Alix E. Harrow - Tumblr Posts

Novels are untrustworthy advisers. They aren’t concerned with rationality or sobriety; they peddle in tragedy and suspense, in chaos and rule breaking, in madness and heartache, and they will steer you toward such things with all the guile of a piper luring rats into a river.

Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

So a while ago I was working at the little town bookstore (as you do, more stories about that sure to come) and I got so invested in a particular author (Alix E. Harrow) that I went and stalked her Instagram for a good long time while the store was quiet. And I found that she had recommended a book that wasn’t out yet, but was going to be out in a few days. It was Becky Chamber’s Psalm for the Wild Built.

And oh, oh boy, did that book change me. There are some people out there that you will meet who reach right into your body with their words and physically alter how your brain works. I was going through a rough time when I read this book, and I wept on the back porch of my parent’s home in the dappled shade of sugar maples and it was the first time I’d cried tears of happiness and relief in… a long, long time.

I recommend that book to everyone I met. It is my comfort book. It is a warm hug from someone you miss. It is a kind word from a stranger. It is a cup of tea on a rainy day and a glass of lemonade on a hot one. You ever want to feel seen, instead of observed? Comforted and encouraged instead of force-fed horrors? Reassured that people are good, and goodness finds a way, and small comforts are not luxuries to be ashamed of but essentials to be shared with anyone willing to sit by your table? Go read this book. It took me less than two hours to read.

It is not magical, it does not force a strange world upon you. It simply looks at you softy, offers you a drink and some food, which it has made itself but is happy to share, and tells you that it sees you, that you are real, and you are being cared for.

The second book came out a year later and I read it as soon as I could get my hands on it. It was equally comforting, and it challenged me to think about what I was giving to myself, and question whether enough of that was kindness. It challenged me to think about my faith, both in something greater than myself and something that was shared equally among everyone I will ever know. And once again, this time sitting in the dimly-lit kitchen of my first apartment, I wept tears of relief and joy. It was okay to feel how I was feeling. My grief had been seen, validated, and held in someone’s hands like glass until I could place it on the shelf of my experiences: never gone, but finally in its place.

This book of small comforts and gentle joys and big questions inside of small people made me feel safe. My greatest struggles have been with anxiety, with never feeling safe, and this book, for days at a time, made me feel safe in my own mind and body. Becky Chambers managed, in about 150 pages, to write a story that changed how my brain worked.

I’m pretty sure these are the best books I’ve ever read. And they came to me exactly when I needed them. I’m looking forward to what comes next.

Books that changed the way my brain works:

Psalm for the Wild Built, Becky Chambers

The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

Underland, Robert Macfarlane

The Once and Future Witches, Alix E. Harrow

Beartown, Fredrik Backman

A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman

There’s definitely more, these are just the ones I could remember in a few minutes

More on these to come I’m sure