Which book best represents you this year?

Hemingway - bookIf a book could represent your year, this year, what would it be?

Every year, like Christmas, booklists appear like neatly wrapped gifts in heritage and new media outlets. They announce the top ten books published during the calendar year. You are familiar with the practice. A year ago I was employed at an international publishing house and had learned that the one of the best things to happen to a book title is to be on one of those lists.

Last year, during a particularly awful time, I was sitting at the Pack Library in downtown Asheville, North Carolina. It was a December afternoon and I was working on a book design project. And I was thinking about work and life and money and decisions that required answers — and I had just finished reading For Whom the Bell Tolls. Why haven’t I read this book sooner? I asked myself.

In a dismal mood, I wrote a blog post about the best books I should have read before 2013. Later, I thought of the books that stayed with me that year. Like friends. And wrote another blog post featuring the best books I read during during that year.

Today, I am sitting in another library hundreds and hundreds of miles from that place a year ago — both physically and metaphorically. Which books have befriended me this year? How about you? If you could sum up your year as a book, which book — or books — might it be?

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