2023 Reading

Posted byBrendan MoodyPosted inbooks

I read 279 books in 2023. (“Books” is defined inclusively here, to include graphic novels, coffee table books, poetry collections, separately-published novellas, and children’s picture books.) An asterisk indicates a rereading.

I don’t really do top tens and so forth, but the following is a short list of writers I read this year that you may not have heard of but might like to check out:

  1. Bitter Karella
  2. Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
  3. Hiron Ennes
  4. Joan Silber
  5. A. E. Stallings
  6. Domenico Starnone
  7. Brontez Purnell
  8. Patricia Smith
  9. Graeme Macrae Burnet
  10. Christophe Chaboute
  11. Mike Curato
  12. Sylvain Neuvel
  13. Caroline O’Donoghue
  14. Jerry Craft
  15. Mick Herron
  16. Daniel Mason

Full reading list follows:

2023

January

  1. Marion Crawford, The Little Princesses
  2. Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
  3. Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm
  4. Bitter Karella, Midnight Pals
  5. Tom Perrotta, Election
  6. Bitter Karella, Midnight Pals II
  7. Tom Perrotta, Tracy Flick Can’t Win
  8. Lord Dunsany, Fifty-One Tales
  9. Hannah Gadsby, Ten Steps to Nanette
  10. Sarah Monette, The Witness for the Dead
  11. Sarah Monette, The Grief of Stones
  12. Paul La Farge, Luminous Airplanes (hypertext edition)
  13. Paul La Farge, Luminous Airplanes (print edition)
  14. Thomas Harris, Cari Mora
  15. Alan Downs, The Velvet Rage
  16. Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man
  17. Nicola Griffith, Spear
  18. Rosemary Pardoe, The Angry Dead
  19. Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts
  20. Anne Carson, Bakkhai
  21. Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, My Monticello
  22. Alice Randall, The Wind Done Gone*
  23. Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time*

February

  1. Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
  2. Billy Collins, Musical Tables
  3. Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing
  4. Hiron Ennes, Leech
  5. Vivian Gornick, Approaching Eye Level
  6. Anne Carson, An Oresteia
  7. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
  8. Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
  9. Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice
  10. Maggie O’Farrell, I Am, I Am, I Am
  11. Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit
  12. J. K. Rowling, Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies
  13. J. K. Rowling, Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists
  14. J. K. Rowling, Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide
  15. Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story
  16. Dave Barry, Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs*
  17. Kiersten White, Hide
  18. Edmund White, Our Young Man

March

  1. Joan Silber, Improvement
  2. Loretta Lynn, Me & Patsy Kickin’ Up Dust
  3. Joan Silber, Secrets of Happiness
  4. Ty Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me
  5. A. E. Stallings, Like
  6. Christine Woodside, Libertarians on the Prairie
  7. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods*
  8. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy*
  9. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie*
  10. Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Banks of Plum Creek*
  11. Paul Auster, City of Glass*
  12. Paul Auster, Ghosts*
  13. Paul Auster, The Locked Room*
  14. Patricia Engel, Vida
  15. Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends*
  16. Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic*

April

  1. Michael Moorcock, Elric of Melnibone
  2. Laura Ingalls Wilder, By the Shores of Silver Lake*
  3. Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter*
  4. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little Town on the Prairie*
  5. Laura Ingalls Wilder, These Happy Golden Years*
  6. Laura Ingalls Wilder, The First Four Years*
  7. Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires
  8. William Anderson, The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder
  9. Peter Baker and Susan Glassner, The Divider
  10. Anne Tyler, Redhead by the Side of the Road

May

  1. Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny
  2. James Baldwin, The Evidence of Things Not Seen
  3. Stephen King, Carrie*
  4. Lyndsay Faye, The Whole Art of Detection
  5. Katie Hafner, The Boys
  6. Anne Glenconner, Whatever Next?
  7. Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson, You Feel It Just Below the Ribs
  8. Joseph Knox, True Crime Story
  9. Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
  10. Donn Fendler, Lost on a Mountain in Maine*
  11. Geraldine Brooks, Horse
  12. Josh Riedel, Please Report Your Bug Here
  13. Louis Sachar, Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom
  14. Erika Krouse, Tell Me Everything
  15. Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments

June

  1. Anne Tyler, French Braid
  2. Rick Moody, Hotels of North America
  3. Domenico Starnone, Ties
  4. Patricia Roberts-Miller, Demagoguery and Democracy
  5. LeAnne Howe, Savage Conversations
  6. Umberto Eco, How to Talk to a Salmon
  7. Madeleine L’Engle, The Arm of the Starfish
  8. Aubrey Gordon, “You Just Need to Lose Weight”
  9. Madeleine L’Engle, A Wind in the Door*
  10. Valeria Luiselli, Sidewalks
  11. Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices
  12. Brontez Purnell, 100 Boyfriends
  13. Peter Bussian, Trans New York
  14. Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler
  15. Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, An Iliad
  16. Amy Fusselman, Idiophone
  17. Amy Bloom, In Love
  18. Kelly Forsythe, Perennial
  19. Caroline Fraser, God’s Perfect Child
  20. Ada Limon, The Carrying

July

  1. Meg Cabot, The Quarantine Princess Diaries
  2. Nico Walker, Cherry
  3. Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch
  4. Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Refugees
  5. Kelly Link, White Cat, Black Dog
  6. Robert Morrison, The Regency Years
  7. Grant Ginder, Let’s Not Do That Again
  8. Graeme Macrae Burnet, The Accident on the A35
  9. Mike Rothschild, The Storm is Upon Us
  10. Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things
  11. Anne Lamott, All New People
  12. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Means of Escape
  13. Da’Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of the Beast
  14. Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband
  15. Joan Aiken, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

August

  1. Grant Chemidlin, What We Lost in the Swamp
  2. Ronald Malfi, Ghostwritten
  3. James Tate, The Government Lake
  4. Robert L. Fish, The Incredible Schlock Homes
  5. Robert L. Fish, The Memoirs of Schlock Homes
  6. Kathy Acker, Great Expectations
  7. Lois Lowry and P. Craig Russell, The Giver (graphic novel)
  8. Sierra Simone, American Queen
  9. Shirley Jackson and Miles Hyman, The Lottery (graphic novel)
  10. Richard Chizmar, Chasing the Boogeyman
  11. Octavia E. Butler, Damian Duffy, and John Jennings, Kindred (graphic novel)
  12. A. S. Byatt, Ragnarok
  13. Margaret Atwood, Dearly
  14. K. J. Parker, Pulling the Wings Off Angels
  15. Tade Thompson, The Murders of Molly Southbourne
  16. V, The Apology
  17. V, Reckoning
  18. Naomi Salman, Nothing But the Rain
  19. Bitter Karella, Midnight Pals III
  20. Christopher Rowe, These Prisoning Hills
  21. Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks, Pumpkinheads
  22. Tade Thompson, The Survival of Molly Southbourne
  23. Mike Rinder, A Billion Years (audiobook)
  24. Tade Thompson, The Legacy of Molly Southbourne
  25. Ada Limon, Sharks in the Rivers
  26. Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom
  27. Kij Johnson, The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe
  28. Cassandra Khaw, Hammers on Bone
  29. Caitlin R. Kiernan, Agents of Dreamland
  30. Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall, The Sopranos Sessions
  31. Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End
  32. Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient
  33. Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry
  34. Alora Young, Walking Gentry Home
  35. Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance
  36. Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith, Wash Day Diaries
  37. Franny Choi, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On
  38. Debbie Tung, Everything is OK
  39. Warsan Shire, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head
  40. Safia Elhillo, Girls That Never Die
  41. Malaka Gharib, It Won’t Always Be Like This
  42. Elizabeth Alexander, The Trayvon Generation

September

  1. Joy Arlene Renee Cox, Fat Girls in Black Bodies
  2. Robin Hobb, Assassin’s Apprentice*
  3. Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, Black Orchid
  4. Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry
  5. Robert Draper, Weapons of Mass Delusion
  6. Douglas Wolk, All of the Marvels
  7. Christophe Chaboute, Alone
  8. Abraham Riesman, True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee
  9. Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, Instructions
  10. Samantha Harvey, The Shapeless Unease
  11. August Derleth and James Turner (editors), Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
  12. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me*
  13. Malcolm X, The End of White World Supremacy
  14. Lemony Snicket, Poison for Breakfast
  15. Christophe Chaboute, Park Bench
  16. Lucy Maud Montgomery, Mariah Marsden, and Brenna Thummler, Anne of Green Gables (graphic novel)
  17. Harper Lee and Fred Fordham, To Kill a Mockingbird (graphic novel)
  18. Cullen Bunn and Leila Leiz, The Last Book You’ll Ever Read
  19. Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes, and Marco Finneran, The Keeper
  20. Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power
  21. Agustina Bazterrica, Nineteen Claws and a Blackbird

October

  1. Jack London and Christophe Chaboute, To Build a Fire
  2. G. B. Trudeau, The Long Road Home
  3. Mike Curato, Flamer
  4. Luke Dumas, A History of Fear
  5. T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead
  6. R. F. Kuang, Babel
  7. Veronica Roth, Arch-Conspirator
  8. Claire Dederer, Monsters
  9. Sylvain Neuvel, The Test
  10. Martha Wells, All Systems Red
  11. Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood
  12. Gregory Maguire, The Witch of Maracoor
  13. Richard Chizmar, Becoming the Boogeyman
  14. Diana Wynne Jones, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (revised edition)
  15. Lorrie Moore, I am Homeless if This is Not My Home
  16. Caroline O’Donoghue, The Rachel Incident
  17. Seymour Chwast, Dante’s Divine Comedy
  18. John Carlin and Oriol Malet, Mandela and the General
  19. Frances Hodgson Burnett, Mariah Marsden, and Hanna Luechtefeld, The Secret Garden (graphic novel)
  20. Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me with Apples
  21. Billy Collins, Horoscopes for the Dead
  22. Louis Sachar, Sideways Stories from Wayside School*
  23. Louis Sachar, Wayside School is Falling Down*
  24. The Death of Superman: 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
  25. Louis Sachar, Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger*
  26. Louis Sachar, Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom*
  27. Emily Tesh, Drowned Country
  28. Ama Asantewa Diaka, Woman, Eat Me Whole
  29. A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
  30. A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner
  31. A. A. Milne, When We Were Very Young
  32. A. A. Milne, Now We Are Six

November

  1. M. Rickert, Lucky Girl
  2. Scott Snyder, Jock, et al, The Batman Who Laughs: The Deluxe Edition
  3. Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell, Murder Book
  4. Malcolm Devlin, And Then I Woke Up
  5. Alex Michaelides, The Maidens
  6. David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon
  7. Edgar Cantero, Meddling Kids
  8. Louis Sachar, Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School*
  9. The John Varley Reader: 30 Years of Short Fiction
  10. Henry Hoke, Open Throat
  11. Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands
  12. Jerry Craft, School Trip
  13. Jerry Craft, New Kid
  14. Claire Keegan, Antarctica
  15. R. F. Kuang, Yellowface
  16. Daniel Sweren-Becker, Kill Show
  17. Mick Herron, Real Tigers

December

  1. Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
  2. N. Scott Momaday, The Death of Sitting Bear
  3. Dr. Seuss, The Lorax*
  4. Denise Levertov, Selected Poems (2002)
  5. Van Jensen and Nate Powell, Two Dead
  6. Ada Limon, The Hurting Kind
  7. Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat*
  8. Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back*
  9. Truman Capote, A Christmas Memory (with One Christmas and The Thanksgiving Visitor)
  10. Dr. Seuss, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish*
  11. Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham*
  12. Dr. Seuss, Hop on Pop*
  13. Jason Rodriguez, Colonial Comics
  14. Dr. Seuss, Dr. Seuss’s ABC
  15. Dr. Seuss, Fox in Socks*
  16. Mick Herron, Spook Street
  17. Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!*
  18. Dr. Seuss, I Can Read with my Eyes Shut!*
  19. Dr. Seuss, Oh Say Can You Say?
  20. Chris McCoy, Safely Endangered Comics
  21. Karl Stevens, Penny
  22. Dr. Seuss, What Pet Should I Get?
  23. Dr. Seuss, Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?*
  24. Dr. Seuss, The Foot Book
  25. Dr. Seuss, Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!*
  26. Dr. Seuss, The Shape of Me and Other Stuff
  27. Dr. Seuss, There’s a Wocket in my Pocket!*
  28. Alvin Schwartz and Victor Rivas, In a Dark, Dark Room*
  29. Charles Addams and H. Kevin Miserocchi, The Addams Family: An Evilution
  30. Mick Herron, London Rules
  31. Lorrie Moore, See What Can Be Done
  32. Nicola Dinan, Bellies
  33. Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage
  34. Brent Katz, Josh Morgenthau, Simon Rich, and code-davinci-002, I Am Code
  35. Stephen King, If It Bleeds
  36. Stephen King, The Outsider
  37. Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes
  38. Daniel Lavery, Texts from Jane Eyre
  39. Mick Herron, Joe Country
  40. Charles Dickens, The Annotated Christmas Carol (edited by Michael Patrick Hearn)
  41. Daniel Mason, North Woods
  42. Elizabeth Hand, A Haunting on the Hill
  43. Jon Clinch, Marley
  44. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House*
  45. Mick Herron, Slough House
  46. Mick Herron, Bad Actors
  47. Mick Herron, Standing by the Wall
  48. Mick Herron, Dolphin Junction
  49. Mick Herron, The Secret Hours
  50. Rod Espinosa and Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (graphic novel)

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