My ten favorite new-ish books I read in 2023 (unranked; in alphabetical order by author’s last name):
Maria Bamford, Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult
She’s such a singular comedian and presence that you go into it hoping it’ll fully capture that voice on the page; it does, even if I almost wish I waited for the audiobook. Still, her delivery’s only a facet of what makes her so unique. While early on, she emphasizes that this parody of self-help books is indeed a parody, it’s not totally lacking in useful advice—a tightrope where she balances laughs and their not-so-funny origins effortlessly, just as she does in much of her standup work.
Emma Cline, The Guest
Cline’s second novel is as composed, subtle and biting as any fiction Joan Didion (see below) ever wrote, even if it’s decidedly of today rather than any kind of throwback or homage. Her titular protagonist, a directionless Millennial sponging off of anyone she can find (or trick into aiding her) comes off as a more serious version as one of the characters on the great, late TV series Search Party; Cline’s also shrewd enough to lace some dark humor within her thriller structure.
A.M. Homes, The Unfolding
I’ve been waiting nearly a decade for Homes (May We Be Forgiven) to release another novel. I can’t say I was expecting this, a relatively compact what-if about the machinations of a network of conservatives planning to “take back America” after the first Obama election; however, I was not surprised to discover how humane and complex she renders these indefensible characters, presenting an extensive understanding of how they got where they are without at all excusing them for their actions.
Evelyn McDonnell, The World According to Joan Didion
Even more compact, McDonnell sidesteps the usual biographical doorstop for something more closely resembling a critical work about her subject, partially in the way Rob Sheffield did a few years ago for The Beatles. What Didion means to McDonnell and, more significantly to the culture she reported on and invited her readers to view through an ever-distinct lens is what drives these reflections and observations; it was enough to make me want to revisit Slouching Towards Bethlehem immediately.
Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
This Irish author’s long-awaited fourth novel is nearly his longest, definitely most ambitious and possibly darkest (a real feat coming from the guy best known for Skippy Dies.) Yes, it’s an epic tome about a dysfunctional family but one where it really does take 600+ pages to peel back all of its layers and arrive at an expertly detailed comprehension of where everything went wrong and the weight of what would be lost if it were to end tragically. Murray’s prose here can be frustrating in its lack of compromise but also admirable for that same reason.
Alex Pappademas and Joan Le May, Quantum Criminals
Not every band warrants a book about them, but one as popular and simultaneously cultish and divisive as Steely Dan surely does. This picks apart their distinct jazz-pop and personal history via short chapters about characters populating their tunes (like “Deacon Blues”, “Peg” and “Josie”, for starters) and the other characters who wrote and performed them: Donald, Walter and a revolving cast of bandmates, session musicians and influential figures. With Le May’s drawings enhancing Pappademas’ insightful prose, it’s a hoot if you’re a fan and might even convert those few listeners on the fence.
Ann Patchett, Tom Lake
Patchett’s latest is another novel whose ambitious structure consists of a series of gradually revealed puzzle pieces where their assemblage is as intriguing as the complete picture they eventually form. As the narrator relays a story from her past as a summer stock actress to her three daughters on their family farm during Covid lockdown, Patchett maintains the momentum of these parallel narratives with a deft hand while also exploring the notion of performance, both onstage and off.
Ian Penman, Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors
I’ve been looking for a new book (or any old one, for that matter) on New German Cinema director Rainer Werner Fassbinder for some time. Penman’s short but still bountiful mosaic of essays (some of them a sentence or two long) is a new way of viewing this iconoclast: it considers how an artist’s dense body of work (in this case, 40-odd films over a 13 year period) lives on decades after his death and continues to reveal new facets and contexts to those revisiting or for the first time discovering them.
Michael Schulman, Oscar Wars
Just when you think you didn’t need another book about the Academy Awards, this The New Yorker contributor comes out with perhaps the best one on them, or at least the most entertaining and relevant as the institution reaches its century mark. Focusing on about a dozen of the most notable editions (Midnight Cowboy’s win, the Snow White/Rob Lowe disaster, the La La Land/Moonlight mixup), it’s a fizzy read acknowledging the utter ridiculous of the Oscars while also making the case for their continued relevance.
Matt Singer, Opposable Thumbs
In all of its iterations, Siskel & Ebert was both a fun watch and innovative in transforming how we consume cinema and connect with others in talking about it. This book shows that what transpired behind the scenes was just as compelling as the show itself. It seems so simple now, the notion of placing two highly competitive critics, both with outsized personalities in a room together and giving them free reign to argue about movies (and everything else.) Singer reveals the whole story in a compulsively readable account recommended for both film and TV enthusiasts.
Here’s my complete 2023 Booklist, with titles in chronological order of when I finished reading them (starred entries are books I’ve re-read):
- Douglas Coupland, Binge
- Ramzy Alwakeel, How We Used Saint Etienne To Live
- Warren Ellis, Nina Simone’s Gum
- Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
- Paul Murray, The Mark and The Void*
- George Saunders, Liberation Day
- Larry Widen and Judi Anderson, Silver Screens: A Pictorial History of Milwaukee’s Movie Theaters
- David Mitchell, Number 9 Dream
- Eve Babitz, Eve’s Hollywood
- Matthew Horton, George Michael’s Faith (33 1/3 series)
- Andrew Sean Greer, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
- David Sheppard, On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno*
- Tim Blanchard, Like Magic In The Streets
- Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge
- Shawn Levy, In On The Joke
- Craig Brown, 150 Glimpses of The Beatles
- Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise
- Michael Schulman, Oscar Wars
- Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos*
- Haruki Murakami, Men Without Women
- Charles Bramesco, Colors of Film
- Joseph Lanza, Easy Listening Acid Trip
- Ian Penman, Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors
- Emma Cline, The Guest
- Samantha Irby, Quietly Hostile
- Donna Tartt, The Little Friend
- Kent Jones (ed.), Olivier Assayas
- Ted Gioia, Music: A Subversive History
- Bill Bryson, I’m a Stranger Here Myself*
- Pauline Kael, The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of…
- Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero Of This Book
- Geoff Dyer, Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It
- Tracey Thorn, Bedsit Disco Queen*
- Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land
- Adam Levin, Kodachrome Milwaukee
- Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy
- Alex Pappademas and Joan Le May, Quantum Criminals
- Mike Doughty, I Die Each Time I Hear The Sound
- John Hodgman, Vacationland*
- A.M. Homes, The Unfolding
- Joshua Ferris, A Calling For Charlie Barnes
- Sara Gruen, Water For Elephants
- Karl Ove Knausgaard, Autumn
- Ann Patchett, Tom Lake
- Sam Wasson and Jeanine Basinger, Hollywood: An Oral History
- David Wondrich, Imbibe!
- Dale Peck, The Garden of Lost and Found*
- Judd Apatow, Sicker In The Head
- Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg*
- Kenneth Womack, Solid State
- Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
- Maria Bamford, Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult
- Don Lee, Lonesome Lies Before Us
- Matt Singer, Opposable Thumbs
- Stanley Elkin, Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers
- Werner Herzog, Every Man For Himself and God Against All
- Evelyn McDonnell, The World According to Joan Didion
- Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem*
- Zadie Smith, The Fraud
Haunted Jukebox 