2023 in Books
A Tour of What's Been Sloshing Around My Brain This Year
Are you guys sick of end-of-year book lists?? I’m not and I never will be. Much like the way I want to know what everyone is eating, I desperately want to know what everyone is reading.
I became a voracious reader as a child in the same way that many people around my age and older did: it was before the internet was a household fixture and it was how I escaped into other worlds. By the time we got AOL dial-up when I was twelve the habit was already deeply ingrained and has never left me, no matter how much prestige TV or app-scrolling is available.
The upshot is: I read a lot. Today, I am omnivorous when it comes to genre, style, time period, and topic - although obviously there are some preexisting interests and lines of questioning that I am pursuing. I read a lot of books that my friends recommend to me, and when I am lucky I also get to read books that my friends have written.
There are few things that I’m fastidiously organized about, except making lists of books. My to-read lists are probably more books long than I have time left in this life to read, but I keep adding to them anyway. I perhaps love making lists of books almost more than I love reading them. Why is this? I do not know, but I have been recording the books I’ve finished in a single spreadsheet since 2009. It is the only data about my life I really care that much about, apparently. I also have a terrible memory and I’m afraid I wouldn’t remember anything I’ve read if I didn’t keep track.
The books below are some of my absolute favorites that I read this year, the most pared-down list I could muster, in chronological order from when I happened to finish them, earliest to latest. I got many of these at the library and maybe that’s my biggest unsolicited recommendation of all: support your local library!! Especially as book banning is on the rise, especially as public services are getting slashed across the country. It often feels like a miracle that I can walk into a well-lit building in my town and find a book about pretty much anything imaginable FOR FREE - let’s keep that accessible and for everyone.
And obviously, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you: don’t buy books from Amazon y’all. I made a little wish list of all these books on bookshop.org, and if you do decide to buy any of them there it’ll support an indie bookstore. I couldn’t find The Dawning Moon of the Mind there - you will have to hunt on the used book websites a little more to find it - but I added another book by the same author on there instead, which I haven’t read but want to.
The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine by Sophie Strand
This small book of short essays has really shaped my thinking this year around understanding myth - being able to read between the lines to see the layers underneath the words. The depth and breadth of Strand’s knowledge of the foundational myths of the West (primarily ancient Egypt, Greece, early and Gnostic Christianity, and myths of the British Isles) intertwined with her scholarship on the natural world and what I’ll call perhaps a poetic sensibility makes for a powerful brew and for new ways of thinking. It is steeped in ecology, it is queer, it makes novel connections between things. The subtitle is, “Lunar Kings, Trans-species Magicians, and Rhizomatic Harpists” and chapter titles include, “Dionysus: Girl-Faced God of the Swarm, the Hive, the Vine, and the Emergent Mind,” or, “Coppice the Hero’s Journey: Creating Narrative Ecosystems.” Being able to untangle some of the more modern translations and understandings of the myths has been deeply personally important for me this year.
Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong
Full disclosure: Jane is a friend and it is such an extra joy on top of the joy of reading a great book to know and love the person who wrote it. Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is Jane’s memoir about growing up in New Jersey in her family’s Chinese restaurant - and everything after. This book is held together by these relationships with her family members and the food (The food!! Oh, incredible descriptions of food!), food as a way of showing love and care in all of the different seasons of life, food as a way of staying connected to one’s ancestors and culture, food as survival and even more so as a way of thriving. It is tender and it is also absolutely ferocious, both. A gem. And if you enjoy poetry you should also check out Jane’s books of poetry: Overpour from Action Books and How to Not Be Afraid of Everything from Alice James.
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
I could not stop thinking about this book after I read it. I brought many books with me on vacation, but after finishing Detransition, Baby I just went back and started it from the beginning - nothing else could satisfy me. I have given up trying to describe the plot to people as a way of recommending it so here are a couple of the reviews that ring correct to me. In The New York Times Roxane Gay said: “I loved seeing [Detransition, Baby] on other people’s lists because, you know, Torrey Peters, she went there. It was just irreverent, [referencing] so many things that queer people don’t necessarily want to talk about. And she made a story out of it instead of sitting and making the discomfort the only story.” Andrea Lawlor (author of one of my favorite books I read in 2021, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl) says, “An unforgettable portrait of three women, trans and cis, who wrestle with questions of motherhood and family making . . . Detransition, Baby might destroy your book club, but in a good way.”
an ordinary woman by Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton is one of those writers who I want to read absolutely everything by. I have been slowly working my way through her collected poems, starting from the beginning, over the last few years. an ordinary woman came out in 1974 and like all of her other books the poems are written in a simple, direct way that raises the hair on the back of my neck - some of them are absolutely astonishing. Here’s one that I love:
breaklight
light keeps on breaking.
i keep knowing
the language of other nations.
i keep hearing
tree talk
water words
and i keep knowing what they mean.
and the light just keeps on breaking.
last night
the fears of my mother came
knocking and when i
opened the door
they tried to explain themselves
and i understood
everything they said.
The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts by Susan Brind Morrow
Susan Brind Morrow is an archaeologist and a poet who, in this book, translates and explains in depth the hieroglyphs covering the inner walls of an Old Kingdom pyramid that was built some four thousand years ago. If you, like me, tried to read a copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead that felt actually dead, lifeless, full of language and imagery that was difficult to feel something about - this book is the remedy. Over and over Morrow shows how earlier translations of hieroglyphics have tried to project (for example) nineteenth century British conceptions of the world onto the language, rendering them into opaque and convoluted metaphors when they are actually very direct, drawn from the observable natural world, and full of energy. She shows how ancient Egyptians invented time by looking at the night sky, and how that was foundational to their understanding of the cycle of death and rebirth. The Pyramid Texts are instructions for a dead king to take his place in the sky, reborn. If you are at all interested in this topic I cannot recommend it more.
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
This book broke my fucking heart and stitched it back together. It is a novel that follows Tayo, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, a veteran of WWII who was a prisoner of war in the Pacific theater. His cousin, who was raised as his brother, his best friend, is killed in the fighting overseas, and Tayo struggles to live after returning home without him. He sees that the death of his cousin and the death of his uncle while he was away, a father to him, are connected in ways that cannot rationally be explained. With the help of medicine men who guide him through a series of ceremonies, he is able to see the way the story hangs together and make the choices that will enable him to return to the world fully. It goes right into the heart of the violence that makes the war machine of America possible. This book often surprised me and it also deeply moved me.
Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard
I love the way this book is structured. Simard is the forest ecologist who scientifically proved what has been called “the wood-wide web,” i.e., the connection between mycelia and trees, their exchange of nutrients that is responsible for the healthy thriving of both. She beautifully interweaves her own personal life and history - from growing up in western Canada the child of generations of loggers through her work as a scientist for logging companies and as an academic, her relationships, raising her children, beating cancer - with the scientific discoveries she makes over the decades that profoundly changed the way we understand both the forest and the trees. From a craft perspective I think to do that kind of interweaving without it being heavy-handed is really difficult to do, and Simard does it with incredible skill. It is a compelling read for her personal story, the way she has fought for forests that is based in an old way of understanding them, and about how these vital discoveries were made.
Some other notably great books that I read this year include (and these are all on the Bookshop wish list): The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante, The Red Book by CG Jung, The Round House by Louise Erdrich, The Girls by Emma Cline, A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan, A Ribbon the Most Perfect Blue by Christine Kwon, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, White Sands by Geoff Dyer, My Mother Laughs by Chantal Akerman, Breath by James Nestor, The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, No Meat Required by Alicia Kennedy, Celtic Queen Maeve and Addiction by Silvia Brinton Perera.
Okay now this is the important part: what are the books you read this year that you think everyone should read?? Please share with us in the comments, so I can add to my to-read list!
Thanks for reading this year, y’all. No matter when you subscribed, it’s meant a lot to me. One note about scheduling: I’m planning to send out the next newsletter on January 10th, which is a week later than normal, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve that I hope you’ll enjoy. After that the newsletter will come out every other week on Wednesdays as usual. I hope whatever you’re doing or not doing this holiday season is fulfilling and restful. May the peace that so many of us enjoy be found across the world, and may we be its instruments.