What I Read: 2023

Cobras, lanterns, doves, cabins, criminals

[This post is an addendum of sorts to my regular monthly newsletter, which you can read and subscribe to here. You can find all of my reading lists, dating back to 2009, on my website; this list is also duplicated there.]

JANUARY

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004)

William Gerhardie, Futility (1922)

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) (re-read)

Tom Roston, The Writer’s Crusade (2021)

John McPhee, Draft No. 4 (2017)

Richard J. King, Ahab’s Rolling Sea (2019)

Luisa Valenzuela, Up Among the Eagles (1983, trans. Christopher Leland et al)

FEBRUARY

Chris Bachelder, U.S.! (2006) (re-read)

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop (1978)

A. S. Byatt, The Biographer’s Tale (2000)

Paul Morand, The Man in a Hurry (1941, trans. Euan Cameron)

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower (1995)

Robert Caro, Working (2019)

Scholastique Mukasonga, Igifu (2010, trans. Jordan Stump)

MARCH

Stephen Marche, On Writing and Failure (2023)

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)

James Patterson, James Patterson (2022)

Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train (1950)

Kenzaburo Oe, A Personal Matter (1964, trans. John Nathan)

Philip Roth, The Counterlife (1986)

Lorrie Moore, I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home (2023)

Fred Bason, Fred Bason’s Second Diary (1952)

APRIL

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1966)

Banana Yoshimoto, Hardboiled & Hard Luck (1999, trans. Michael Emmerich)

Philip Roth, Deception (1990)

Lauren Groff, Matrix (2021)

R. D. Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez, The Death of WCW (10th Anniversary Edition) (2014)

Nick Hornby, Dickens and Prince (2022)

MAY

Jon Mooallem, Serious Face (2022)

Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle, Volume Six (2018, trans. Don Bartlett and Martin Aiken)

Hilton Als, My Pinup (2022)

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

Martin Amis, Dead Babies (1975)

Dubravka Ugresic, Thank You for Not Reading (2001, trans. Celia Hawkesworth and Damion Searls)

JUNE

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

Adam Mars-Jones, Lantern Lecture (1981)

David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (1987)

Phyllis Rose, The Shelf (2014)

Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness (2015)

José Saramago, The Stone Raft (1986, trans. Giovanni Pontiero)

Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys (1995)

JULY

Frank Belknap Long, Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside (1975)

H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness (1936)

Anne Fadiman, At Large and at Small (2007)

Paul Metcalf and Clare Spark, Enter Isabel (1991)

Charles Olson, Call Me Ishmael (1947)

Sam Shelstad, The Cobra and the Key (2023)

P. G. Wodehouse, A Prefect’s Uncle (1903)

Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods (1864)

AUGUST

Lynne Tillman, Bookstore (1999)

David Graeber, Debt (2011)

Ricardo Piglia, Target in the Night (2010, trans. Sergio Waisman)

Trina Moyles, Lookout (2021)

Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove (1985)

SEPTEMBER

Michele K. Troy, Strange Bird (2017)

Steven Moore, Dalkey Days (2023)

Harry Crews, The Mulching of America (1995)

Brian Michael Murphy, We the Dead (2022)

Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Reputations (2013, trans. Anne McLean)

J. L. Carr, The Battle of Pollocks Crossing (1985)

Elaine Dewar, The Takeover (2017)

Stephen Marche, Love and the Mess We’re In (2012)

OCTOBER

Stuart Ross, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (2005) (re-read)

Patrick deWitt, The Librarianist (2023)

David A. Randall, Dukedom Large Enough (1969)

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)

Muriel Spark, The Comforters (1957)

Cole Nowicki, Right, Down + Circle (2023)

August Derleth, Thirty Years of Arkham House: 1939–1969 (1970)

Joyce Carol Oates, The Female of the Species (2005)

H. P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror (1929)

John McPhee, Tabula Rasa (2023)

NOVEMBER

Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel, Dayswork (2023)

Emmanuel Carrére, Gothic Romance (1984, trans. Lanie Goodman)

Jenny Erpenbeck, Go, Went, Gone (2015, trans. Susan Bernofsky)

Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday (1981)

Michel Houellebecq, Serotonin (2019, trans. Shaun Whiteside)

Fred Bason, Fred Bason’s Third Diary (1955)

DECEMBER

André Schiffrin, The Business of Books (2000)

Alasdair Gray, Poor Things (1992)

Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay, Quantum Criminals (2023)

Paul Caruana Galizia, A Death in Malta (2023)

G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)

P. G. Wodehouse, Something Fresh (1915)

* * * * *

NUMBERS AND PICKS

Fiction: 46/84 (55%)

Non-fiction: 38/84 (45%)

Books in translation: 13/84 (15%)

Pre-2000: 42/84 (50%)

Post-2000: 42/84 (50%)

Most-read author: Chris Bachelder, Fred Bason, Penelope Fitzgerald, H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen Marche, Philip Roth, Kurt Vonnegut, P. G. Wodehouse (2 each)

Favourite fiction: At the Mountains of Madness, The Cobra and the Key, The Counterlife, Lantern Lecture, Lonesome Dove

Favourite non-fiction: Dickens and Prince, Dukedom Large Enough, Lookout, Quantum Criminals, Walden

* * * * *

PUBLICATION DATES

2023: 10

2020s: 8

2010s: 17

2000s: 7

1990s: 8

1980s: 10

1970s: 4

1960s: 5

1950s: 4

1940s: 2

1930s: 1

1920s: 3

1910s: 1

1900s: 2

1800s: 2