The books I read in 2023

If you know me, you know that a sizable part of my personality revolves around reading a lot of books outside of my academic requirements. I finished 128 books for pleasure in 2023. I made a video about my top 10 fiction and 10 nonfiction reads of the year recently, but here’s the full list I’ve been keeping in my phone notes app for twelve months (I keep track of the books that I particularly enjoyed with a heart emoji) :

January

1. Too Much and Not the Mood, Durga Chew-Bose (2017) 🖤

2. Quicksand, Nella Larsen (1928) 🖤

3. Vladimir, Julia May Jonas (2022)

4. Magnolia, 木蘭, Nina Mingya Powles (2020)

5. Cassandra at the Wedding, Dorothy Baker (1962)

6. Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter), Simone de Beauvoir (1958)

7. Ugly Feelings, Sianne Ngai (2005) 🖤

8. Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville (1853) (reread)

9. Permafrost, Eva Baltasar (trans. Julia Sanches) (2018) 🖤

10. The Lonely City, Olivia Laing (2017) (reread) 🖤

February

1. Água Viva, Clarice Lispector (trans. Stefan Tobler) (1973)

2. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk (trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones) (2009)

3. The Rabbit Hutch, Tess Gunty (2022) 🖤

4. If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, Noor Naga (2022) 🖤

5. Punks: New & Selected Poems, John Keene (2021) 🖤

6. Thelonius Monk: the Life and Times of an American Original, Robin D.G. Kelley (2009) 

March

1. Sirens & Muses, Antonia Angress (2022)

2. Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us, Rachel Aviv (2022)

3. After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz (2022)

4. Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration, David Wojnarowicz (1991) 🖤

5. An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading, Dionne Brand (2020)

6. The Idiot, Elif Batuman (2017) (reread)

7. Notre si chère vieille dame auteur, Anne Serre (2022)

April

1. Either/Or, Elif Batuman (2022)

2. If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin (1974) 🖤

3. Augenblicke, ed. Claudine Delphis (1991)

4. Y/N, Esther Yi (2023)

5. I’m a Fan, Sheena Patel (2022)

6. Optic Nerve, María Gainza (trans. Thomas Bunstead) (2014)

7. Katalin Street, Magda Szabó (trans. Len Rix) (1969) 🖤

8. Adolescence Leaves, Nathan Truong (2022) 🖤

9. A Horse at Night: On Writing, Amina Cain (2022) 🖤

May

1. Long Live the Post Horn!, Vigdis Hjorth (trans. Charlotte Barslund) (2012) 

2. The Baudelaire Fractal, Lisa Robertson (2020)

3. The Goodby People, Gavin Lambert (1971)

4. The Shards, Bret Easton Ellis (2023)

5. Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (2014)

6. In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing, Elena Ferrante (trans. Ann Goldstein) (2021) 🖤

7. Maud Martha, Gwendolyn Brooks (1953)

8. Passion simple, Annie Ernaux (1992) 🖤

9. Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, Claire Dederer (2023)

10. I Remember, Joe Brainard (2001)

11. Authority, Jeff VanderMeer (2014)

12. The Woman Who Killed the Fish, Clarice Lispector (1966)

13. Acceptance, Jeff VanderMeer (2014)

14. Chelsea Girls, Eileen Myles (1994)

June

1. The Biography of X, Catherine Lacey (2023)

2. Still Born, Guadalupe Nettel (trans. Rosalind Harvey) (2020) 🖤

3. My Brilliant Friend / L’amica geniale, Elena Ferrante (trans. Ann Goldstein) (2011)

4. Near to the Wild Heart, Clarice Lispector (trans. Alison Entrekin) (1943)

5. Death by Landscape, Elvia Wilk (2022) 🖤

6. A Breath of Life / Un souffle de vie, Clarice Lispector (trans. Johnny Lorenz / Teresa Thiérot & Jacques Thiérot) (1978) 🖤

July

1. Fille d'Amanitore / Et que mon règne arrive, Léonora Miano (2023)

2. Checkout 19, Claire-Louise Bennett (2021)

3. The Story of a New Name / Storia del nuovo cognome, Elena Ferrante (trans. Ann Goldstein) (2012) 

4. Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction, Brian Dillon (2017) 🖤

5. Love, Toni Morrison (2003) 🖤

6. The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann (trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter / John E. Woods) (1924)

7. Sweet Days of Discipline, Fleur Jaeggy (trans. Tim Parks) (1989)

8. Forbidden Notebook, Alba de Céspedes (trans. Ann Goldstein) (1952) 

9. Journal de nage, Chantal Thomas (2022)

10. The Little Virtues / Le piccole virtú, Natalia Ginzburg (trans. Dick Davis) (1962) 🖤

11. The Late Americans, Brandon Taylor (2023)

12. The Centre, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi (2023)

August

1. The Guest, Emma Cline (2023)

2. The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art, Eileen Myles (2009)

3. Revenge of the Scapegoat, Caren Beilin (2022)

Poetry for the Sealey Challenge (none of these have hearts because I was reading so much poetry everyday that it became hard to “rank” what I read, but several of these definitely deserve them)

1. Muscle Memory, Jenny Liou (2022)

2. Les Ronces, Cécile Coulon (2018) 

3. Soft Science, Franny Choi (2019) 

4. On Earth, Robert Creeley (2006)

5. What Silence Equals, Tory Dent (1993) 

6. Elegies, Muriel Rukeyser (1949)

7. Some Changes, June Jordan (1971) 

8. Letters from Maine, May Sarton (1984) 

9. Skin of Nocturnal Apple, Misha Honcharenko (2023)

10. Please, Jericho Brown (2008)

11. Débarcadères, Jules Supervielle (1966)

12. Pleasure, Angelo Nikolopoulos (2022)

13. Beasts at Every Threshold, Natalie Wee  (2022) 

14. Rendang, Will Harris (2020)

15. Blue in Green, Chiyuma Elliott (2021)

16. Quiet, Victoria Adukwei Bulley (2022)

17. To Stay Alive, Denise Levertov (1971)

18. Normal Distance, Elisa Gabbert (2022)

19. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, John Ashbery (1975) 

20. Junk, Tommy Pico (2018)

21. The Sonnets, Ted Berrigan (1964)

22. Singularities, Susan Howe (1990)

23. Tanya, Brenda Shaughnessy (2023)

24. After Lorca, Jack Spicer (1957)

25. Handspun Rosaries, Dina Klarisse (2022)

26. Meditations in an Emergency, Frank O’Hara (1957) (reread)

September 

1. The Dry Heart, Natalia Ginzburg (trans. Frances Frenaye) (1947)

2. Weird Fucks, Lynne Tillman (1990)

3. Exercices de style, Raymond Queneau (1947)

4. The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector (trans. Idra Novey) (1964) 🖤

5. Água Viva, Clarice Lispector (trans. Stefan Tobler) (1973) (reread)

6. In the Act, Rachel Ingalls (1987)

7. Notes on Suicide, Simon Critchley (2015)

8. Study for Obedience, Sarah Bernstein (2023) 🖤

9. This Little Art, Kate Briggs (2018) 🖤

October

1. They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurraqib (2017) 🖤

2. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing (1962)

3. Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton (1973)

4. Babel: An Arcane History, R. F. Kuang (2022)

5. The Fawn, Magda Szabó (trans. Len Rix) (1959)

6. Paradise Rot, Jenny Hval (trans. Marjam Idriss) (2009)

November

1. Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett (2015)

2. L’Heure de l’étoile, Clarice Lispector (trans. Marguerite Wünscher) (1977) (reread)

3. Journey by Moonlight, Antal Szerb (trans. Len Rix) (1937)

4. Un chien à ma table, Claudie Hunzinger (2022)

5. I Fear My Pain Interests You, Stephanie LaCava (2022) 

6. Que reviennent ceux qui sont loin, Pierre Adrian (2022) 🖤

7. Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between, Joseph Osmundson (2023) 🖤

8. Exciting Times, Naoise Dolan (2020)

9. Affinities: On Art and Fascination, Brian Dillon (2023)

10. A Ghost in the Throat, Doireann Ní Ghríofa (2021) (reread)

11. Shifting the Silence, Etel Adnan (2020) 🖤

December 

1. Stoner, John Williams (1965)

2. Motherhood, Sheila Heti (2018)

3. Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges (1944) (reread) 🖤

4. Day, Michael Cunningham (2023)

5. Foster, Claire Keegan (2010) 

6. Midwinter Day, Bernadette Mayer (1982)

7. Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker, Jason McBride (2022) 🖤

8. Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation, ed. Jeremy Tiang and Kavita Bhanot (2022) 🖤

9. Kick the Latch, Kathryn Scanlan (2022)