Books of My Year, 2023

It was a big year for my Shakespeare reading, only coincidentally because it was the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio. Sundays are always good play-reading days, but I decided at one point to binge the Henrys.

Part one (Spring): Richard II; Henry IV part 1, part 2; Henry V

Part two (Fall): Henry VI part 1, part 2, part 3; Richard III

This is about the extent of my English history, so I’d guess Henry V was pretty much the best king. Also, in Shakespeare’s world, Joan of Arc was a villain (HVI-1). It’s all about perspective.

In addition to the books listed below I read a few magazine stories and poems and, less aesthetically pleasing, reports via PDF (to wit: January 6 Committee, USA v DJT). 

Unlike past years’ readings, I didn’t love everything here. In fact, a couple of things made me question how and why I majored in English (specifically the poetry and prose of Hart Crane, which I didn’t finish). I simply don’t have the mind for high, literary poetry. If I don’t know what you’re talking about, is it really all my fault?

That said, here’s what I read (omitting the PDF reports and stray stories and poems), roughly in chronological order:

1. The Sky Is Not the Limit (memoir) Neil deGrasse Tyson. Life as a smart, successful, charismatic Black man in America. Perspective matters even when your eye is on the sky.
2. Romeo and Juliet (play) William Shakespeare. I still think Juliet should have left with Romeo that night.
3. Living (screenplay) Kazuo Ishiguro. My favorite novelist. The film was quietly moving, emotionally restrained yet draining, like Ishiguro’s other tales. I’d read somewhere that the source material he adapted drew from ...
4. “The Death of Ivan Ilych” (short story) Leo Tolstoy. Sociology of ambition and frustration. 
5. Howard’s End (fiction) E. M. Forster. Liberated women and the men they try to save. 
6. America’s Presidents (biographical portraits), National Portrait Gallery. Good historical primer. As I learned in the Chernow history below, Washington had lots of portraits done. Lots.
   
   
   
7. The Philosopher’s Stone (quantum physics?) F. David Peat. Oh dear. I loved his other book, Einstein’s Moon. This one went totally over my head, and not in an inspiring, “look up at the sky” way.
8. Common Sense (political philosophy) Thomas Paine. Very witty. Interestingly, he had no love for the Quakers.
9. Come Looking (poetry collection) Dan Johnson. I still like the one about the Tastee Diner, but the rest made me want to turn in my English B.A. Huh?
10. Shadowplay (Shakespearean history) Clare Asquith. Was Shakespeare a propagandist trying to persuade Elizabeth I to go easy on the Catholics? Persuasive survey of the plays in the context of religious, social, and political history.
11. Utopia (political philosophy) Thomas More. Much like Plato’s Republic, and all “utopias,” really, it’s about structuring the irrational human condition. Is order better than just learning to deal with chaos?
12. The Gentleman Poet (Shakespearean fan fiction) Kathryn Johnson. An enjoyable romance with Shakespeare himself popping up in a Tempest-like milieu.
13. Ten Great One-Act Plays (theater) Moliere, Chekhov, Shaw, Williams et al. Since my copy is apparently from my college days, I recognized rereading the one I’d been assigned to perform in class, "Something Unspoken” (Tennessee Williams). I had no idea at the time it was about lesbianism. I guess I’ve always been clueless.
14. Alaska (travel) Bern Keating, National Geographic Society. It’s a nicely written and photographed travelogue from the 1960s. Educational, too. Did you know Alaska is both the Eastern-most and Western-most U.S. state? 
    
15. A Lesson Before Dying (fiction) Ernest J. Gaines. Endurance and dignity. Much in common with the deGrasse Tyson memoir (above). It’s important to experience the world from other perspectives.
16. As You Like It (play) Shakespeare. I do get some of the comedies mixed up. This is the one with the forest and the girl says something like, “Why talk we of fathers when there is such a man as Orlando?”
17. Stuart Little (children’s fiction) E. B. White. Some reading from my niece’s bookshelf. Charming, but the ending left me a bit unsettled. I won’t spoil it, though.
18. The Time Machine (science fiction) H. G. Wells. From my brother’s bookshelf. Better than the movie. The fact that the machine stays in one place and only travels through time satisfies my notions about how time travel should work. I’d rather do it without machinery, but even Quantum Leap’s brain wave transmissions need an accelerator.
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (fiction) Mark Haddon. Experiencing how someone navigates a chaotic (to them) world. Perspective, once again, matters. 
    
    
    
20. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (fiction) Mark Twain. Re-read from very long ago. Huck was the more interesting character, but he’s only beginning to evolve here.
21. Cradle to Cradle (environment) William McDonough and Michael Braungart. All about how to make the sustainable plastic paper out of which this book was manufactured. Truly the most difficult book I’ve ever had to hold in my hands, heavy, inflexible, exhausting. 
22. Contemporary American Short Stories selections: “Sex Education” by Dorothy Canfield, “A Shower of Gold” by Donald Barthelme. Both good, but show their age.
23. Beyond Gender (political memoir) Betty Friedan. The occasion of the book is a report on symposiums Friedan had organized in the 1990s, so a lot of this is quoted material. But the post-feminist point is that the whole battle of the sexes thing that mid-century feminism launched missed the point of what was happening to society and the economy. Women weren’t taking jobs from men; corporations were hiring more women so they could pay their workers less. Follow Robert Reich on X/Twitter now. Same thing Friedan was saying. 
24. The House of the Dead (autobiographical? fiction) F. Dostoevsky. A deeply humanistic look inside an abominable institution. 
25. Washington: A Life (biography, history) Ron Chernow. Probably not the best employer, but a damn good leader. 
26. Around the World in Eighty Days (science fiction) Jules Verne. Spoiler alert: There’s no balloon. 
27. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (play) Shakespeare. It’s all about getting the right lovers together in the end. And Bottom, who wants to play all parts. Ass.
28. For Whom the Bell Tolls (fiction) Ernest Hemingway. Far more graphically violent than I was expecting after having read A Farewell to Arms last year. But the writing is so good. And a bit mischievous with all the “obscenity” he’d throw in. The bottom line is that the “bell” tolls for all of us; that’s what ties humanity together.
29. A Life in the Theater (memoir) Tyrone Guthrie. All the names worth knowing at the time. 
30. The Drawings of Albrecht Dürer (art history) Heinrich Wölfflin. An opportunity to look closely at how lines create shape and volume.
31. Two Gentlemen of Verona (play) Shakespeare. It’s all about getting the right lovers together in the end.
    
    
    
32. Mayday (allegory; art) William Faulkner. Faulkner’s original drawings highlight a special edition Arthurian-type story written for a would-be girlfriend. Do you choose death (fame as immortality) or life (dull, unheroic)?
33. Here at the New Yorker (memoir) Brendan Gill. All the names worth knowing at the time, but unlike Guthrie (above), Gill comes across as a bit smug. 
34. Incarnations : A History of India in Fifty Lives (collected biographies) Sunil Khilnani. There’s more to the history of India than Gandhi (and the other lives surveyed here really make you rethink your hero worship of the former).
35. Remember When (Christmas season stories) Clay Aiken, editor, for Bubel-Aiken Foundation (now National Inclusion Project). Earnestly if not professionally written personal memories, some tragic, some comic, and all relatable and human.

Speaking of nonprofessional writing, again, I’ve collected a few more Wordle-generated “stories." Click to open the image in a new tab and zoom in. Thanks for reading!

Love, hosaa

Maybe I’ll just go to the movies next year.