All the books I've read in 2023
It's a new school term and I'm BACK, BABY
I am forever welded to the scholastic year and so September feels like a good time to do a big old book stack of everything I can (remember) reading this year.
In the interests of time management/ sanity, I have written one sentence on each of the books below and linked to previous letters/ podcasts I’ve made on them. (There’s also a new Shelf Request on books to gift bridesmaids.)
And, because this question of how I read so much arises every time I drop a book stack, I’m flagging this letter. Although, I’m zonking out way earlier than I used to and thus, reading much less. Gains and losses my friends, gains and losses.
From the top!
Finally read A Visit From The Goon Squad for Book Chat and LOVED IT, it’s a vivid, ridiculously clever novel of inter-connecting stories about time, loss, ambition and identity.
From one of my fave writers and heavily influenced by SNL, Romantic Comedy is about a cynical comedy writer who falls in love with a popstar (read more).
My book of the year, Demon Copperhead is a stunning, absorbing re-telling of David Copperfield, set in rural Virginia at the start of the opioid crisis (read more.)
I’ve included Babycakes as representative of my discovering/ downing Armistead Maupin’s entire Tales of The City canon (a glorious rendering of San Francisco starting in the late 70s) after choosing it for Book Chat.
Hello Beautiful is a gentle book by the American writer Ann Napolitano about 4 sisters growing up in America in the 60s (read more).
The second book from Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple deals with marriage, monogamy and sexuality in spry, smart prose (read more).
Rosewater is a raw and lovely debut from gal-dem founder Liv Little, about a barmaid and poet feeling lost in London and life (read more).
When near Naples a few weeks ago, it felt fitting to give My Brilliant Friend another go… once I’ve finished all the Neapolitan novels, I will share thoughts! (Until then, 🤐 )
A debut with buckets of charm, Nicola Dinan’s Bellies is a compassionate, observant exploration of young gay love, friendship and gender (read more).
My other favourite book of the year, Soldier Sailor is a lacerating, gorgeous, clear-eyed book about a woman’s first few years of motherhood (read more).
Augusttown, Bobby’s recent pick for Book Chat, is a funny, lyrical, sprawling book about the scorned village of August Town (with its colonial legacy and its anansi magic) in Jamaica.
The 3rd book by my OG podwife out in Nov, I guzzled Good Material - an astute, witty and moving update of High Fidelity about a heart-broken comedian.
Another one to pre-order, Playing Games by Huma Kureishi, who writes with wisdom and heart about two sisters, in a fraught relationship.
A Book Chat pick from Bobby set against the geo-politics of the early 00s, in The Reluctant Fundamentalist a young Palestinian man narrates his journey to America and his corporate success, before disillusionment sets in.
If you liked Fleabag you will enjoy Green Dot, an Australian debut about whimsical twenty-something Hera, who falls for an unsuitable man, out early next year.
The Rachel Incident is a riotous read - as smart as it is charming - about two young Irish booksellers and their entanglement with a professor and his wife (read more).
Small Hours is my pod-hub’s new book (out next yr) about a fractured family brought together by a talking fox and explores dementia with the same care and elegance as his debut.
After her lauded debut, Megan Nolan follows up with Ordinary Human Failings, about an unscrupulous tabloid journalist and his latest ‘scoop’: the Irish family of a 10 year old is accused of a heinous crime (read more).
Self-Help is a bittersweet 1985 collection of short stories by Lorrie Moore (and a bit of a mixed bag, for me).
Another Bobby pick for Book Chat, Annie Proulx’s Close Range: Wyoming Stories (inc. Brokeback Mountain) are absorbing and evocative stories about the hardscrabble life of ranchers and bull riders.
Finally got round to reading Crossroads, didn’t love it like I did Corrections, but if you’re looking for a Franzen family epic, it ticks the box.
I recently extolled the virtues of humorist Samantha Irby’s fourth essay collection, quietly hostile, which is funny and filthy and unexpectedly profound.
The second non-fiction book from Mim Skinner, Living Together is a prescient, thoughtful study of collective living, and how to find ‘community’ in the age of individualism.
A Book Chat pick by me, Annie Ernaux’s A Girl’s Story - I’m trying to read a bunch of her back catalogue before I try the Nobel-winning The Years - about a coercive sexual experience as a teenager in a French summer camp.
A Woman’s Story (read more) is Ernaux’s clear-eyed re-telling of her mother’s life - more of a sociology of rural France than a familial memoir - while A Man’s Place does the same for her father’s life.
As part of my project to read books gathering dust I plucked Man’s Search For Meaning off my shelf - a short, devastating and profound book about the meaning of life, by psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankel (read more.)
Nell Frizzel’s second non-fiction book about parenthood, Holding the Baby is a balm to frazzled new mothers.
An excoriating and eloquent memoir (as funny as it is devastating) Original Sins explores faith, shame, addiction - and writing your way to salvation (read more).
A dense and thrilling work of non-fiction by editor Joanna Biggs, A Life of One’s Own distills the life and literary lessons of 9 famous female writers (read more).
I chose Home Cooking for the most recent Book Chat, and while I wasn’t hipped on all the recipes, I love what Laurie Colwin teaches us about slowing down and valuing the simple things in the kitchen (also: her expressions - I am obsessed with hipped - are 🤌).
Strong Female Character is an astoundingly self-aware, deadpan memoir about class, mental health, female adult autism and family dynamics by comedian Fern Brady (read more).
Bobby’s first ever pick for Book Chat, Tin Man is Sara Winman’s exquisitely tender and moving novel about the love and loss of two childhood best friends, set against the AIDS crisis of the 80s.
Hugely entertaining and a little chaotic, Yellow Face is about bad art friends and publishing trends (read more).
Blown away by Pamela Anderson’s memoir, Love, Pamela, as evidenced by this long newsletter - my second most popular letter, in fact! - all about it.
Also deep-dived (dove?) Monsters, a lively work of non-fiction by lit crit Clare Dederer about the emergence of the problematic fave and what we ‘do’ with the work of the cancelled.
A must-read from Burnt Toast’s Virginia Sole-Smith, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture covers internalised fatphobia, why BMI is a fallacy and what ‘healthy eating’ means (read more).
BITS
A typically varied whistlestop tour of some of the things I enjoyed over the summer
Mixed feelings on the TradWife trend, but cannot stop thinking about this letter from Culture Study which led me to an even better one on the fetishisation of the American pastoral (and the enigma that is Ballerina Farm). The comments are worth a read (always), particularly the one from a Utah journalist which gives riveting context.
Re-reading some of Parul Seghal’s back catalogue (former literary critic at The NYT, now at The New Yorker) I was struck again by how good this piece was. Ostensibly a review of the contested novel American Dirt, it is more accurately an eloquent, rational exploration of how to tell stories that are not yours, aka “the earned fact”. Should be required reading for every writer. Also great: her long-read on Jacqueline Rose.
I fell into a Tay Beep Boop hole (def her real name). The homes itself would be quite wild to live in, but it’s like decorative ASMR.
I will never forget the September joy of a new pencil case (and am now living vicariously through my daughter) and thus derived great joy from this piece in The FT on the psychological importance of stationery.
I read about this new pill for post-natal depression with hope in my heart. A pill that takes just 3 days to kick in (rather than months) and is suitable for short-term use (rather than being a terrifying mine-field to come on/off) could be game-changing. Just don’t ask Tom Cruise for his opinion.
Heart-breaking and necessary, an interview with editor Merope Mills about ‘Martha’s Law’, which would give patients and their families the legal right to an urgent, second opinion, by Ed Cumming for The Telegraph. (Mills’s daughter Martha died aged 14, you can read her story here.)
Was reluctant to watch this (and it got pretty crap reviews) but my friend Stacey assured me I wouldn’t regret it and she was right - Tyson Fury’s new reality show is a riveting insight into the traveller community (and how to stay rooted in it when you’re worth over £50 million and live in a Versailles-esque mansion), and what it’s like to both have, and to live with someone who has, bipolar. Star of the show is indubitably Tyson’s wife Paris, raising 6 (now 7) children mostly single-handedly and accommodating Tyson’s whims and volte-faces with benevolent pragmatism.
Terri White’s recent interview with Caroline Calloway for Grazia was ace (annoyingly can’t find online to link) and made me desperate to read Scammed, which White says proves Calloway to be a genuinely talented writer… but I simply can’t justify £65 on one book. Also delicious, This New Yorker piece by Tyler Foggatt comparing Calloway and her ‘ghost-writer’ turned arch enemy Natalie Beach’s essay collections and finding Calloway’s to have the edge. (Normally I would not enjoy the creative work of two young women being set up in competition; but they have both lent into/ monetised this duel.)
Via Dolly, Nick Cave’s gorgeous response to a reader in love with an unsuitable man. Cave’s newsletter Red Hand Files is so wise and emotionally astute, revealing him to be an agony uncle par excellence. (Why hasn’t a publisher scooped up a collection of his letters yet!?)
I really enjoy journalist Amelia Tait’s monthly letter The Waiting Room for its unique single-person stories - in this one she calls up Gwyneth Paltrow’s body-double from wince-fest Shallow Hal, Ivy Snitzer, to discuss her experience making a movie that would never get made now.
Speaking of letters, I thought this Maybe Baby reply to a reader who found herself irritated by her friends with kids offered a fresh spin on a contested subject. (I def think European parenting is more adaptable than American).
This is heart-punch stuff. An extract from writer John Niven’s new book, O Brother, about his late brother, Gary, in The Sunday Times mag.
“I asked her why she had bought them for us. “Because you were being good boys and hadn’t asked for anything.” I see Gary still, hugging Mum in gratitude, his arms wrapped around her legs, his head nestling into her hip. It is one of those random memories of parental love and kindness that causes your heart to flex in your chest all these years later, a moment that you know will very likely be somewhere among your last thoughts.”
I’ve been suspicious of NuCalm’s anti-anxiety patches since the craze first begun - this Guardian piece is essential reading before you hit purchase. If something sounds too good to be true…. it generally is.
God bless Amy Odell, on how nothing really changes in the fashion industry.
Everyone will forget about how, during the pandemic, many believed the fashion system was broken and needed to change. Despite so many calls for brands to produce less and rethink fashion shows, everything pretty much went back to normal as quickly as possible once pandemic restrictions eased. So rethinking the fashion system was kind of like the liquid leggings of ideas — something that sure seemed real cute at the time!
To end! This salad topper that my husband discovered in Sainos. It’s crunchy and a little salty and it upgrades a humble salad ten-fold. I am beholden forevermore.
DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE I CAN LEGALLY WATCH BAMA RUSH?? I’M DESPERATE!
And if you have any great reccs, drop ‘em below.
Armisted Maupin!!! Devoured his books when I discovered them too - there’s no other way to read him.
Will you share your take on why Euro parenting seems more adaptable to adult friendship than American? I read bringing up bebe - but would loove a recent, real life perspective here!