Life’s too short to make yourself read books you don’t like
I'm writing a book! Plus best reads of 2023
If you look back over a year, it’s amazing how many things happen. How many things you’ve accomplished, and maybe don’t even recognise or remember. Even just all the books you’ve read. These were the best things I read in 2023 - and one book I gave up on.
My book of the year that I loved so much: The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer. It’s so, so great! I just loved the optimism in it, and of course the fact that it was a book about people who love books. Plus, a mysterious writer living on a private island! What’s not to love.
Currently reading: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabreille Zevin. I like it, but it’s also a prime example of ‘tell don’t show’ and it’s interesting to see someone just go with that instead of writing as if you’re a detective leaving clues for your readers.
A non-fiction/memoir book I loved which was a slow, unfolding kind of read: Water, Wood and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town by Hannah Kirshner.
Memoir: Constellations by Sinéad Gleeson. “I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal. A map, a tracing of connections and a guide to looking at things from different angles.”
A book I made a heroic effort with & then stopped reading was The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, by David Abram. It’s something I would have loved to have already read, but whenever I opened it, my brain just turned to static mush.
Wicked fun reads: Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome, which I listened to as an audiobook, and it was well worth it! Probably even better than just reading the text yourself. Also: Undead and Unwed by MaryJanice Davidson - the first in a series of frothy paranormal romance vampire books about a shoe-obsessed queen of the vampires.
Literary fiction vs genre fiction = reading difficult books is great until it isn’t
I’ve always had this fascination with books that are deep and arty. I loved Ulysses, for example! Like, passionately loved it. I remember reading the Sirens chapter on a bus and just being so excited like my brain was full of sparkling bees. But then I just went too far - maybe because I studied creative writing under literary fiction writer Mike McCormack and was so in awe of him and his work that it’s the only kind of thing I wanted to read or write.
This resulted in my ‘to read’ pile being full of depressing-as-hell books that felt like a noble slog through a beautifully crafted bog made out of words, while debating philosophy with the ghost of Ernest Hemingway. In wellies that leak.
Sure, I was probably ‘growing as a person’ - or not. I know sometimes that literary fiction writers’ despair about ‘an intelligent readership’ or the lack thereof, but this year I finally decided that hey, being intellectual about books is just too bloody hard sometimes. Surely reading is meant to be fun? I’ve read a lot of trash in my life (even books that changed me forever are seen as trash by some people) and there’s no need to be ashamed of that.
This way of thinking has freed up my writing practice! Shocking, I know. That and the fact that I work extensively with A.I. as a content creator in my day job, and so I’m more of an editor now than anything else.
I’m 15 pages into a new novel - only 210 to go! Hooray! What is it about? It features a secret code, a mysterious death in a quarry lake, and witchcraft. It’s set in Ireland.
What books have you read this year? And what books did you give up on? And why? Thank you for being here, and may the turning of the year bring you even more books!
Jessica
Loved this! One of my very favourite books at the moment is the sci-fi novella, A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (and its sequel A Prayer for the Crown Shy). Have you read it?