Hi Friend.
I love talking about books Love love love. I could do it all day long. And the universe of publishing, book selling, library resources is SO SO EXTENSIVE that any book recommendation must be taken with heaps of salt.
I filter my recommendations through the following:
Quality of prose: sentence and paragraph level quality.
Experience of reading: ease, pleasure, fun, etc.
Stickiness (or memorability) of ideas: impact, perception shifts, applied concepts etc.
This means that books I LOVED don’t always make it into the recommendation pile.
Some super fun books I read aren’t featured (*waves at Sarah J. Maas along with the rest of the internet*).
And some books I felt “meh” about while reading stayed with me so much longer than others while others I loved immediately faded with time.
Reading is, like all pursuits, subject to personal whim and preferences that are impossible to quantify. I don’t want to rank these books or give them “stars”. Think of it more like glimpsing into the constellation of my interior life for 2023 and the ones listed below are the ones that stood out in my little world.
Book links below are affiliate to my little shop at Bookshop.org which basically just is money injected into the book economy because I buy new books a lot.
I link to author’s substacks (where applicable) in their name.
Nonfiction
I read 27 nonfiction books. Full list here. Not a miss in this bunch! All worth reading if the fancy takes you.1
The Dance of Intimacy by Harriet Lerner
If you’ve been a Brene Brown fan, then you are going to love Harriet. A book that really altered, deepened, revised my understanding of relationships, closeness, and conflict. And that feels like a trite summation.
Touched Out: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, and Control by
A book destined for a million women’s studies classrooms. This book weaves itself through academicly rich references and the personal memoir voice to say something messy and real about the violation of women’s bodies from girlhood into the stories we take on as mothers/parents. There was a bit of mental distortion for me in reading about her early years—her experiences were the ones my parents built my entire world to spare me from and they did it successfully. But the air is toxic to us all when it comes to embodiment, sexuality, and gender. I know similar harms in my life even with a personal arc of such dissimilar details.
Side note: went to a writing workshop Amanda led and it was SO GOOD.
Congratulations, The Best is Over by R. Eric Thomas
I should not have laughed till tears choked me at Eric cutting his hand on a broken glass while moving into his new apartment but I did. He manages to draw out the pathos and humor of life in equal measure in sharp, practiced storytelling.
Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood By
Easily my most recommended book of the year. There were so many people who are in the thick of this presently or whose professional work intersects with this era. Helped me frame some of the seasons I’ve passed through and the intensity of certain hungers in my own life today.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
I read this essay collection so slowly. The slowness of reading aided in the depth to which is altered me. I don’t see things the same way after so many hours of repeated return to this prose, this ideas. Images from the book come to me at random moments like snapshots of memories I never actually experienced for myself. It is a book concerned with many things but the one I heard clearest was the question of motherhood and our relationship to all things that grow (which is in fact the definition of motherhood).
Two honorable mentions for ideas that were so immediately impactful I can’t help but mention them:
Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. An instant continual reference in my home as a quality we want to embody.
Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by
. Once the concept of mimesis (the idea that desires are contagious and so we pick up desires that may or may not be consistent with our actual selves and purpose) is in the air, it catches rather mimetically and everything starts to filter through it.
Fiction
I read 16 fiction books this year. Full list here. Highest in a long time! Definitely trying to find my way into genres and authors I enjoy so there were a LOT of misses in this category for me. These are my top picks.
The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante
Ferrante’s fiction does not make me feel good. It is not “fun.” And it makes it to top billing because her sentence level execution of time shifts is just so damn impressive. She goes from past to present to future to dream state with such speed even in individual sentences. Time writing is her superpower. It makes for a destabilizing experience which is her entire point.
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier
I had been trying to read a fantasy series I picked up at the library. 100 pages, I had no real read on the characters, motivations, or even vibe. My Cousin Rachel gave me all of it and more in the first paragraph. This broody gothic is perfectly poised for feminist study—unreliable narration from a man’s point of view, the titular character changing like a funhouse mirror in the gaze of that male narrator, questions of sex and what is owed or promised in sex, and IS HE GOING TO MURDER HER OR NOT?!
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
A wildly popular novel that deserves some of the hype it got (but probably not all because hype is by definition a bit of an inflation of value). Far better than the cover would suggest, this book is about what happens when communal care pushes back on individual suffering to make a different outcome. It’s also way, way, way sadder than the cover would suggest. Also women in science. And neurodivergence. And a dog with a vivid internal world. and who doesn’t love a great dog character?
Reading By Month
Some observations:
Reading goes down when tiktok is on my phone (March, April). It goes up when I delete it.
Moving is bad for reading (June).
Reading also goes down when I started playing video games. Immersive world building is a whole experience on its own (September).
I looked at the Goodreads “Most Read in 2023” list and… I read a lot of them. Should I feel bad about that? Eh. No idea.
Yes, Sarah J. Maas universes are fun to read. Entirely responsible for the massive increase in pages read in December. Will be continuing down this road.
I’m starting to think that fictions writers have all the fun. Just looking at the covers and back blurbs in the stores, this really seems to be the case.
I quit reading more books than you’d guess. Some, I’ll come back to eventually (Spare by Prince Harry). Others, I probably won’t.
My reading focus is very, very disjointed. This piece by
was challenging. There was a time when I, too, could read Foucault and stay with it.
Please let me know.
What did you read? What must I add to my list of to be read? What is motivating you to be with language these days?
With Love,
Dana
Exception to my broad nonfiction recommendation is 1000 Hours: Time Management for Mortals which I COULD NOT STAND. It was sloppy, poorly argued, resourced by thinkers totally inappropriate for any pursuit informed by justice and equity, and ableistic to boot.
This year I discovered that I (mostly) really enjoy the genre that I think is described as “thriller.” Which I’ve always confused with horror (and will never even try). But this has turned out to be more like mysteries that keep you on your toes (like The Maid and Wrong Place, Wrong Time). That’s been fun for me, along with the permission to swiftly exit anything that appears to be too dark to protect my own emotions.
Also: have you read the memoir Save Me the Plums? Unexpectedly gripping and delightful and about food magazine publishing - I think you might like it. ❤️
I think 99% of the "rah rah" motivation non fiction books out there fit your description of "1000 Hours"