Books I Read in 2023.

Five days into the new year, here is the annual post on this blog. (At this point, I think I’m the only one who reads these, but at least they’re good time capsules of my reading.) As always, recommended in bold.

1. The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch.
2. The Song of Lunch, Christopher Reid.
3. The Husband’s Secret, Liane Moriarty.
4. Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty.
5. Translating Myself and Others, Jhumpa Lahiri.
6. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath.
7. Scattered Showers, Rainbow Rowell.
8. One Day, David Nicholls.
9. What Alice Forgot, Liane Moriarty.
10. Doting, Henry Green.
11. Roadwalker: A Few Miles on the Bharat Jodo Yatra, Dilip D’Souza.
12. Brian, Jeremy Cooper.
13. Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life, John Gray.
14. The Best of Everything, Rona Jaffe.
15. Five Go on an Adventure, Enid Blyton.
16. Home Stretch, Graham Norton.
17. High Windows, Philip Larkin.
18. Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, Jeremy Atherton-Lin.
19. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, TS Eliot.
20. Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan.

And we’re out (mostly) of the reading slump! Thanks to daily commutes, train rides and some great writing, I read more this year than I had in a couple of the previous ones. Highlights included discovering Liane Moriarty, whom I read with a speed that shocked me: her easy writing style, twisty plots and big promises of dramatic payoffs really pulled me through. After I read The Husband’s Secret, I immediately went out and got myself Truly Madly Guilty. Non-fiction featured quite frequently as well. It was a pleasure to read Jhumpa Lahiri’s essays on translation and language. Jeremy Atherton-Lin’s mix of history and memoir in Gay Bar was eye-opening, rewarding and very sexy; I particularly enjoyed how little time and effort he spent translating queer people and our lexicon for the rest of the world. Two very different cat books, intriguingly: John Gray’s arguments that a philosophy of human life can be derived from cats and TS Eliot’s always entertaining, always silly cat poems. Lastly, I reread One Day after many years (almost ten, as this post will testify), and was so thrilled to be see that the two cities featured most prominently, London and Edinburgh, were ones I had come to know intimately in the last two years myself!

To 2024 and to books!