2023 Booklist and Recommendations (with links)

Reading Capote's In Cold Blood between typewriting poems for folks
at the Three Village Farmers Market in Setauket, NY

Am I obliged to start every New Year's reading list/recap with shock at the passage of time? I think I won't, although I'll comment on that inevitability a little later...

2023 Reading list:

Counting plays and individual trade paperbacks, I read nearly 80 books in 2023. Clearly, reading is an obsession for me. Escapism. Learning. ADHD-prompted insatiability for novelty (pardon the pun, and pardon saying “pardon the pun” I loathe it.) Part of it is also the desire to flesh out my imagined expansive private study/library, a fantasy I’ve harbored since I first saw Disney’s Beauty and The Beast.

Sometimes the books and their particulars linger long after, other times they fade leaving only a line of dialogue, or clever twist, or concept or brilliant structure that stays with me. Often, I jump hungrily to the next book the very same day. This year I was more partial to underlining, marginalia, trying to ensure I engage more deeply with the books for legitimate fear I’ve been egoistically inhaling books and retaining nothing of value. Anecdotal case in point:

On New Year’s Eve 2023, my friends and I played a game with a dry erase board spinner to prompt us to reminisce on the best-of experiences of certain categories. When my arrow landed on “book” my mind nearly went blank as I could only scrape up a couple of titles. (My first response was “Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy” which, upon reading this list, if I picked ONE of his books for best read this past year, it would have been Suttree.) Then the free-association of gushing memory came tumbling in blurts of praise out as it always does “Oh my god, Neuromancer by William Gibson was phenomenal, amazing when authors seems so ahead of their time with ideas and characters! Oh and I read In Cold Blood by Capote for the first time…so crazy good!” Setty warmly cut me off a few minutes into it, knowing as any old friend of mind does, that this self-interrupting monologue collage could go on forever.

As I compile this list on the second of January 2024, I am continually surprised, “Wow, that was this year? AND that one too?”! Even the memories I have of reading these books, such as the new favorite, James Anderson’s “The Never Open Desert Diner” reading while sunbathing with Sabrina on the West Meadow Beach of Long Island, doesn’t feel like an experience that happened in the blur of 2023.

The more I look at the list and associate each book with an activity or locale (I listened to Augusten Borrough’s “Dry” while cleaning storm-blown lumber off the property, I read “All My Sons” in a café in Babylon called “Jack Jack’s Coffee” etc) It occurs to me, with some relief, how much can happen in a year. The relief is interlaced with some hope that there will be plenty of time to do pursue and achieve many of my goals and ambitions for the coming year.

Last year I made a pact with myself to try to deplete my to-be-read bookshelf over the course of the year, partly aided by the frugal and tide-staying of literary-hoarding-pathology rule of “Don’t buy anymore books!” Even with all I read this past year, I still have nearly 70 books on the to-read shelf! I’m still going to try to prevent myself from buying books…

Sometimes the impulse to buy books is simply too strong, I purchased more than a few books on an escapist shopping binge off my computer in the middle of a class I was desperately dissociating from. Other times the opportunity is too perfect: I bought Steinbeck’s wonderful “In Dubious Battle” one night in January 2023 off of a book stand left outside of a store in Kingston, NY on a trip with friends. I left a folded dollar wedged in between the locked door. When we entered the store the following day, I confessed my mid-bar-hopping night-shopping and they laughed while expressing gratitude.

You’ll note that I do deep dives on writers, I complete collections with a voracious rabbit-hole deep dive with the hunger of a devotee. I finished August Wilsons’ indispensable “Century Cycle” early in the year, hot off the excitement of seeing his play The Piano Lesson on Broadway with my Sabrina for our 1 year anniversary last December. I continued through Cormac McCarthy’s masterful oeuvre in tribute to his tragic passing. I subscribed to the scholastic, analytical podcast “Reading McCarthy” and that made me appreciate his works even more thoroughly. I discovered the exhilarating world of crime in Ed Brubaker, and his work with artist Sean Philips dominated my experience of comics this year.

Fun bit of literary travel nerdiness: in September my girlfriend Sabrina and I had the distinct joy of taking a long weekend and visiting Bangor Maine, the hometown stomping grounds of Stephen and Tabitha King as a gift to her for her birthday. To be honest, it was a gift to me too. If you've at all followed my reading lists or me in general, you will know I am a ravenous King fan and have read just about everything he's read and rarely been disappointed. Took a huge tour of his town, through SK-Tours which I really recommend. We saw their house, learned a lot of trivia, found a rare and out-of-print book of his, and walked away with even more respect for the Kings than I already had, for their support of the town and all their generosity to the place they grew up. I was able to sit in a park bench that he used to write in (photo below) in the same park that features the water tower that gets demolished in the book "IT" (Bangor is an analog for Derry in the book.) Epic and exciting bookish nerd trip. Also... I implore you to go to Acadia National Park!

Sabrina and I at the grand finale of the Derry tour,
The Kings' home!

There are "A"s next to the books I *listened to* I don't use audible, I use libby, a free library service that runs through your library card, highly recommended! I’ve put asterisks next to some of my favorites and vehement general recommendations. There are books I loved that I don't think are for everyone and I did not star some of those. (I've been striking out with what always feel like unassailable suggestions with my English teacher aunt the past few years, to our mutual chagrin.) Honestly, all of August Wilson's 10 play "Century Cycle" deserves your Maybe it will add to your 2024 reading list! Try not to buy books from amazon by the way would you?

Check out the youtube channel "Better Than Food", it's been a favorite resource-of-entertainment to peruse this past year, even just watching ruminations this guy has on books that I have already read is illuminating and interesting! He got me to read one of my favorite books of this year "The Peregrine" by J.A. Baker with his rapturous review of it. Please let me know your favorite reads of 2023 in the comments, maybe I’ll add them to my wish lists this year.

2023 Booklist and Recommendations (with links)

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