An incomplete series of lists detailing what I built, wrote, cooked, talked about, and read in 2019.

Projects

• Finished my sixth year reading 52 books in 52 weeks
• Led the engineering work for the relaunch of Recode on Vox
• Started writing a novel (and completed my National Novel Writing Month goal of 25,000 words in 30 days)

Writing

• The Weight of Words: Self-Acceptance Doesn’t Have to Be a Solo Journey (Catapult)
• Lean in or lie down? Balancing jobs, side projects, and hobbies (Medium)
• My Discomfort with Comfort Food (Eater)

Speaking

• Essay reading: Slant’d Issue 02 Launch Party (March, Slant’d)
• Keynote: Lean in or lie down? Balancing career development, side projects, and hobbies (April, Flawless Hacks, Slides)
• Workshop: Side Projects — Pursuing Your Interests While Keeping Your Day Job (August, The Cosmos Summit)
• Session: How to organize reading groups that encourage continued learning about our work? (October, MozFest)

Cooking

A slew of Bon Appetit recipes that did not disappoint:

• Carrot loaf cake, for a friend’s birthday
• Sour cream and onion potato salad, for a friend’s potluck dinner
• Chocolate chip cookies, for a weekend artist retreat upstate
• Mussels with white wine, for a date night with E
• Blueberry-pecan galette, for a summer dinner with friends
• Shrimp scampi pasta, spinach salad, marinated anchovies with bread and butter, for the first dinner I hosted in my apartment with a real dining table
• Snickerdoodles, for a white elephant book club exchange

Non-BA recipes that were also delicious:

• Omurice, to satisfy my craving after watching too much Terrace House (Food52)
• Tres leches cake, for a friend’s birthday (Smitten Kitchen)
• Pink grapefruit and avocado salad, to recreate my favorite dish from my sister’s birthday dinner at Chez Panisse (Food & Wine)
• Chinese smashed cucumbers with sesame oil and garlic, which I made often but most memorably on a Saturday night furniture-building session with E that ended with me cooking in a New York blackout (NYT Cooking)
• Silky zucchini soup, for a dinner / workshop prep session with a friend (Food & Wine)
• Baked eggs with spinach and mushrooms, for a brunch with friends because going out for brunch is for suckers (Smitten Kitchen)
• Roberto, for a solo Saturday soup night (Helen Rosner’s Tinyletter)

Reading

61 total in 2019. For additional metadata and more details on how I choose the books I read, check out the corresponding spreadsheet.

1. Meaty by Samantha Irby
2. Wrong to Need You by Alisha Rai
3. The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty
4. The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory
5. Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger by Rebecca Traister
6. Becoming by Michelle Obama
7. A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole
8. A Week to Be Wicked by Tessa Dare
9. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
10. The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
11. Hurts to Love You by Alisha Rai
12. Sophia of Silicon Valley by Anna Yen
13. Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
14. A Night to Surrender by Tessa Dare
15. The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America edited by Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman
16. You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian
17. Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
18. The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin
19. A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza
20. If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim
21. The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esmé Weijun Wang
22. A Lady by Midnight by Tessa Dare
23. Normal People by Sally Rooney
24. Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials by Malcolm Harris
25. How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
26. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble
27. The Rogue Not Taken by Sarah MacLean
28. Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
29. Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl
30. A Prince on Paper by Alyssa Cole
31. Home Remedies: Stories by Xuan Juliana Wang
32. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
33. Lot by Bryan Washington
34. Any Duchess Will Do by Tessa Dare
35. The Bride Test by Helen Hoang
36. Severance by Ling Ma
37. Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich
38. Memes to Movements: How the World’s Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power by An Xiao Mina
39. Hey Ladies!: The Story of 8 Best Friends, 1 Year, and Way, Way Too Many Emails by Michelle Markowitz and Caroline Moss
40. Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan
41. Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
42. The Other Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn
43. The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn
44. Exhalation by Ted Chiang
45. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
46. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
47. Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
48. A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
49. Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
50. High School by Tegan Quin and Sara Quin
51. A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas
52. Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, and Advice for Living Your Best Life by Ali Wong
53. The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai
54. Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
55. The Wallflower Wager by Tessa Dare
56. Know My Name by Chanel Miller
57. Romancing the Duke by Tessa Dare
58. A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas
59. With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
60. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
61. The Duke and I by Julia Quinn