Books of 2023

I have struggled to read in 2023, but that is not surprising. I have struggled with just about everything. I learned to make adjustments, to go with what I wanted to read over what I felt I should read. I chose to reread books because I know the stories brought me joy and when I could not focus on very much, it was easy to get lost in worlds I knew so well, in stories I knew the ending of.

I didn't know all of this as the year began. The first book I opened was a Maigret stoy by George Siménon. This has turned into a tradition. On the first of January, I purchase a collection of Maigret stories on my eReader and read them throughout the year, one at a time in the order they were published. It's a slow process. My wish list tells me there are at least 10 volumes and I'm only just finished volume 4. It's okay. I am not in a rush. I like burying myself in the heavy slow smoke infused world of Maigret. I know some of the stories already but I do not mind. I think of lazy afternoon watching TV adaptation with my grand father as I read the words. He would complain at everything Bruno Cremer did wrong whilst I saw nothing wrong. His Maigret was Jean Renoir. A little like Doctor Who, we each had our Maigret. I think of the volumes of Maigret stories lining the walls of the holiday homes. One day, I hope to inherit those books but I know this is not likely. I do not even know if they still exist. I suspect my aunt will have thrown them away long ago.

Early on, I read The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. I was intrigued by it. So many people raved about it but ultimately I found it boring and discovered little new in the pages of the book. Maybe I read it too late, maybe my mind was still too muddled from the aftermath of covid and illness.

After this I carried on reading Maigret, unable to read anything else. And then I stopped reading entirely. For the entirety of February I did not pick up a single book. I remember yearning to read, to be pulled into a world that was not my own, but that was to no avail. I simply could not read.

Instead I watched TV, I mourned the loss of community, the loss of photography, and my body that stubbornly refused to return to the health I had known pre-covid. In this period I fell in love with The Legend of Korra, a show that had somehow passed me by when it originally released (no clue why as it's right up my alley). A shift took place then. I still could not read the books I had, but I could linger in the world of Korra by reading the comics. So I did just that. I allowed myself to read purely for fun and well... I had fun.

Spurred by this new mundane revelation that I could again read for fun, I picked up Spear by Nicola Griffith. I followed it by Enchantment by Katherine May, and Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki translated by Polly Barton. I found I could read books that challenged me a little again, made the cogs in my head turn, ponder, and wonder. I did not overload my reading list with such books though. We had reached April by then and my world was crumbling into regular pain and an increased difficulty to focus at work. To help with my workload, I took to listening to YA stories whilst in the office. Those often didn't demand too much of me. This is how I ended up reading the Warcross books by Marie Lu. I did not enjoy these very much. The writing annoyed me, the story unravelled along massive plot holes, but the voice in my ears kept me steady. So I listened.

After those I needed something different, something that would transport me. I turned to Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake stopping often to jot down notes and thoughts on the pages of my work notebook. It wasn't my most productive time at work but I found inspiration for life, for me in the stories of fungi.

I am not too sure what happened afterwards but I fell deep into a rabbit hole of Greek and Roman myths. I have always loved these stories and return to them again and again. Only this time, I focused on the often unheard and unwritten stories of the women, seeking to find myself in those. I read of pain and loneliness, of madness and power, of disappearing and becoming. I probably needed to hear all this.

In search of something less violent, I stumbled across The Ponies at the Edge of the World by Catherine Munro whilst browsing through one of the audiobooks app of my local library. I grew entranced by the magic of her words and the landscape of the north I nearly experienced back in 2014 but did not. I tentatively read essays and non-fiction but soon reverted to Maigret stories, finding the weight of thinking too much. The summer was gone and it was difficult to ignore the painful shifts of my body.

I returned to what had worked earlier in the year: to read for fun. I found a delightfully light and nonsensical queer version of Pride and Prejudice and smiled and laughed as tropes after tropes were told to me in Pride and Prejudice and the City by Rachael Lippincott. It felt good to know what was coming, to know how it would end even though I'd not read the book or came across spoilers.

I followed this book by Late Bloomer by Clem Bastow. It was another work time audiobook to help pull me through the growing fatigue of my mind. It broke me a little, her words echoing my lived experienced a little too closely, a little too raw. So I turned to Kaamelott comics by Alexandre Astier, Steven Dupré and Benoît Bekaert. They talk of the arthurian legends I love so much. Unlike many of my other arthurian books and stories on my shelves, they are funny. They made me laugh out loud and I needed this through the month of November when everything was a blur.

My phone finally binged with my audiobook reservation for Now She Is Witch by Kirsty Logan. I dropped everything and disappeared into the magical lyrical world of Lux and Else. It was not an easy book to read. I had to take many a break but I loved it. I loved how it pulled me in, dropped me into a world of wanting and searching, into something raw and real and yet soft and mystical.

I followed this book by Twelve Moons by Caro Giles. It was another discovery as I browsed through endless titles of the audiobook app, waiting for one of my wish list books to become available. This too was a difficult read, one I often stopped listening to at work in favour of savouring it at home or on my commute. I needed the space and the time to digest it, to cry with it as words unrelated to my life hit a chord and reduced me to tears. Caro Giles gave me the space to be vulnerable and afraid after the GP broached words I did not want to hear, words that are still far away, waiting for another battery of test before they can become a reality or vanish into the air as if they'd never been spoken.

After this, Covid entered my body and knocked me down for half of December. I did not read much. I did not want to read much, but I still had a couple of Maigret stories to go through. So I read them, finishing the last one on the 31st of December, right on time for a new volume of Maigret stories to land in my eReader on the first day of 2024.