Goodreads’s Best Books of 2023 Released, Great Gifts for Readers This Holiday Season

As the holiday season quickly approaches, consumers are still scrambling to find gifts for their loved ones. And for those of you with avid readers in your lives, that means books. But scouring your nearest Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore can be a challenge when you aren’t sure if the book you choose will suit a person. You may know which genres they prefer or subjects they are interested in, but that doesn’t mean every book will be one they devour and add to their list of favorites. Worst case scenario, it ends up collecting dust on the shelf and only halfway finished.

Luckily for you frantic shoppers, Goodreads has just released the results of their 2023 Choice Awards for the Best Books of 2023 list! Gathering votes from nearly six million of their site-users, Goodreads has collected a list of both fiction and nonfiction titles that their users have deemed the best of 2023. From science fiction to romance and memoirs to history, Goodreads has something for anyone to enjoy on their list. You can even check out the nominees that didn’t win in each category if you want even more gift ideas for readers. 

Scrolling through Goodreads’s social media accounts may highlight the discourse between readers as they argue which book may have been more deserving to win a particular category than others. This is normal considering the subjectivity of art and the wide-range of taste and preferences amongst readers, so don’t fret over buying a book someone else may call ‘boring’ or ‘trash’ (especially if they mention that they didn’t even read it). What someone else hates, your reader may enjoy! If you choose to scroll through their Instagram or Tiktok, you may want to take note of these comments. Not only could you potentially get a better idea of what certain books are about, but you may just get great recommendations! 

Some titles that may be popular gifts this holiday season seemed almost destined to win first-place in their respective categories. Yellowface and Fourth Wing, for example, were immensely popular on bookstagram and booktok this year, so it seems no surprise that they won by such large margins. There were a few interesting outcomes, however. Interestingly, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which was named the 2023 Barnes & Noble Book of the Year, came in fourth-place in its category for historical fiction, losing to the first-place winner Weyward with almost 30,000 votes. Barnes & Noble determines the winner of their prestigious title by inquiring their booksellers to nominate the titles they feel are particularly remarkable and would recommend to a consumer. This explanation, provided in one of their blog posts this past November,, is rather vague. Meanwhile, Goodreads allows their list to be determined as a sort of popularity contest. A voter isn’t required to have read every book in each category in order to cast their vote, so they merely choose the books they have read and enjoyed to determine who they vote for. This is not necessarily bad, per se, as Goodreads pools together a large group of readers, allowing many different perspectives, interests, and preferences to come together and let their voices be heard. If some books win by large margins, perhaps it’s because a majority of readers believed it deserved to win. 

Lists such as Goodreads’s Best Books of 2023 gives us a great insight into the minds of readers and which books or authors have really made an impact in the publishing world. However, just because one book wins doesn’t mean its fellow nominees in the category are any less enjoyable. Yellowface may have won with over 200,000 votes (with second-place lagging 140,000 votes behind) in the fiction category, but the titles it competed against, such as Hello Beautiful (second-place), Maame (eighth-place), or Evil Eye (thirteenth-place) are also incredible books that you should absolutely check out. If the reader you’re shopping for hasn’t read the book that won in their preferred genre, then you should definitely check it out to see if it’s something they would be interested in. That being said, check out all the nominated books in that category! Even if a book didn’t win, it could be a gem that your reader loves!

The Woman in Me, Spare, and Celebrity Memoirs Humanizing Celebrities

In 2021, the world was captivated by Britney Spears’s story as she spoke out against her father and her management as the result of their abuse and for keeping her under involuntary conservatorship. The world applauded for her as the conservatorship was terminated. Now the world applauds her memoir, The Woman in Me, for reclaiming and humanizing her story. The book highlights the importance of Spears reclaiming her independence by sharing her story as a woman within the music industry fighting against the men in her life that sought to control her. 

Published on October 24, the memoir narrates a story that is described on the Gallery Books website—the publisher and a division of Simon & Schuster—as “a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.” Gallery Books reports that the memoir sold 1.1 million copies in its first week in the U.S, with the combined figure composed of sales of print books, e-books, pre-orders, and audiobooks. The publisher has also announced the memoir is going for a fourth printing, bringing the number of hardcover copies in print to about 1.4 million, making it the fastest selling book in Gallery’s history. The Woman in Me now joins other celebrity memoirs such as Spare by Prince Harry, The Promised Land by Barack Obama, Becoming by Michelle Obama, and Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump in selling over a million copies in their first week of publication.

What these numbers reflect is the support for the #FreeBritney movement that began in 2020 when rumors and personal accounts of the conservatorship and the effects it had on Spears’s mental health began to be uncovered. The internet has come out in droves to support Spears before the full extent of the situation and the implications of what that meant for the pop star’s life was even fully revealed. Of course, this also means that people have eagerly awaited for more news concerning Spears’s career under the authority of her conservatorship and what effects this had on her. And perhaps that reveals the harsh truth: the obsessive curiosity audiences possess when it comes to knowing and understanding the ugly and humane realities that lie beyond the persona celebrities present to the world. An almost desperate need to know that these larger-than-life figures possess larger-than-life issues that ground them back into reality and bring them to equal footing with us, humanizing them to us.

Another celebrity memoir that did exceptionally well was Prince Harry’s Spare, which was published earlier this year in January and sold 1.6 million copies in the U.S. during its first week. Spare followed the announcement that Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, would be leaving the royal family. Like Spears’s memoir, the success and reception of Spare could be attributed to the memoir’s debut following a huge news story.

The near-instant success of celebrity memoirs such as The Woman in Me following the dramatic revelation of such imperfections in these people’s lives seems to suggest readers crave these tragic stories that explore every human emotion that hides behind the smiles and carefully-crafted persona portrayed in public. Readers want to know the details hidden behind closed doors that humanize celebrities. In a sense, a memoir like The Woman in Me is the closest we can get to an honest portrayal of a human who has been placed on a pedestal.

The Horrors of the Supernatural & Family Trauma

As Halloween quickly approaches, this is the best season to indulge in a great horror novel that sends chills down your spine. In order to celebrate the spookiest season of the year, this blog post is dedicated to reviewing a popular horror novel published earlier this year. How to Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix is not this author’s first foray into horror and he does not hesitate to thrust you into an environment bursting with tension and eeriness once the main character, Louise, enters the aforementioned haunted house. This narrative  doesn’t just frighten its reader with the hauntings of the supernatural, though. In it, Hendrix explores the depth of unresolved trauma and the ways it can haunt a family through generations.

The story begins with Louise receiving a call from her estranged brother, Mark, with the news that both of their parents tragically died in a car accident. Now, single-parent Louise must leave her daughter Poppy behind in San Francisco to travel back to Charleston for the funeral. As is often the case with a death in the family, money becomes a huge issue between Louise and Mark as they fight over their inheritance and what they should do with the house—including their late-mother’s extensive and creepy puppet collection. Eventually agreeing to sell the house, as the siblings bicker over their past and the differences in how they view their lives, Hendrix makes it clear that something is very wrong with the house. From dolls that seem to move on their own to the attic being nailed shut as though to keep something from getting out, coupled with Aunt Honey’s recollection of their mother saying their father had been “attacked” the night they died, Hendrix eloquently weaves together a story laced with figurative and literal hauntings that forces the siblings to actually talk through their differences and their family’s past.

Hendrix’s haunted house and haunted dolls are undeniably campy but they work well with the dark topics discussed within the family and the awkward, heavy tension that often permeates any interaction between Louise and Mark. Hendrix didn’t attempt to reinvent the horror genre or bring anything new to the table, but the novel is enjoyable because he plays into the camp and the supernatural aspects of the story works to develop the family conflict and force the family to confront the issues they were often prone to avoiding. Avoidance is perhaps the most prominent theme within the story and the setting of the family home is the most appropriate setting to force this confrontation. Although Louise wishes to escape the odd occurrences once more and flee to San Francisco, her determination to ensure the house is ready for sale in order to use the money to provide for her daughter is what drives her to confront the ghosts of her family’s past.

The leader of these haunted dolls is Pupkin, the late-mother’s favorite puppet and a source of great fear for the siblings. As a reader, one can feel how much fun Hendrix likely had while writing this character. His eerie song that echoes in Louise’s head and the aggressive actions he often displays coupled with the joy others’ fear provides him makes him a being of pure chaos. One gets the sense he is, in an ironic play by Hendrix, the puppetmaster jerking Louise and Mark around like his own pair of puppets for his twisted amusement. As Hendrix explains in the novel, “A puppet is a possession that possesses the possessor.” What Pupkin is and what he wants remains a mystery throughout most of the novel, as he represents the physical symbol for all of the secrets that have been buried and carefully avoided within the family. 

Hendrix uses a simplistic foundation for any horror story—a haunted house and haunted dolls—and uses them to reinforce the very real horrors of a family rife with secrecy, family drama, and generational trauma. The story works best when the family begins opening up to one another and the truth finally begins to unravel, allowing Louise to come to terms with her past and make amends with her family, both the living and dead. This is definitely a great novel to check out if you’re looking for some good old-fashioned horror mixed with the exploration of a family and their strained bonds.

Nonfiction Books That Will Change Your Life

For many readers, nonfiction can be an intimidating genre to break into.  However, nonfiction can often help people to change their habits, or keep them informed  on past, current, and future issues. Here, I have collected some nonfiction books I have loved and that have affected the way I think, act, and interact with others. So dive in. I promise, these books will change your life.

1. The Sweetness of a Simple Life by Diana Beresford-Kroeger

Diana Beresford-Kroeger draws on her life as a botanist and scientist to teach a better way of life in her 2013 novel, The Sweetness of a Simple Life. Beresford-Kroeger is a Canadian citizen who grew up in Ireland learning ancient Celtic wisdom. She applies these principles of natural connection, language, and kindness to modern-day life with a series of guidelines for how to live a “simple life.” This book includes tips on a wide range of  things, including how to build a bird’s nest, how to use leftover meat bones to fertilize a garden, and even  how to reduce the chance of a heart attack with food. Beresford-Kroeger’s other works, The Global Forest and To Speak for the Trees, expand on her love of nature and Celtic wisdom.

2. Radical Curiosity by Seth Goldenberg

While the market of pop science books is endlessly diluted by excess, this 2022 book was a standout in its emphasis on curiosity as society’s biggest kept secret. Seth Goldenberg makes the argument that curiosity is in short supply in the modern day, but harnessing its power could radically change the way we view our impact on society. As a more recent release, this book draws on the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic as a catalyst for “looking at the system in a fundamentally new way.”

3. Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall

Hood Feminism is a breakthrough in feminist texts that reframes the conversation towards marginalized groups that created it in the first place. Mikki Kendall outlines the feminist movement as it was developed by and then shunned from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) women. Each essay in this collection reflects on how BIPOC women have continuously been left out of the mainstream white feminist movement, and how to change this. Kendall shows how the combination of racism, poverty, and hypersexualization of BIPOC women has been at the forefront of this divide, and how intersectionality is a more complex issue than mainstream feminists realize. 

4. How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

As deceiving as the title may seem, this book does not teach you how to do nothing. Instead, it teaches you how to slow down, look outside your window every now and again (or even go for a walk in the park), and distance yourself from what Jenny Odell labels “the attention economy.” Odell makes the argument that in modern society, it has become too easy to get swept up in “the attention economy” of today, with social media, the Internet, and technology at the forefront of our lives. Throughout the book, Odell develops an action plan for taking back our time that does not ignore the complexities of modern-day life and the importance of technology. Instead, Odell shows how we can disconnect from the negative effects and turn the rest into positive action.

5. Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

Trick Mirror was one of the most popular books when it was released in 2019, and for good reason. Expanding on previous essays and adding new ones, journalist Jia Tolentino gives a complex picture of the last two decades through a series of social and cultural questions that many people can relate to. In one essay, Tolentino focuses on the idea of “always optimizing,” wherein people, especially millennials, are constantly trying to find the best use of their time instead of taking a moment alone (similar to Odell’s theory in How to Do Nothing). In another, Tolentino tells the story of a falsified 2014 Rolling Stone article of a sexual assault case that happened at her alma mater, the University of Virginia. Tolentino covers a lot of ground in these essays, but ultimately does a great job of tying together underlying themes of social and cultural touchstones.

6. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Similar to The Sweetness of a Simple Life, this 2013 book serves as a part-memoir and part-instruction guide on how to live a more environmentally-friendly life. Botanist and Potawatomi scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer draws on a lifetime of studying plants, indigenous culture, and her own personal story of motherhood. Wall Kimmerer’s love of nature is infectious, and with each page, she manages to inspire the reader to do better. Her argument for a renewed bond between people and nature relies on a reciprocal culture of gratitude, in which people understand that they are indebted to the natural world in the same way as it is to them.  

Happy reading!

-Hannah Eaton, CambridgeEditors Team

The Triumphs and Tears of Women Talking

The cast of Women Talking / Credit: Michael Gibson/United Artists Releasing

While the trend of book-to-movie adaptations has become excessive and (in some instances) disappointing in recent years, the January release of Women Talking, directed by Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley, has proven to be an important exception. 

Based on a real tragedy in a Bolivian colony, the 2018 novel by Miriam Toews follows a Mennonite community located in rural Canada where a stream of sexual assaults have affected the women of the colony. The story follows a subsequent meeting where an elected group of colony women must decide how to move forward in the aftermath of such violent and horrific crimes. 

When a story as unique and powerful as this one is adapted for the screen, there is the fear that something will be missing in the translation. However, screenwriter Sarah Polley has managed to capture the essence of Women Talking while also opening the door for more conversations on the relationships between survivors of sexual assault.

A major difference that Polley utilized between page and screen was a shifting narrator.  In the novel, the colony teacher August Epp takes the minutes for the women’s meeting and narrates through his notes. In the movie, our narrator is Autje, played by Kate Hallet, a teenager attending the meeting. 

While this difference does not dramatically change the story’s content, it does change the audience’s perception of the events. The youthful voice of Autje recollecting the crimes against the women is enough to bring even the most stoic viewer to tears. 

The movie emphasizes the divisiveness of the characters. Mariche, played by Jessie Buckley, believes that forgiving the men of their crimes is the only way to reach heaven, while Salome, played byClaire Foy, states that she can not forgive them and will turn her back on her religion if she is forced to stay. 

Mariche, in fact, butts heads with each of the women, even accusing her sister Mejal, played by Michelle McLeod, of faking her panic attacks “for attention.” This survivor-on-survivor attack brings into question the responses to trauma and the different ways they manifest. Mariche is incorrect for attacking Mejal, but the audience is aware that this is a trauma response, and her later apology is both understood and accepted.

A new inclusion in the story was an emotional scene where Mariche’s mother Greta, played bySheila McCarthy, apologizes for her role of complicity by not protecting Mariche from her abusive husband. 

Each scene of disunity among the women effectively shows the multifaceted path of assault survivors. There is not one clear-cut way to move forward, nor is there one way to deal with the years of struggle that these women had to endure and learn to overcome. But as Polley shows in the final scenes, it is possible to work together through these moments to prioritize recovery.

On January 24, the Academy Award nomination list was released, with Polley earning a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for Women Talking. A win for this movie would go a long way to encourage more media about sexual assault survivors and show audiences that these stories are necessary for our current social culture.

You can see Women Talking in theaters now.

Hannah Eaton, CambridgeEditors Team

John McPhee and “Greening” an Edited Draft

What kind of editing happens when a draft already seems finished?

In his book Draft No.4: On the Writing Process, American writer and pioneer of creative nonfiction John McPhee writes about the outlining, drafting, and revision phases included in the writing process. One chapter called “Omission,” also published in the New Yorker in 2015, discusses McPhee’s experience writing and editing his pieces for Time.

After rounds of back and forth with his editors on a piece and reaching a finalized draft, McPhee would come into work in the morning and find a final assignment with a note telling him to “Green 5” or “Green 9.” Essentially these notes would mean McPhee was supposed to condense his work by that particular number of lines so that it could fit into the print magazine format. He was supposed to mark his changes in green pencil so that his editors could add something back if they saw fit, which according to him, they rarely did. Editing values being concise.

This practice of “greening” his text was a task intended to reduce the piece in size, but change nothing about its voice, message, or tone. The piece needed to be left intact—just slightly shorter to fit publishing’s practical needs. Although used specifically for print needs in this anecdote, the importance of greening lines in a text expands to digital formatting as well (consider Tweets or the format of blog posts).

McPhee took this experience and ended up teaching it to his writing students at Princeton, asking them to green their pieces to think about every word placed in their work. This final phase of editing requires methodically rechecking word and line count while making careful changes—putting together a puzzle of a perfected draft.

When editors of the CambridgeEditors team work on copy edits, proofreading, or formatting, they employ these strategies to end up with final pieces worthy of McPhee’s praise. CambridgeEditors has experts in greening and polishing texts of all kinds. If you’re interested in making your pieces as polished and concise as they can be, reach out to CambridgeEditors or check out our website for more information on all the services we provide.

Tatiana Jackson-Saitz, Cambridge Editors Team

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Active or Passive Voice?

By Hannah Voteur, CambridgeEditors’ Team

How do you know what voice would best serve your writing?

One of the most frequently repeated lessons from high school English class is that the passive voice should be avoided at all costs. It takes away from the clarity of the sentence and is questionably grammatical.

However, this isn’t entirely true. The passive voice is one of two grammatical voices in English, the other being active. Voice in grammar indicates the relationship between the subject of the sentence and the action; more specifically, whether the subject is performing the action (active) or being performed on (passive). Either voice can be applied to any tense since they don’t carry specific temporal information.

Although using the passive is often frowned upon by teachers, both of these forms of verbs are grammatically correct. However, as stylistic choices, they lend different tones to your writing. Choosing one over the other can be a way to highlight certain information or draw your reader’s attention to a different focus. Creative writers can particularly play with voice, selecting either based on their desired effect on readers.

Passive voice emphasizes the action over the participants, which is why it can be useful in news or scientific contexts. News articles are more apt to contain “The store was robbed,” to bring readers closer to the point of the story, the robbery itself, and not the presently unknown perpetrators. Scientific papers might use the passive to highlight the different steps of an experiment, leaving out the actors, the scientists themselves, because that information is already clearly established and doesn’t need to clog the
sentence.

Active voice is more decisive and declarative, directly stating the information for readers. Opinion pieces and other more definitive styles of writing would benefit from this voice type. It lends clarity and focus to your sentences, helping with conciseness and precision. Academic writing on history or other informational subjects tends towards using a more active voice for this reason, keeping the writing in line with the factual and informative content.

Either type of voice can enrich your writing, as long as it is properly utilized with your subject matter and audience in mind. If you’re looking for assistance deciding on the best way to make use of voice in your writing, or if you need any other helpful guidance, contact CambridgeEditors or check out our website for information on our full range of editing services.

Exploring; Where should our focus lie?

I have a general statement.

Now, we all know generalizations are dangerous, in that they can grossly overlook important small details, but I’m willing to take that risk, at least right now. Here goes: The constant debate that applies to exploring, be it going round the world or your hometown, is whether or not you focus on your destination, or enjoy the ride.

Would you not agree? In an age when we are so focused on productivity and efficiency, it seems as though people are struggling more and more to simply enjoy the little things, and the process of getting from one place to another, literally or metaphorically, is more and more becoming entirely focused on the outcome.

Why is this?

It could be that since we are capable of doing so much more than we could in the past, what with the aid of technology to take care of the little mundane things, we feel as though we must be even more productive than the machines we rely on?

Maybe. Probably? It seems likely, although there are of course other factors that add into that.

Regardless, this is a debate that has been much on my mind recently, especially considering that it is my last day here in the CambridgeEditors’ office!

Coming in to Cambridge just about every Wednesday and Friday of the past few months has been a treat, and working with Dr. Weiner and elizabeth has been both educational, but also truly inspiring! Collaborating with two very independent, multidimensional women is something I can only hope to continue throughout my life. Needless to say, the bar has been set high.

So, as my metaphorical journey through this semester comes to a close, I am thinking very much about this debate, journey or destination? Perhaps in my case I’m focusing on both, whether it be truly appreciating my experience here, as well as appreciating how it will help me move forward as I eventually (sooner than I’m fully comfortable acknowledging just yet) enter the mythical “workforce” that we are told that we will one day enter. Who knows? I like the idea of keeping my options open, but who doesn’t?

Ursula K. Le Guin said it best: “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.” I am grateful for all that I learned while I was here, and I look forward to emulating the amazing two women who I work with now.

-Hadley Gibson

 

Meet Our Newest Editor, Charles Coe!

As we near the end of October, the CambridgeEditors office has been very busy putting our clients in contact with specific editors, and business has been flourishing! We have also been on the hunt for more editors to join our ever-growing team, and so are immensely pleased to announce the arrival of our newest editor, Charles Coe!

Mr. Coe is an accomplished poet, with All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents, and Picnic on the Moon, two collections published by Leapfrog Press. In addition, he is an avid writer, contributing to many journals in the New England area, as well as serving as the co-chair of the Boston chapter of the National Writer’s Union. It is thrilling to have someone so passionate about writing and editing in our midst, and in fact, he is also a fellow bibliophile.

In a post from his page on bestamericanpoetry.com, Coe wrote,

“We all know that the role of the library is changing rapidly. Libraries are learning to adapt, with their banks of computers and increased focus on offering readings and other community events. Even so, with the Internet and the emergence of eBooks some people consider the traditional library model outdated. A few American high school libraries have gone so far as to do away with hard copy books. Obviously, print books have to “share the road” with new technologies, but I believe (at least, I hope) that there’ll always be room for books and the libraries that preserve and present them.”

To see the full post about his love of books, click here.

Welcome to the team, Charles!

-Hadley Gibson

‘The Opposite of Loneliness’ – Young Writers etc.

Last week in a moment of procrastination I went to the library and took out The Opposite of Loneliness,  a collection of essays and stories written by the late Marina Keegan. This book has been on my radar for about a year now, when I read about it in the New York Times book review, which proclaimed Keegan to be an incredible talent for someone her age, or something along those lines.

I remember being particularly struck by the fact that so many book reviewers were astounded by Keegan’s age; “The loveliest piece of writing I’ve ever seen from someone so young…” “…contains the keen observations of a short lifetime – and the wisdom of a much longer one.” “In her brief life, Marina Keegan managed to achieve a precocious literary master.” “…after a young writer’s death, her words soar. …The prose, polished but thoroughly unselfconscious, is heartbreaking evidence of what could have been.” All of these various comments from reviewers, quoted on the inside sleeve of the book, are undoubtedly showering Keegan’s work with praise. However, what bothers me is that they all focus on the fact that she was young, as though they are surprised that someone under thirty could be a profound, thoughtful writer.

In many ways it feels as though younger generations are continually viewed as knowing less than older generations, simply because they haven’t been alive as long. I’m not arguing with this fact, because I don’t disagree with it. Instead, I’m arguing with the idea that age brings talent, or a more defined voice. To be completely frank, I don’t think this is the case. There is a difference between having more life experience, and simply having a knack for something. More life experience will definitely give someone a larger perspective, and allow them to aptly use different skills, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that someone with less life experience can’t be just as skilled at something.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I think Keegan’s work should be praised simply because it is good, not because she was young. However, I also recognize the fact that this book was published as a result of her untimely death to honor her memory, and if she were still alive today she may very well have published other works based solely on merit, not on hype. Do you know what I mean? Her personal story makes for a great way of introducing the book, and creates enough mystique about an immensely talented young writer who died years before her time, that many people want to read it! There’s just something about that type of tragedy that people are drawn to.

But enough of my ranting; I also wanted to write about this book because it is excellent. As a current senior in college, a lot of her essays ring true for me, with themes of focusing on the present, as well as being okay with not knowing exactly where you will be in a year. These themes can carry over to all ages, though, which is why I would recommend it to just about anyone.

Keegan’s life story also resounds with me on a personal level. In May of 2012, she graduated from Yale University. One month later, I graduated from high school. As I was preparing to enter my next stage of life in college, she was preparing to enter the mythical “real world”. You know, the “real world” that we are told about our whole childhoods, whether it is hidden behind the mask of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” or more blatantly when we are told that we can’t get away with certain things once we become fully fledged adults. While I was able to enter my freshman year of college in the fall of 2012, though, Keegan never got the chance to experience the “real world”. She was killed in a car accident five days after graduating college, and was never able to begin work at the New Yorker, where she had been hired.

As one of the reviewers up above said, “what could have been” with Keegan is haunting, and sad. However, based on her writing, it is clear that Marina was a hopeful person. The title of the book is the same as that of an essay she wrote as her final post while editor in chief of the Yale Daily News, addressed to her graduating class. “We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness,” Keegan writes,  “but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life.” Well, I doubt there is anyone who is unable to identify with that sentiment. As Keegan describes her experience at Yale, “this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together,” I can certainly relate. Likewise, I can confirm the feeling of fear associated with losing that feeling next year, but I hope to take her words to heart, “We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. …In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that.”

I can only hope that I’ll be able to carry that idea with me as I finish up my last year of college and beyond, but I also hope that by writing about it here, you who read this blog will decide to pick up the book! Who can’t benefit from hearing their inner thoughts so eloquently written out? And by someone so young as well! Like I said, age doesn’t necessarily always translate to wisdom, but I suppose we can all acknowledge that this essay is coming from the viewpoint of a young person, who most of the time tries to remain neutral. 😉

Keegan’s best selling book shows her on the cover, in a yellow coat that can be described as “happy” and “hopeful”, the epitome of youth.

-Hadley Gibson