A Year in Reading: Cecilia Rabess
In January, temporarily, I moved to the mountains, where there was space between people and places, and where the air smelled like cold smoke and sawdust, and where I learned how to brake in icy conditions, how to hide my trash from bears, and how to use a snow blower, sort of. I read a stack of cozy mysteries that I bought at the grocery store. Some classics by Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express, Sparkling Cyanide, A Pocket Full of Rye; the Sassy Cat Mysteries by Jennifer J. Chow; and, because why not, a couple of old Boxcar Children Mysteries I found in the bargain bin. All of these books provided a form of very gentle mental exercise—whodunnit!—and all of these books had satisfying endings and all of these books made me want to drink hot spiked coffee and light wood burning fires.
In February, I sold my first by , a book about a writer with a—spoiler alert—happy ending. This was a book that had been recommended to me many times, but which I had never read, for no good reason at all. Everyone promised me I would like it. But I didn’t like it—I loved it. It was funny, it was sad, it was smart and sentimental: it was everything you want a book about writers (and lovers) to be. I also read
