I hope no one minds that this dispatch is coming long after the season of best-of lists, “Wrapped” and recaps. Most of what I read last year wasn’t published in 2023, so I figured it doesn’t particular matter if I don’t get my reading round-up out while saying “Happy New Year” is still acceptable.
I had a moment of hesitation about putting together this year’s edition, but realized that this is the one writing activity I’ve consistently completed, since 2012 (previously in blog form), and I would feel disappointed if I stopped. It’s always a fun exchange - I love to hear what everyone else has read, too, and thoughts on any of the books or authors I mentioned. It ends up being a kind of annual check-in with book people, both friends and friendly strangers alike. I’m also curious to see what I have to say about a book and I won’t find out without the round-up…
I finally quit Twitter in October as it was only making me feel annoyed or bored, but I do have to say that I really miss the conversations around books and writers that used to happen there. It was a good place to eavesdrop on what other people were reading. I’m not sure if this is happening anywhere else or is gone forever. It seems unlikely that everyone will be hanging out in one spot in the same way. (By “everyone” I mean authors, editors and other publishing industry people, critics, and avid readers.) If you have any ideas on where to get this (Substacks, other platforms?), please let me know in the comments. (One of my recommendations, not for book talk but, but book opinions: Mike Lindgren’s newsletter (he’s an editor at Melville House). He sends occasional opinionated summaries of his reading life.)
And now:
The 2023 Reading Round-Up
I usually read a couple of the new literary releases, but none tempted me in 2023. Buzzy releases I skipped included Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (the alternate history aspect put me off, the logic seemed off), the new Lorrie Moore novel (the premise of which sounded difficult to pull off), the new Zadie Smith novel (not really into historical fiction). Tell me what I missed! Did anyone read Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma and how was it?
I read 28 books in 2023. Not a big reading year as it was full of other distractions (e.g. subscriptions to too many periodicals), though I did make some great discoveries.
The obsessive stats
Genre: 43% nonfiction (mostly essays and memoir), 32% fiction (novels and 2 short story collections), 25% poetry. 14% of the books were graphic works (comics).
Gender: 75% of authors were women, 25% men. This has been a pretty steady (unconscious) pattern over the years.
Nationality: Authors were from the USA (about half), France (4), United Kingdom (3), Belgium (1), Canada (1), Denmark (1), Greece (anthology), Hungary (1), Italy (1), Mexico (1), and Switzerland (1).
Language: About a third were books in translation. No books I read were in other languages. Disappointing! I would like to read more in Spanish and French, but it’s not a formal resolution…
Cool presses: It is always worth seeking out independent presses (i.e. not owned by a big corporation). I read an outsize number from the fantastic NYRB and their imprints as I finally got to take advantage of their biannual sale (the more books you buy, the more they are discounted). I also read books from: And Other Stories, Barrelhouse Books, Black Ocean, Brick Books, Brooklyn Arts Press, City Lights, Drawn & Quarterly, Graywolf Press, Noemi Press, and Semiotext(e).
Publication date: About a third of the books were first published in the past 5 years (this is lower than usual). About a third were published in the 20th century. The oldest book I read was first published in 1946.
Books I didn’t finish/in progress
James Merrill: Life and Art by Langdon Hammer: I picked this biography up after a visit to the poet’s home in Stonington, Connecticut (which is run by wonderful people, highly recommend). I was enjoying it, not sure why I dropped off. I think I was daunted by the sheer size of it - 944 pages! I got to the point where the very wealthy Merrill was embarking on his post-collegiate life of freedom, scholarship and passionate lovers in Europe, beginning with a trip to Greece - maybe I was envious!
Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki: A Greek novel about three sisters coming of age in the countryside outside of Athens. Lush and dreamy, surprisingly sexually frank for the time (published in 1946). Didn’t dislike it, just didn’t seem like the right moment for this book.
Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese by Patrick Leigh Fremor: Greece appears to be a theme of my abandoned books. Fermor is a wonderful writer (I highly recommend A Time of Gifts), and becomes someone you want to be friends with. I discovered in this volume, however, that he is an obsessive completist, to a fault (chasing down the very last detail of obscure history, for example), which left me skimming and looking to other books.
Faux Pas: Selected Writings and Drawings by Amy Sillman: Essays on art and artists by a contemporary painter. Funny, thought-provoking, a bit heady. To return to…
Re-Reads
I won’t spend much time on these as I’ve written about them elsewhere. I returned to these for comfort and inspiration.
What It Is by Lynda Barry (Drawn & Quarterly, 2008)
The genius cartoonist’s collage essay on creativity and art, plus writing inspiration
The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy (Bloomsbury, 2018)
Memoir on starting life anew in middle age, by a wise plawright and novelist.
Fiction and Nonfiction
Listed in reverse order from least enjoyed to most appreciated. This is the bottom of the list, reflecting mixed feelings about some of the books, presented the usual caveat that I would rank these entirely differently if I were judging them for a literary prize (i.e. assuming that I would set aside personal biases to be fair to the authors). This order is based on my own enjoyment, whether the book stayed with me or changed my thinking in some way, how likely I am to return to it, whether it appeared at the right moment, etc.
19. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (Scribner, 2022)
Egan’s sequel to the Pulitzer prize-winning, A Visit from the Good Squad, which was a fun read for the vivid characters, the author’s clear passion for the San Francisco punk scene and the weird future constructed in the novel. The Candy House felt like she got bogged down in her own outlines. The characters were all connected in random ways, which ultimately didn’t matter (and were hard to follow), the future world hard to envision or inhabit. Overall it felt like the parts didn’t hang together and the greater points about technology, society, etc. were contradictory. I found it hard to finish.
18. The Word Pretty by Elisa Gabbert (Black Ocean, 2019)
A collection of short essays. Gabbert is a funny, frank, and original thinker, and I admire her confidence. I found the form of these mini-essays frustrating. No doubt the brevity was intentional, but to me the pieces felt like drafts or beginnings, the thought not fully completed or the premise not fully explored.
17. Art Schooled by Jamie Coe (Nobrow Press, 2014)
A graphic novel about a guy who grew up in a small town in Britain and goes to art school and encounters bigger-city sophistication, and the familiar art school characters and cliches. The art is good and it’s beautifully printed, but the story’s a bit lacking. The protagonist writes off his classmates’ various forms of expression as sheer pretension and doesn’t do much growing out of this. Daniel Clowes accomplished as much in his 8-page “Art School Confidential,” though perhaps unfair to compare as this is by a young comics artist…
16. Mothers and Dogs by Fabio Morabito, trans. Curtis Bauer (Other Press, 2023, originally 2016)
A short story collection by a Mexican-born writer living in Europe. What I liked best was how Morabito manages to flirt with the uncanny without relying excessively on it to make the story interesting - there are still clear characters and narrative trajectories. Making things weird without explanation is always a temptation with short stories, because the form is brief enough that you don’t have to come up with all of the scaffolding to support the weirdness, but I find this is a bit of a cheat sometimes. I was put off by the portrayals/attitudes towards women in a couple of stories, and women are generally distant or absent throughout. For more extensive thoughts on this collection, see my review for the Chicago Review of Books.
15. The Country Life by Rachel Cusk (Faber & Faber, 2019, originally 1997)
I loved Cusk’s recent “Outline Trilogy” (I set down some impromptu thoughts about it here), and started delving into her earlier work. She wrote many novels in a more conventional style, and I was curious what these would look like, given the unique approach to fiction in the trilogy. This novel updates the classic British story of the young woman coming to serve as a governess at a wealthy estate, in a comic, parodic mode. It confirmed Cusk as an absolute virtuosa with language, it feels like she can do anything. The approach has a 19th-century flavor to it, with dense paragraphs and long sentences that take you on a winding, funny journey. The characters are vivid and unforgettable. The issue for me (which I think comes up in comedies generally), is that the machinery of the plot starts to weigh the work down. After the atmosphere and style is set, there’s so much else to get through, I found it a bit too long (341 pages, this is accurate for a parody of a 19th-century novel) … But I also tend to prefer shorter novels.
14. The Years by Annie Ernaux, trans. Alison Srayer (Seven Stories Press, 2023, originally 2008)
Ernaux had been on my radar for a few years - smart women I admire were reading her (hi Lydia!), and then she won the Nobel Prize in 2022. This is one of her better-known works in France, though apparently it’s atypical of her style. Most of her work is personal memoir, radically honest interrogations and accounts of her life, including sex and family (from what I’ve read about her). This work is a personal record of France, written in the first person plural, so it feels like a memoir by written by a generation of people. What I found most interesting was the change in attitudes towards World War II as those cataclysmic years faded in memory. Ernaux, who was born in 1940, recalls it as something she and her peers felt almost sad to have missed, a brush with greatness, legendary stories. I’d say this is for true francophiles, as many of the events and cultural artifacts referenced are very specific to France, and the text is weirdly devoid of explanatory notes. (I generally prefer works in translation not to have loads of notes, but this one definitely warrants more than the 3 or so provided!).
The “we” telling the story of France sees May 1968 as the apotheosis of society, and everything that follows is a disappointing slog through ever-metastizing capitalist consumer culture, technological dependence and political disaffection. Which, OK, boomer, fine, I feel this every day and I’m sure the 60s were a great time full of promise. As well as this is described, I was hoping for more wisdom or insight on where we go from here, but this was clearly not the project (and she is French after all, disaffection is the natural mode). I do want to read her more personal work, however.
13. Termush by Sven Holm, trans. Sylvia Clayton (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2024, originally 1997)
This is a novella by a Danish author, first published in 1967, about a luxury resort that functions as a haven after a nuclear disaster for those who had previously reserved and paid for a spot. It’s written in the form of a journal by one of the guests, in a terse, simple, internally-focused style, which I think is why it still feels like it has something to say today. I’m not well-versed in science fiction and would be interested to hear how this compares to other books with a similar premise. This was just issued in English, if interested, please read my full review which was just published in the Chicago Review of Books.
Part II to come soon. Observations and comments on the above are welcome as always!
Interesting and as always, beautifully written and so thoughtful. Always challenges me to expand my reading choices! Thanks for your insights and recommendations.