Roy's Best Books 2023
Roy's Best Books 2023
Some words I liked a lot this year.
This is my 8th annual December ramble about the books of my year. Not necessarily books that came out this year, but books I read (or heard) that moved me, taught me, made me cry or cracked me up. It kind of feels like I’m late with this year’s edition but hey—two-day shipping at your preferred online bookseller, right?
FICTION
Nowadays I often avoid reading the latest best-selling, prize-winning, must-read fiction that everyone’s talking about. Because over the years I’ve learned not to trust hype. I like to wait a few years to see if anyone’s still talking about the book. See if the title comes up in a discussion and someone says, God I loved that book, years after they read it, and they start talking about the character or scene that stuck with them. To me, that’s how you know. Not by critics’ reviews or book trailers or Reese Witherspoon. (However, if Ms Witherspoon is out there somewhere, this does not mean I wouldn’t want MY book on your list someday! Just sayin’).
But this year I read two of the latest novels from two big names in fiction—because I had loved previous work by both authors, and because multiple writer-friends flat-out raved about these new books. And now I will rave about them myself.
Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver is the best novel I’ve read in years. The best overall reading experience that delivers in all facets. The sense of total immersion in a world, the intense rooting interest in a main character, the epic scope of historical context, the deep underlying interrogation of the real world, and the sheer delight in artful language. I can’t think of what more to ask from a novel. And, frankly I can say pretty much the same things about The Vaster Wilds, by Lauren Groff, although Groff’s tale delivers in its own particular way. Read them both, and see what you think.
NON-FICTION
The Gutenberg Revolution: How Printing Changed the Course of History, by John Man. Okay, I admit there are maybe three people reading this who could be marginally interested in this book. One of them is my father, a fellow ink-stained wretch as we used to say in the biz. And the others have similar or adjacent backgrounds. But, even if you don’t have ink and perhaps newsprint in your blood, or an old pica pole in a desk drawer at home, this is a fascinating blow-by-blow account of the twists and turns of fate, greed and genius that resulted in one of humankind’s most impactful technologies, on a par with gunpowder, the electric light or the personal computer.
BONUS NON-FICTION
Beatles 66: The Revolutionary Year, by Steve Turner. An amazingly detailed, month-by-month tour through a year in which the world changed the Beatles and the Beatles changed the world. I went Audible on this one, and listened to most of it in the car on a longish drive to and from a writer’s retreat. It made for great company.
WORDCRAFT
Consider This: Moments in My Life After Which Everything was Different, by Chuck Palahniuk, author of the novel, Fight Club. This is a very different kind of craft book: personal, direct, funny, truth-telling, even illuminating at times. The subtitle hints at one of the biggest takeaways, because Palahniuk is referencing what he sees as the key piece of wisdom he has to pass on—in the end, write about the moment after which everything was different. If that gets your writer-brain running like a hamster, this book’s for you.
And in the GREAT BOOKS BY NICE FOLKS I KNOW category… Farsickness, by writer/teacher/editor Joshua Mohr, who is a huge favorite among scribblers here on the UpperLeft Coast. This slightly demented short novel—a collaboration with Josh’s ten-year-old daughter Ava—seems to live somewhere between the old Fractured Fairy Tales cartoons from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and a Guillermo del Toro film, and this juxtaposition of innocence beside horror is only enhanced by Ava’s charmingly bloody illustrations. But underneath all of that is a heart-wrenching journey through the deepest kind of trauma and regret to somewhere resembling hope. Which is exactly what readers usually get from Josh’s work.
That’s all for this year, folks. Remember, like Stephen King said…
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”