What I read in 2023

Welcome. Here, I document my ongoing attempt to unlearn stupidity and distractions and, well, also read more.

January

• Severance by Ling Ma (2018)
• Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi (2004)
• Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (2021)
• My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (2016)
• Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout (2022)
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2008)
• Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi (2005)
• Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (2019)
• The Employees by Olga Ravn (2018)
• When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut (2020)
• Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout (2017)
• The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout (2013)
• Outline by Rachel Cusk (2014)
• Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout (1998)
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang (2007)
• Transit by Rachel Cusk (2016)

February

• Bliss Montage by Ling Ma (2022)
• Sabrina by Nick Drnaso (2018)
• Kudos by Rachel Cusk (2018)
• The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers (1951)
• Tokyo Ueno Station by Yū Miri (2014)
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016)
• A Life’s Work by Rachel Cusk (2001)
• Shame by Annie Ernaux (1998)
• Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez (1983)
• The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (1971)
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
• The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg (1947)
• Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville (1853)
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899)
• Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid (1990)
• Couplets: A Love Story by Maggie Millner (2023)

March

• Liberation Day by George Saunders (2022)
• Annie John by Jamaica Kinkaid (1985)
• A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert (1877)
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
• The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders (2005)
• The Touchstone by Edith Wharton (1900)
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)
• Early Light by Osamu Dazai (2022)
• No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai (1948)
• Identity by Milan Kundera (1998)
• Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders (2013)
• Bluets by Maggie Nelson (2009)
• Voices in the Evening by Natalia Ginzburg (1963)
• Happiness, as Such by Natalia Ginzburg (1973)
• Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-ju (2016)
• The Houseguest: And Other Stories by Amparo Dávila (2018)

April

• Fox 8 by George Saunders (2013)
• Caterpillar Dogs: and Other Early Stories by Tennessee Williams (2023)
• The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (1944)

May

• A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (1947)
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams (1955)
• The Dead by James Joyce (1914)
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
• Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley (1917)
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro (2001)
• The Possession by Annie Ernaux (2008)
• Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (2014)

June

• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee (1962)
• Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin (2015)
• Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin (2008)
• The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (1919)
• The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante (2002)

July

• The Only One Left by Riley Sager (2023)
• The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth (2022)
• Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh (2015)
• The Road to the City by Natalia Ginzburg (1945)
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh (2018)
• Summer by Edith Wharton (1914)

August

• Sisters by Daisy Johnson (2020)
• In the Act by Rachel Ingalls (1987)
• Kappa by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1927)
• The Silence by Don DeLillo (2020)
• The Flowers of Buffoonery by Osamu Dazai (1935)
• Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls (1982)
• Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro (2007)
• A Little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro (2015)
• At the Edge of the Woods by Kathryn Bromwich (2023)
• The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa (1994)
• Barbara Isn’t Dying by Alina Bronsky (2023)
• Nothing But the Night by John Williams (1948)
• The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Sparks (1970)
• The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector (1977)
• My Grandmother’s Braid by Alina Bronsky (2019)

September

• Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan (1954)
• I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (1995)
• Four Stories by Rachel Ingalls (1987)
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers (1946)
• Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal (1976)
• The Wall by Marlen Haushofer (1963)
• Mary Ventura and The Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath (1952)
• The Autobiography of my Mother by Jamaica Kincaid (1996)
• The Forester’s Daughter by Claire Keegan (2019)
• Binstead’s Safari by Rachel Ingalls (1983)
• Sula by Toni Morrison (1973)
• My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier (1951)
• Termush by Sven Holm (1967)
• Don’t Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne Du Maurier (1971)

October

• Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier (1936)
• Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan (2007)
• Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg (1957)
• Paradise by Edna O’Brien (2019)
• They by Kay Dick (1977)
• A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (1953)
• My Ántonia by Willa Cather (1918)
• Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (2017)
• Chess by Stefan Zweig (1943)
• Letter from an Unknown Woman by Stefan Zweig (1922)
• 24 Hours in the Life of a Woman by Stefan Zweig (1927)

November

• So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan (2023)
• The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
• North Woods by Daniel Mason (2023)

The gems

The stories with extra oomph that stirred something in my silly, shriveled soul.

• Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (2021)
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2008)
• Transit by Rachel Cusk (2016)
• The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers (1951)
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
• The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg (1947)
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899)
• Liberation Day by George Saunders (2022)
• The Touchstone by Edith Wharton (1900)
• The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders (2005)
• Voices in the Evening by Natalia Ginzburg (1963)
• The Houseguest: And Other Stories by Amparo Dávila (2018)
• Caterpillar Dogs: and Other Early Stories by Tennessee Williams (2023)
• Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (2014)
• Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin (2015)
• Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin (2008)
• Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro (2007)
• A Little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro (2015)
• Barbara Isn’t Dying by Alina Bronsky (2023)
• The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector (1977)
• I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (1995)
• The Wall by Marlen Haushofer (1963)
• Binstead’s Safari by Rachel Ingalls (1983)
• My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier (1951)
• Don’t Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne Du Maurier (1971)
• They by Kay Dick (1977)