2023: Favorite reads of the year
Hello, friends!
In 2022, I read 98 books. 2023, for so many reasons, has been a speedbump and roller coaster of a year, resulting in far fewer books read—just 52. But there were some pretty good ones in there, and I thought I'd (briefly, as I'm writing this while visiting my folks for the holiday) share them with you.
The Appeal, Janice Hallett
I think Janice Hallett is my top literary discovery this year. I started the year in the mood for murder books (which I think you can attribute to the resurgence of whodunit movies lately), and accidentally stumbled upon Hallett's first novel at Powell's Books. Imagine my delight when I fanned the pages and discovered that Hallett's preferred method of fiction delivery is epistolary. This novel follows a small-time repertory theater group's activities around an unexpected murder, allowing the reader to piece together what really happened through text messages, emails, and other ephemera. (And if that's your style, then check out Hallett's other murder books: They're all epistolary!)
Small Game, Blair Braverman
In 2021, I chose Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North, Blair Braverman's memoir of discovering herself in Norway and Alaska, among sled dogs and glaciers, as one of my favorite reads. This year she followed that book up with Small Game, a novel about a group of reality show contestants dumped into the wilderness, where they must, while documented by a skeevy camera crew, attempt to survive. I've never quite read a book like this, and I loved it just as much as Ice Cube.
All the Queen's Men, SJ Bennett
This is the second of Bennett's books in the Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series, which, as you might imagine, dreams up a world in which Queen Elizabeth II has a nose for solving murders that happen to take place on royal property. You might not expect this sort of thing to be good at all, but Bennett creates a dynamic world around the inquisitive Queen, with such texture and reality that you never once doubt the Queen's ability to bring any rapscallion to justice.
The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman
Spotting a trend here? I picked up this book while visiting the coast with Felicia, in a cute little bookstore in Seaside, Oregon. I brought home many murder books from that trip, and this is the first one I got to. The premise is simple: Four elderly friends, residents of an assisted living facility in England, are the Thursday Murder Club, and quite capable of besting the local police or MI5 at solving significant crimes when they just happen to arise, again and again, on their front lawn. Osman does a nice job making you take the older generation seriously, pairing their lack of familiarity with technology and modern culture with their decades of deep experience in ferreting out the most intimate secrets of people who don't share them. Brilliantly structured and impossible to stop reading.
New and Selected Poems, Volume One, Mary Oliver
I confess I've never been much of a poetry reader, but when I discovered Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" in the recent past, I found myself enthralled and inspired. I came upon this collection of Oliver's work during another Powell's date night with Felicia, and over several months, read it slowly, often reading the poetry aloud to Squish before bedtime. I'm not only inspired by Oliver's view of the world, but deeply moved by the dance of her language, the way she collides unlikely words together to paint the most vivid images.
Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, Jesse Q. Sutanto
This novel is just...pure joy. Vera Wong is an elderly Asian woman who owns a tea shop where nobody shops. This is her life until a dead body turns up on the shop floor. From the moment Vera kept vital evidence from the police—believing they would squander it and muck up the investigation, and that she could do better herself—I was hooked. I've never read a murder book where the investigator solves crimes by preparing food for her suspects. Vera Wong is a marvelous character, and I hope Sutanto finds more stories to tell about her.
And an honorable mention to an old favorite: Microserfs, by Douglas Coupland. Yes, I've read it twenty times. Yes, it's thirty years old and in some places showing its age. But it's also a truly unique novel, one that snapshots a particular place and time so clearly that, while reading, I find myself seeing the Windows 3.11 startup screen in my dreams. It's also, for a novel that's so irreverent and pop-culture-driven, deeply sentimental and touching.
I'm going to leave it there in this final newsletter of the year. To everyone I wish a 2024 filled with growth, healing, and passion, and a confidence that who you are matters no matter what you do or don't do, what you have or don't have, where you've been or where you're going.
Happy holidays to you and yours!
✏️Until next time,
Jg
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