I bought my first Kindle in 2016. I’d had a Barnes and Noble Nook and loved having an e-reader but more and more I found that books that I wanted were available only on Kindle so I finally caved to Amazon. Almost every book I’ve read since 2016 has been in Kindle format, including almost every book on this list except Mrs. Obama’s (hardback, a Christmas present from my son).
Say what you want about Amazon, but Kindle e-readers are awesome - compact and light, easy to use, dependable, and nice to hold and carry. I’ve had at least three phones since 2016, and I had to replace a 3-year-old Chromebook last year, but the Kindle kept on keeping on, until just a few months ago. It wasn’t charging consistently, it didn’t hold a charge, and sometimes I had a hard time connecting to wi-fi networks away from home. So when my husband asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I asked for the newest Kindle and asked him to pay the extra $20 for the ad-free version. The new Kindle was wrapped up under the tree on Christmas morning, and it’s so pretty - a light green color that looks beautiful with the case, even lighter and quicker than the old one, and it charges on a USB-C cable so I can use the same charger for all of my devices. And it has all of the advantages of the old one, too. It fits in almost every handbag I own, so I can read wherever I am. This year, I read wherever I was - in between baseball game innings, waiting for swim meets to begin, in the dentist’s office, on the beach, in planes, trains, and automobiles. Here are all (most) of the books I read in 2023.
The Light We Carry - Michelle Obama.
Child 44 and The Secret Speech - Tom Rob Smith. I read these early last year and was thinking about them and all of my other reading about the horrors of Soviet totalitarianism under Stalin when I heard the news that Alexei Navalny is imprisoned in a penal colony inside the Arctic Circle. I hope he survives. I hope he outlives Putin.
On Beauty, Intimations, and Changing My Mind - Zadie Smith. Zadie Smith is my 2023 Author of the Year. I know she's excited about this.
The Country Girls (trilogy) - Edna O’Brien. This was the beginning and end of my foray into the literary work of Edna O'Brien.
An Unsuitable Attachment, Some Tame Gazelle, A Glass of Blessings, and Jane and Prudence - Barbara Pym. I can’t get enough of Barbara Pym, but I’ve read almost all of her work and sadly, there won’t be any more. Zadie Smith was my Author of the Year, but Barbara Pym earns Honorable Mention.
Snobbery, The American Version - Joseph Epstein. Since 2020 or so, my social media feeds have been full of influencers urging women to jettison any and all unpleasant tasks and responsibilities and interactions. I have very mixed feelings about this trend. On the one hand, it's certainly true that most of us are doing things that we don't really need to do, and that don't really bring value to anyone. If ironing or canning preserves or maintaining your roots makes you miserable, don't do those things. They're unnecessary. Superfluous. On the other hand, there are many necessary and important things that we have to do, whether we want to or not. Doing things you don't want to do is part of adulthood. But listening to music you don't like or finishing a book you hate are not necessary or important things and you should feel free to turn off the radio or close the book rather than waste one more moment of your mild, precious life (see what I did there), and you shouldn't feel bad about this. Snobbery was one of the few (and the only one in 2023) books that I have started and deliberately didn’t finish, and I have absolutely no regrets about that decision.
Wrinkles - Charles Simmons. Absolutely bananas. I have no recollection of how this ended up in my library, nor any recollection of plot details. I read it mostly at night, as I was falling asleep, which added to the story's bizarre and dreamlike quality. And it was not good. I did not enjoy it. And that is all I have to say about this ridiculous book.
Red Notice and Freezing Order - Bill Browder. I still worry that the Russians will get Bill Browder one way or another. If Trump ends up in the White House again, he'll probably wrap the poor man up and ship him to Moscow as a gift to Putin. Maybe Canada will offer asylum.
Here are three extremely dissimilar books that I happened to read one after the other, and wrote about in one post, right here.
- Two Souls Indivisible - James Hirsch
- Against Memoir - Michelle Tea
- American Prometheus - Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. Definitely a job for two authors.
Enough - Cassidy Hutchinson. I was thinking about what I wrote about this book this morning, as I watched news coverage of Nikki Haley's outraged reaction to Donald Trump's "where's her husband" taunts at one of his stupid Klan rallies. Mr. Haley is of course a National Guardsman who is currently deployed and although Ms. Haley's outrage is justified, I must also point out to her (because I'm sure she's reading this) that he's the same Donald Trump now that he's always been, just with fewer marbles and more loose screws, and he's spewing the same kind of garbage and vitriol as ever, and you supported him then, and what's the difference now? Don't pretend that you know who he is now but you didn't know who he was then. You're too smart for that.
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath. I managed, as a white woman who studied English at an East Coast university in the 1980s AND who attended high school at an all-girls institution, to avoid The Bell Jar. It was never assigned in a class, and I never thought of reading it on my own. I probably thought, at some point, that I should try to read The Bell Jar one day; I should put that book on my list. The thing is that I’m 58 now, and it’s definitely time to recognize that things I haven’t done, places I haven’t gone, books I haven’t read may well remain undone, unvisited, unread. I don’t have forever. I won’t get around to everything. So I read The Bell Jar, and have very little to say about it except that it’s probably not ideal reading for a person already in the throes of a mental health crisis, and except that even a person who is legitimately mentally ill can also be a jerk. Those things can coexist, and they do in the person of Esther Greenwood, The Bell Jar’s protagonist, who is spoiled and petulant and often pointlessly cruel. It’s hard to root for her but oddly, you do root for her. Annoying protagonist aside, I’m still glad I read the book (although I definitely won’t read it again - once was enough). I’m fascinated with these relics of mid 20th century exceptionalist postwar America, the time in which I was born and raised and that I thought was as solid and immovable as the ground beneath my feet and that I now know was fleeting and temporary. And it is filled with carelessly beautiful writing. And it’s a classic, I suppose, and so there’s one more of them that I can cross off my list.
Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe. I read this in 2019, but I read it again this year. I was in Cleveland and had just finished reading a book, but I couldn’t download a new book because my old Kindle wouldn’t connect to any non-home Wi-Fi network. I never mind re-reading a book that I love, and I had also just returned from Belfast, so it was the perfect time to read this, with the memory of the Falls Road and the Divis Tower fresh in my mind.
Howards’ End - E.M. Forster. This really counts as another Zadie Smith book because I wouldn’t have thought to read it had Zadie Smith not urged me to do so. Last year, when I read Zadie Smith’s novel On Beauty, I learned (maybe from the introduction or maybe from a review, I don’t remember) that On Beauty is a modern-day retelling of Howards’ End. Zadie Smith is out here writing fan fiction, and I’m all for it. But I read Howards End months after I finished On Beauty, and so had forgotten completely that it was it was based on Howards End and so when I reached the part when Mrs. Wilcox invites Margaret Shlegel to visit, I had a moment of literary deja vu, and then I remembered why that scene seemed so familiar. Thanks to Zadie’s E.M. Forster essay in Changing My Mind, I’ll be reading a lot more E.M. Forster next year. I'm also smack in the middle of Middlemarch, which is great, because of course it is, because Zadie Smith says so. Zadie Smith has convinced me to read Philip Roth, E.M. Forster, George Eliot, and who knows who else? When it comes to books, I do whatever Nora Ephron and Zadie Smith tell me to do. Neither Nora nor Zadie have ever steered me wrong when it comes to literary recommendations.
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing - Matthew Perry.
Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen - Mary McGrory
Ex-Wife - Ursula Parrott. Ex-Wife was a bestseller in 1929 and then it disappeared into literary obscurity. Then the internet discovered it and all of a sudden, my newsfeeds were filled with think pieces about this book and its modern-day relevance. I can imagine how shocking it might have been to an early 20th century audience (lots of adultery and domestic abuse). And I can also see why it was a bestseller. It’s a page-turner, and it depicts a life of freedom and glamour and independence - and yes, loneliness and grief and despair - that would have been unfamiliar to most women of that time. I wouldn’t call it a great novel but it’s certainly a worthwhile read especially if you’re interested in early 20th century New York (and who isn’t). I think I’d be interested in reading a biography of Ursula Parrott. Maybe I’ll do that this year. Check back with me around February 2025.
Oath and Honor - Liz Cheney. As with Cassidy Hutchinson’s book, I pre-ordered this and read it the moment it showed up in my library. And as when I read Cassidy Hutchinson’s book, I didn’t learn much that I didn’t already know (I followed the J6 hearings pretty closely) but I wanted to read a personal perspective from someone who lived the investigation and the hearings day in and day out. No matter what you think of Liz Cheney’s politics (I disagree with her about almost everything), she’s an American hero, and I hope she remains in public life in some capacity.
Every Day is a Gift - Senator Tammy Duckworth. I read this for work - my boss was introducing Senator Duckworth at an event, and I was drafting remarks for him. I read her book so that I’d know something about her other than that she is a Democratic senator from Illinois. I ended up reading this in about a day, during my early summer bout with COVID. Senator Duckworth has an amazing and inspiring story, and she tells it very well. I recommended the book to a very conservative friend who likes military biographies and memoirs, and she was impressed. Tammy Duckworth is a uniquely American figure, the child of an American father and a Thai-Chinese mother; born in Thailand and raised there and in Malaysia and Singapore and Hawaii. She spent her early childhood in comfort and security; and then when her father lost his highly paid job as a property manager, the family fell abruptly into poverty. An excellent student and athlete, the young Tammy joined the Army for the secure pay, benefits, and tuition assistance; and then she found that she was born to be a soldier. She would likely have remained in the Army, ascending to high rank, had she not lost her legs in the attack on her helicopter in Iraq in 2004.
I didn’t set out to read a series of of heroic American women's memoirs, but I did set out to read a lot of Zadie Smith and Barbara Pym. Everything else on this list is random, just a bunch of books that found their way into my Kindle queue. There’s a nice serendipity to just reading what’s available and in front of you. It’s like listening to old-fashioned radio. You never know when you’ll hear that one song that you’ll want to sing along to forever.
*****
A few days ago I saw a social media post that said something about how it doesn’t matter if you read a paragraph, a page, or a book every day - as long as you’re reading something, you can call yourself a reader. By the way, this also applies to writing. Sometimes I write three sentences and sometimes I write two or three pages in one sitting, but I write every single day and that makes me a writer. Anyway, even though I don’t need validation from social media strangers (or at least that’s what I tell myself), this message was strangely comforting - some days, I’m so distracted (by scrolling inspirational social media content, for example) or so busy that I only read a few pages, and I wonder if I’ll get through more than a handful of books this year. A handful of books would be fine if they’re the right books. I think I read somewhere around 30 books last year - yes, I could just count but I’m pretty sure that I read at least one or two that I forgot to write down. I just finished my fourth book of 2024 (it was a long one) so I’m not quite on the 30 per year pace for this year but who cares. That’s just fewer books for which I have to write meandering and incoherent reviews for next year’s book post. See you in 2025.
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