Early & Alone #93: 2023 in Reading

My 2023 favorites

Hello! It’s been a minute! There are a few different reasons for the pause, including the complicated feelings I have about Substack as a platform, both given their recent stance on Nazis, and the increasingly gross feeling I felt about all of the competition to get more readers, followers, and comments, and to launch paid subscriptions. There is a way to write without being haunted by those numbers, but I needed some space and time away to get there.

I still don’t know what the answer is. Other writers I admire have migrated their newsletters to other platforms, but honestly, I don’t feel that I have the audience, and my newsletter isn’t making Substack any money, and I’m not sure I have the wherewithal to move, so for now, I’m staying put.

Speaking of moving, Jeff and I bought a house! We moved in December, so packing and unpacking and settling in has taken up a large part of my energy for the last few months. I am in love with the house and so grateful that we had the opportunity to buy it. I feel very, very lucky because home ownership is something I never thought I’d be able to do.

That said, my life looks very different than it did even a year ago, and hugely different than it was before Covid. In 2020 the idea of living in a house with my partner and his two teenagers on the border of my hometown would have seemed pretty improbable. And so with this pretty major lifestyle shift (well, more like a series of shifts over time), I find my ambition has shifted, too. I no longer feel the same drive to write for an audience or build up a personal brand.

Still, I enjoy writing here, having a space to process certain things and offer my thoughts to a smaller group of people who seem invested in reading them. And one thing I’ve done since I started a little blog in 2008 is offer a roundup post of my favorite books of the year. So without further “ado” (aka me blathering on about ambition and Substack and the shifting nature of time and aging), here is a list of my favorite books of 2023, in the order in which I read them.

1. Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead—This is one of my favorite kinds of novels—a twisting family epic that goes many places over the span of many years. I loved the characters and the storytelling in this novel.

2. True Biz by Sarah Novic—I didn’t know much about deaf community going into this, and I really enjoyed learning more about it. The novel is set in a school for the deaf, but involves a mystery of sorts and some memorable characters.

3. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado—One of the most innovative memoirs I’ve read. Machado tells the story of an abusive relationship in searing detail through a series of themed vignettes. It’s difficult to read but the writing is so beautiful and evocative. Unforgettable.

4. Deacon King Kong by James McBride—I loved this twisting novel of a housing project in Brooklyn in the 1960s. It’s funny, sweet, and full of the most amazing character details. I was blown away by the way McBride could fully paint a portrait in just a sentence.

5. The Lone Pilgrim by Laurie Colwin—You know I had to include some Colwin here. I loved this collection of stories with trademark Colwin characters and settings. I just think she captured a certain kind of woman so beautifully.

6. The Yellow House by Sarah Broom—I didn’t know how much I didn’t know about New Orleans before I read this book, which is a personal and lovely rendering of the parts of the city that tourists never see, as well as a story of a family who lost so much in Hurricane Katrina.

7. The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe—You know how sometimes you dismiss a book or a movie because it’s “old” and therefore no longer relevant, and then you read or see something that reminds you that sometimes art can be timeless? This is one of those books. It’s a story about a group of women working in publishing in New York in the 1950s and it has everything you could want.

8. Heavy by Kiese Laymon—Laymon’s memoir is singular in its language and details, about how difficult it was for Laymon to grow up as a heavy, sensitive Black boy in a complicated family in Jackson, Mississippi. He writes about shame honestly and beautifully.

9. The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett—I’m a Patchett stan, but I can also say there are novels that I don’t love. This was not one of them. One of her earlier novels, this one was so surprising and lovely, I was delighted by it. It’s one of those books where I kept thinking, “How does she think of these things and then make it all work??”

10. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann—This book gave me much-needed context for the Scorcese movie, which I also really enjoyed. I love a good narrative nonfiction rendering of a time and place I know little to nothing about and Grann is a gifted storyteller. This book is more of a story of the FBI and their involvement in researching the Osage killings than the movie gets into, but it gives much more detail and context than the movie was able to give.

11. Stay True by Hua Hsu—Hsu’s memoir of growing up and then going to college in the mid-to late-90s is a perfect encapsulation of what it feels like to grow up and make friends and discover who you are through what you love. For Hsu, a huge part of that is music. It is a tribute to his friend, Ken, who is tragically murdered while they are in college, but it’s also just a story of a kid growing up and making discoveries, both about himself and about the world.

12. The Possibility of Life by Jaime Green—Sci-fi is not my thing, but it’s not not my thing, either. Green’s book deftly chronicles the human search for something out there in the universe, something that will help us feel less alone. She uses Star Trek and The X-Files, among other cultural touchstones, but also an impressive volume of scientific research and theory to discuss how people can use aliens or the possibility of alien life to define our own life here on Earth.

13. A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet—This is a weird little novel about what happens to a group of kids on vacation with their parents when the world suddenly turns even more dystopian than it already is. I devoured it in a couple of days.

14. Trust by Hernan Diaz—This is one of the most interesting novels in terms of structure and form that I’ve ever read. Diaz builds the novel in four separate sections that seem disconnected until you understand what links them all together. It’s a little too much about finance for my taste, but I’m definitely glad I read it.

15. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell—This is a novel about the plague, and as such, it’s pretty upsetting. It’s the fictional story of a young William Shakespeare and his family and how his son, Hamnet, inspired his masterpiece. But it’s a really innovating and interesting novel and you come to love the characters.

16. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver—This is a modern day retelling of David Copperfield, but you don’t need to know that to read the book. I definitely didn’t, having never read Copperfield. This was also my first Kingsolver novel. It’s long and details the opioid crisis in Appalachia, so I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. But somehow it all works. It’s told in first person by a boy nicknamed Demon Copperhead, whose life is a series of tragedies and little joys. He has a singular voice, though, and from the first pages, you want to follow him everywhere he goes, even through the depths of despair and greed and death.

In all, I read 41 books in 2023, and these were the tops for me. What were your favorites of last year?

I can’t promise I will be writing with any kind of regularity or form going forward, but I do hope to pop in now and then. I hope you are all well.