The Best Books I Read in 2023
Brooklyn, New York
Anyway, out of all the books I read this year, there were 15 or so that stood out—books that stayed with me, taught me things, changed how I saw love and life and identity, kept me up at night or had me reading while walking (something I would not recommend on the streets of New York).
This felt like a heavy and hard year, and reading gave me such a sweet place to rest. It helped me better articulate my own feelings, and it constantly reminds me of our connected experience as tiny beings moving around our private little worlds that can feel so overwhelming and isolating. I would say that this list is the books I enjoyed the most, but there were a whole bunch of books I read that helped me refine my perspective on politics or anti-capitalism, so I want to mention those below as well, if that’s something you’re interested in.
- Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò - About identity polities and the inequality of power
- On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint by Maggie Nelson - Essays about freedom to/from in four realms: art, sex, drugs and climate echange
- Who is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind by Fariha Roisin - Part memoir of trauma, part interrogation of the colonialized wellness industry.
- Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell - An examination of the politics of time and and our relationship to it.
- Health Communism by Beatrice Adler-Bolton - A short book about how we are basically extractive targets of profit for the health industry as it is, and argues for a future of health that is based on a collective commitment to each other
- The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks - Basically about how we socialize men to be unemotional robots and how that affects women and our relationships.
- They Call it Love: The Politics of Emotional Life by Alva Gotby - An examination of the politics of emotional support and love that is generally not compensated and expected of people in the margins.
All That’s Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien - This one was recommended to me by my friend Shirley. It’s about a woman who returns home to Cabramatta (a Vietnamese-dominant south-western suburb of Sydney) after her younger brother is killed at a graduation dinner. With no real answers, she takes it upon herself to investigate his murder which then takes you through a series of POVs that range from her family to community members connected to the murder scene. I loved this because I am going to STAN any author coming out of Western Sydney (where I’m from), and I though it was super inventive to wrap an immigration/trauma story into the genre of murder-mystery.
Motherhood by Sheila Heti - One of the only pieces of writing that has ever mirrored the spiraling questions chasing each other in my head (and in the heads of a lot of other women I know) on the decision of motherhood. It’s like reading a mind eat itself in real time arguing for both sides. Lots of questions on the relationship of art making and identity to the role of motherhood. This quote from the book killed me:
“How far beyond your mother do you hope to get? You are not going to be a different woman entirely, so just be a slightly altered version of her, and relax. You don't have to have all of what she had. Why not live something else instead? Live the pattern which is the repeating, which was your mother and her mother before her, live it a little bit differently this time. A life is just a proposition you ask by living it "Could a life be lived like this too?" Then your life will end. So let the soul that passed down from your mothers try out this new life in you. There is no living your life forever. It's just once - a trial of a life. Then it will end. So give the soul that passed down from your mothers a chance to try out life in you. As a custodian for the soul passed down through your mothers, you might make it a little easier this time around. Treat it nicely because it's had a hard time. This is the first time in generations it can rest. Or decide with true liberty what it will do. So why not treat it with real tenderness? It has been through so much already, why not let it rest?”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang - I DEVOURED this satirical take on the publishing industry, not only because it was so fun to read but because of the subtext and autobiographical details that matched with the author’s IRL life. It’s about a white woman who steals her Asian friend’s manuscript when she dies, and publishes it as her own. The premise itself is fucking bonkers, and it has received criticism because the author appears to have modeled the deceased Asian author in the book on her own career, and re-packaged the criticism she got herself on previous books as in-book plot details. Wild! So fun to read but a bit of a let down in ending.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - Recommended to me by Ash! I love me some magical realism, and this one is full of it. You follow Piranesi, who lives in a weird labyrinth-style decrepit open-aired structure with endless halls and vestibules periodically flooded by the ocean. It is so so beautiful and reads like one of those dreams you try to explain to your boyfriend but no matter how hard you try you just sound like you’re having a stroke. Fun fact, the namesake, Piranesi, is Italian architect and painter Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who is famous for his insanely elaborate etchings of fictional prisons.
Douglas Stewart has an incredible way of creating vivid portraits of a specific moment in time I have no idea about - working class Scotland in the 80’s. These books are devastating, and both center queer young male characters at the edge of understanding who they are in a violent and senseless world of poverty, homophobia and alcoholism. I loved these characters and although I had to put it down at times because of how devastated I was, I never wanted it to end.
Beloved by Toni Morrison - OK yes wow. A Pulitzer Prize winner and something I took far too long to get stuck into. It’s about Sethe, a woman who was born a slave and escaped, and the farm where so much violence happened and which haunts her. There’s an angry baby ghost, and a really unflinching and devastating story of slavery, its consequences and the loss and pain it wreaks onto people and their families for their whole lives. Another book I had to take a lot of breaks from, incredibly beautiful and incredibly sad.
The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts - Love me some Alan Watts, this is great philosophy book basically about why the feeling of being separated from everything else is an illusion, and we’re really just bits and pieces of the same universe. Really big thinking and questions on ego and the myths that are sold to us. Had a really great impact on me, one of those books that make you walk around for a few days and everything looks a little different until silly little things bum you out again.
The Boy and the Dog by Seishū Hase, Alison Watts (Translator) - What a sweet little book! It’s about a dog (Tamon) who is on a massive journey to return to its home after a tsunami, and on its way stops at the sides of various characters, each of which occupy a single chapter. You get a window into the lives of all these people, way stations for the dog on its way home, and how the dog creates small ripples in these peoples lives before he moves on. It made me think about what our pets do for us, how they mirror our humanity and desires and needs, and the strange inclination we have as human beings to domesticate and live with actual animals in our homes. Have you ever thought of this while high? It freaks me out sometimes that I literally cohabitate with an animal that cannot communicate with me beyond grunting.
Pure Colour by Sheila Heti - After Motherhood I ran to devour Sheila Heti’s other work, and this one was so strange. You’re basically following a woman who joins her dead father in another world, which I think is being lost on a leaf? It’s incredibly meandering and metaphysical, and very loose on plot and heavy on abstract ruminations about life and beauty and death. It wrecked me. I have a feeling it’s probably super polarizing.