It’s the end of the year! Can you believe it?

December in my mind means holidays and thinking about the new year. I find this time to be a great opportunity to reflect on what’s coming in the new year and all that’s happened over the past year. In the spirit of the holidays, I want to share books about family (found or otherwise), holidays, and the transition to a new year.

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Personally, I always associate the year-end holidays with spending time with those you love, either friends, family, lovers, or others.

The people you surround yourself with at the end of the year, are hopefully ones that love and support you. They may not always be biologically related to you, but that doesn’t matter. What really matters is your relationship with them.

It reminds me of the saying “blood is thicker than water”, which is actually incomplete and doesn’t mean what you think it does. The full quote is:

“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”

This means that the commitments and relationships you make (the covenant) is more important and stronger than biological family (water of the womb).

The people you grew up with and are related to you, can be your closest relationships, but they may not be. When they are the closest relationships it’s often because you continue to choose to be with them and spend time with them.

But not all families are loving, supportive, and kind, which can be heartbreaking. However, the great thing about this world is that there are so many people, and you can find and create your own family.

Found family consists of all the people you have chosen to let into your life and have become as close as a family. Found family is a beautiful thing, and is a wonderful reminder that no two families are the same because no two individuals are the same.

In honour of all the families out there, here are some books that celebrate found families and the people you choose to have in your life.

Five books about celebrating found family

Here’s a list of five books about celebrating found family.

1. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1999)
3. Heartstopper Volume 1 by Alice Oseman (2018)
4. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022)
5. Babel by R.F. Kuang (2022)

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published.

The Color Purple (1982)

by Alice Walker

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Alice Walker’s iconic modern classic is now a Penguin Book.

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience.

The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker’s epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.

Links:

• Goodreads
• Storygraph
• Wikipedia

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999)

by Stephen Chbosky

Charlie is a freshman. And while he’s not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it. Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But Charlie can’t stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a deeply affecting coming-of-age story that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Wikipedia
    • On the author
    • About the book
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

Heartstopper Volume 1 (2018)

by Alice Oseman

Charlie, a highly-strung, openly gay over-thinker, and Nick, a cheerful, soft-hearted rugby player, meet at a British all-boys grammar school. Friendship blooms quickly, but could there be something more…?

Charlie Spring is in Year 10 at Truham Grammar School for Boys. The past year hasn’t been too great, but at least he’s not being bullied anymore. Nick Nelson is in Year 11 and on the school rugby team. He’s heard a little about Charlie – the kid who was outed last year and bullied for a few months – but he’s never had the opportunity to talk to him.

They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn’t think he has a chance. But love works in surprising ways, and sometimes good things are waiting just around the corner…

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Author’s Website
  • Wikipedia
    • On the author
    • About the book
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022)

by Gabrielle Zevin

In this exhilarating novel by the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry two friends–often in love, but never lovers–come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Author’s Website
  • Wikipedia
    • On the Author
    • About the book
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

Babel (2022)

by R.F. Kuang

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Author’s Website
  • Wikipedia:
    • On the author
    • About the book
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. I’d love to know which books you love or that you would recommend. Let me know in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.