My year in books: 2023
Plus a special holiday gift for you
I wrote a specific post about my year in reading and diversity, so check that out here. But I saw everyone else doing their yearly book round-up and I could not resist. I also talked about my 3 favorite books of 2023 here and some of the best books by diverse authors here.
Book everyone should absolutely read
A Fever in the Heartland, by Timothy Egan. Okay, so I knew that the Ku Klux Klan, when it resurfaced in the 20th century, did so first in Indiana. There’s a famous photo of a lynching, a crowd of people dressed like they’re going to the fair, children and women smiling and pointing, that’s from a lynching in Indiana. I understood all that. What I didn’t know was how powerful the Klan had become in places like Indiana. And Washington and Oregon and Colorado. Klan candidates were headed for the White House.
If you read Egan’s book closely, what you’ll learn is that the Klan didn’t get “defeated” and then fade away again. No, what happened is that they accomplished most of their goals—getting anti-immigration legislation passed and establishing laws supporting segregation in places like Indianapolis. The book sells better as a story about defeating the Klan, but I think we all know, we didn’t defeat the Klan then. We haven’t defeated the Klan in 2023, but we have to know and understand our history before we can get better in the present.
Series I obsessed over
Slough (or Slow) Horses books, by Mick Herron
Some friends were watching the Netflix series based on these books so my husband, who had just recently discovered the delight that is the library holds system, started reading them. He would sit beside me in our living room or in bed at night laughing out loud as he read each book. “What are you laughing at?” I’d ask, over and over again. “The dialogue,” he’d say. Or he’d try to explain something about Roderick Ho, but the joke didn’t translate.
The books start out a little slow. Slow Horses, the first book, is good, but the series really hits its stride at about #3 through #4. You don’t have to be into spy stuff to enjoy these books. They’re really about the absurdity and corruption inherent in bureaucracies. In this case, the British Secret Service, but fill in your own institution. Any will work.
Warning: you probably need a high tolerance for bodily humor. Jackson Lamb is…how do I say it….gross.
Best books about history you didn’t know but need to
I talk about these books in my best books list for The Ryder, Bloomington’s independent magazine, which will be out in January, but here’s a quick recap.
Brotherless Night, V.V. Ganeshananthan. Beautiful account of the origins of the civil was in Sri Lanka and its devastating consequences.
In the Upper Country, Kai Thomas. We all know that enslaved peoples who escaped went north, some as far as Canada. What I didn’t know was what happened to those people once they got to Canada. This novel looks at some of that history.
The East Indian, by Brinda Charry. When we don’t examine the very specific, contingent history of how slavery in the United States evolved as an institution, it lends credence to the idea that there was something natural or inevitable about the system. It’s not natural and it wasn’t inevitable. This novel explores that evolution through the experiences of Tony, the first immigrant from the Indian subcontinent in the colonies.
Moonrise Over New Jessup, Jamila Minnicks. New Jessup is a fictional version of the many real all-Black towns and communities that existed across the South. This novel explores the particular perspectives Black folks who’d taken refuge from the Jim Crow South in such towns might have had on the Civil Rights movement’s call for integration.
Best nonfiction books
High Conflict, by Amanda Ripley. Still thinking about this book. I think it’s essential for this historical moment. I’ll be going back to it as we amp up into another contentious election year. Wrote about it here.
Awe, by Dacher Keltner. Want to feel hopeful about life, existence and humanity? This is the book for you. Wrote about this one, too, here.
If You Should Fail: A Book of Solace, by Joe Moran. I have no idea why I ordered a copy of this book from my library or where I heard about it. The hold system got messed up this summer so by the time the book arrived, I was convinced that it was actually someone else’s book. Still, I took it home and put it on my shelves, feeling mildly guilty that I might have taken a book that wasn’t meant for me. Then I started reading it. This book was very much meant for me.
Joe Moran is responding partly to our stupid, capitalist take on failure. Fail better. Fail forward. All failure is a prelude to ultimate success. Bullshit. Sometimes failure is just failure. In fact, Moran suggests, life is failure. Accept it. You’ll feel much better.
There were so many interesting insights in this book. The story of the big failure and breakdown that preceded Max Weber writing The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which as a sociologist, I should have known about. Moran discusses at length a satirical history written by another sociologist, Michael Young, in the 1950s, called, The Rise the Meritocracy. Young coined the term—meritocracy—but the point of his satire was that a meritocracy is a horrible way to organize society. The irony is almost too much—the guy who invented the word “meritocracy” was making fun of it. Meritocracy now is held up as this amazing utopia. People are willing to die on the hill of meritocracy (especially perhaps, in publishing?), as if such a thing could ever possibly exist. And if it did, that it would be a good idea.
I loved this book so much, I’ll be buying my own copy. Also, check out Moran’s hilarious essay about tragedians and comedians in academia, here (I’m definitely a comedian).
Best books by writer friends from the internet
Saturnalia, by Stephanie Feldman. I took an amazing class on novel structure with Stephanie, so I had to check out herelatest novel. I have one word for you—homunculus. That’s it. More stories with homunculi.
Endpapers, by Jennifer Savran Kelly. I think I “met”
through her Substack, First Draft. Her novel is a deep dive into all things bookish—as in the actual physical design of books. Also, hidden queer history. Like all books that are both good and weird, it’s a little hard to explain, but worth the read.Best memoir
I’m Glad My Mom Died, by Jeanette McCurdy. My daughter watched ICarly and I have the vaguest memory of the character Jeanette played. I didn’t read this book because Jeanette was a child star. I read it because of the title. I mean, who wouldn’t? I’ve been thinking a lot lately about books about fucked-up families. There are novels about fucked-up families, but there often seems to be a pressure to devise a happy ending in fiction. A healing or a reconciliation. I like that memoir doesn’t bother. Or at least, the happy ending looks a lot different. But I like the comfort of reading about other people’s fucked-up families.
Best mysteries not about white, straight people
I love mysteries and I love a good mystery series, but I also love reading books about BIPOC people and LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities and poor people. So always on the lookout for those sort of mysteries. Please share if you have any of your own to add to the list.
Better the Blood, by Michael Bennett. This is the first in a new mystery series featuring Maori detective, Hana Westerman. I’ve read a lot of Australian mysteries and thrillers, but none from a Maori perspective. Excited for the next book.
Clark and Division and Evergreen (Japantown Mystery), by Naomi Hirahara. These mysteries explore the aftermath of internment for Japanese Americans. First, their sojourn in Chicago. Then their complicated return to California.
A Disappearance in Fiji, by Nilima Rao. This is another series from SOHO Crime, who are really killing it upping the diversity in the mystery genre. This mystery explores the racial and ethnic complexities of the British Raj, where a Sikh detective finds himself demoted from his post in Hong Kong to the “sleepy” island of Fiji.
And There He Kept Her and Where the Dead Sleep (Ben Packard Mystery), by Joshua Moehling. Many years ago, I wrote a cozy mystery with a bisexual main character. When I sent it out, one agent told me that people who read cozy mysteries wouldn’t be comfortable with a bisexual main character. I’m still mad about it. These two books are not cozy mysteries. They are big-city-cop-moves-to-rural-town (is that automatically cozy? I never really understood the boundaries of that genre). Only, Ben Packard, the big city cop, is a gay man. And so, what is it like for a gay man in a rural Minnesota town? I like stories like that. I like everything about these two books.
My holiday gift for you
Full disclosure, I totally stole this idea from
at . Because it is an awesome idea!
I’ve read over 200 books this year. This does not make me a superior person as I totally believe my obsessive reading is a trauma response. As a child, when things were bad, there were books (is reading a trauma response for most of us?). As an adult, there still are books when things are bad.
The point is, I read widely and eclectically. Mystery, romance, fantasy, literary. Less sci-fi and less nonfiction. But I know a lot of books.
So, in the comments, tell me three books you loved this year and I’ll recommend another book for you based on those three. Book concierge! Also, I’ve always wanted to work in a bookstore, so I can put this on my resume for the future.
Lessons in Chemistry, Olive Kitteridge, Demon Copperhead.
Three books I loved this year: "there was an old woman" by Andrea Carlisle; "A Certain Time" by Kate Kasten; and "The Yellow Wife," by Sadeqa Johnson.