2023 in Books

As in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, I logged the books I read. Here's the 2023 list, followed by some brief comments.

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1. Young Mungo — Douglas Stuart | 1.3
2. Slow Horses — Mick Herron | 1.10
3. The Topeka School — Ben Lerner | 1.16
4. Dark Fire — C.J. Sansom | 1.18
5. The First Rule — Robert Crais | 1.20
6. The Passenger — Cormac McCarthy | 1.21
7. Tyll — Daniel Kehlmann (Trans. Ross Benjamin) | 1.21
8. Honor — Thrity Umrigar | 1.28
9. Still Pictures — Janet Malcolm | 1.30
10. The Nothing Girl — Jodi Taylor | 1.31
11. Eastbound — Maylis De Kerangal (Trans. Jessica Moore) | 2.7
12. The Hatred of Poetry — Ben Lerner | 2.10
13. Dominion — C.J. Sansom | 2.11
14. Making Wolf — Made Thompson | 2.12
15. The Face: A Time Code — Ruth Ozeki | 2.15
16. Token Black Girl — Danielle Prescod | 2.17
17. Slip Runner — J.N. Chaney & M.F. Lerma | 2.19
18. Walking — Thomas Bernhard (Trans. Kenneth J. Northcott) | 2.23
19. Hello, Molly! — Molly Shannon | 2.26
20. The Secret History — Donna Tartt | 3.1
21. The World is Always Coming to an End — Carlo Rotella | 3.6
22. Die Alte Dame Am Meer — Anna Johannsen | 3.11
23. Devil in a Blue Dress — Walter Mosley | 3.11
24. The Shadow of What Was Lost — James Islington | 3.14
25. Nowhere Girl — Cheryl Diamond | 3.16
26. Several Short Sentences About Writing — Verlyn Klinkenborg | 3.17
27. Off To Be The Wizard — Scott Meyer | 3.20
28. Interior Chinatown — Charles Yu | 3.23
29. The Name of the Rose — Umberto Eco (Trans. William Weaver) | 3.31
30. Surfacing — Kathleen Jamie | 4.4
31. Swing Time — Zadie Smith | 4.9
32. The Maidens — Alex Michaelides | 4.12
33. The Sense of an Ending — Julian Barnes | 4.13
34. Plays Well with Others — Eric Barker | 4.13
35. Economical Writing — Deirdre Nansen McCloskey | 4.15
36. Sing, Unburied, Sing — Jesmyn Ward | 4.19
37. The Possibility of Life — Jaime Green | 4.22
38. How Far the Light Reaches — Sabrina Imbler | 4.24
39. I Am the Light of this World — Michael Parker | 4.28
40. The Art of Brevity — Greg Faulkner | 4.30
41. Greeks Bearing Gifts — Philip Kerr | 5.2
42. The Secret Pilgrim — John Le Carré | 5.8
43. Sam — Allegra Goodman | 5.15
44. The Every — Dave Eggers | 5.15
45. Singer Distance — Ethan Chatagnier | 5.22
46. Sportin’ Jack — Paul Strohm | 5.23
47. The 4-Hour Workweek — Timothy Ferriss | 5.28
48. Summer Lightning — P. G. Wodehouse | 5.29
49. The Committed — Viet Thanh Nguyen | 6.3
50. The Lover — Marguerite Duras (Trans. Barbara Bray) | 6.5
51. The Thin Man — Dashiell Hammett | 6.6
52. Goodbye, Things — Fumio Sasaki (Trans. Eriko Sugita) | 6.14
53. The Undying — Anne Boyer | 6.17
54. Gone to Dust — Matt Goldman | 6.24
55. Der Löwe Büllt — Tommy Jaud | 6.24
56. Smart Brevity — Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, & Roy Schwartz | 6.28
57. Fuccboi — Sean Thor Conroe | 6.29
58. Blue Like Me — Aaron Philip Clark | 7.3
59. The God of Small Things — Arundhati Roy | 7.10
60. Heavy Weather — P.G. Wodehouse | 7.14
61. Arlington Park — Rachel Cusk | 7.17
62. The Spectator Bird — Wallace Stegner | 7.18
63. Northanger Abbey — Jane Austen | 7.21
64. Eurotrash — Christian Kracht | 7.27
65. The Highland Witch — Susan Fletcher | 7.27
66. Dark Earth — Rebecca Stott | 7.31
67. Stay True — Hua Hsu | 7.31
68. Thinking 101 — Woo-kyoung Ann | 8.1
69. Far from the Madding Crowd — Thomas Hardy | 8.8
70. King Lear — William Shakespeare | 8.10
71. Feed Them Silence — Lee Mandelo | 8.10
72. The Tao of Pooh — Benjamin Hoff | 8.10
73. Bannon — Louis L’Amour | 8.14
74. My Man Jeeves — P.G. Wodehouse | 8.15
75. The Elegance of the Hedgehog — Muriel Barbery (Trans. Alison Anderson)| 8.17
76. Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution — Tania Branigan | 8.18
77. Shy — Max Porter | 8.19
78. The Orchard Keeper — Cormac McCarthy | 8.20
79. Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad | 8.21
80. Blood Meridian — Cormac McCarthy | 8.27
81. LaserWriter II — Tamara Shopsin | 8.28
82. The Quiet American — Graham Greene | 8.28
83. Blueprint for a Book — Jennie Nash | 8.29
84. Girl with a Pearl Earring — Tracy Chevalier | 8.31
85. The Secret Adversary — Agatha Christie | 9.2
86. Elements of Fiction — Walter Mosley | 9.3
87. The Dogs of Riga — Henning Mankell | 9.8
88. Firefly: Generations — Tim Lebbon | 9.11
89. World Without Mind — Franklin Foer | 9.18
90. Fairy Tale — Stephen King | 9.25
91. The Inimitable Jeeves — P. G. Wodehouse | 10.1
92. Blindsight — Peter Watts | 10.4
93. The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time — Will Durant | 10.9
94. The Walk and Other Stories — Robert Walser (Trans. Christopher Middleton) | 10.9
95. Stonefather — Orson Scott Card | 10.11
96. All Quiet on the Western Front — Erich Maria Remarque (Trans. A.W. Wheen) | 10.14
97. Write for Your Life — Anna Quindlen | 10.16
98. The Einstein Intersection — Samuel R. Delany | 10.23
99. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce | 10.30
100. The Creative Act — Rick Rubin | 11.6
101. A Room with a View — E.M. Forster | 11.6
102. Euphoria — Lily King | 11.13
103. Broken Ice — Matt Goldman | 11.18
104. We Are Too Many — Hannah Pittard | 11.18
105. Atonement — Ian McEwan | 11.24
106. A Quiet Flame — Philip Kerr | 11.26
107. Things We Lost to the Water — Eric Nguyen | 12.4
108. The Hustler — Walter Tevis | 12.7
109. The Morning Star — Karl Ove Knausgaard | 12.16
110. The Crossing — Cormac McCarthy | 12.16
111. You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me — Sherman Alexie | 12.24
112. The Mutual Admiration Society — Lesley Kagan | 12.29
113. Small Mercies — Dennis Lehane | 12.31

It was a year for great titles: Fuccboi, Eurotrash, Hummeldumm (German for “dumb ass”), Token Black Girl, The God of Small Things, LaserWriter II.

Young Mungo, like Shuggie Bain, was exquisitely crafted. I think I may have liked Mungo even better than Shuggie, perhaps because I identified with the former’s plight more than the latter’s. There’s an immediacy to the themes in Mungo, something more palpable and arresting.

• “He looked like a man who’d enjoy a long swim in January.” Douglas Stuart, Young Mungo

The Passenger is the first of two novels Cormac McCarthy published in late 2022. I’ve read almost all of his oeuvre: McCarthy sure loves a frighteningly and generationally brilliant male protagonist that essentially lives like a hobo, either full-time, or for some of the time.

Interior Chinatown was smart and entertaining and thought-provoking.

The Sense of an Ending might be my favorite of the Julian Barnes novels I’ve read. Understated, reflective, and a thrilling exploration of the banal, the accumulative effects of ancient decisions that still shape the now.

How Far the Light Reaches was so well done, in terms of weaving natural history with memoir.

Sam is an excellent, realist, contemporary coming of age novel that does a fine job with pov at the various stages of the protagonist’s life. Super relatable for me. I was rooting for Sam so hard. Haven’t felt for a character like that in a while.

Found the Wallace Stegner randomly and ended up enjoying it a lot. Currently reading Crossing to Safety, so that'll be one of the first books on my 2024 list.

Eurotrash was pretty great, in concept and execution.

Stay True was a nostalgic rip through the early/mid-90s for me. Well-written, introspective, and full of place-names and bands and brands I grew up on.

Thomas Hardy sure likes the word “incipient.”

The Elegance of the Hedgehog takes itself a little too seriously, tries to cover too many concepts/ideas, and is a bit heavy handed at times, and still I liked it very much. I love when novels take on art and philosophy—so much better than reading critics and philosophers.

Why Wodehouse? One of my blind spots—I certainly was aware of Jeeves, but I’d never read any Wodehouse, nor did I know anything about him (spoiler: he's a controversial figure). I was re-reading The Secret History for my course on Dark Academia last spring, and Richard, the narrator, tries to read Wodehouse as a diversion. I started with two Blandings novels before jumping to Jeeves. One of the pleasures of Wodehouse is reading the slang of his time. See P.G. Wodehouse in the OED.

I'd like to read your 2023 list, if you have one. Find me on Instagram (@bmcnely) and share!