2023 reading review
Because it's better than pretending I never committed to doing this monthly
Well, I have done a stunningly bad job of keeping up with my ““monthly digests”” on here but alas here is what I read in 2023, for those interested and those interested only. I have starred my favourites. There’s some reflection and a note afterwards about my intentions for 2024, such as they are.
January
Go Back at Once by Robert Aickman
Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh
Everything, All the Time, Everywhere: How We Became Post-Modern by Stuart Jeffries
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
Appliance by J. O. Morgan
The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han (translated by Daniel Steuer)***
Lambda by David Musgrave
To the Wedding by John Berger
February
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith***
Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens
Regeneration by Pat Barker***
March
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert (translated by Robert Baldick)
The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez***
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder)
April
Dancing Girls by Margaret Atwood
Slade House by David Mitchell
Pure Colour by Sheila Heti
Look At Me by Anita Brookner***
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
Out There by Kate Folk
A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietranonio (translated by Ann Goldstein)
The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
May
Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman
The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas
The Guest by Emma Cline
Rouge by Mona Awad
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (translated by Ros Schwartz)***
June
Trust by Hernan Diaz
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin
Bliss and other stories by Katherine Mansfield
Exquisite Corpse by Marija Peričić
July
Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones
The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis
My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley
The Gathering by Anne Enright
August
The New Life by Tom Crewe
First Love by Gwendoline Riley
The Politics of Reality by Marilyn Frye
September
The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
The House With All The Lights on by Jess Kirkness
Middlemarch by George Eliot***
The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale
Consent Laid Bare by Chanel Contos***
October
The Liquid Land by Raphaela Edelbauer (tranlated by Jen Calleja)
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin***
November
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
The Doll’s Alphabet by Camilla Grudova
December
The Recovering by Leslie Jamison
Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler (translated by J. M. Davies)
Uncle Paul by Celia Fremlin
Bluebeard’s Castle by Anna Biller
It’s mildly interesting to look at how my reading has spread out throughout the year. I must have been distracting myself from something in April - turning 30, perhaps? I did also have some time off in recovery from an operation then, but not that much time. In November, I had my hands and heart full trying to salvage a treasured relationship and so didn’t have the same attention span as usual. Reading Leslie Jamison’s The Recovering (an addiction memoir and so much more) while this was happening really helped keep me honest with myself, though. This was also the year I read Anita Brookner for the first time, truly a reader’s writer (and favourite of “secretly lesbian spinster aunts” as the dear friend who introduced me to her put it and which I wouldn’t rule out as a happy portent of my own future). Reading Middlemarch alongside Mona Simpson’s weekly posts was also a highlight of my year, and saw me through a fairly unmoored sort of time1. Of remarkable note also is Jess Kirkness’ book The House With All the Lights On, a memoir and cultural study/history of deafness I learned so much from and gained a friend of the author out of. I’m really proud of her, and sincerely recommend her book.
The worst book I read this year was probably Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stephens for reasons I outlined in another post on here. Most disappointing: Pure Colour by Sheila Heti. Most repugnant: First Love by Gwendoline Riley, who I now have a fear of and respect for in equal measure for being able to go there and elicit that kind of response in me - I actually threw up reading this novel (granted I already felt unwell, but a certain chapter sent me over the edge). In thinking of Riley’s work, I’m reminded of something an old friend of mine said that I’ve never forgotten: anything that can be shattered by the truth, should be. Take that as a warning and a recommendation.
In 2024 I intend to read more ‘classics’, to continue creating seasonal TBR piles that I’m allowed to stray from, and to pursue a reading list I’m putting together about female sexuality. Recommendations and discussions are welcome. As for this substack, I think I will just be reasonable with myself and say that I will post when I feel like it until and unless I develop some sort of discipline. I have other writing goals for this year, so perhaps posting more regularly on here will be a fruit of those. Thank you for reading, though, and I hope your year brings some peace and some happy surprises. Wind at your back, sun on your face, etc. etc.
I’m just going to leave my Middlemarch playlist here.