Eva Holland

I managed to read a heap of good stuff this year, nearly all of it narrative nonfiction. I burned through Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers back in January, and I still can’t quite comprehend how she transformed her years of reporting into such a seamless story. I picked up John Jeremiah Sullivan’s instant-classic essay collection, Pulphead, during a trip to Boulder in March, and have been working my way through it ever since. Later that same month I read two fascinating books by writer pals of mine during a three-day ferry ride from Bellingham, Washington, to Southeast Alaska: The Oil Man and the Sea, Arno Kopecky’s chronicle of a sailing trip through the proposed tanker route for a controversial pipeline, and The Footloose American, about a young Hunter S. Thompson in South America, by Brian Kevin.

In the spring I read two wonderful books by Mike Paterniti: Driving Mr. Albert, about a cross-country road trip with Einstein’s brain, and The Telling Room, a complicated and thoughtful story about a famous Spanish cheese. Over the summer and fall I read three very different books, but each one in a single sitting or close to it: Robert Kolker’s Lost Girls, the story of a group of young women who were murdered – presumably by one uncaught killer – on Long Island; The Emerald Mile, by Kevin Fedarko, about an illegal speed run through a flooded Grand Canyon in a tiny wooden boat; and John Branch’s Boy On Ice, about the life and early death of NHL enforcer Derek Boogaard.

In terms of shorter stuff, I tried my best to keep up with the wonderful stories published by The Atavist all year. I managed to get to Love and Ruin, James Verini’s tale of romance in Cold War Afghanistan, and Charles Homans’ taxidermy heist story, The Dead Zoo Gang. I read A Thousand Pounds of Dynamite, about a casino extortion scheme, and The Trials of White Boy Rick, about a young white crime kingpin in Detroit, and 52 Blue, Leslie Jamison’s sad, thoughtful story about a lone whale and loneliness.

Some other stories that stuck out for me this year: my friend Lauren Quinn’s excellent The Ism and the Alcohol, on addiction and recovery narratives; Landays: Cries of the Pashtun Women, Eliza Griswold’s look at the short rebellious poems shared among women on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border; Jon Mooallem’s Lest Ye Be Judged, about a pastor who ministers to major league baseball umpires; Outside Magazine’s 1997 classic on the fine details of freezing to death; Remote Control, Sarah Marshall’s look back at Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan; the very smart Greg Howard on Ferguson: America Is Not For Black People; Brian Phillips’ lovely, haunting sumo epic, Sea of Crises; and finally, The Case For Reparations, an eye-opener from Ta-Nehisi Coates.

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!