📖 reading reflections & favorite books of the year:

When you become more in tune with yourself as a reader, it becomes this intimate way of knowing yourself deeply; to know, intuitively, the kind of books that you will gravitate towards can take years of exploration, of trial and error.

But to finally know which books will have a likelihood of settling somewhere within you feels like finding your own voice, your own style, and that is an incredibly precious discovery as both reader + human. but the most wonderful part is, it can always change as we are ever-evolving. Here it is at 32, at a time where I feel most authentically “me.” Yet the core of what I look for will always remain the same:  contemplative books focused on the interior life and all its fascinating complexities and contradictions.

They require a slowing down, compel me to sit with them, to write in the margins, to journal about a sentence I can’t stop thinking about. I seek out the books that mirror how I wish to live: fully present, alive, and attentive. Might expand on this more in a new substack essay 😉

2025 favorites that I don’t own:

GOOD GIRL by Aria Aber

THE MORNING STAR by Karl Ove Knausgård

SPLINTERS by Leslie Jamison

:: from my book account: bloomingliterature on IG 🌹