My Year in Reading
My Favorite Book
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
S.A. Cosby writes Southern noir that I cannot get enough of. In All the Sinners Bleed, Titus is doing his best to serve his community, deal with his demons, and catch a serial killer terrorizing his hometown. As the first Black sheriff, he is proud of what he has achieved but change comes slow in a small town and not everyone welcomes the new sheriff and the change he represents. As Titus tries to unravel the mystery of the serial killer, he finds that the past is always lurking in the South, haunting and horrifying. Cosby writes gritty and energetic prose. He really gets into the marrow of his characters. You can feel Titus’s pride as he gets dressed for work and the weariness of dealing with so much bullshit despite his accomplishments. Cosby is also deft at creating flawed characters without ever letting us forget that we’re all human and mostly doing the best we can. Most importantly, Cosby is one hell of a storyteller. I did not want to put this book down. When I was done, I wanted his next book, immediately.
My Second Favorite Book of the Year
Family Meal by Bryan Washington
I read Family Meal in a day, hungrily returning to it every chance I got. At the heart of this novel is a man trying to recover from profound grief after his lover dies tragically. But it's also about chosen families and love and fucking and finding your place in the world after trauma shifts your center of gravity. Like S.A. Cosby, Washington is an intoxicating storyteller and his characters, especially Cam, Kai, and TJ have a satisfying depth to them. I would read three hundred more pages about their lives. The ending falters a bit but that should not deter you from embracing this beautiful novel, wholeheartedly. I sure did.
The Rest of My Favorites
Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones (Elegant, Intelligent)
The Guest by Emma Cline (GIRL, WTF)
Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe (Brilliant, Incisive)
The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis (So Many Bad Decisions)
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward (Epic, Intimate, Haunting)
Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J. Ryan Stradal (Charming AF)
Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang (Nearly Perfect)
Excellent Books We Read in the Audacious Book Club
Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor
The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley
Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H
Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith and Migration by Alejandra Oliva
Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond
Witness: Stories by Jamel Brinkley
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter
Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter
The Memoir that Made Me Want to Punch Justin Timberlake in the Face a Minimum of Eleven Times Because, Honestly
The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
The Truly Imaginative, Terrifying Because it Could Happen Dystopian Novel
Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
A Memoir That Flummoxed Me a Bit
You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith
The Eery, Haunting War Novel by a Former Student
The Militia House by John Milas
A Memoir About Antarctica and Climate Change and Motherhood
The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth by Elizabeth Rush
The Unhinged (in the Best Possible Way) Domestic Thriller that Really Had Me Talking Back to the Book, Loudly
Everyone Here is Lying by Shari Lapena
A Charming Graphic Memoir about Heartbreak and Finding a Way Back
I Always Think It’s Forever: A Love Story Set in Paris as Told by an Unreliable but Earnest Narrator by Timothy Goodman
The Poetry Collection Where Every Poem Was Astonishing
Chrome Valley by Mahogany L. Browne
A Collection of Poems I Did Not Really Understand
Pacific Power and Light by Michael Dickman
A Meditative Book About Motherhood, Family, Pandemics and a Warming Planet
The Light Room by Kate Zambreno
An Intense and Formally Innovative Memoir
Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Calculation by Camonghne Felix
Another Hilarious, Often Incredibly Moving Essay Collection from One of the Best Writers
Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby
An Incisive Polemic on Cultural Attitudes Toward Fatness That Is a Must-Read
Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia by Kate Manne
Books I Read About Palestine and Israel to Better Understand
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit
The Hundred Years War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
An Uneven Memoir that Makes Valuable Points About How We Judge the Poor for the Same Human Decisions Everyone Makes
Class by Stephanie Land
An Absorbing, Sprawling, Wonderfully Written (Forthcoming) Novel About the Building of the Panama Canal
The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez
The Perfect Novel I Re-Read All the Time
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
2023 was a weird year in reading. I started a lot of books I didn’t finish. As a completist I will eventually finish them but I struggled to find books I wanted to stay with and lose myself in. So many books were just… lackluster, often boring. Sometimes, when you look at book-related social media, it seems like everyone loves every book but that is not realistic. And it isn’t honest. Not every book is good. This is, of course, entirely subjective; it is not a moral affront to admit that sometimes, for whatever reason, you didn’t like a given book. I thought about this a lot this year as Goodreads imploded. I’ve been using the site for… gosh, at least fifteen years now. I use it to log my reading and share my thoughts on the books I’ve consumed. My reviews there are never formal. As I once told an author, who sent me an angry missive after I shared my honest, mostly positive thoughts about his book, “This is my personal Goodreads account, not the New York Times Book Review.” Also Goodreads is for readers. All writers should write that on a Post-It and carry it with them, everywhere.