Do You Read the Secret Chapter at the End of Every Book?

My Favorite Chapter is the one most skip.

What’s your favorite part of a book? My go-to must read after a good book is the Acknowledgements. It’s my book dessert.

It makes sense to my reading vibe, after all. I used to read magazines backwards; the horoscopes or Q&A brought me into the issue subtly. Is it a surprise that the Acknowledgements chapter is my favorite? Now, rather than starting there, I save it for last, picturing the author’s favorites hair color and what they’d wear to dinner like any book character.

Different that the initial dedication which is a quote (if I’m lucky) and a few names, the acknowledgements are gratitude for years and years of writing. Partially out of curiosity, I devour the pages of personal notes like walking through the author’s home.

Who helps these published authors submit their manuscripts, edit each comma and send rounds of editorial reviews, what community brought the arc of this story to life?

I’d been writing a book for the last five years. And then, earlier this year, I lost the entire thing in a freak Google Drive accident. The words are gone yet I think about the book chapters every day. I’ve redrawn my cover art and fonts in my dreams. My title and subtitle flip around in my head as I wake up most mornings like a little game of word Tetris.

Perhaps my ‘gone-missing’ book created an inquisitive examination of the layout and words when I’m reading any genre. My deepest respect for authors leads me not only crave deeper inspection of the characters or the research in a nonfiction, but also how they got the book on a shelf.

I never stop at the last chapter. I keep going—straight into the acknowledgments. From pets to editors, friends to book clubs, parents to lucky pens—this is where the gratitude lives. Can I DM the author and ask, who is Pepper and how did they help you write this?

It reminds me of movie credits. A place where everyone who contributed gets their name in lights. But in the work world, especially in the corporate projects I’ve been part of, it didn’t always work like that. The cover page—the big credit—was reserved for the executives. Lists of everyone else often didn’t make the cut. These days, Slack channels or Teams threads act like ongoing “cast lists,” though I still cringe when a few favorites are singled out and entire crowds of contributors are left behind.

Shockingly personal, I love the secret chapter like a sprinkles on my ice cream. It’s flush with names of friends and cousins and pets and streets, even thanks to furniture or a paint color or a favorite pen. The softening into messy run on sentences, mix of groupings, grammatical and sentence structures so different from the book itself, in the insight into the world of authorship.

I’ve started my own quarterly acknowledgement practice to help commemorate my own life, work and stage of life.

Gratitude journals have always been hard for me. They feel a little forced. Instead, I write seasonal—or quarterly—acknowledgment sections for my life. Not a list of “what I’m thankful for,” but a living record of people, moments, and forces that kept me going.

If you want to try this, here are some prompts to get you started:

• What’s a significant project you’ve kicked off or completed lately, and who helped you make it happen?

• How have you celebrated big or small milestones, and who’s in that celebration circle?

• What have you learned the hard way—and who or what supported you while you were in learning mode?

• Who has been a steady force for you?

• Who and what do you credit your recent successes to?

When you start to write your acknowledgments, you might surprise yourself. You’ll see patterns. You’ll remember the quiet helpers, the cheerleaders, the ones who picked you up when you weren’t sure you’d make it to the next chapter—of your project, or your life.

Because sometimes the most powerful thing we can do isn’t write a gratitude check list, it’s to write the credits of that season.

Next week, I’ll share my Acknowledgment Summer Chapter.