Re-reading "Year of Yes" 10+ years later

Recent reads and a few things I'm saying "yes" to in 2026

Feeling My Shelf is a newsletter about books, life, and, well, life with books. Grab your favorite caffeinated beverage and get comfy. First up, some recent reads.

If I Ruled the World: A Novel by Amy DuBois Barnett
As a Black woman who grew up surrounded by glossy magazines with dreams of living in New York City and seeing her name on the masthead, this book was made for me. Which is why it’s not surprising that I pre-ordered and immediately devoured this book within two days of its arrival. It’s a smart, sexy, messy debut that “peeks behind the curtain at the cutthroat world of hip-hop music and the glamorous magazine scene in the late 1990s.”

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes
A long-time favorite of mine with an update! Ten years ago, the Queen of Primetime Television blessed us with this memoir of sorts, chronicling her journey of saying yes to all of the things that scared her and pulled her out of her comfort zone: public speaking, working out, and acting, among others. There are some new, fun chapters in this, but the voice and message to introverts everywhere remains the same: good things always come from dancing it out, stepping out into the sun, and being your own person.

Boom Town by Nic Stone
A book marketed as a cross between Gone Girl and P-Valley? A must-read that centers on “two missing erotic dancers from Atlanta’s most notorious gentlemen's club and the woman committed to finding them.” I can’t decide if the pacing was slow or if I was just impatient and greedy. I breezed through the chapters, desperate to know what happened. I had some strong guesses based on the comps, but still found the moment that everything clicked into place to be super satisfying. But be warned: the characters make such bad choices over and over that you’ll want to jump into the book and shake them.

There was only one place you could find me on Thursday nights back in 2015—in front of the TV.

Like many others, I was waiting to see what dark and twisty situations Meredith would find herself in on Grey’s Anatomy (even though I was more of a Cristina girl) or whose problems Olivia Pope would handle next on Scandal. So, it’s no surprise that the minute Shonda Rhimes’ book Year of Yes hit shelves, I was first in line to grab a copy.

The critically acclaimed writer and producer found herself confronted with the sharp truth just a few years before penning the book: “You never say yes to anything,” her sister Delorse said. Those six words became the wake-up call that fueled Shonda’s year-long “yes” project. A former wallflower, she conquered her fears of everything from giving commencement speeches to simply accepting compliments.

A fellow wallflower at the time, I related deeply to Shonda’s blend-in-the-background vibe. But similarly, I’d started to become uncomfortable in my own comfort zone, wondering what it’d be like to take some leaps too. It was around that time that I moved to New York City. I had two suitcases filled with my belongings and the biggest of dreams.

Since I was 13, all I wanted was to work at a major magazine and to see my name in print. And when I finally made it all happen, my family, friends, and hell, even my hometown, were proud. I, on the other hand, quickly started to feel different. Magazine life wasn’t at all what I expected it to be.

And just a few short years after that, I had my own extreme “year of yes”—quitting my job and moving across the country in search of something that would reignite my creative spark. No job. No apartment. No real plan. Just a risky “yes” to big dreams and California vibes. Good times.

For a while, I was content, but that nagging feeling that something was off returned over the last couple of years, and everything came crashing down on me last year when I got laid off.

I again felt lost. Ashamed. Uncomfortable. Ready to run and thinking that I, once again, needed to completely overhaul my life.

I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching, and re-reading this book more than 10 years later felt like a long-overdue check-in with a longtime mentor. We’re both older and wiser. Now, we are in completely different places in our lives than when we first met. It was easy to reconnect and fall back on old wisdom, but there was also a new lesson to be learned.

In this case, yeses don’t always have to be big and drastic. Like a cross-country move. Some yeses can be quiet revolutions.

“The small, daily yeses that don’t make headlines but remake your entire world.”

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret taking those big leaps that followed my first reading of Year of Yes. They pushed me and put me on a path that’s allowed me to slowly peel back the curtain on the person I’ve always wanted to show the world. For that, I’m forever grateful. But I like the person I am now, and even though I’m still feeling a bit lost, I don’t want to completely start over.

Instead, I want to pivot.

To lean more into the things I love, the things that bring a little more whimsy to my life, and that make me feel full instead of drained.

Now, that’s a really long-winded way of saying I’ve officially ditched my usual goal-setting method this year, in favor of simple intentions. Small, but mighty-yeses. For the sake of time, I won’t share them all, but here are a few of my more bookish ones for 2026.

📖 Say yes to a simple reading goal: 10K pages
For the first time in a long time, I don’t want to read a certain number of books. In recent years, doing so has felt stifling and pressurized to pick up buzzy titles I had no interest in actually reading to stay on track. Now, I’m just going to read when the spirit moves me, and we’ll see when and if that equals 10,000 pages.

🧡 Say yes to reading through Kennedy Ryan’s backlist
I love all of the books in her Skyland series, so I figured that it’d be fun to check out the rest of her titles. If you’ve read any, where should I start?

🍪 Say yes to staining my cookbooks
These books aren’t fine china or rare jewels. They’re meant to be used and loved and spilled into as I try out new recipe after new recipe. So that’s what I intend to do.

✈️ Say yes to seeing some more (book) worlds
I love a book conference. I love a new bookstore. I want to go to more of both outside of Los Angeles. And California. And even out of the U.S., especially out of the U.S.

✏️ And finally, say yes to writing the book that I want to write
I’ve been trying to finish my contemporary romance novel for the last nearly three years, and this is finally(!) the year we query her. How? By releasing myself from the pressure to write a book like this one or that one or that so and so would like. I don’t have an agent or a book deal, so right now, what an imaginary publisher or reader wants is none of my concern. This book is for me.

All The Men I’ve Loved Again by Christine Pride. This one’s been on my shelf for a minute. Now that it’s (basically) February and I’m in the mood for romance, I’m cracking it open. It’s about “a woman who finds herself in the impossible situation of being in love with the same two men who won her heart in her early twenties again as she nears forty.”

• I don’t even want to tell you how many times I’ve watched Netflix’s People We Meet on Vacation. I absolutely loved this Emily Henry adaptation, though the consensus on the internet seems to be that the book was better. (Isn’t it always?) I had the luxury of not having read the book before, so going in totally blind allowed me to fully enjoy the movie simply for the quirky, cheesy (ugh, that line about “casual sax” had me cracking up) rom-com that it is. But don’t fret, readers, I recently bought the book, so I’ll be comparing the two soon.

• I’ve also finished Season 4, part 1 of Bridgerton, and can definitely say that Season 2 is still my favorite. I love a good Cinderella story, but Benedict, come on, man! So you can paint the girl from memory perfectly, but have forgotten what her voice sounds like? Ugh. I want Anthony and Kate!

• Help I’ve fallen victim to the Brick craze and can’t don’t want to get up. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a little productivity device that blocks distractions on your phone with a quick little tap. Sure, I could just put my phone on DND. But I’m enjoying “bricking” it while I read.

• Speaking of writing my novel…I recently returned from the concrete tundra known as New York in January, following an amazing writing retreat hosted by Generation Women. As a California transplant, I was semi-underprepared for the snow, but was more than happy to stay inside and get over 10,000 words of my novel’s third (and final before it goes to beta readers!) draft written. I also got to gush about my love for Michael B. Jordan in a room full of captive (and very funny and friendly) writers and learned a lot about squatters, scammers, and cannibalism. Don’t ask.

  

Here’s how to help people affected by the ongoing ICE raids. Is a stairwell the hottest place for a hookup? TV says yes. In Wonder Man (a very fantastic show, btw!) Yahya Abdul-Mateen II perfectly captures the anxiety of excellence. How to be a more resilient person, according to therapists.

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