As I looked back on the books I read in 2023, I was given pause to think about how I read – in new ways and old.

First, I want to mention strategies I adopted in 2023 that made reading more fun. For example, I cast a drag queen as the central character of an Iris Murdoch novel, and that suddenly made a book about the strained mores of postwar poshos much more interesting.

Of perhaps greater consequence, I used the library probably more than I have since I was a kid. In recent years (decades), I’ve bought far too many books I don’t read and then I feel guilty about them lying in stacks all over the place unread – and that doesn’t include invisible stacks on my Kindle. The library is less risky in that way. I reserve a book at the library, and then wait a week or a month or two, and then it comes and I have three weeks to read it, and that creates a return deadline that focuses my mind. This pattern probably made me read more in 2023 than in many recent years.

Looking back over those books I did complete, though, I wonder if my reading was maybe a bit tame and I missed some of the indie treats and works in translation that I often enjoy most. No writer *really* captured me this year as, eg, Annie Ernaux or Lucia Berlin or Robin Wall Kimmerer have in years before. Could have been me! Perhaps that fixed loan period at the library focused my mind on finishing those sorts of bestsellery or reading groupy books that other readers request and are waiting to read. But even so: there were a lot of books I enjoyed there.

I also did a lot of sampling and skimming this year. If the opening wasn’t clicking, I’d scan the body of the book and skip to the end. Sometimes that’s enough, and library books make wider skimming possible. Skimming: ah! That’s a reading practice to embrace.

Breaking my wrist and having to do exercises three times a day also created extra reading time. (Exercises that allow reading: my kinda.) While the fracture was mending, I found it easier to read hardbacks (the library again) or my Kindle. Paperbacks with tight spines are more work to prop open.

So: I actually read (completed) far more books this year.

Though too: reading isn’t about productivity, is it? So much of my most significant reading is rereading.

I am never sure about the idea of ‘best’ books – best is so subjective, and often boring – so, most recent first, these are the books that probably left most of an impression on me in 2023:

* Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
* Naomi Klein, Doppelganger
* Zadie Smith, The Fraud
* Daniel Mason, North Woods
* Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds
* Tahir Hamut Izgil, Waiting to Be Arrested at Night
* Rachel Pollack, A Walk Through the Forest of Souls: A Tarot Journey to Spiritual Awakening
* Matthew Evans, Soil: The Incredible Story of What Keeps the Earth, and Us, Healthy
* Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer
* Helen Macdonald, H Is For Hawk

I haven’t finished The Bee Sting yet, but on the basis of the first 400 pages, which have consumed me over the last couple of days, its immersive storytelling is a winner.

The standout is probably North Woods. Formally clever, imaginative, poignant. Actually, maybe something did capture my attention this year. I would like to reread it.

Special mention also to Kent Haruf, whose entire canon I completed/reread this year. I think it’s very good to reread your favourites, and he is one of the great prose stylists. Britney Spears’s The Woman in Me surprised me – a lot is missing there, but too I realised, duh, it’s one of those awful child star stories. Other notables were Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree, Ada Calhoun’s Also A Poet, M. John Harrison’s Wish I Was Here, Rebecca Smith’s Rural, Justin Torres’s Blackouts, and Catherine Lacey’s The Biography of X (the last two have a similar feel, and I note both were published by Granta in the UK). Yellowface was fun, and one of the more astute descriptions of publishing I’ve come across in fiction.

I should also mention this year’s ongoing read of Ovid’s Metamorphoses aka Long Ovid. Next we are making a start on the Bible. Our original plans were to read the Old Testament in 2024 and the New in 2025, but we’ve decided simply to finish Genesis in January, then take it from there. I was exposed to the Bible a lot as a child, but I’ve spent less time there as an adult, and I’m curious to see what I remember, and also to think about literary as well as broader influences.

I’m currently listening to My Name Is Barbra – wow, surely the audiobook of the year, all 48 hours of it. Apparently the audio has lots of asides that aren’t in the print/ebook edition. Barbra Streisand is a wonderful narrator.

A special mention also for Bobbie Louise Hawkins, whose story The Child was picked by George Saunders for his Story Club.

Elsewhere, I encountered a LOT of namedropping. Some of it was amusing, some of it was embarrassing, most of it was crammed into three literary memoirs. Writers! As my husband said of one: this reads like a bunch of Instagram captions.

Also elsewhere: some fantastic manuscripts. It’s a real honour to be trusted to read work in progress, and sometimes this raw and unpolished writing enjoys an energy that perhaps only unfinished work can achieve. Hmmm, something for the editor to ponder. I hope these books get finished and find homes with publishers, or get out into the world in some way.

In watching, off the top of my head I enjoyed: The Last of Us, Happy Valley, The Diplomat, Fisk, Wheel of Time, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Reservation Dogs, Slow Horses, and a fantastic series of documentaries on wild dogs. And I’m glad Succession is over. It was too glib for my taste, and reminded me that good writing is about more than lots of shiny surfaces and showing off on social media.

Perhaps the most memorable viewing was Timothy Snyder’s 24-part Yale University lecture series on YouTube on the making of modern Ukraine – which is so much more than that too: a specific take on empire and colonialism and domination and take, relevant in many contexts throughout the world. A camera in a lecture theatre with a brilliant mind communicating brilliantly: sometimes that’s all we need. The words.

Also on YouTube I have recently enjoyed the comedy of Matteo Lane and Bob the Drag Queen. Again, a camera and a sharp mind being quick and very funny: bare brick walls, and words. (Note for sheltered minds: some of these words are also very, um, bawdy.)

Didn’t see a lot of art, but the Mat Collishaw exhibition Petrichor at Kew Gardens is out of this world.

My last post of 2023, on the last day of the year. Look for me on Substack in 2024. And support your local library! I’ve even started recommending books for our library to add to its collection.

And before I go, another mention for my new Zoom masterclasses on writing – to paraphrase one of my musical icons, we start at the very beginning, with Beginnings, on 8 January.

Happy New Year! For some reason, I’m liking the numbers 2 0 2 4. Here’s a pic taken outside Birmingham’s fantastic new library.