2023 BOOK SUMMARY

A la Jessamyn.

2023 stats

Total number of books read: 76 books – I’m still having trouble finding enough to read

average read per month: 6.3 books
average read per week: 1.5 books

number read in worst months: (4, in March and October)
number read in best month: (9, May)

This section is a bit confusing this year, as eight of the books I read were by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö, one of whom is a woman and one of whom is a man, so I counted both of them for those eight books:
percentage by male authors: 29%
percentage by female authors: 71%

fiction as percentage of total: 84% ( 64 books)
crime fiction as percentage of fiction total: 58% (37 of 64 books)
non-fiction as percentage of total: 16% (12 books)

percentage of total liked: 75% ( 57 books)
percentage of total so-so or disliked: 25% (19 books, most of which were so-so, not disliked)

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NOTES:

I think my favourite book this year was Forbidden Notebook (1952/2023) by Alba De Céspedes, about a middle-aged mother in post-WWII Rome who is unhappy with her life, her marriage, and how much she’s subjugated her needs and desires to other people’s and in the process lost her self.

I loved two of the three Rachel Cusks that I read, Outline (2014) and Transit (2016), the latter of which is also in contention for favourite book of the year. I also liked Second Place (2021) but not as much.

I really enjoyed Hervé Le Tellier’s The Anomaly (2020), a mind-bending time travel novel, especially the first of the three sections.

And I LOL’d (and resonated) reading two of three Samantha Irby books of essays this year, Wow, No Thank You (2020) and We Are Never Meeting In Real Life: Essays (2017); I didn’t like Quietly Hostile (2023) as much (too much Dave Matthews Band and Sex in the City for me, though a lovely mini-essay, “I Like To Get High At Night and Think About Whales”).

I could read books like Penelope Lively’s Heat Wave (1996) all day every day: the English summer setting, the domestic tensions and building domestic suspense, the noticed nuances of human interaction, the perceptive, precise writing, her deceptively light touch.

Some of my surprising favourites — books that were unusual for me, out of my comfort zone, and others just strange — included Night of the Living Rez (2022) by Morgan Talty, stories linked novelistically about life on a Maine Native American (Penobscot) reservation (read for a bookgroup); The Displacements (2022) by Bruce Holsinger, which is a very well-written and tightly plotted work of climate disaster dystopian fiction; Berg (1964) by Ann Quin, confusing, chaotic, and poetic; The Furrows (2023) by Namwali Serpell, in which both the main character and the reader spend most of their time dazed and uncertain; and The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (2023) by James McBride, a story with broad scope that holds firmly to the grey zone, the space where nothing and no one is truly only one thing or another but always an amalgamation.

Two escapist novels I savoured were Pineapple Street (2023) by Jenny Jackson and The Five-Star Weekend (2023) by Elin Hilderbrand. Bring them to the beach if you haven’t read them yet. Also good beach books: Palm Beach Finland (2017/2018 transl.) by Antti Tuomainen, dark comic noir set on a Finnish beach; Four Aunties and a Wedding (2022) by Jesse Q. Sutanto, madcap wedding-centered hijinks involving the wedding planner’s mafia family in Oxford, England; and Carl Hiaasen’s Native Tongue (1991), in which two very rare blue-tongued mango voles are stolen from the Amazing Kingdom theme park in North Key Largo, by two very inept robbers.

I wallowed happily in several books by Claudia Piñeiro this year, including Elena Knows (2007), a dark and perfect book set in one day, from the perspective of Elena, who has Parkinson’s disease; A Crack in the Wall (2009/transl. 2013 ), about an architect who harbours a preoccupying and single-minded dream as well as a small fissure of dark secrets; and Thursday Night Widows (2005/transl 2009), my favourite of the three, about the seediness underlying life in a wealthy Buenos Aires gated community.

Autobiography of a Face (1994) by Lucy Grealy, a memoir about her childhood diagnosis of Ewing’s Sarcoma in her jaw, is meditative and stark and I’m glad I read it.

Some favourite crime fiction this year included Unnatural Death (2023) by Patricia Cornwell, in the Scarpetta series – always a favourite, a world I feel completely comfortable in so long as it’s from an unequivocally safe distance; Gallows Rock (2017/2020) by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, 4th in the Icelandic Freyja and Huldar series, a suspenseful police procedural that’s dynamic and very well plotted; Zero Days (2023) by Ruth Ware, set in the UK, a very engaging novel with perfect plotting and pace; Locust Lane (2022) by Stephen Amidon, also well-paced, suspenseful, set in a wealthy Mass. suburb; and Death on Tuckernuck (2020) by Francine Mathews, probably my favourite in her Merry Folger series, set in Nantucket – it’s heart-pounding and full of stormy island and boating ambiance.

I read several novels in Sophie Hannah’s Detective Constable Simon Waterhouse & DS Sergeant Charlie Zailer series this year and really enjoyed most of them; Little Face is the best, but I had a hard time following The Cradle in the Grave. I also read eight of the ten Martin Beck Swedish crime novels written by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö in the 1960s and 1970s and liked most of these slower paced novels, particularly The Locked Room: The Story of a Crime (1972).

Of course, as always, novels in Louise Penny’s Gamache series set in Quebec (A World of Curiosities, 2022), in Deborah Crombie’s Kincaid/James police procedural series set in London (A Killing of Innocents, 2023), and in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club mystery series (The Last Devil to Die, 2023) were a pleasure to read.

Disappointments: The Woman in the Library (2022) by Sulari Gentill, which feels like it’s trying too hard until it doesn’t try hard enough; Checkout 19 (2022) by Claire-Louise Bennett, very recommended and a little intriguing but in the end it feels like a series of disjointed and stylistically irritating writing exercises; Liberation Day: Stories (2022) by George Saunders, which has some interesting and funny things to say, but after reading a few dozen of his stories, I feel like they start to sound very alike; a memoir, Flat Broke with Two Goats (2018) by Jennifer McGaha, which was recommended in a Facebook group – the center doesn’t hold for me, I feel like there isn’t much there there; It’s One Of Us: A Novel ( 2023) by J.T. Ellison, a thriller that has a seductive premise and a good build-up but ultimately fails to deliver; and, I hate to say it because I wanted to like it and I did like a lot about it but The Midcoast: A Novel ( 2022) by Adam White, about a Damariscotta (Maine) lobstering family as told (mostly) by friend of the family Andrew, had some interesting characters, relationships, and plot material, but the overall narrative was perplexingly and unnecessarily disorganised.

Full book list.