it had the day before. Sharper and fresher. Not yet cool, but something closer to it than we’d felt in 6 months. That was always what felt like the first day of autumn for me, and it was one of my favorite days every year. Leaving my office today, I felt it. 

Blue Ridge Mountains

Adirondacks from the Amtrak Adirondack route

I told a friend recently that I’ve been thinking a lot about mountains. What about mountains, he asked, and I couldn’t figure out how to answer. About how there’s something sinister about them, something they hide that I can never reach. For a long time, I only saw mountains through the safety of car windows. There were the Smokies during my childhood, the Blue Ridge during high school, and a very gradual creeping upward through the Appalachians--the Shenandoah, the Catskills, the Adirondacks. I spent a year working in the smallest foothills of the Smokies feeling that lure drawing me closer, and then a summer in an Appalachian Trail town at the northern tip of the Shenandoah. The dirty backpackers who wandered into town to get ice cream knew something I didn’t about the secrets the mountains were hiding. I lived in DC the next year and started driving the three hours back to the mountains on weekend day-trips in search of something I couldn’t name and armed only with a camera and warnings from Google that I probably shouldn’t be attempting the things I aimed to do. I didn’t care about the warnings. I thought a lot about time. About how these mountains were born something like 500 million years ago and they were probably as tall as the Alps. About how they’ve grown tired now and softer. Do mountains ever wear down to nothing? What will the Alps look like in 100 million years? (What does 100 million years mean, and is there a recognizable Earth within in?) Will new mountains be born? These mountains are the oldest thing I’ve ever touched, and they know too much. Autumn is always when I crave their secrets the most. 

Shenandoah

But the Rockies are a different species. I’d only ever seen them once in 9th grade when my dad and I drove to Grand Junction to pick up a motorcycle he bought on Ebay. I stared out the window of my grandpa’s tiny pick-up truck that we’d borrowed for the drive and watched the walls of rock and snow get bigger and bigger as we wove through them on the interstate. There were 18-wheelers on the runaway ramps, the life my dad once lived. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t afraid of much back then. On our way back, we stopped in a resort town just to ride to the top of the ski lift. We stood at the cafe at the top of the Breckenridge lift in our too-thin jackets for a few minutes taking in the view before riding back down. I remember my shallow breathe, but I don’t remember the view. I wonder where images like that go. 

The first time I saw the Rockies

I went back to Colorado last month, this time to see the mountains up close, this time for more than one view. The Rockies feel young and wild, taunting and unpredictable. Sometimes I felt like I was in something closer to a rainforest, and sometimes I felt like the wind would freeze my blood. I’d never slept in a tent before, never carried a backpack with every item I’d use for three days, never drank water I filtered by hand from a stream, never seen the stars from 11,000 feet, never known what snow feels like in August or how bright the moon really is. Maybe part of what draws some of us to mountains and horrifies us at the same time is the way they expose things we don’t know and can’t know and will never know. 

Greys and Torreys

Mirror Lake

Evacuations and Memory Hoarding

My phone has been uploading photos to Google Photos for three days now. They were uploading to iCloud for two days before that until I realized that while iCloud is synced, any picture I delete from my phone also disappears from the cloud. (Upon discovering this, I frantically recovered 30 videos from my deleted folder.) Over 9,000 items I’m uploading—400 of them videos. I’ve deleted nearly every app and all my music, but I can’t bring myself to delete even one picture (or text) until it’s safe elsewhere. I would just put them on my computer, but my computer doesn’t have storage space either, and my external hard drive is too full for me to back it up and make more room. So here we are. My phone is too full to even receive emails. Because I don’t understand how technology works, I imagine the emails waiting patiently in a traffic jam for their turn to get through the road work. 

momentos from freshman fall 

You see, I’m a hoarder. Not the kind you see on TV who has decade-old rat carcasses scattered under the floor-to-ceiling trash in my house, but the kind who absolutely still has that ticket from that theater performance you went to together during freshman year of college. It will be in one of several dozen boxes of similar paraphernalia that is certainly, indisputably, definitively NOT trash, even though neither of you could explain the plot now. It’s a matter of sentimental principle. 
I’m a hoarder of memories. 

When I was little, my friends and I played these semi-morbid mental exercise games of hypothetical truths. Who would you save first in a fire? What would you grab first if you could only grab one object? What would you pack if you only had 5 minutes to leave? 

Though I’ve lived in prime hurricane territory for two thirds of my life, I’ve only evacuated for 4 storms. First was Georges when I was 8. I remember that my family stopped for the night at some nondescript hotel in Tuscaloosa, and I was enraptured by the baby bat hanging on the side of the walkway. I don’t remember packing anything, or if it even occurred to me to consider what to pack. Then there was the storm in early high school (which Google tells me must have been Ivan). We stayed in a church shelter in Florence. I don’t remember being worried. The storms themselves were uneventful, almost hypothetical. Another mental exercise. What if this were real? What if this weren’t a precaution? 

And then there was Katrina. Packing felt different. Should I bring all my valuables, or just put them on the bed away from the windows? Should we bring Moses (our pet bird) with us or just put him in the back hallway away from any windows with enough food for a few days. We’ll be back tomorrow, after all. 

Journals from my 4 years in college--the others are in a separate box

We were heading toward Monroe in northwest Louisiana, but we never made it. The traffic was bumper to bumper until we finally stopped to sleep in the gym of a church just across the Mississppi river from Natchez. I stood with my mom in the nearest Wal-mart entertainment center for half the night watching the identical images flash across tv screens of all sizes. We watched as the Mississippi Coast was eradicated. We watched until we understood there was nothing left and the flood waters started pouring into the homes of the evacuees standing next to us. We were lucky—72 trees down in our yard, but our house was untouched (Moses was fine and singing in the dark). But there was a collective feeling that began in that Wal-mart that our lives would never be quite the same again. 

And then just a few weeks ago was Barry. No one ever knows what to do with a storm like Barry. Barry—the name of someone’s jovial uncle. Or the elderly neighbor who rescues stray dogs and bakes delicious cookies. Barry is surely harmless. But then there were the floods earlier that week, not even related to Barry, but unpredicted and ominous. I left my house for work that morning and spent the next 4 hours stuck in my car on the street car tracks trying to escape the flood waters. One of my friends drove through the flood to his apartment where he grabbed a go-bag and headed straight for the airport—all of 5 minutes thought and preparation, no hesitation. One friend left promptly the next morning, and another left that night. I hadn’t intended to leave. My landlord assured me that my house has never flooded. But the Mississippi River was so high… what if? 

Nothing would happen, I reminded myself as I bought Tupperware containers two days before the storm. This house won’t flood, I told myself as I piled all the books from my lowest two shelves on the kitchen table, and then decided to put my favorites in a laundry basket and move them onto the counter instead. The most important things should go in the Tupperware because it’s waterproof and can float. How do you decide what’s irreplaceable? I packed the paintings I made in high school art class. The art Sam made for me to hang on my walls in college. I packed the poems Elijah gave me two birthdays ago. The framed photo of my sister and I on her wedding day. Lily’s painted baby-foot prints. My great grandfather’s ring. The dried flowers from my grandpa’s grave. I moved the container from the table to the counter. Then from the counter to the top of the refrigerator. 

How do we choose the objects that deserve our sentiment? Why do we give emotional power to things that exist only as symbols? Would I rather be the person who could rush home, grab Harry and a change of clothes, and leave without thinking twice? 

During the years I did gymnastics, my parents sacrificed every cent they possessed so my sister and I could do the things we loved (to a degree that I couldn’t fully understand at the time). We didn’t have extra money for a video camera, so almost no videos (and very few photos) exist of my gymnastics years. My friends’ parents would video me at competitions with the intention of making a DVD copy to give my mom and I eventually. I don’t know of a single one of those DVDs or recordings that survived Katrina. There used to be professional sports photographers who photographed competitions and then put action shots online for families to buy. My family didn’t even have a computer for most of those years, and once we did, we didn’t have money to splurge, so we never bought them. Last year, I secretly contacted about a dozen Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and Tennessee sports photographers to see if any of them had photos archived from 15 years ago. No luck. And why does it matter? They were just videos, just pictures. They were worth nothing compared to the lived experience. Why over 15 years later do I still think about them?

My parents took a lot of photos of Whitney and I when we were babies. Money was tighter once I was born, so even though they took as many photos of me, they didn’t get them developed. For my entire life, we’ve made jokes about how I was the invisible child. There are albums of Whitney from before I was born, and then albums where I appear suddenly as an elementary school child. There was essentially no evidence I existed before the age of 6. A couple of years ago for Christmas, my mom gave me a framed photo that I’d never seen before—me on my first birthday. Then she gave me a bag full of pictures. She'd found almost a dozen rolls of film hidden away in storage. The film was between 25 and 30 years old, and she knew there was no hope it wasn't ruined when she snuck it to Walgreens to be developed. She cried in the store when she got them back and found nothing had been ruined—all of my baby pictures for the first time anyone had seen them in nearly 30 years. It’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given. 

Of course Barry was harmless. There was hardly a puddle in the road when I returned back to my house after evacuating to my parents for the weekend. Before I left for Mississippi, after I’d packed up Harry and some snacks and my cameras, I went back in to grab the laundry basket of my favorite books. I got back in my car and put it in drive, stopped, went back inside, and climbed up on a chair to get the Tupperware container, too.