14. Be Less Crazy About Your Body by Megan Dietz

This a fun, short little book that could have been a very long article on The Hairpin, from whence it was recommended. She's right. We do need to be less crazy about our bodies. You know how it goes: if you're focused on dieting you won't be available to fight bigger fights (rudimentary Googling does not lead me to the source of this theory- or at least it's most quoted form). Also it's boring. And we should all wear vintage swimmers. 

13. Mia Culpa by Mia Freedman

Exactly what you would expect from a collation of Mia Freedman's columns from the Sunday Daily Telegraph. Rambling. Reductionist. Somewhat charming. I have a good deal of affection for Mia Freedman. She actively calls herself a feminist, and does feminist things in an incredibly anti-feminist industry. She's open about her life- which, have I mentioned? I crave the minutiae of other women's lives. I loved the part in Mamamia- her autobiography- where she described sneaking out of work at 5.30pm by pretending to take a mobile phone call while walking into the lift. I mean, I didn't love that she had to do that, I love that she told us she had to do that. 

On another topic, the point of this project was to record what I read in book form in a year. This was surely the worst year to ever do that, as the vast, vast bulk of my reading now occurs online. I read for hours a day online. I have an extensive Google Reader that I like to clear each day (highlights: everything from The Awl team) and every day I read a couple of articles from the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, the Washington Post and even CNN, Business Insider, the Economist, and Time. I diligently read my New Yorker every week. Why does none of this count but Mia Culpa does, because it's between two covers? Because those were the parameters I set on this project, and they were wrong.