The Books I Did NOT Read This Year
But I wanted to and probably still will.
I turned in the full manuscript of my next book this past Friday. I thought I would feel more relief, but truth be told I kind of miss the intensity of the last several weeks as I assembled the different chapters I’d been working on for months into a whole. It’s a highly involving process, the kind of thing that tests your abilities in a good way.
I am looking forward to not thinking about it for a few weeks and substituting the time I’ve been spending on the book with reading. I read fewer books last year than any year in recent memory because for the last four months my bandwidth for reading not related to the book has been rather limited. The books I acquired and wanted to read this year have stacked up. I figure, why not give them a little moment in the sun, even though I haven’t read them? Given the sheer number of books published, it’s an accomplishment to even get on someone’s radar.
(All titles link to longer book descriptions and options to purchase at Bookshop.org.1
Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park
I’ve really been looking forward to this book, but given its heft and apparent ambition, I put off tackling it until the book manuscript was in. This will be on the plane with me as I travel back to Chicago to see family, so I probably will sneak it in under the wire as a book for 2023.
The In-Betweens: A Lyrical Memoir by Davon Loeb
Most of the time I can’t remember what made me interested in checking out a book, and I’m afraid that this is the case here, but when I cracked it open I could tell it’s the kind of book that demands you slow down and take your time. One to be sipped and sat with, rather than gulped. It’s heading to my nightstand.
Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative by Peter Brooks
I heard about this book somewhere, and I immediately thought it would be up my alley and be good fodder for a newsletter post here. I’m a big sucker for the idea that narrative has the ability to overpower our rational senses, and that seems to be part of what Brooks is teasing out in this book, but I guess I won’t know until I actually read it.
Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World by Devorah Heitner
I was intrigued by this book because it looks like a deeper and more nuanced treatment of what’s going on in the lives of young people in an online world they can connect to through their phones. I find the most prominent voices on these issues (cough, Jon Haidt, cough) to be a heavy on moral panic and high on their own authority, and maybe this book is an alternative. I’m especially interested in reading about an aspect that I’ve been long interested in, the way technology is used to “surveil” students, particularly in schools, using behaviorist apps like ClassDojo, or even just the now standard parent portals. I wrote about the problem of real-time data and the need to shut down those parent portals all the way back in 2016.
Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati
I dunno, sounded cute by the description, and who doesn’t want to think about what it would be like to live a life as the owner of a bookshop in Tuscany?
Toad by Katherine Dunn
Considering that Dunn is author of one of my favorite novels of all time, Geek Love, and I bought this the week it came out, I’m surprised I haven’t read it yet. The problem is, I stuck it in a drawer in my nightstand and promptly forgot about it. I have successfully liberated it now.
The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos by Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya
This is from Two Dollar Radio, a publisher which puts out books you just won’t read anywhere else. Click on that link I gave you in the title and see how truly interesting this book looks.
Wellness by Nathan Hill
I’d been looking forward to Hill’s follow-up to The Nix for a long time, and I was sent an advance copy, but it got soaked on my porch by a literal hurricane and by the time it dried out, I sort of forgot about. Also because I have a weird thing about not reading books everyone else is going to read, I found the Oprah Book Club choice demotivating.
There’s honestly about 15 others where those came from. If I never bought another book I might not finish all the unread books I already have in my possession, but it’s not like I’m going to stop acquiring them.
Links
This week at the Chicago Tribune I lay out how you can give the gift of a book shopping day together with an important person in your life that totally isn’t a substitute for your failure to get a present in a timely fashion.
Tor.com has compiled the reviewers’ choice books for 2023 in science fiction and fantasy.
The Tournament of Books has announced its shortlist competitors, 15 books for the main draw and three other books that will duke it out to grab the 16th slot. If you get reading now, you’ll be up to speed by the time the fun starts in March.
LitHub has compiled 139 of the best book covers of the year according to book cover designers.
Adam Morgan has selected his favorite book reviews of the year.
By Melanie Winkolsky writing at McSweeney’s: “An Open Letter to the Eleven Adults Responsible for the Majority of the Book Bans in Schools.”
Recommendations
1. Romney: A Reckoning by McKay Coppins
2. Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly
3. Going Infinite by Michael Lewis
4. Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein
5. The Last Folk Hero by Jeff Pearlman
Michael E. - Los Angeles, CA
As an apparent fan of narrative non-fiction that gets at interesting cultural and social issues, Michael is a good fit for The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town by Brian Alexander. Compelling human narrative combined with a dissection of the truly diseased state of our health care industry.
Can’t believe that 2023 is almost in the books (pun intended). What were the books you meant to read this year, but didn’t get to?
I’ll be coming to you from the midwestern place of my birth next week. I hope I don’t freeze to death.
JW
The Biblioracle
All books linked throughout the newsletter go to The Biblioracle Recommends bookstore at Bookshop.org. Affiliate proceeds, plus a personal matching donation of my own, go to Chicago’s Open Books and the Teacher Salary Project, which is advocating to establish a federal minimum salary for teachers of $60,000 per year. Affiliate income is $311.30 for the year.
I've been trying to get ready to read *Translation State,* the newest novel from Ann Leckie. I fell in love with her worldbuilding and characterization in her debut novel *Ancillary Justice,* and I am so incredibly hyped for this one that the fear of disappointment (and the need to devote 3 hours to power through it) has left it sitting on the TBR pile on my bedside bookshelf since I bought it in June. I'm going to read it the next time I have to take a sick day--nothing like aliens and cannibalism to make you feel better about the crud in your chest!
I add books to my TBR list at a clearly unsustainable rate, so the answer to your question of which books I meant to read and didn't get to is: nearly all of them. Anyway, I love the cover for Toad, and I second the recommendation for The Hospital, which was amazing, though utterly depressing and harrowing.