I never want to boil my reading experiences down to numbers and data. But truth be told I live to type my current page number into my reading-tracking app. And it is nice to look back and remind myself of the books I’ve been through in a given season. As someone who grew up with more translations of the Bible in his house than novels, I cherish the extra attention I can give to my library stacks.
I read 34 books in 2023. Twenty were fiction, mostly novels, and fourteen were poetry collections. Star-ratings are not gospel, and between January and December I gave nothing less than 4.25 stars. Maybe I’m easy to please, maybe I give bad writing the benefit of the doubt. I think it’s safe to say I loved everything I read last year. None of us (including myself) have time for me to babble on about over thirty books. So what follows is a list of five poetry books and five books of fiction that I really, really loved. They are not ranked, just listed, and I’ve tried to keep things spoiler-free. Thank you in advance for reading.
Poetry
The Next Monsters by Julie Doxsee
What can be said about this collection, these poetic mini-essays? Are they surreal, absurd? Devastating, sometimes whimsical? Are they metaphorical, allegorical, personal? Yes and no and yes again, and they’re phenomenal. The key to Doxsee’s work is the teetering feeling, the easy fall into tender love or uncomfortable violence from the same balancing point.
Green River Valley by Robert Lashley
All I wrote in my Storygraph review for this collection was, “Simply incredible,” and I meant it with every fiber of my being. I was fortunate enough to hear the poet himself read at Ghost Town open mic in Southwest Washington. His reading could have knocked me out of my chair. The poems have a deep timbre and take you on an effortless glide into the realities of life in a city changed and changed, over and again, and yet some things stay the same.
In what is arguably his most personal selection of poems to date, Christopher Luna removes the proverbial mask and lets us see everything. The host and creator of Ghost Town, an open mic series that will be celebrating 20 years of uncensored poetry in 2024, and he is a mainstay in the VanWa (and Portland, I’d argue) poetry scene. But how does one deal with being a local celebrity, and a poet? Speaking to many people and addressing the man in the mirror — are these the same thing, or vastly different? Let Luna put his exposed soul on the line and show you.
I am lucky to know Christopher personally, call him a friend, and this recommendation is inevitably filled with my bias, but I do not care. It’s a great collection.
In my review for Lucy Wreck I wrote, “Limón has some stellar poems in this collection, and even the shorter, pithiest ones are still good,” and believe me this is a compliment. This was my first read of her work, and I was not sure what to expect, I only knew that she became the United States’ poet laureate. One of my first favorite poets was Billy Collins, so I knew I could like well-received, popular, or let’s even say palatable poetry, but I was still skeptical. She proved my skepticism wrong. There’s a lot of heart and well-earned cleverness in Wreck. I was happy I read and quickly picked up another collection of hers (and I’m still waiting for a third I put on hold with the library).
Bells In Winter by Czesław Miłosz
Incredible poetry translated from Polish. The dust jacket says that the translation doesn’t do the original poems justice, and I find this hard to believe because they’re so good. Miłosz and his avant garde, sweeping poetry have stolen my heart. No wonder he won the Nobel Prize. This was one of those books where I was simply sitting in a café reading it and feeling my blood pumping and noticing my eyes watering and becoming a little more human for having been with the poems for a while.
Note: the link for this book leads to the Internet Archive copy because I thought it was out of print. If you’re alright with purchasing through Amazon, there may be that option. But as with all of these, if your library has it, then it’s yours for a time.
Fiction
A marriage and family in a downward, uncontrollable spiral. Two people in love and hatred with each other, inseparable. Three children at the mercy of their troubled parents. The harsh cold of Minnesota, the sharp tongues of pretentious intellectuals, and the realities of being Indigenous today. For a short novel this is a powerhouse. This is my first Erdrich and I am looking to read more of her work, just not sure what to read next.
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
Reviewing, explaining, or just recommending a book like this in a paragraph is impossible. I had trouble hitting a stride with this novel, mostly because I was trying to read in short bursts during work breaks at my job. It wants slow, careful attention. For myself that meant reading for at least an hour to truly sink into it. The narrative: sprawling, full of vignettes where people our protagonist Billy Parham meets on his journeys suddenly take over and share their own tales, small epics. It’s gruesome and sad. The vocabulary is daunting. For me this was not easy to read but rewarding.
Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson
Possibly the best a novella can be. Tight and concise. Johnson wields a deft ability to jump from period to period of Robert Grainier’s life, and shift focus from him to any one of the unique people he meets in the panhandle or the Northwest (similar, I guess, to McCarthy’s book in that way, but I wouldn’t say their writing styles share too much in common). Train Dreams is an image of a specific time, and place. It is a whole life. It is grief and our inability to comprehend our own lives. It is a great book.
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
This had been a sort of forever-to-be-read book in my ever growing list of books to get to “eventually”. I remember reading a segment of it in high school. My deep appreciation for his writing came after reading In The Lake Of The Woods, a now formative work to me. Reading The Things this year felt like the right book came to me at the right time. O’Brien’s deceptively simple language simply works. And this book is an essential read, I think. It’s not easy to put the horror and desensitization of war into words but O’Brien does it, and this fiction blurring the lines between truth and felt-truth will stick with me in my mind for years to come.
Tinfoil Butterfly by Rachel Eve Moulton
Gripping, emotionally devastating — hey, listen. I know these words are thrown around plenty, but here’s the thing: the whole last 100 pages had my eyes aching with that painful hum of oncoming tears behind them. It’s a well-written, creepy, tense book with a delicate heart underpinning everything. The primary setting, the Black Hills, is perfect. The characters? Disconcerting, losing their tether to reality at times. And it is so, so sad but I shouldn’t tell you any more.
Honorable Mention
Via the new audiobooks narrated by Andy Serkis, I finally read The Lord Of The Rings. The unabridged audiobooks were a fantastic way for me to enjoy the story without getting distracted or zoning out during the lore-heavy parts.
This Year
I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.
There’s no strict plan for my reading in 2024. Or rather I should say in general I’m trying to loosen up. If I can read 25 books, that’ll be cool. I’m hoping to read some more nonfiction. Also I’ve been on a bit of a David Sedaris kick, but that may be a newsletter for another time.
Thank You!