A Year in Reading: Elena Saavedra Buckley

This was my first full year in New York, my first with a full-time job, and the first since college in which I signed a lease. In the past few years I lived in rural Colorado, freezing, then New Mexico, Texas, and California; I exited a very long relationship; I misplaced entire boxes of possessions and filed Borgesian freelance tax returns. Regret is always there for the taking when you’re growing up, whenever that may be, but it’s not so bad when you can drive to the next destination before it catches up. So while 2022 has been relatively stable, staying in one place has given me plenty of time to reckon with myself. To distract, I placed some of the aimlessness I used to embody in my reading patterns. Here are some of the great books I came across in the process.

I spent New Year’s with my brother in preparation for a vs. party/debate my friends were having in the city a few weeks later. (I was on team James.) What a great book to read while 26 and clumsy, wanting both independence and a good reason to abandon it, while being put up in someone else’s home like the overseas Isabel Archer so often is. Beyond these obvious resonances, I loved how James quilts together varied forms of love across generations, dispositions, and fates. Also, I’m sorry if this James/Wharton party sounds annoying, but I’ll counter that by saying it was extremely fun. One challenge was to write parodies of each author. My team’s Wharton passage described an event called “the Horse Week Ball.”