Favorite Reads of 2023

My yearly reading goal is usually 50 titles. This year it was to read less books but more lengthy classics or modern classics. I did not do this but I did hit 50 which feels like a good number for me.

FICTION

Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe (coming out in June 2024)

This book is ridiculous in all the right ways: Margot Miller is a young single mom trying to make her way in the world. Her mother is a Hooters waitress, her father an ex-professional (and celebrity) wrestler, and she has just started an onlyfans site to try and make ends meet. Baby daddy (her married English professor at the community college) and her mother who is trying to marry a religious man try various ways to stop her. When her father and roommate offer to help her with her onlyfans career, her site takes off and she has to navigate a whole slew of obstacles to keep her little family safe. This is my wheelhouse: quirky characters you root for, great storytelling and writing, humor without all the darkness. Loved it, which made me seek out more Rufi Thorpe and I ended up also reading, Knockout Queen.

Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe

Probably not quite as good as Margo (for me) but only because it is heavier. There is still great writing and storytelling. In this novel, Thorpe tells the story of an adolescent friendship between Bunny, an athletic but awkward girl who is desperate to fit in, and Michael, a boy who has encounters with men he meets online. There is also Bunny’s alcoholic father who’s scams will soon tumble his upper middle class life. This story is heart wrenching and there is a sense of doom but you just aren’t sure which if either of them will make it out of high school and head into their future.

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

Whoa. This book is hard to describe. First, it takes place in a “United States” that was split into territories with the Southern Territory being the conservative, fascist state that one must escape from and the Northern Territory being the liberal territory. X is an artist and writer and performer whose work ignites and repels and creates movements. When she dies, her widow, CM is left to go through her things and figure out exactly who she was married to. She doesn’t even know X’s birth name or place. She sets out to research her wife’s life, to figure out not only who she was and where she was from, but also find out what motivated her. She covers decades of X’s history and the history of the territories. This story is fascinating on so many levels. How do we answer the question: who am I? How much of our life is a performance? This book will keep you thinking.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

I really liked this time travel book. It’s a contemporary story about a 40 year old woman whose father is dying. She’s not happy or unhappy. She just is a bit stuck. After a drunken night out with her friend, she wakes up on the morning of her 16th birthday. She moves back and forth between that day and the current time. She gets to spend time with her father when he is in the prime of his life and reconsider friendships and romantic entanglements. I tend to find all the time travel, slightly romantic books formulaic but this one stands out from the crowd. It feels fresh: maybe because the story’s primary relationship is between a father and daughter. Great, quick read.

The Librarianist by Patrick Dewitt

It’s about a retired librarian. I had to read it! I rarely let a librarian character go by unread. Luckily, this book was really a great read. I love Patrick Dewitt (The Sisters Brothers) and even though this is a real departure from his other work, I really enjoyed it. Bob Comet is a retired librarian who ends up volunteering at a senior center. He quickly gets involved with the lives of the seniors. This is not a clever book or particularly deep; but it is a quiet, slow lovely tale about how people connect and how those connections enrich our lives.

Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin

Austin’s niche seems to be with people who have obsessive thoughts that get in the way of their quality of life. In this novel, we follow Enid who is employed at a NASA like agency, has a fear of bald men, is obsessed with true crime podcasts, tries to connect with her half sisters (awkwardly), dates a polyamorous lesbian couple and has multiple other dates before connecting with Polly, the ex-wife of another woman she briefly dated. It’s definitely a quirky book about quirky people.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead byOlga Tokarczuk

A skinny little thriller that will have you thinking about it long after you finished reading it. I really can’t even explain this book concisely. There’s a murder in a remote Polish village inhabited by a few reclusive citizens that care for the estates of wealthy city people who spend the summer there. When one of the caretakers turns up dead in a snow bank, the story turns into a mystery.

nONFICTION

Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America by Helen Tworkov

I actually had expectations that I wouldn’t like this book but felt compelled to try it because the subject matter interested me. Lucky me, the book ended up being really interesting. I can’t say that it is one that stayed with me for months but I really enjoyed learning about Tworkov’s history with Buddhism in the United States. It has a nice balance between memoir and historical and I found her take on the subject very interesting. Definitely recommend it if you are interested in Buddhism.

Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Stories of Dementia, the Caregiver, and the Human Brain by Dasha Kiper

This is a very accessible book about dementia which weaves science with case study. It sort of looks scholarly but is actually very approachable. My mother has dementia and it was interesting to read about what is happening in her brain and also read similar anecdotes in the presented case studies. This book was recommended to me and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.

To Name the Bigger Lie: A Memoir in Two Stories by Sarah Viren

Since reading her compelling NYT article, I have been waiting for this book and it did not disappoint. She calls it a memoir in two stories because she focuses on two experiences: an expanded retelling of the story she told in the NYT article and an experience she had with a teacher in high school. In one story, she is an adolescent in an advanced class with an inspiring teacher who begins to teach in a way this challenges students’ trust in him and the second story is one of facing false accusations of sexual harassment that threaten her and her wife’s livelihood and reputations. This book did not disappoint and I found the additional story added to the richness of the questions she raises: what is a common truth? what is truth? who gets to shape and tell a narrative about an experience? As a librarian, I’m frequently thinking about validity of a resource for a research project. With the concept of “fake news,” what happens to reliance on primary sources? How do we teach students and even citizens to dissect the information they encounter? Ugh!

And Don't F&%k It Up: An Oral History of RuPaul's Drag Race by Maria Elena Fernandez

This book is for people obsessed with RuPaul’s Drag Race. I am one of those people. Season by season, Fernandez shines a light on relationships, controversies and behind the scenes antics through interviews with participants and staff. Anya and I both plowed through this one.

Poetry and Poetry adjacent

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

Recommended by a friend. This is a stunning collection and dare I say it: a page turner. I read it twice, the first time in one sitting because there was a layered story at the core that was very compelling. At its simplest, it is the story of a deaf boy who is murdered by soldiers. The townspeople go deaf and their rebellion against the occupiers is carried on through sign language. This is about war, occupation, language, and silence in the face of atrocity.

Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe

One of the things I loved about this book is how many surprises there were in it. It was shelved in poetry and I have to agree that it is poetic. However, I’d say its layered fragments, micro-essays, not that it matters either way. I also confess that the sheer bulk of the book almost deterred me but I had heard such good thing it felt worth a shot. I’m so glad I took a chance with this one. Beautiful, insightful, challenging pieces but with breathing room around them. I highly recommend this one.

Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku By Natalie Goldberg

I thought this book was going to be about writing haiku but it was so much more than that: part memoir, part historical deep dive into haiku and those who have written in the form. Ended up being a quick enjoyable read and I learned so much about haiku, the beginnings, the ancient writers of it and the contemporary continuance of the form. Also, something I love is the scavenger hunt of further reading ideas. I think it was Austin Kleon who wrote about how one book sometimes leads to another and another and the conversation that happens between them and you as the reader.