My 2023 Reading List

This was not a good reading year to begin with, and then it went seriously downhill after the October 7th massacre in Israel. I had no ability to focus and stay grounded. In December, particularly on our Hannukah trip to Yelapa, Mexico, I was finally able to take comfort in reading again. It helps enormously if I turn my phone off and don’t have it anywhere near me when I read — far too many distractions. On good days, I am hyper aware of reading as therapy, as breath, as pause. On bad days, I am consumed only by reading snippets on my phone and go to bed hyper aware of how much time I have wasted, and how little I have really learned and absorbed. These last couple weeks, I’ve put a good dent in New Yorker magazines that I hadn’t gotten to in months, and re-learned the value of turning my phone off on Shabbat. I also deleted Twitter (X) and NextDoor from my phone — complete zap of my mind and such a waste of emotional energy (the antisemitic posts and “false news” on Twitter became truly unbearable, and my armchair activism was a useless activity that only caused me mental and emotional harm). I’m not big on New Year resolutions, but am committing to spending far more time doing serious reading in 2024 than I did this year.

Here is the list:

Aviv, Rachel. Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us

Barry, Sebastian. Old God’s Time

Bolin, Alice. Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession

Carr, David. The Night of the Gun

Cobain, Kurt. The Last Interview

Crace, Jim. Being Dead

Crews, Harry. A Childhood: The Biography of a Place

Cullhead, Elin. Euphoria

de Beauvoir, Simone. A Very Easy Death

Dederer, Claire. Monsters

____________. Love and Trouble

Duras, Marguerite, The Lover

Everett, Percival. The Trees

Goldberg, Danny. Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain

Harding, Paul. This Other Eden

___________. Enon

Hemingway, Ernest. Across the River and Into the Trees

Hornby, Nick. About a Boy

Kang, Han. The Vegetarian

Keefe, Patrick Radden. Empire of Pain (half!)

Keegan, Claire. Foster

Lehane, Denis. Small Mercies

Lerner, Ben. The Topeka School

Malcolm, Janet. Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory

McBride, James. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

McEwan, Ian. The Comfort of Strangers

Moore, Lorrie. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home

Nunez, Sigrid. The Friend (re-read)

O’Farrell, Maggie. Hamnet

Oz, Amos. My Michael

Smith, Clint. How the Word Is Passed

Thomas, Joseph Earl. Sink

Verghese, Abraham. The Covenant of Water

Wellons, Jay. All That Moves Us

Whitehead, Colson. Harlem Shuffle

Williamson, Elizabeth. Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle For Truth