Volume 4, No. 2: Best of 2023 Addendum

Greetings, book and treat people! It rained for much of the weekend here in Western Mass, and I jealously watched on social media as my friends in the midwest got a blizzard. Is it time for me to move to far northern Minnesota or Iceland? Maybe, except that I love my little corner of Massachusetts with my whole being. Even in these weird and unsettling days of climate change, where it floods in December and rains in January. Happily, it is snowing on Tuesday morning as I write this, so all is not lost.

Earlier this week marked 100 days of genocide in Palestine. I am still calling my senators, even though it is obvious (and has been for a long, long time) that the US government does not care about Palestinian lives. The US government doesn’t care about most lives. So. We care about each other.

Thanks to everyone who has expressed interest in my reading tracker template and/or customization! I truly love doing this work. I want to do it all day. If you’re looking for the reading spreadsheet of your dreams, all the information is here.

I’m super excited for the 2024 iteration of this newsletter, which is going to be a beautiful mix of WHATEVER I WANT, starting with reviews of three books I read in December after I’d already made my Best of the Year lists. I make my lists early in December because I take the second half of the month off. I have no regrets, but these ones should have been on those lists. So here’s a Best of the Year addendum.

If you’re new and you missed it, here is the rest of my favorite fiction, poetry, and nonfiction from 2023.

The Books

Personal Best edited by Erin Belieu & Carl Phillips (Poetry, 2023)

This is a brilliant anthology of poems and essays by fifty-seven authors. Each poet selected the poem they wanted included, riffing on the theme of “personal best”. Accompanying the poems are short essays about—well, they often begin with why the authors chose the poems and why they believe they are their personal best. But from there they leap away into so much beauty and wisdom. There are essays on craft, on the work of poetry, on language, on hardship. Some poets explain what they were trying to do with a certain poem, or their inspiration for it. Some essays read like mini memoirs. Some read like love letters to mentors, friends, other poets. Some capture a particular moment in time. I was struck by how many essays reflected on why some poems get anthologized a lot and some never do. I was also fascinated by how many different interpretations of “personal best” this book holds. Every poet reacts differently to the brief. The poems represent creative breakthroughs, moments of revelation, old favorites, risks taken, vanished versions of self, nostalgia, pride, a difficult accomplishment, wonder, delight.

This is a book about art-making as world-making. It’s about the why and what and how and who of writing poems. Why does anyone write? What is the point of poetry? What makes a series of words in a particular order settle and flutter in a heart? How does the act of writing transform the life of the writer? The act of making anything is terrifying and complicated. This book spoke to the writer in me, but even if what you make is not poems, or even words—if what you make is bread, or paintings, or conversations, or children, or maps or space or houses or friendships—this book is also for you. We are all makers.

I highlighted so many passages, both in the poems and the essays. Here is just a small sample of the wisdom in these pages:

Camille T. Dungy on Natural History:

The world is broken in so many ways, and we are the ones doing most of the breaking, but also there are little cracks through which we can filter joy. Everything doesn't have to be so darned serious all the time. I love the ways that writing "Natural History offered me pathways to beauty and humor and lightness and love.

Danez Smith on waiting for you to die so i can be myself:

To encounter questions and ideas that stun my making and shock me out of language is a blessing, and from this poem, I'm learning to make every poem or project such an occasion Let me slow down my language, let me be dissatisfied with what first comes, let me find the poem that answers to no one, that sings not for the high notes but for the deep, earthy truths.

Jake Skeets on Maar from Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers

I think that's why this is one of my favorite pieces and one I wish would be analyzed more. It avoids the argument of showing versus telling and focuses on the landscape itself. It shifts its breath to the field. And if you've ever walked into a field, you rarely ask yourself: “What does this field mean?" We rarely question whether the field is showing or telling, imagistic or sentimental, lyric or narrative-driven. Instead, we experience the field. We ought to "read" poems similarly; we should experience them first.

Two small notes of gratitude: First, this anthology is from Copper Canyon Press, a truly stellar publisher of poetry. I’m always excited about their books, but I want to give a special shoutout to their stellar publicist, Ryo Yamaguchi, whose emails are thoughtful, warm, personal, and descriptive. It is often because of him that I request and read poetry I might not otherwise have made time for—and then I get to tell all of you about it! Second, I bumped this one up my TBR because of Surabhi’s excellent review (a frequent occurrence around here).

Songs on Endless Repeat by Anthony Veasna So (Nonfiction & Fiction, 2023)

This is a posthumous collection of So’s published essays, as well as experts from his unfinished novel, Straight Thru Cambotown. Afterparties is one of my favorite story collections of all time, so I was not surprised that the fiction in this collection delighted and dazzled me. It also hurt a lot. It feels strange to be sad about the fact that I will never read any more of So’s work, because it is his loss as a whole person, and not just an artist, that I mourn. But it is also true that reading this book broke my heart over and over again. In so many ways, it’s a book about grief—public grief, private grief, familial grief, cultural grief, the aftermath and continuation of grief. Though I did not know So, and my sadness at his death sits at a remove, there was still a sharp poignancy for me in the experience of reading this collection of his writings. It was as if So’s language—so cutting, so funny, so unabashedly queer, so full of his vibrant, messy Cambodian American community—was carving out a space for me (us) to grieve for him and with him.

Excerpts from So’s unfinished novel are scattered among the nonfiction pieces. They’re not exactly short stories, and they’re not exactly a cohesive whole, either. They are something in between—flashes, fragments, bits of life. The prose jumps. It jumps, I don’t know how else to describe it. There is something about the way So writes people—their interiority and their physicality—that is recklessly alive. His prose is unpolished in a polished way. It’s rough the way living is rough. What I mean to say is, rarely do I encounter writing that is so itself, and when I do, I will follow it anywhere. The fiction in this book stands on its own.

Something else that delighted me about this book: all the thinking it made me do, beyond and with and outside of it. There are several essays about pop culture—a fantastic one about Crazy Rich Asians and Asian representation in film and media; one about the cultural phenomenon of reality TV; a short but wonderful snapshot of a year in books. It got me thinking about people who complain about pop culture references in fiction. I see this sentiment everywhere. Name-dropping the “it book” of the moment cheapens a novel. An essay about Crazy Rich Asians can’t possibly be serious art. Books and articles that engage with popular music, film, literature, gossip (gasp!) are destined to lose their relevance eventually.

Well, I think it’s utter rot. So was here. He wrote about what was happening while he was here. He wrote about what mattered to him and his people. He wrote about all the things that touched him, changed him, delighted him, angered him. He wrote about all the Big Stuff—intersectional queer identity and intergenerational trauma and friendship. And he wrote about a movie, and a buzzy book release, and a particular song ("Baby Yeah"), because all of those things—wait for it!—were also part of his life, part of the Big Stuff, mattered. It’s petty and narrow-minded to criticize writers for writing about the whims and weirdnesses of the times they live through.

Anyway. I loved this book.

Otto and the Secret Light of Christmas by Nora Surojegin (words) & Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin (art), tr. by Jill Timbers (Children’s Fiction, 2022)

I selected this as one of my December picture books thanks to Sarah’s review in her fabulous kitlit newsletter Can we Read? so I was expecting it to be good. I was not expecting to read the whole 100 page illustrated chapter book in one sitting, or for it to make me cry, or for the sheer wonder of the story and the art to twist something deep in my heart.

Otto is a small man (gnome? elf? human? does it matter?) who leaves his home by the sea after discovering a postcard that includes the words “the light of Christmas”. He’s determined to discover what this light of Christmas is, and hopefully bring it back to warm and cheer him during the long, dark winter. He starts walking north, and it’s not long before adventure finds him. He meets forest creatures and talking trees, gentle snow monsters, giants, leaf fairies, bears and badgers, and the terrifying Ironworm who feeds on nightmares.

I don’t know how to explain the magic of this story. It’s whimsical and creative, yes, and the art is absolutely gorgeous. Each painting is a whole world. It’s surprising, yes, and Otto’s encounters are a satisfying blend of dangerous and cozy, yes. Yes, there’s a delicious tension and momentum to the whole thing: will Otto ever discover the light of Christmas? And yes, there’s a wonderful spaciousness to it—Surojegin does not rush through each adventure, but lets them unfold slowly and in wonderful detail.

All of this alone would make for a marvelous book, but there is something else, some alchemy I can’t name, that transformed it into a book of my heart. I’ve been thinking a lot, as I’ve been reading picture books these last few months, about wonder. Picture books evoke wonder loudly and unabashedly. I loved everything about this book: the way it celebrates friendship and found family; the wildly imaginative creatures; the beautiful illustrations of northern forests and snowy tundras; the mediations on darkness and light; the soft humor and slight weirdness; Otto’s delightful grumpiness and determination. Which is all to say: this book is a treasury of wonder. I still haven’t figured out what it is about picture books that fill me—overflow me!—with wonder, but whatever it is, this book has it in glorious, overwhelming abundance.

The Beyond

Send Me Your Cooking Inspiration

What have you been cooking lately? What cookbooks are you loving? What’s the best recipe you’ve made this year? What was the best thing you cooked in 2023? I’ve made some pasta bakes. I made a nice soup. I baked some brownies. But I am low on inspiration and motivation. Come talk to me in the comments, please.

Recent Audiobooks

2024 on audio is off to a great start! Here are two of my recent favorites.

Walking Practice by Dolki Min, tr. by Victoria Caudle, read by Nicky Endres: This was brain book and not a heart book. I appreciated where it took me intellectually, but I was not moved by it. It’s dark, gory, funny, smart, gross. An alien who’s stranded on earth pursues humans for sex so that they can easily kill and eat them in the postcoital haze. In her translator’s note, Victoria Caudle talks about some of the techniques Min uses in Korean that aren’t possible in English, and her choice to translate those techniques with formatting—different fonts, spacing, and text size. Nicky Endres vocally translates the unusual formatting by stretching out some words and speeding up others; using different voices; creating long pauses; and incorporating moans and screams and other sounds. There is something profoundly queer about this—it’s a translation of a translation, a movement through different kinds of performance.

Aster of Ceremonies by JJJJJerome Ellis, read by the author: JJJJJerome Ellis is a disabled artist who speaks with a stutter. Their work explores language and Blackness and lineage and music and plants. It is world-opening, world-renewing, utterly spectacular. This book banged down a thousand doors in my brain, reshuffled my body like a dance, delightedly messed up the way I think about plants and poetry and silence. The audiobook is a song, a prayer, a benediction, a rupture, an offering, a hymn. It’s a collaboration that makes space for so many kinds of translation: between plants and humans, past and present, written and bodily language, silence and noise.

Further Reading

My December reading included some fantastic books that weren’t my favorites of the year, but that I still loved. I recommend them all! I hope to review them all, too—if there are any you’re especially excited to hear about, let me know in the comments.

A Curious Land by Susan Muaddi Darraj (2016): This is a gorgeous collection of linked stories, tracing the life of Tel al-Hilou, a small village in the West Bank, from 1916 through the late 1990s. In one of the stories, a character who has moved home to the village after many years in America says to another character: “Everything changes, nothing changes.” This devastating, quiet, bedrock-true declaration is at the heart of this book. I wrote a bit more about it here.

Crisis by Karin Boye, tr. by Amanda Doxtater (1934): This is a wildly strange novel about faith, desire, queerness, and art-making. I’m still trying to untangle it. Something that struck me about it is the brilliant way Boye writes about queerness as catalyst. There’s a remarkable scene where the main character suddenly notices the shoulders and neck of a classmate. She is absolutely dazzled by this woman’s beauty. It catapults her into crisis—and a new world.

Fire From the Sky by Moa Backe Åstot, tr. by Eva Apelqvist (2023): This is a tender coming-of-age novel about Ánte, a teenager who’s struggling to reconcile his queerness with his love for his Sámi culture and his desire to root down into the place he loves and become a reindeer herder like his father. It’s a story full of first love, teenage drama, the harsh beauty of the natural world, and complicated family relationships. What I loved most is the space Åstot makes for Ánte’s many identities and desires. There is nothing to reconcile, in the end—there are only the boxes the world creates.

The Unfortunates by J. K. Chukwu (2023): This is a hard book about academic racism and depression. It’s also deeply funny. It’s structured as a thesis written by the main character, Sahara, and it includes letters, emails, charts, playlists, photos, illustrations, etc. It was difficult to read at times (it’s so real and close), but it’s also a beautiful ode to Black and queer friendship and kinship.

The Bookshelf

Around the Internet

On Book Riot, way back in November, I wrote about building seasonal rereading rituals. I also rounded up some fun (and hopefully unexpected) books set in the 1980s, and some queer YA from 2023 you might have missed. On AudioFile, I paired three great audiobooks with three (reading) new year’s resolutions.

A Taste of the Commonplace

This week I searched through my commonplace book for passages tagged with ‘beginnings’. We’re still in the beginning of the year, after all. I found this quote from Ongoingness by Sarah Manguso that I think might resonate with a lot of you. It certainly resonated with me.

Often I believe I’m working toward a result, but always, once I reach the result, I realize all the pleasure was in planning and executing that path to the result.

It comforts me that endings are thus formally unappealing to me—that more than beginning or ending, I enjoy continuing.

Queer Your Year

Queer Your Year will mostly live on Instagram and in the wonderful QYY discord this year. Instead of giving lots of recs here, I’m going to share one book I’ve read and loved for the challenge each week.

Depart, Depart by Sim Kern (published by a micro press, one sitting read)

This 80-page novella takes place in a Red Cross shelter in Dallas after a hurricane and catastrophic flooding destroys most of Houston. Noah is a trans man who survives the flood thanks to advice from the ghost of great-grandfather, Abe. In the shelter, he befriends several other queer and trans folks, and, despite Abe’s continued warnings that he must be ruthless in order to survive, Noah, miraculously, becomes softer, more open. He lives with the ghost of a man whose trauma turned him into a monster, who saved his own life but lost his heart and his humanity, who did not escape his own pain. His ghost wants Noah to do the same thing. Noah spends the whole book struggling to do what Abe could not, to become—in a sense—his ancestors’ worst nightmare.

There is a heartbreaking moment when an older gay Jewish man, someone who has become like a father to Noah, leaves the shelter without even saying goodbye, as soon as he’s able to access his bank account. There are so many small moments like this that show just how easy it is to choose not to take care of each other, not to help, not to be in community. Over and over again people choose themselves and their own survival over all others.

This book is a beautiful ode to queer family and complex inheritance. It’s about how choosing yourself—truly choosing yourself, the real way—is often about choosing other people. We choose ourselves by choosing each other. There is no other way out.

Books Out This Week! I love Them!

• City of Laughter by Temin Fruchter (fiction): This is a book of my heart. I reviewed it for BookPage. I wrote about on Instagram. I am going to read it again soon. It is a haunting and magical queer Jewish spell.

• Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali (poetry): This beautiful collection is about violence done to women, and it’s about holiness and sacredness and where to find it—in bodies, in ancient texts, in ritual, in secrets, in the carving of space. I loved it.

And Beauty

First, some words I’ve been holding, some dreams I’m dreaming:

• The Work of Witness by Sarah Aziza

• How Poetry Became a Tool of Resistance for Palestinians by Armani Syed

• A Normal Thing for a Person to Do by Sam Herschel Wein

• This Palestinian Feminist reading List is incredibly thoughtful and contains many books I loved (and more I want to read soon).

• I Left My Faith. God Didn’t Flinch. by Temim Fruchter

• Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence (Dr. King’s 1967 speech at Riverside Church)

As always, a little bit of beauty to send you on your way: It’s January, it finally snowed, winter has my heart and always will.

Catch you next week, bookish friends!