Words of Wisdom, Words of Strife. Words That Write the Book I Like

Well, kids.It's the last week of December, so it's time for my end of the year posts. I'm not sure how many I'll have time to do, so I will start with my favorite one: The Books I Read in 2023.

Since I'm pretty sure I won't finish the book I'm reading right now before the end of the year, I'm going to call it and say that I read 45 books this year. Of those, I read Five Young Adult books, and one children's novel.

The Children's Novel - Was "Black Beauty', by Anna Sewell. If you only got around to reading one children's book and that book happened to be "Black Beauty", I'd say you were lucky. It was a beautiful story about respecting all life, especially animals. I was never one of those horse crazed girls when I was younger, listening to "Wildfire", and reading "Misty of Chincoteague", like my sister, so I missed this book growing up. I don't think it lost anything by reading it when I was old and cynical, as opposed to when I was young and cynical.

As far as the Young Adult books are concerned, I'm just going to do a loose ranking. I could go a different way on another day, but right now I would rank them thusly:

5.) "A Hero Ain't Nuthin' But a Sandwich", by Alice Childress. I loved this book when I was a kid, but I think it lost something either by it not being the 1970's anymore, or the fact that I had already read it before, or because I'm not nine years old anymore. If you haven't read it before, I would still recommend it, but I didn't have quite the same reaction I did in 1974.

4.) "That Was Then This is Now", by S. E, Hinton. This was another reread for me. I don't remember it being quite so dark when I read it in junior high. It takes place in a small town in Texas in the 1960's. It's about the relationship between two foster brothers, and the decisions we make and can't take back, when we're too young to make them. 

3.) "Moxie", by Jennifer Mathieu also takes place in a small Texas town, but it is supposed to be modern day. It is about trying to deal with sexism and how to channel one's anger. It is really fun and sweet, and the Netflix movie with Amy Poehler is definitely worth watching too. I also think I need more of a tutorial on how to channel my anger over sexism, but this is at least a start.

2.) I don't think I read "Brown Girl. Brown Stone", by Paule Marshall when I was younger, but I'm glad I read it now. It takes place in the 1930's and '40's in Brooklyn, where Barbadian immigrants deal with racism and poverty. It's a really sweet/sad story.

1.)  I love Jacqueline Woodson, and "Brown Girl Dreaming" is one of her best. It is actually a series of connected poems about growing up in the South in the 1960's and '70's, during Jim Crow and then moving to New York. The writing is superb, and the story itself is riveting.

 

 

 

 

I read one Classic Novel in 2023. It was Edith Wharton's "Age of Innocence". In 1921, it was the first novel written by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize. As a lit major, I'm always surprised by the books I WASN'T assigned to read in college, and this is one of them. It's about the aristocracy of the time, and their bullshit rules. I thought it was fun and a little snarky. One of my favorite combinations.

 

"Ms. Marvel Vol II: Generation Why", by Jamie McKelvie, Jake Wyatt, and Adrian Alphona was the only graphic book I read in 2024. I really love the Ms. Marvel series so far. Who wouldn't want to read about a teenage, Muslim superhero?  I can't wait to read the next installment.

I also have just one cookbook that I perused this year: "The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen", by Sean Sherman with Beth Dooley is amazing. I've made a few of the recipes so far, and I plan to make many more in the coming months. Sadly, I'm not the best cook that ever lived, but in trying to master these recipes I feel like maybe I could get better.

I also only read one Fantasy/Sci Fi book this year, but it was a doozy. Marlon James', "Red Leopard/Black Wolf"  is graphically violent and sexual, and epic in every way. It is also a series, and I will tackle the next installment soon.

I read three Horror/Monster Fiction books this year. I loved them all, but if I have to rank them, it would look like this:"

3.)  "The Daughter of Doctor Moreau", by Sylvia Garcia-Moreno. This is the third novel I have read of hers, and they are all so different. She has such a great imagination and manages to cover political and feminist issues during different points in Mexican history.

2.) I got pretty into indigenous horror fiction, with more titles I'm excited to read in 2024. Cherie Dimaline, combined the horror of colonialism, fake "christianity", and werewolves all in one brilliant nove in "Empire of Wild".

1.) I'm blaming Stephen Graham Jones with my recent, above mentioned Indigenous horror fiction obsession. This year I read his, "My Heart is a Chainsaw". Lucky for me, it's a trilogy. So, I plan on reading the next installment in a month or two. This book is perfect for someone like me with ADHD, and a love of pop culture references. I'm just going to hope that Stephen Graham Jones is as prolific as Joyce Carol Oates.

Strangely enough for me, I didn't read a ton of detective/mystery novels this year. Only two, and here is how I would rank them:

2.) "Pardonable Lies", by Jacqueline Windspear is another book in the Maisie Dobbs series. It's nice that there are so many of them, because they are great to read when I need a break from how bleak the world is these days. I know that everything will come out okay, with a nice, tidy ending in her books. Unlike the shit show that can be the real world.

1.) I read Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" last Winter. Which is about the opposite of a Maisie Dobbs book. I had no idea how bleak it was, but incredibly engaging and well written the whole time.

 Okay, now we're FINALLY down to the two big categories.

The first is the five best Non-Fiction books I read in 2023:

5.) "The White Album", by Joan Didion was just...Okay. I'm sure that's blasphemy in some circles. I loved "Slouching Toward Bethlehem", but except for one or two of the pieces, I was pretty bored with a lot of "The White Album". I've been told I really need to read "The Year of Magical Thinking" to feel better about her writing, and I promise I will.

4.) I was really surprised by how much I liked Jeanette McCurdy's "I'm Glad My Mom Died". My daughter told me I needed to read it (I tried not to read to much into THAT). It was a Summer read, but the story was crazy and heart breaking and compelling. 

3.) "The Body", by Bill Bryson was definitely what you'd expect from a Bill Bryson book...And that's a good thing. It's full of fun, and not so fun facts about the human body. It doesn't bog down with way too much information to process, and you don't need a degree in medicine to understand it.

2.) John got "An Immense World", by Ed Yong for Christmas last year and loved it. So, I finally got around to reading it this month. I only wish I had more time to read, other than right before bed. The few times I read it during the day, when I wasn't dozing off right before bed, I got so much more out of it. There is so much information about how other creatures experience their worlds. It was fascinating.

1.) The best non-fiction book I read in 2023 was "The Yellow House", by Sarah M. Broom. She writes about the history and present of the New Orleans the tourists don't normally see, through the history and present of her own family. It is so well written and the stories are heartbreaking. I have been recommending it to everyone I know.

 

Now, onto the five best fiction books I read this year:

5.) "Deacon King Kong:, by James McBride. As we all know, I am moody as f*ck, and sometimes what I want to read changes wildly from one day or week or month from the next. For whatever reason, I tried to start reading this book a couple of times before I picked it up this year, and loved it. Who the hell knows why? Anyway, this last time, it really did take, and I got so into the story that takes place in South Brooklyn in 1969.

4.) Because she teaches at the Writer's Workshop, I have had the pleasure of hearing Lan Samantha Chang read her own work, so it's nice to hear her voice in my head when I read her books. "The Family Chao", is a retelling of Dostoevsky's "The Brother's Karamazov". It takes place in a small town in Wisconsin and centers around the death of  a controlling, narcissistic, father.

3.) I finally got to go to Louise Erdrich's book store, Birchbark Books when we were in Minneapolis this Fall. I bought any of the books on this list written by Native Americans, including this one there. "The Sentence" takes place mostly in 2020. It is about the Pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and all of the gray areas enmeshed in that year. It is also about what happens when the most annoying customer dies and haunts their bookstore store afterward. 

2.) I just finished reading Ann Patchett's "Tom Lake". It is another book that takes place during the Pandemic. It is written by a Writer's Workshop graduate too. It's about a family who owns a cherry farm in Michigan. Their three adult daughters come home during the Pandemic and help pick the harvest. To pass the time, they press their mom to tell them the story of when she dated a now famous actor. In that telling, we also hear the story of a young woman trying to figure out what she wants, after falling into something. It was hopeful, which I need right now.

1.) I had heard such good buzz about this novel, but I was daunted by it's girth. Eight hundred pages is nothing to sneeze at, especially for a person who has almost no attention span. I took the leap, and I am so glad I did. My favorite book I read in 2023 was "The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois", by Honoree' Fanonne Jeffers. It was a beautifully, sad tale of an African American's story from the earliest days of the United States. This book made me feel so many strong feelings. It was hard to put it down to go to work, or eat, or just function on any level.

So, judging from this list, I need to read more classic, graphic,  and sci fi/fantasy novels next year. If you have any recommendations of books you loved from any genre, I'd love to hear them.