Authors, Sentences, Poems, and Books that Captivated Me in 2023
Happy reading in 2024, everyone!
Happy New Year! I hope that however you took in the change of the year, it was delightful. I had a blast with some friends in a cabin on a lake in Arkansas and I highly recommend the level of rest, laughter, connection, and pure joy that took place in that cabin for everyone.
As promised, but a wee bit late, I wanted to share my favorite reads from 2023. I know we’re in 2024 already, but I’m still very much in the taking-stock-of-the-year-that-was mode (and looking forward to engaging with this deep dive reflection tool this week to help me with that as well as to look ahead to 2024 more coherently). It was a treat to go back through what I read this year and consider what stood out.
The first reflection, however, wasn’t about the books themselves, but how I took on a few experiments with books and reading in 2023.
I took about a month this year to do a reading cleanse, which is to say, I didn’t read anything that wasn’t required for my job or to function in this world (like continuing to read stop signs) for the month. It meant I didn’t read any news, any newsletters, articles, magazines, books, poems, etc. for four long weeks. I was attracted to it as an experiment in clearing my head of other people’s creativity to allow my own to emerge, sensing it was somehow lost or buried. It was another way of meeting myself beyond distraction, even delightful distractions like reading. It was both successful and not this go around, and something I definitely want to make space for again in 2024. More, I want to marry discipline and art in 2024, letting go of the romantic notion that art must arise organically from stillness or retreat. Yes, it often does. But every creative person I know dedicates themselves to the creation. More than anything, that’s my intention for 2024 with my own creativity in all the forms it takes.
I also committed to being a library-first reader (instead of a casual rememberer that such an important institution exists and oh yeah, I should support it), which has been an absolute delight. I’ve read books that I wouldn’t have otherwise while waiting on books I couldn’t wait to devour to come off the hold list on Libby or because my neighbor, also an avid reader, is regularly keeping me in interesting titles that, usually, I wouldn’t pick up on my own. I read books this year that I hated but that topped many of the book club lists; I read books that I hate-finished, hoping the story or the craft would somehow magically improve in the final pages. More, though, I read books that utterly transfixed me, that stopped time, expanded my imagination, and grabbed me by the heart.
You can view the whole list of what I read this year here and below, I’ve highlighted some of the books and authors whose minds, words, imaginations, and experiences elevated my experience of life this year.
Alexander Chee (How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Edinburgh, Queen of the Night)
In 2022, I began working my way through this list (truly, one of the best ever lists I’ve ever read of books - I haven’t read all of them, but I’d say I have read about 70% of it, and MY GOD they are all excellent; it continues to tickle me for some reason that Esquire of all publications has given me this gift). The pitch for How to Write an Autobiographical Novel - “[it is] a book for someone keen on the study of life” - made me want to read it, but I didn’t immediately do so because I’m not usually that into memoirs and memoir-type books. I turned my attention to the fiction of the list initially (again, highly recommend) and came back to some of the non-fiction on the list in 2023 and will continue in 2024.
I’m so glad I came to this book, eventually, though. It is the best book I read this year, no question. It is likely the best book I’ve ever read, period.
A friend of mine (who began reading it shortly after I raved about it to her) marveled at the sentence “It was a summer of wanting impossible things” from the first essay. Pairing it with Alfonso Cuarón’s film Y Tu Mamá También on her recommendation was simply delicious.
Chee’s novels - Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night are also two that I loved this year. About a month ago I realized
also writes a newsletter and my shout of glee as I did so scattered the cats from their resting places.Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta, James Hannaham
I loved how Hannaham structured this novel to repeatedly put Carlotta’s voice at the center of the reader’s experience and how he used the structure to remind the reader, too, just how much Carlotta, a Black trans woman just released on parole, has to pull our collective attention to her for her to be seen, valued, and cared for instead of ignored, tokenized, or brutalized in her fictional world and in our real one. I loved that while never shying from the disappointments and hurts that Carlotta experiences, the book explores her joy and vitality as its central mood. I rooted for Carlotta, I cringed at her actions, I laughed aloud at her jokes, I hated her family when she couldn’t or wouldn’t, and I wanted her to have that damn shoe.
Natasha Pulley (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, The Bedlam Stacks, The Half Life of Valery K, The Kingdoms)
Every single one of these books would top any of my favorite lists and I am so damn glad that Libby got me into Natasha Pulley’s work. I love the worlds she creates and the characters who inhabit them, including the octopuses, real and mechanical (fun fact: I got one tattooed on my hip after reading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street; turns out, it’s a wee difficult to make a steampunk octopus whimsical in tattoo form, but I love it nonetheless). I find how she creates the worlds that her protagonists (all of whom are queer men) delightful. She isn’t an author writing queer characters whose identity is the focus of the story (to be clear, I love these books!). Nor is she an author writing characters who are randomly given a sexual orientation (almost always it’s the bisexual friend / roommate / coworker) who is trying to say “Look! My characters are queer! It’s no big deal because we never mention it except every time the character is on the page we tell you their identity in some weird way!” (I usually detest these books). She subtly creates these worlds that are disruptive to read because she has these queer men in worlds where we have been conditioned, even in our imaginations, to know their queerness would be a Big Deal and a Threat to Their Safety and yet, in hers, they are safe, it is normal beyond the gays-can-be-married-so-they-must-be-equal-now nonsense world in which we live, and she gives their romances center stage without her books being Romance Novels. Her writing subtly invites us to liberate our imaginations on so many fronts and I find this just as incredible to explore as the stories she tells.
No Meat Required, Alicia Kennedy (with a bonus appearance by Tender is the Flesh, Agustina Bazterrica translated by Sarah Moses)
I read Tender is the Flesh and thought: “Damn, I loved this book, even if the premise that humans would become cannibals if we couldn’t eat animal meat is a little far-fetched to me. I mean, I’m a human that doesn’t eat meat - it’s doable,” I practically screamed at the pages.
Then, I read No Meat Required, and was like “damn, I bet (many) humans would TOTALLY become cannibals if they couldn’t eat animal meat.”
(who also writes a newsletter!) doesn’t actually write about cannibalism in the book. Instead of summarizing it, I’ll say here that three books have monumentally shaped my thinking about food and what I eat: Omnivore’s Dilemma, Eating Animals, and now, No Meat Required.Her undoing of “veganism is a White People Thing” was necessary and overdue in this genre. I also loved how she pushes her readers to consider the nuances of their own “rules” for eating animal flesh, while still being clear in her view (that I share) that we should stop eating animals. I was fascinated by the way she thinks about eating local eggs from farmers in San Juan or her questioning that maybe even the strictest of us vegans should consider eating lionfish. Her take against fake / lab meat (think Impossible, Beyond, etc.) was not only refreshing, I found myself saying “aahhhhh, so THIS is why I have been against fake meats” when I previously haven’t been able to articulate why, I just knew I didn’t buy that shit. And I haven’t been able to unsee the connection and parallels between eating animals and the subjugation of women since I read it (and yes, dear reader, it’s why I now think maybe Bazterrica’s plot for Tender is the Flesh isn’t so far out there, after all).
Nghi Vo (The Chosen and The Beautiful, Siren Queen, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, When The Tiger Came Down the Mountain, Into the Riverlands)
Another author whose work is so incredible I spent a significant part of the year reading nearly all of her published oeuvre! Vo’s writing is captivating, and I found myself consumed by her characters completely as I read her words. Each of her books are stories that spark with magic and queer storytelling, be that her retelling of The Great Gatsby, her magical realism spin on what fuels Hollywood and the price it exacts from its stars, or her novellas following Cleric Chih as they traverse a mythological land inspired by imperial China. She is a “must read” author for me at this point, and I know I’ll read everything she writes.
Self Therapy, Jay Earley
Most self-help books are provoking, but not transformative, sharing a lot about the what or why of some big idea (that is, to be fair, usually really important!), but very little of the how. This book stands out, to me, though, and I recommend it to all my clients as guides for our work together in coaching; I recommend it to anyone who is searching for a therapist but can’t access one because of wait lists, insurance, or a lack of connection with someone they trust; I recommend it to everyone who has been trying to work on themselves in coaching, in therapy, or elsewhere and remains stuck; I basically recommend it to anyone who is interested in the agonizing, important work of integrating their ego and moving through life responding, not reacting. It is a fast, easy to understand and follow guide to Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy and each chapter includes brilliant guides for doing parts work solo or with a partner so that you can actually apply what Earley shares. As a designer, it made my heart sing that the exercises were actually crafted to help and are reliable guides to doing so (vs the well-intended but hollow reflection questions that are often at the end of chapters in self-help books that fall woefully short of the brief of helping you transform your life).
Kai Cheng Thom (A Place Called No Homeland, Falling Back in Love with Being Human)
Thom’s writing is raw, evocative, and world building. In her poetry collection, she meditates on her life as a trans Chinese Canadian woman coming of age in a world that is cruel, violent, and exploitative while she comes into her own power and potential. Her poem downtown beastside made me gasp aloud in awe of the brilliance, the work, the creativity it must have taken to construct it, let alone the ache and pain it evokes in my heart about the shape of the current world in which we live. (Pro tip: it must be read in physical copy to appreciate it). In her letter collection, she does in public what the dream and promise of abolition invites us all into by offering her answers to: what does it look like for us to assume the position that every human life is precious? What does that ask of those who have been harmed, and by people who do not see our own preciousness and instead want to annihilate us? What does it mean when we do the harming? Her letters broke my heart, inspired me, made me laugh, made me dream.
Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver
This was my Appalachia book of the year, and I wasn’t alone in consuming this inventive retelling of David Copperfield. It won a Pulitzer and is basically on any “best of” list, so I imagine if you’re a book person, you’ve either read it or seen it recommend ad nauseam, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it here except to say: it was one of my favorite reads of the year; it was a delight to return to the mountains, roads, and speech of my early life; and it takes special authors with dedication and care, always, to write books that tell the truth about a community’s pain without making them the problem, that don’t gloss over a nation’s deliberate perpetration of the violence and destruction of said community, and that are actually good stories to read. Many a fiction author has gotten lost in one or more of those intentions, and Kingsolver is not one of them.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers
Becky Chambers is another queer sci-fi writer that I am delighted to be getting into and can’t wait for 2024, in which I plan to hunker down and read the rest of her books. I love sci fi, speculative fiction, magical realism, fantasy, all of it because the genre has the potential to show us new worlds and help us see who and what we could be by illuminating what we already are. Often, writers in these genres explore the darker side of our potential, that with which we are disgustingly familiar - the parts of us that harm, kill, wage war, steal, manipulate, colonize, oppress. Those books are important to read, no question, and they offer important insights into who we are and what we cause when allowing these parts of us to be the only view of ourselves. But too few authors (at least that I’ve read) explore the potential of us when we aren’t consumed by our defensive armoring and instead operate from the depth of us that is primordial, that loves fully, and that can find a path where there is abundance and care for all. This short novel, the first in a series, was touching precisely because it offers us a look at who we already are if we’re courageous enough to allow it to emerge and what world is possible if we do - even as we must deal with the consequences of having created a world today born from our greed, our hatred, our mass delusion. It was a stand out this year because it invited me to imagine the world we can still build even if (when) everything goes to shit and it asked me to do it believing in the best of us and of me. It was gorgeous and fun and so touching to read the story of Sibling Dex and Mosscap as they journey together.
Others to Highlight But this is Already Really Long, But Ahhhh They Were So Good, Too
Rabih Alameddine (The Wrong End of the Telescope, The Angel of History)
Lisa See (The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan)
How Much of These Hills is Gold, C Pam Zhang
Flux, Jinwoo Chong
Plain Bad Heroines, Emily M. Danforth
I hope this list might help you pick out some of your next great reads in 2024. May this year be full of amazing stories, deep contemplation, hilarious takes, arresting views of who we can be together, and may it be full of words that change your worlds.
Xo -
A
Thank you for this wonderful review and checking out my book!