My favourite reads of 2023
- December 21, 2023 -This year my to-read pile grew even more. I have a library of unread books growing in my apartment, but it’s fine. I like that I have all this knowledge waiting to be cultivated.
This year I read good books, but I didn’t read any soul-shattering books compared to last year. I’m going to need to create a list of soul-shattering books to read in 2024. The thing is those books I read in 2022 came to me on an impulse buy and were all books already out long enough to be in paperback. Those books were of the category: the right book at the right time. But I digress, now on to my favourite five for this year, in no particular order.
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century – Alice Wong
This book gave me recognition of my life with a disability and chronic illness. It’s a collection of essays by various people of various disabilities and subjects. I found comfort in many of these essays, they made me feel less alone. Even tho it’s about living in the United States with a disability, the lived experience is the same. I wrote a more expansive review on my blog.
Storytelling itself is an activity, not an object. Stories are the closest we can come to shared experience.
—Harriet McBryde Johnson, Too Late to Die Young: Nearly True Tales from a Life (2006)
The Only One Left – Riley Sager
Mystery thrillers set in the 80’s are addictive. Add to that a gothic house, bad weather, and a murder mystery. Irresistible. Almost the same vibes as The Sun Down Motel. Whereas that one is not set in the 80’s, this one is. Of course, I read this one in one sitting, too hard to put down.
“You’re never alone when there’s a book nearby,” she used to say. “Never ever.”
― Riley Sager, The Only One Left
Yellowface – R.F. Kuang
I bought this book the moment it was available in bookstores. The premise only was enough for me: “So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese labourers to the British and French war efforts during World War I.”
June is an unreliable narrator, at every turn you find out she lied or she glossed over the facts. While this book is about racism and cultural appropriation — It’s a dark comedy and train crash you can’t stop watching. It’s also a critique of the book publishing world. I found it an excellent read.
“Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop – Satoshi Yagisawa, Eric Ozawa (Translator)
This book was an impulse buy while I was browsing at the bookstore. I didn’t even realize it was available before publishing day at this bookstore. To me, these Japanese contemporary fictions are like a warm bowl of ramen, utterly comforting.
When Takako’s boyfriend breaks up with her, she accepts her eccentric uncle’s offer to live above his bookshop. Satoru inherited his secondhand books bookshop from his father and has been running the shop for years.
While Takako is living there and helping out running the shop she develops a love for literature while meeting various kind people. Satoru also gets a shock when his wife suddenly returns after being gone for years.
It’s funny. No matter where you go, or how many books you read, you still know nothing, you haven’t seen anything. And that’s life.
― Satoshi Yagisawa, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir
Another book that has been out for a couple of years that I impulsively decided to read. I don’t read a lot of science fiction, but this year I read a total of three including this one.
“Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission–and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.”
Ryland wakes up in a spaceship without any memory of how he ended up there. He doesn’t even remember his name. While he tries to figure out facts and his memory returns little by little we find out that humanity and the rest of the universe are at stake.
I found this book fascinating and terrifying, because while what is threatening humanity could never happen(?) neither can a rescue mission on this scale. It’s about people fighting for the greater good and sacrificing their lives, hoping that the earth will survive and that humanity will live on.
Ryland is a dude I would have liked to know in real life. He’s stupid smart and funny. You feel for him on his quest to save the earth and humanity.
Once again I’m struck by melancholy. I want to spend the rest of my life studying Eridian biology! But I have to save humanity first. Stupid humanity. Getting in the way of my hobbies.
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary
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