Reading list 2023

Reading 2023

The novel most enjoyed: new (to me) writers: 

Aliss at the Fire by Jon Fosse; Minor Detail by Adania Shibli; The Night of the Hunter by Grubb Davis

The novels most enjoyed (as well as the above):

The Lady in The Lake by Raymond Chandler; The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy 

Single most astonishing novel of the year:

(a tie) – Aliss at the Fire by Jon Fosse; Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

The most striking non-fiction works:

Angela Y Davis: Women, Race & Class – documents the various oppressions before correctly, in my view, saying it all comes down to class and through that, power: revelatory. I do not know why I haven’t read her before.

Virginie Despentes: King Kong Theory

Rebecca Solnit: Recollections of my Non-Existence

Friedrich Engels: The Condition of the Working Class in England – and what has changed?

Nick Hayes: The Book of Trespass – this has lit a flame…spells out what we all know, if we just care to think about it.

…plus a couple of the essays in Aurochs and Auks by John Burnside, which move between discussions of extinction and his own near-death experience with Covid.

The most uplifting work:

Virginie Despentes: King Kong Theory – furious punk-energised feminist fury – gang-raped as a teenager, escort in her early twenties, refused to have the limits to her life prescribed for her, went on to write books and films: utterly righteous and inspirational

Everything I have read by Kathleen Jamie

Most uncategorisable & yet bloody brilliant book:

Nina Simone’s Gum by Warren Ellis

Novel that disappointed:

Paradais by Fernanda Melchor

The year’s most striking fictional character:

Alicia (Stella Maris)

…and the most-dastardly villain(s):

The ruling, land-owning, worker-supressing, profit-robbing class (again)

The best authors encountered for the first time this year:

Jon Fosse, Louise Kennedy, Claire Keegan, Adania Shibli, Kathleen Jamie

The most beautifully written novel:

Aliss at the Fire

Poetry most enjoyed: 

Terence Hayes: for his poems and his performance of them

The Overhaul by Kathleen Jamie – it was all people promised me it would be.

How it Will Happen by Lisa Blackwell – just for how much it took me by surprise

Pepper Seed by Malika Booker 

The Dogs by Michael Stewart – for the poetry alongside the art, the concept, the “everything” of it.

Anthology of the Year:

More Fiya:  A New Collection of Black British Poetry

Reading: Fiction

Bernstein, Sarah: Study for Obedience

Chandler, Raymond: The Lady in The Lake

De Beauvoir, Simone: The Inseperables

Ditlevsen, Tove: The Trouble with Happiness

Duggal, Sharon: Should We Fall Behind

Fagin, Jenni: Hex

Fitzgerald, Penelope: The Bookshop

Fosse, Jon: Aliss at the Fire (x2); A Shining

Gaitskill, Mary: Bad Behaviour

Gonzalez, Tomas: Difficult Light

Grubb, Davis: The Night of the Hunter

Hedayat, Sadeq: Blind Owl

Holliday, SJI: Violet

Jonasson, Ragnar: Outside

Kang, Han: Greek Lessons

Kawakami, Mieko: All the Lovers in the Night

Keegan, Claire: Antarctica

Kennedy, Louise: Trespasses

Kundera, Milan: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Laxness, Haldor: Fish Can Sing

McCarthy, Cormac: The Passenger; Stella Maris; Outer Dark; The Counsellor (screenplay)

Melchor, Fernanda: Paradais

Mishima, Yukio: Beautiful Star

Rankin, Ian: Rather be the Devil

Shibli, Adania: Minor Detail

Smith, Ben: Doggerland

Soyinka, Wole: Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth

Stuart, Douglas: Young Mungo

Non-Fiction

Polly Barton: Porn

Tom Blass: The Naked Shore of the North Sea

John Burnside: Aurochs & Auks

Angela Y Davis: Women, Race & Class

Virginie Despentes: King Kong Theory

Joan Didion: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Warren Ellis: Nina Simone’s Gum

Friedrich Engels: The Condiition of the Working Class in England 

Annie Ernaux: Exteriors; The Years

Kathleen Jamie: Findings; Sightlines

Linton Kwesi Johnson: Time Come

Nick Hayes: The Book of Trespass

Mark Hodkinson: No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy

Mark Lanegan: Devil in a Coma

Audre Lorde: Your Silence Will Not Protect You

Helen Mort: A Line Above the Sky

Jaqueline Rose: The Plague

Bobby Sands: Writings from Prison

Rebecca Solnit: Recollections of my Non-Existence

Poetry

Anthology: More Fiya:  A New Collection of Black British Poetry

Anthology: In the Hour of War: Poetry From Ukraine

Raymond Antrobus: Perseverance

Lisa Blackwell: How it Will Happen

Malika Booker: Pepper Seed

George Mackay Brown: The Storm

Zakia Carpenter-Hall: Into the Same Sound Twice

Jo Clement: Outlandish

Charlotte Eichler: Swimming Between Islands

Ella Frears: Shine, Darling

Terrence Hayes: so to speak; American Sonnets…

Ian Humphries: Tormentil

Kathleen Jamie: The Overhaul

Anthony Joseph: Sonnets for Albert

Ilya Kaminsky: Dancing in Odessa

Rachel Long: My Darling From The Lions

Hannah Lowe: The KIds

Carola Luther: On the Way to Jerusalem Farm

Audrey Molloy: The Blue Cocktail

Don Patterson: The Arctic

Alice Oswald: Nobody (x3)

Arthur Rimbaud: Seasons in Hell

Michael Stewart: The Dogs

Hannah Sullivan: was it for this

Marina Tsvetaeva: Brides of Ice