Eva Holland

I read a lot this year, much more than I managed in 2012 when I was working full time for two magazines and freelancing heavily on the side.

I finally read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. And I read some more recent nonfiction classics: The Beak of the Finch, by Jonathan Weiner, while I was cruising in the Galapagos in early April, and Moneyball and Friday Night Lights while I was stuck at home sick, unable to play any sports myself, through the entire month of August. I read a book everyone was talking about a year ago, a year late: Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg. I read books by writers whose work and lives I follow on Twitter every day: The Skies Belong to Us, by Brendan Koerner, while I was waiting out a snowstorm in my tent at Denali base camp, and Ingenious, by Jason Fagone, also during that sickbed August.

This fall I read two dark, searing books, one set in Somalia and one set in Alaska: A House in the Sky, by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett, and Tom Kizzia’s Pilgrim’s Wilderness. I don’t read much fiction, but I stayed up all night reading Benjamin Percy’s werewolf epic, Red Moon. And as 2013 winds down, I have two books sitting halfway-read beside my bed: Wild Ones, by Jon Mooallem, and Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things.

I read shorter pieces of writing, too, lots and lots of them. A few stand out in particular: The ones I still find myself telling people about, at a party or over coffee, like Mac McClelland’s Is PTSD Contagious? Or the ones I pass along to my parents or close friends, trying to explain to them the type of storytelling I want to do, like Confessions of a Drone Warrior, by Matthew Power, or The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever, by Michael Mooney. And the ones I just keep dwelling on, thinking and re-thinking, like Patricia O’Connor’s Private Ceremonies.

I wrote a lot in 2012, and a lot of it was stuff I was really proud of; it seems like I have less of both those things to show for myself in 2013. But I was excited to write two long features for SB Nation Longform: No Sleep ‘Til Fairbanks, about the support crews who work behind the scenes of the Yukon Quest, and The High One, about the 100th anniversary of the first ascent of Denali. I had fun putting together this roundup of the North’s hidden misfits and miscreants, for Up Here. And I was really pleased with how months of work came together in the end for my story about the “McCandless pilgrims” phenomenon, Chasing Alexander Supertramp.

I’ve got lots of exciting stories in the works already for 2014. And plenty on my reading list, too – Happy New Year!