Favorite Reads, 2023

 You can see that we are already well into 2024, but I wanted to share my favorite reads of 2023. Some are independently published books and we all know those can use all the word-of-mouth possible! My reading numbers have gone down in recent years, as I do so much reading for editing, teaching, and now, publishing! I'm not complaining! I love each of these aspects of my book life. In 2023, I read a total of 32 books for "leisure" - whatever that is. I read twenty-one novels, two novellas, one story collection, four graphic novels, two memoirs, and two collections of essays.

Here are my top five reads of the year...and three honorable mention choices. Each of these books, in my opinion, is well worthy of your time. If they could capture my attention and heart in this tumultuous and busy year, that should be worth something! And in no particular order, they are:

Here's the publisher's description: 

"This gripping novel—inspired by true events—tells the interwoven stories of a deformed German infantryman; a lonely British film director; a young, blind museum curator; two Jewish American newlyweds separated by war; and a caretaker at a retirement home for actors in Santa Monica. They move through the same world but fail to perceive their connections until, through seemingly random acts of selflessness, a veil is lifted to reveal the vital parts they have played in one another's lives, and the illusion of their separateness."

I love everything I've ever read by Simon Van Booy, and this was no exception. His style reminds me of some of my very favorite authors - Kent Haruf, Per Petterson - and the way he cuts through to the heart of his characters. 

A classic, for good reason, and probably the book I recommended most this year. A six-year-old girl and her grandmother spend a summer on an island in the gulf of Finland. This slim moment is full of small, tangible moments and big truths, of longing and love, of the complicated tangle of relationships and life itself. If you only listen to me about one book on this list, make it this one (and check out the author's other writing as well).

A reviewer said “Beautifully written and satisfyingly creepy, this is one of the most poignant and original ghost stories I've ever read.”

I agree! This book will surprise you, enthrall you, and keep you thinking long after you set it down. It's about family and time and memory, and the relationships that define us. 

I'm thrilled that I'll have a chance to hear the author talk about the story in person this year.

Full disclosure: this author has a young adult fantasy book coming out with Type Eighteen Books this April, and she kindly sent me this copy of her earlier book. Elizabeth has done and continues to do many amazing things, but at some point, she was a shepherd, and the local "Ask a Shepherd" on a CBC radio show. This is a collection of her letters for the show, and I found it compulsively readable, endlessly fascinating, and representative of her particular charming and intelligent writing - which is why we took on her new book in the first place. I loved this unique read.

This book was the last in my Summer of Summer reading project...and now I'm realizing I never wrote a post about it. I loved it! An eerie and immersive read about a relationship that begins over the course of a summer and goes through a series of changes and transformations, as relationships do. I loved the POV of this novel, an unreliable character who is simultaneously exasperating and completely relatable. Once in, I had a hard time putting this book down.

And now the honorable mentions:

Another slow cooker book. This one takes place in the late 1960s, in the English countryside where an awkward single woman eavesdrops on the interesting couple residing below her. The publisher calls it "a seductive psychological portrait, a keyhole into the dangers of longing and how far a woman might go to escape her past."

Like a couple of my other choices this year, this book surprised me with its approach and twists. Recommend!

A story collection from the same publisher as Magdalena - they're doing something right! The writing in this collection is gorgeous, and the settings and range of characters are fresh and surprising (I guess I wanted to be surprised this year?!?). And like most writing I like, the characters are relatable and leave me with emotional or intellectual takeaways. I must read more short stories in 2024!

I loved this story written by a daughter about her mother's life. From the publisher: 

"The story of a woman whose life spanned a century of tumult and change. In many ways Nance’s story echoes that of many mothers and grandmothers, for whom the spectacular shifts of the twentieth century offered a path to new freedoms and choices. In other ways Nance was exceptional. In an era when women were expected to have no ambitions beyond the domestic, she ran successful businesses as a registered pharmacist, laid the bricks for the family home, and discovered her husband’s secret life as a revolutionary."

This is a brief, perhaps not formatted expertly post, but I did want to share my favorite books of 2023. And I do pay attention to your Best Of posts, too, and usually add many of your choices to my list. Happy reading in the new year, everyone!

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The Summer of Summer: Flights

 

This might sound trite, or too on-the-nose, but reading Flights, Olga Tokarczuk’s unique book about many things under the umbrella of “travel” is like taking a journey. The best kind of travel journey, where you meander down one road to discover something that wasn’t in any of the guidebooks or maps. I’m not even sure how to describe this read, this wholly original book.

At times, it reminded me of another book with a big impact on me: Outline by Rachel Cusk. In that book, our narrator never introduces herself in a traditional way, and we learn about her as she moves through the world and interacts with others—thus, an outline of the person she is emerges. In Flights, Tokarczuk introduces herself from the start. She relays some of her earliest memories and talks about her parents’ methods of travel and therefore, her childhood exposure to the concept. After her parents spent time at a campsite or abroad, like most of us, they’d return home to jobs and bills and a worn path in the carpet of their flat. But the author claims her divergent path:

“That life is not for me. Clearly I did not inherit whatever gene it is that makes it so that when you linger in a place you start to put down roots. I’ve tried, a number of times, but my roots have always been shallow; the littlest breeze could always blow me right over…My energy derives from movement—from the shuddering of buses, the rumble of planes, trains’ and ferries’ rocking.”

And then, unlike Cusk’s traditionally undefined narrator, Tokarczuk gives a full run-down of herself:

“I have a practical build. I’m petite, compact. My stomach is tight, small, undemanding. My lungs and my shoulders are strong. I’m not on any prescriptions–not even the pill—and I don’t wear glasses.”

Etc., until the focus narrows.

“My abdominal aorta is normal. My bladder works. Hermoglobin 12.7. Leukocytes 4.5. Hematocrit 41.6. Platelets 228.” 

And more!

Why? Again, it’s hard to describe this book, which meanders down so many paths having to do with travel and permanence, moving and staying, life and death. There are stories heard during travel, stories about people met and places visited. There are conversations relayed from life on the road: on plane trips, in foreign cafes and bars, discussions had while waiting to go someplace else. And the book returns many times to meditations about the human body and everything it means to have one, as our physical forms fortify us, change, and die, as we move through time and space trying to find meaning in our relation to what lies beyond us.

Have you ever gotten into to your car to drive a familiar route and sort of blank out at some point, not remembering the specifics of how you progressed to your current location? Reading Flights reminded me of that. At some point, I would pause and think “Huh. Now I’m reading about a slave whose body was preserved against his family’s wishes,” or “Now I’m following the travels of Peter I, tsar of the Russian Empire.” What all the meandering paths have in common is always some consideration of travel, or the body, or both. Flights is unlike anything I’ve read, with this tight focus on the topic while at the same time, feeling that it’s going in every direction at once. You might be thinking that it sounds like a frustrating or challenging read, and I will say that maybe early on, I felt that way, as I wet my feet. But once you’re in, you’re in, and the stories and segments wash over you easily, as if you’ve been the passenger all along. The structure of the book itself, with its short sections and asides, its starts and stops and recurring segments and themes, makes it the perfect book to take on a journey, short or long. I believe the more I think about this book, the more it will resonate. And it definitely made me want to plan a trip.

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The Summer of Summer: The Natural

 

I didn’t know much about The Natural, except that it was a movie I hadn’t seen starring Robert Redford, and that some consider the book, written by Bernard Malamud and published in 1952, the quintessential, literary baseball novel. And baseball is a summer game (in theory, although it runs from April into October, if you’re lucky); choosing this book for my Summer of Summer seemed like an easy choice. I even got my son to read along with me on vacation.

I was expecting a hero’s journey type of book, the story of a scrappy slugger and his rise in the leagues (again, with the image of Redford in mind). Certainly, those elements are there. The book opens with Roy Hobbs, a nineteen-year-old pitcher on his way to try out for the Chicago Cubs. We know his talents are considerable when the train stops at a carnival and he strikes out “the Whammer,” a top hitter in the game.

But this hero’s journey has its trials, as they do, and Roy is a tragic character more than anything else. Without giving away any of the plot’s surprising twists, I will tell you that often, Roy’s challenges come wrapped in a female package. Sidenote: the women in this story have great names: Harriet Bird, Memo Paris, Iris Lemon. In fact, everyone has great names, from the beleaguered manager of the New York Knights, Pop Fisher, to the journalist trailing Roy for a scoop, Max Mercy, to the star player and Roy’s nemesis, Bump Baily.

You can get a feel for the tone of this book, written in the fifties, by these names. In this world, the men call each other “bub” and “kiddo” and “son,” and the women say things like “How droll!”

But did I like it? I appreciated the atmosphere, dialect, and winding plot, and once I got a feel for the tragic element, I appreciated the character of Roy on a symbolic level. He’s a striver, a uniquely American character in his quest for fame and greatness—spurned on by an unhappy childhood and a string of bad luck. He’s a man of appetites that cause, in many ways, his demise. And in the way of tragedies, often we readers see what’s coming down the track before the character can; many times, I wished Roy would wise up, act better, do right.

I also liked some of the exaggerated elements of the book—such as when Roy literally hits a ball so hard that the cowhide falls off—these bits felt almost apocryphal and compounded that feel of heroism and the way we raise our sports competitors to mythic levels.

When I finished the book, I started to imagine how they took this story and filmed it, and now that I’ve watched the trailer, it would seem they made it into what I imagined the story to be before I picked it up—a story of a slugger making his way to the top. We’ll see. I’m planning to watch the full movie soon.

Next up for my Summer of Summer is quite a shift, the 2007 “fragmentary novel” by the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, Flights. Let me know what you’re reading, or if you try any on my summer list! 

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The Summer of Summer: Seating Arrangements

 

My second read for the Summer of Summer reading project is Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead. In this story, the Van Meters have gathered for the marriage of their eldest daughter, Daphne, who is well bred and educated and nevertheless, seven months pregnant for her nuptials. This irks the father especially. Winn Van Meter was raised with certain ideas about class, gender, and appearances. He’s never moved beyond the identity he earned when he joined an exclusive Harvard club, and ramifications and associations from those days continue in his life, thirty-plus years later. As they do. The family has gathered at Waskeke, an island where rich families have summered for generations, and Winn’s ongoing, current obsession is his pending application to the elite golf club there.

It may seem from my initial notes that the novel is about Winn, and it certainly focuses on his thoughts more than others, but the story moves from character to character, giving glimpses into the perspectives of several. I have to admit, for many pages, I didn’t like anyone much. These are people who remember what they spent on oysters for their first wedding, and when young children are caught playing dress up with their mother’s jewelry, they say “This is nothing. The good stuff’s in the safe.” And then I caught myself wondering why I was feeling a bias against these characters for their lifestyle—fiction is about relating to people unlike ourselves, isn’t it? And I was thinking, too, about what I felt were the horrific “jokes” about the wealthy explorers who perished trying to see the Titanic wreck. Why is antipathy—or, at least, a lack of empathy—against the rich acceptable? Shouldn’t be. Their concerns and issues are still human.

Still. Another aspect of the novel is the sexuality that simmers from the first pages. Winn, you see, is harboring a painful attraction for one of his daughter’s friends, and he has since she was young. Overall, I found Winn tiresome, with his continual fussing to keep things in place at the house, his obsession with the golf club and why they won’t let him in, and his awkward lusting after the young woman. There are additional affairs, relationships, and thwarted romances to deal with amongst the wedding guests. The other Van Meter daughter, Livia, has recently been dumped by the son of Winn’s nemesis—the man he thinks is keeping him out of the club. As the wedding party frolics and drinks, and drinks some more, there are sexual misadventures but also mishaps with the lobster intended for the rehearsal dinner and with a wayward golf cart. Also, a dead whale has beached nearby. I did enjoy some of the ironies of the book and how they played out. Such as the fact that Winn was a “ladies’ man” in his day and now has to deal with two daughters and their forays into the sexual world, and the outing Livia (an aspiring marine biologist) makes to view the whale.

And I will tell you that at some point, it started to come together for me, this darkly funny, orchestral novel. I don’t want to spoil anything else in the plot, but I will say that the book left me contemplating privilege and class, money and expectations, gender conditioning, and sexuality as it relates to power dynamics, and the way Shipstead brought all of the simmering tensions to a satisfactory, touching, and entirely realistic finale was truly inspiring. Do I recommend this book? To a certain, patient reader, yes. To those who like to relate to a character(s) from the start, maybe not. But it definitely has something to say about wealth (and many other things) and in its own way, Seating Arrangements is a richly American story, I think. And a good summer read.

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The Summer of Summer: The Summer Book

 

The back cover copy on this 1975 novel claims that it "distills the essence of the summer - it's sunlight and storms - into twenty-two crystalline vignettes." And that it does. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson centers on two characters - six-year-old Sophia, who has recently lost her mother and is navigating the loss and change that entails, and her grandmother, a headstrong expert of living on the rugged and mutable island where they spend their summers.

It's a book you'll want to read slowly - for me, a rare, five-star read. There are so many wisdoms, so many glimpses of human nature to contemplate, so many twists and dialogue that rings with the deepest truth. If there's a third, noticeable character in the book, it's probably Nature. The island consists of rocky coastline and the forested interior, and the weather can cause drought or near-swamp conditions. Sophia and her grandmother are in constant contact with their environment - exploring, playing, noticing, building. Both are angry about certain things. The grandmother, near the end of her life, resents the loss of some of her autonomy. Sophia is angry about things she's unable to voice in her young age. Of this novel, a friend of mine said that the grandmother is the best untrained psychologist she's seen. And certainly, there's a nurturing wisdom in the way she handles Sophia's meltdowns, questions, and sometimes, personal attacks.

Written in deceptively simple prose, this novel encompasses depths and depths. Each story lingers, as layers of meaning continue to rise to the surface long after reading. I could choose from many excerpts in this wonderful novel, but here's one.

The sun came up. The fog glowed for an instant and then simply vanished. Out on a flat rock in the water lay a scolder. It was wet and dead and looked like a wrung-out plastic bag. Sophia declared that it was an old crow, but Grandmother didn't believe her.

"But it's spring!" Sophia said. "They don't die now; they're brand new and just married - that's what you said!"

"Well," Grandmother said, "it did die now, all the same."

"How did it die?" Sophia yelled. She was very angry.

"Of unrequited love," her grandmother explained. "He sang and scolded all night for his scolder hen and then along came another and stole her away, so he put his head under the water and floated away."

"That's not true," Sophia screamed. She started to cry. "Long-tails can't drown. Tell it right!"

So Grandmother told her he had simply hit his head on a rock. He was singing and scolding so hard that he didn't look where he was going, and so it just happened, right when he was happier than he'd ever been before.

"That's better," Sophia said. "Shall we bury him?"

"It's not necessary," Grandmother said. "The tide will come in and he'll bury himself. Seabirds are supposed to be buried at sea, like sailors." 

I highly recommend this wonderful book for your summer pile. Next up in my summer reading project, Maggie Shipstead's Seating Arrangements.

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