ABL #7: Every book I read in 2023
📚 Notes on a year of reading
Reading Notes for paid subscribers focuses on my self-guided study of burnout and stress, but I read so much more than just self-help and cultural critiques.
Back in 2019 when I started my burnout recovery, I set a wildly ambitious goal to read 24 books that year. Self-help aside, I missed the summers when my sisters and I would max out our mom’s library card with novels on every visit, and I wanted to add more of that kind of play into my life. I decided to read one novel and one nonfiction book per month, for no other reason than I thought I “should” be able to do so.
I don’t recommend setting wildly ambitious goals for yourself while burnt out. I fell so short of my own quota that year, but I’ve continued to set the same goal every year since. Each time I’ve gotten closer and closer, but never quite made it until last year, when I somehow managed to squeeze in an extra two.
In total, I read 19 novels and seven nonfiction books, with the most in October (five) and the fewest in June and July (zero).
This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org. Purchases made through these links may earn me a small commission.
1. Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies: And Other Rituals to Fix Your Life, from Someone Who's Been There
Devoured, and coming soon to a Reading Notes near you! I loved Tara Schuster’s flippant, irreverent writing style, and have referred back to this book constantly over the past year for advice on office decor, writing thank-you notes, and more. At certain points this book feels like an affirmation; at others, an instruction manual or a cautionary tale. The chapters are also itty bitty, which makes them highly snackable.
2. Beach Read
So good I wrote my first official edition of this newsletter about it! Don't let the title fool you, as I did. This isn’t a popcorn paperback you cram into your beach bag to halfheartedly flip through while your partner naps. Deep down, it’s actually a productivity book.
3. Austenland
The best way I can describe this book is if Bravo launched a “Bachelor in Pemberly” spinoff. It’s an OK read if you’re looking for something light and easy but have seen the 2005 Pride and Prejudice too recently to go again. This is Book 1 in a series, but I didn’t find it compelling enough to track down the second one.
4. Claire of the Sea Light
I chose this from my local library’s “blind date with a book” basket based solely on the picture of chocolates on the cover. The story wasn’t gooey at all, but it was bittersweet, and I got completely caught up in Edwidge Danticat’s writing style. This book has a beautifully roundabout narrative that reminds me of the sea, itself a central character: folding in on itself, then pulling back to give readers a wider narrative view, then rushing back in on itself again like waves.
5. Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close
If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to be a better friend, I recommend this book by best friends Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman. I’ve often felt like I never learned how to make or keep real friends growing up because I was homeschooled until high school and my family moved every 3-6 years. There also weren’t many close or lasting adult friendships modeled for me, maybe in part because of those moves. This book was a helpful peek into how the dynamics of an intentional, sometimes long-distance friendship change over the years. I’m excited to revisit it later this year in Reading Notes.
6. Small World
A “heartfelt” novel about two sisters who learn to navigate their relationship as post-divorce adult roommates by finally addressing childhood resentments. This reminded me of my own sisters, and I intend to recommend it to them.
7. The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life From Work
If you’ve been rethinking the role work plays in your life, this book is for you. I spent more time with this one than any other this year: I was an advance reader last spring, interviewed the author,
for its publication, and shared my reading notes here and here.
8. A Burst of Light and Other Essays
I wanted to read this as a reference point for Audre Lorde’s writings on self-care, especially her famous quote, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” But I timed it badly and read it while planning my wedding without my mom, who died of cancer a little over seven years ago. The bulk of this book is made up of diary entries, and that combined with its emphasis on Lorde’s experience living with cancer threw me for an unexpected emotional loop. However, this nontraditional approach to essay structure was fun to read, and I plan to try it myself.
Because I borrowed this from my local library, I don’t think I was able to engage as deeply with the text as I wanted to — I couldn't highlight the text, for example, or return to various passages later in the year as my thoughts gelled. And I don't think this is a one-and-done read. think it’s one you need to sit with and digest, and then come back to it. As a result, I have a new personal policy: The library is only for books I don’t plan to take notes on.
9. The Immortalists
I picked this book because I share a first name with the author, but it ended up being my second favorite novel I read this year. Four siblings learn the dates of their respective deaths at the beginning of the book and spend the rest of it either resigning themselves or trying to avoid their impending demise. The story is agonizing and beautiful and haunts me to this day. Content warning: suicide.
10. Circe
You might remember Circe from The Odyssey, but that’s only Odysseus’s side of things. And really, what can one man tell you about the life of an immortal witch? Circe gives you the full story, from a refreshingly feminine POV.
Reading this sent me on a quest to track down the specific edition of The Odyssey I read in my freshman lit/philosophy class (I foolishly purged it during one of my subsequent moves and have regretted doing so ever since). This year I might also revisit the Percy Jackson and the Olympians YA book series — book two was my tween self’s introduction to the character of Circe, and the series has now been adapted into a TV series streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
11. Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Iconic Poet
Confession: Until 2019, I couldn't stand Emily Dickinson. In my high school and college lit classes I found her poetry agonizingly boring and obnoxiously laden with em dashes (hello pot, meet kettle!). I was also less than sensitive to her agoraphobia: how could someone who didn’t leave her house have anything worthwhile to say?
Apple TV’s Dickinson changed that, breathing life and relatability into this stiff character who for me had only lived through stilted stanzas about bees and birds (not to be confused with the birds and the bees). And now that I, too, lived in a small town and just wanted to be left alone to my gardens and writing, by the time I saw Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life at the library, I was ready for her. Getting to know her through our shared interest in gardening has given me more respect for her literary work, and now I’m going back through some of my old lit anthologies, digging into the poems we never read in class and noting which flower friends we share.
12. Sign Here
Very much if The Good Place met Good Omens, with a dash of Drop Dead Diva thrown in for good measure. This was one of the last books I read before my wedding in June so I don’t remember too much about it except that it provided a much-needed escape from the stresses of my own real world. Sometimes the only reason to read a book is to escape to a different world for a while and that is perfectly fine.
13. The Only Purple House in Town
Come for the emphatically purple cover; stay for the Victorian fixer-upper, its cast of queer found family, and their latent magical powers.
14. And Then There Were None
This was a book club pick from 2017 that I didn’t finish at the time, but read it in its entirety while on family vacation in August because I still had it on my phone. Going into it, all I knew about this book was that it was a famous classic and a baffling whodunnit. In fact, it’s the best-selling crime novel of all time and the sixth best-selling book in the world. But it’s got a history riddled with racism, as I learned is so common among Agatha Christie’s novels.
And Then There Were None has been published under three different titles over the years, two of which contained racial slurs that were repeated throughout the story (the original UK title was considered too offensive even by pre-WWII American standards). A minor character, who appears maybe three times, is described in blatantly antisemitic terms every time. These references aren’t just offensive; they’re also a distraction from the plot.
The Telegraph reported last year that HarperCollins worked with sensitivity readers to edit or remove offensive passages from several of Christie’s novels in editions from 2020 onward. The version I downloaded in 2017 had undergone at least some degree of sensitivity editing because the story’s central rhyme and the name of its island setting had been tweaked. But the title page still showed the outdated U.S. title, just in a smaller font and printed lower than the current one, and those antisemitic descriptions appeared, jarringly, throughout.
I’m a little embarrassed not to have known beforehand about this book’s history or the controversy surrounding its author, but I’m glad for the opportunities this is giving me to be more informed and intentional about the media I consume.
15. The Wishing Game
Although written for adults, this book shares elements with and reminds me of some of my YA favorites — a plucky heroine who has always felt out of place, rich world-building complete with a map at the front of the book, a buried scandal. I didn’t relate strongly to the theme of motherhood and fostering (and the relationships that hinge on those themes are weird to me) but the main storyline surrounding the titular game is consuming enough to make up for it.
16. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (and Three Stories)
I borrowed this from my best friend,
, when I house-and-pet sat for her in September. I wanted something I could finish quickly, given I was there for less than a week. It had to fit easily into my crammed purse for day-long outings. I’d never read any Truman Capote, but the idea of reading Breakfast at Tiffany’s while in New York tickled me. I was already being cliché this trip, systematically tracking down locations from all my favorite Meg Ryan films. Why not just commit to the bit and be a goofy tourist?Then I found myself pulling up Google Maps to trace the book’s horseback route through Central Park and excitedly noting where my path earlier that day had overlapped and crisscrossed. It was one of the best eerie feelings, and I’m glad I leaned into the cliché. I don’t think I would have connected as well with the material or that it would have been as real to me had I read it in any other place.
17. Anne of Green Gables
This series was one of my favorites as a kid, and I revisited it this fall as the leaves began to turn colors. It’s impossible to separate tree worship and Anne Shirley in my brain, and I flew through the first five books in the series in about a month. I’m cooling my jets there because the final two books focus more on Anne’s children and their stories than on her, but will likely read those this spring. If there’s anything L. M. Montgomery writes better than trees, it’s flowers.
18. Anne of Avonlea
19. Anne of the Island
20. Anne of Windy Poplars
21. Anne’s House of Dreams
This book’s setting is a departure from the others — a harbor town instead of wooded farms — so by this point, I was reading about beaches, not beeches. The imagery was all oceanic and shore-centric, and on the way home from spending Thanksgiving with my sister in Massachusetts I spotted “mackerel skies and mare’s tails” as referenced in this book.
22. Mexican Gothic
This book had been on my TBR list for a couple of years before I finally read it this fall, and let’s just say I wasn’t prepared. I expected it to fall more in line with the psychological thrillers I usually gravitate toward, but it’s solidly horror — the best of 2020, according to Goodreads Choice Awards voters. All the classic gothic elements are there: a gloomy creepy house high up a misty mountain, a reclusive and overbearing lord of the manor ruling a subdued staff, and a damsel in distress who’s not allowed to leave but suddenly doesn’t want to. The eugenics plot line was a nasty surprise twist (it’s introduced early, so not a spoiler), and the mushroom plot line evokes big Motherland: Fort Salem imagery. I was disappointed to have to return this one to the library, so thank you to my sister for donating her copy to my bookshelf!
23. None of This Is True
This one was every bit the psychological thriller I expected it to be, but the format was fun and new. The plot centers around a podcast, and some chapters are written as episodes of that podcast, complete with descriptions of B-roll video that plays behind the voice-over. This book reminded me of Peacock’s Based on a True Story and Netflix’s Dead to Me: when the call is coming from inside the house, who can you really trust??
24. Vampires of El Norte
This was my favorite novel I read this year. The story sucked me in as though it were the vampire in question and held me there until I had devoured it. The love story aspect is super satisfying — can they survive parental disapproval, class differences, a literal battle, an unforgiving landscape, and unidentified monsters? The setting reminds me of the old westerns I grew up watching. Although I don’t think it refers to them explicitly, the story evokes legends of El Chupacabra, making these vampires less Twilight glitter and more Stranger Things Demogorgon. With both this book and Mexican Gothic, I found myself googling English translations of new vocabulary and reading Wikipedia entries about eras of Mexican history that I learned so slant in school it barely counts.
25. All the Women in My Brain: And Other Concerns
This book was a birthday gift from Hattie, who has recommended it often and has excellent taste in books. If you liked Buy Yourself The Fcking Lilies* (No. 1 on this list), then you’ll like this one too. Betty Gilpin’s creative metaphors for modern womanhood will help each of your warring inner selves feel deeply seen. For a sampler, read her essay about stress, “The Time I Went Into a Full-Body Spasm for Six Days,” which is partially excerpted from the book. It lives on permanent bookmark in my Notion dashboard because I reread it at least annually.
26. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
This book was everywhere when it came out in 2019, just as I was starting my burnout recovery journey, and the title alone earned it an immediate spot on my anti-burnout TBR. But once I started reading this spring, I realized it’s not exactly burnout-friendly reading. The writing is brainy and academic. At 204 pages the book is average length, but the font is small and the paragraphs are long. It took a few chapters for me to get into it and a full seven months to finish. For comparison, I blew through the other nonfiction titles on this list in a week or three.
I still plan to cover this in Reading Notes this year because I do think it’s worth examining where we spend our attention and why. Having spent my time with it frequently distracted by the birds outside my window — which is maybe the whole point of the book — I’m looking forward to going back through it later with a keener focus.
I’m taking January slower this year — I caught a New Year’s case of COVID that I took as the universe telling me to rest more — but am spending it with some advance reader editions that I’m excited to share notes on later this year. I inhaled the first half of
‘s The Age of Magical Overthinking (out April 9) this week and have already caught myself falling prey to some of the cognitive biases she writes about.Thanks for reading! Talk soon,
💜 Chloe