What if...the best books I read in 2023?

Shoutout to Los Angeles Public Library and The Ripped Bodice!

Dec 31, 2023

Hello!

As promised, here’s a selection of the books I loved most this year! Not gonna be all coy about it this time. I read 121 books, with some audio thrown in there. I’d argue that at least half of them were various flavors of “research” for my Very Big Project.

If you read even one book you can’t shut up about, please tell me about it! I love to be influenced (and love to be anti-influenced even more, so please also share your literary hot takes).

Quick aside: Bookshop.org affiliate links ahead. If you buy any book linked here, I will receive approximately one dollar, and Amazon will receive zero dollars. A win for everyone involved! I keep this shelf pretty updated throughout the year as well. This is also your quarterly reminder to download Libby if your local library uses it. : )

Non-Fiction I Can’t Shut Up About

I am not allowing myself to comment on each, or I’ll never stop. Just know I STRONGLY recommend all of these.

Craft Books That Are Not Save the Cat

Nothing against Save The Cat.

Understanding Show Don't Tell by Janice Hardy. Oh, you think you’re a top in your relationship with your own writing? Think again, baby, because Janice here’s gonna turn you into a power bottom by page 10.
1000 Words by Jami Attenberg. Is this a craft book? No idea, but it’s encouraging, digestible, and involves neither Stephen King nor a white lady with locs.
Blueprint For A Book by Jennie Nash. Extremely useful in terms of both structure and making your project feel real and robust before you even begin.
Romancing The Beat by Gwen Hayes. My only qualm with this is that it makes writing a romance novel seem easy.
Before and After The Book Deal by Courtney Maum. If you’re trying to get a book published and don’t want to dig through The Shit No One Tells You About Writing backlog (no idea why you wouldn’t, but whatever), at least read this.
Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses. The craft book that’s like, “Okay, but what if we just didn’t?” This is also good for anyone who writes as a day job and exclusively receives feedback from cishet white guys.

Not Quite “Self-Help,” But Very Helpful

Not sure I understand the bounds of self-help as a genre, but my picks are 100% Brene Brown-free.

A Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton. Recently reco’d this to a friend as “Thoreau without all the guy stuff.”
Syllabus by Lynda Barry. If you teach anything creative-adjacent, it’s a must. (Get the physical book—it’s all illustrated.)
All The Gold Stars by Rainesford Stauffer. This is like “how not to base your identity on external validation 101.”
What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo. A non-problematic (and arguably much stronger!) version of The Body Keeps The Score.
Many Roads, One Journey by Charlotte Kasl. I don’t know, I’m still sober, so something must be working here?

My Favorite Genre

Freaky, horny, and/or queer little bangers.

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter. “Silicon Valley is fucked,” but make it surreal and beautiful. Also my fave 2023 oil-painting-as-cover.
Exalted by Anna Dorn. Astrology & LA & a throw-the-book-across-the-room twist.
Death Valley by Melissa Broder. A bizarro meditation on grief and mysticism and staying alive.
Chlorine by Jade Song. If you’ve ever wished the Disney Channel Original movie, The Thirteenth Year, was both gay and grotesque.
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang. Of the three beauty industrial complex satires I read this year, this one was far and away the sharpest and most complex.
Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield. “Help, my wife returned from being lost at sea and is now turning into sea!”
People Collide by Isle McElroy. “Help, I woke up and now live in my wife’s body, and my body is missing (presumably with my wife in it?)!”

Nemesis Zone

I DNF’d 18 books this year, mostly for no valid reason besides “not feelin’ it right now.” I endorse this tactic and encourage you to do the same! Here’s some stuff I read (or attempted to read) that made me actively angry.

The Wager by David Grann. I thought this was gonna be a “book for dads to fall asleep to for months and never finish,” but literary internet was all like, “No, it’s a WILD and engrossing story!” I love to be correct.
Exit Interview by Kristi Coulter. Still mad that this lady wrote hundreds of pages about the toxicity of Amazon and only left her job there (after spending damn near a decade perpetuating said toxicity) because she got a book deal? Also—spoiler—the titular exit interview never occurs.
A Court of Wings And Ruin by Sarah J. Maas. I slurped down those first two books, then we got to 700+ pages of all war, no smut. No thanks!
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. Even if I ignore the COVID epistolary jump scare, I remain frustrated that Sittenfeld wrote a book with “romance” in the title and then got all “lol ew wut” when she won fifth place in Goodreads’ Romance category. A smack in the face to all the authors of color who weren’t even nominated.

Dystopia & Other Disasters

Escape present hell for future hypothetical hell(s)!

Mobility by Lydia Kiesling. “Oil and gas bildungsroman” is not usually my thing, but the final chapter alone makes it all worth it.
I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane. Devastating situation wherein the surveillance state is turned all the way up, and “criminals” are given extra shadows.
Yours For The Taking by Gabrielle Korn. A white feminist billionaire does a lil’ experiment to see what would happen if she made a girl-power society at the end of the world.
My Murder by Katie Williams. Do you ever wish Gone Girl were also The Echo Wife?
Exhalation by Ted Chiang. I don’t wanna hear about George Saunders anymore! Ted Chiang is IT when it comes to short stories.
Out There by Kate Folk. Ted Chiang for girls. I will not explain further.

Romance <3

I read 44 romances this year, and that’s just counting books that meet the expectations of the genre—i.e. a love story as the primary plot and a happy ending. Every single one of them taught me something about writing, but these are the ones I predict I’ll still be thinking about for years to come:

This newsletter brought to you by:

Libby, Library Extension on Chrome, and The Ripped Bodice
My cat, Creature, who surely absorbed at least part of these via lap osmosis.

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