Favorite (and least fav) Books of 2023
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- Опубліковано 2 січ 2024
- Well I didn't read as many books as I'd hoped in 2023, but a few of the ones I did read impacted me A LOT. I hope you enjoy this wrap up, and don't forget to tell me your favorite read of last year! Scroll down for video links for the books mentioned here.
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Books in this video:
The Body Keeps the Score:
• Healing Trauma: Though...
Thunderstruck:
• Thoughts on "Thunderst...
Spring Rain:
• Thoughts on "Spring Ra...
A Walk in the Woods:
• A Thru-Hiker's Thought...
The Song of Achilles:
• Thoughts on "The Song ...
Galatea:
• Thoughts on "Galatea" ...
Circe:
• Thoughts on "Circe" by...
Before the Coffee Gets Cold:
• Thoughts on "Before th...
Outlander:
• Thoughts on "Outlander...
Thank you for introducing me to Madeline Miller. You are absolutley correct about her. She's just a beautiful writer.
Thanks awfully for the good vibes of your channel.💌
I’m so glad I found this channel!!
I’m glad you’re here!!
I also loved The Body Keeps the Score and Spring Rain! I vow to try Song of Achilles and Circe! I’d give up on Dune but that’s me😜
Great video, thank you for sharing. I've heard such things about The Body Keeps the Score, and I actually borrowed it from the library, but I had so much going on I had to return it before getting a chance to read it. Best to have my own copy so I can work my way through it slowly, I think. I'm interested to check out Spring Rain now so thank you for putting that on my radar. Yes I've read both The Song of Achilles and Circe. My friend and I buddy-read The Song of Achilles, then we went and saw Holding Achilles, which was a production that was a joint effort by The Dead Puppet Society and Legs on the Wall. The show was based around the book and the story of Patroclus and Achilles. I saw it in Brisbane, Australia.
I completely agree about Before the Coffee Gets Cold. The plot seemed so forced. Reading it I felt like a kid joining in on a game where the other kids had just made up the rules on the spot and I felt almost a second hand embarrassment over how bad the rules were, and everything that happened within those rules. Such as when the ghost gets up to go to the toilet because it's been drinking so much coffee... just, what? You're non-corporeal but you still have a functioning bladder? The writing style itself was just so bad - the dialogue made me cringe. It felt like people doing improv theatre or forgetting their lines and would suddenly just say "great!" out of nowhere. I really didn't understand the hype over this one. Maybe it just fits in with the surge in popularity over a lot of modern Japanese fiction that feels almost too pared back and basic, but is "easy" to read and sits alongside the popularity of instagram poetry. Wow I very rarely go full Negative Nancy on a book like I've just done here!
But while I'm empathising with your least favourites... I completely agree about Outlander. It's actually refreshing to see someone else have such a visceral response to the horrors of it. I haven't read it. I watched most of the first season. But I just couldn't anymore. The violence, the sexual violence, the degradation, the torture, the sick pleasure Captain Randall took in all of it and the gall he had to call his acts works of art - he is one of the most vile characters I've ever come across. I finally decided, I don't need this in my life. It's ok to quit some things.
I'm chronically ill and disabled with a slew of rare diseases and my healthcare is my full time job, so things are hard enough without my skin crawling from characters like Randall. I'd rather use those breaths to watch the dance of insects in the trees outside. I also lost my beautiful black cat Cautious, at age 14, in November 2023 (just a few weeks ago, still very fresh), after losing my other beautiful black cat Arian, at age 22, in January 2022.
I put the number 42 into the Goodreads challenge each year and honestly I don't mind if I reach it or not. I just love seeing all the book covers displayed on one page and it giving a glimpse of what my reading year looked like - that is, the kinds of books, not the number of books. But this year I read 59 books.
Some favourites from 2023:
- Orlando (Virginia Woolf). It was a re-read for me, my 4th re-read. I read it this time as part of a book club, paired with The Awakening (Kate Chopin) which I also loved.
- Writing Wild - Women Poets, Ramblers and Mavericks who Shape how we see the Natural World (Kathryn Aalto).
- Journal of a Solitude (May Sarton). I had only heard of May Sarton through reading Writing Wild and I'm looking forward to checking out the other writers mentioned in that book.
- A Prayer for the Crown-shy (Becky Chambers) ... this is the 2nd book that follows on from the first one called A Psalm for the Wild-built. The way she builds worlds that are so inclusive of every species, race, gender, gender identity and expression, different relationship dynamics, neurodiversity, refugees, and has a hopeful vision that feels cosy without feeling naive or trite. Her 4-book Wayfarers series is also something I highly recommend (but I read those the year before).
- Reading through all of Barbara Howes' poetry collections. This year I treated myself to a first edition copy bound by the Hogarth Press, of The Waves (Virginia Woolf) which is my favourite book. The copy I looked at buying had belonged to the poet Barbara Howes and had her named inscribed in the inside cover, in Barbara's handwriting. I hadn't heard of her before, so looked up her poetry and immediately fell in love with her work. So I bought the book, and it feels special to now have her own personal copy of my favourite book.
- Reading all of Brian Selznick's books and being so immersed in his illustrations.
- Beartown and Us Against You (Frederik Backman). I haven't read the final book in the trilogy yet. It was so good to see the topic of rape culture being handled so carefully and brilliantly by a cis-man.
- Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life (Marta McDowell). She is one of my favourite poets, and the structure and layout of the book was so beautiful - going through her life chronologically broken up into the seasons, with pictures of Emily's own herbariums, botany studies and poetry relating to nature. I always love seeing my two great loves - nature and writing - merged together. It's just a stunning book too. If you get the hardcover version, take off the dust jacket and see the lovely little surprise on the front cover.
- Re-reading Under Milkwood (Dylan Thomas) and listening to the BBC/Richard Burton recording of it from the 50's, then going to see a live production of it at a small theatre.
Lots of other great books this year too. In fact, this is what my reading year looked like:
JANUARY
A Prayer for the Crown-shy (Becky Chambers)
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)
Evidence: poems (Mary Oliver)
Beartown (Frederik Backman)
Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life (Marta McDowell)
A Bookshop in Algiers (Kaouther Adimi)
Memory Wall (Anthony Doerr)
FEBRUARY
Felicity (Mary Oliver)
Things my son needs to know about the world (Frederik Backman)
Once There Was a War (John Steinbeck)
The Thirty Names of Night (Zeyn Joukhadar)
Companion Piece (Ali Smith)
MARCH
Love Letters Virginia Woolf & Vita Sackville West
David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
APRIL
The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding (Holly Ringland)
The Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger)
MAY
Open Me Carefully (Emily Dickinson with Martha Nell Smith, Ellen Louise Hart)
Barbara Howes Collected Poems 1945 - 1990 (Barbara Howes)
Us Against You (Frederik Backman)
Light and Dark: poems (Barbara Howes)
Looking Up At Leaves (Barbara Howes)
The Blue Garden (Barbara Howes)
JUNE
The Undersea Farmer (Barbara Howes)
In the Cold Country (Barbara Howes) The Stranger (Albert Camus)
The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
Moving (Barbara Howes)
JULY
Orlando (Virginia Woolf)
Sea of Tranquility (Emily St John Mandel)
A Private Signal (Barbara Howes)
The Ice Palace (Tarjei Vesaas)
God Help the Child (Toni Morrison)
AUGUST
Under Milk Wood (Dylan Thomas)
The Awakening (Kate Chopin)
The Stationery Shop of Tehran (Marjan Kamali)
Miners Pond/ The Weight of Oranges/ Skin Divers (Anne Michaels)
The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Brian Selznick)
Wonderstruck (Brian Selznick)
SEPTEMBER
The Marvels (Brian Selznick)
Girl Meets Boy (Ali Smith)
Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen)
The Bee and the Fly (Lorraine Tosiello & Jane Cavolina)
Poetry 1900 - 1975 - Longman English series - editor George Macbeth
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
Kaleidoscope (Brian Selznick)
OCTOBER
My People (Oodgeroo Noonuccal)
Big Tree (Brian Selznick)
Call Me By Your Name (Andre Aciman)
Emily Dickinsons Poems: As She Preserved Them (Cristanne Miller)
NOVEMBER
Twelfth Night (William Shakespeare)
At Fault (Kate Chopin)
Writing Wild (Kathryn Aalto) Journal of a Solitude (May Sarton)
DECEMBER
Rooftoppers (Katherine Rundell)
The War that Saved my Life (Kimberly Brubaker Bradley)
Walking the Boundaries (Jackie French)
Eugene Onegin (Alexander Pushkin)
Christmas Days (Jeanette Winterson)
Great video! The best book I read (more or less because it is more a resource book) was the Grimoire Encyclopaedia by David Rankine.
You not enjoying Before The Coffee Gets Cold is so cathartic for me, you have no idea (or maybe you really do). The writing gave so little and the underlying philosophy of the book was weirdly conservative in ways. Also why the random descriptions of what women are wearing but literally almost nothing else? I could go on!
Anyway, I just discovered your channel today and I'm really enjoying your thoughtful meditations on all things book! Looking forward to more ❤