I fell short of my 2023 reading target, what can I say, it's been a big year! But I read a lot more non-fiction than I realised. Highlights... Grace Karskens is a queen, love Gordon Matta-Clark and always have time for a rollicking business gone bad story:
- Alan Kohler - Quarterly Essay: The Great Divide, Australia’s housing mess and how to fix it?
- Edward L. Glaeser - Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier?
- Aldo Rossi - The Architecture of the City?
- Chris Chen - Ocean Pools?
- Paul Farrell - Gladys: A Leader’s Undoing?
- Grace Karskens - People of the River: Lost Worlds of Early Australia?
- Margot Saville - The Teal Revolution: Inside the Movement Changing Australian Politics?
- Max Chafkin - The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power
- Joyce Moullakis and Chris Wright - The Millionaires’ Factory: The Inside Story of How Macquarie Bank Became a Global Giant?
- Katharine Murphy - Quarterly Essay: Lone Wolf, Albanese and the New Politics?
- Pedro Donoso - Gordon Matta-Clark: Experience Becomes the Object
- Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe - When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm
Sci-fi is my comfort food. When things are crazy (and look 2023 had some vestigial madness even after the preceding covid years), it's what I turn to - I mean really I've been expecting these years after a life time of reading about dystopian futures:
- Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
- Ian McEwan - Machines Like Me ?
- Vernor Vinge - A Deepness In the Sky?
- Adam Roberts - The This?
- M. John Harrison - Light?
- N.K. Jemisin - The World We Make?
- J.O. Morgan - Appliance
- Lavanya Lakshminarayan - The Ten Percent Thief?
- J.M. Miro - Ordinary Monsters
- Annalee Newitz - The Terraformers?
- Nnedi Okorafor - Binti series (Binti, Home, The Night Masquerade)
- Nnedi Okorafor - Remote Control?
- Grace Chan - Every Version of You?
- Amanda Svensson - A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding?
I read less straight up novels/books this year, but I've wanted to read about Partition forever and Krushwant Singh's book was brilliant, Anna Funder is excellent and Cheon Myeong-Kwan is a major talent. Loved Madeleine Gray's Green Dot and Claire Keegan's Small Things too:
- Cheon Myeong-Kwan - Whale
- Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These?
- Madeleine Gray - Green Dot?
- Anna Funder - Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life?
- Krushwant Singh - Train to Pakistan?
- Andrew O’Hagan - Mayflies?
My garden is more neglected than ever, but Plantopedia is great, LTL's New Voices is so cool, and a highlight of my year was walking out on the Larapinta Track:
- Lauren Camilleri and Sophia Kaplan - Plantopedia?
- Lee Tran Lam - New Voices on Food 1 & 2?
- John & Monica Chapman - Larapinta Trail?
I actually read a lot less about music this year at book length than I thought, but having written a research paper about live music this year, I spent a lot of time throughout the year in deep conversation and thinking about it. Particularly loved reading Ellen Willis's back catalogue:
- Bob Stanley - Yeah Yeah Yeah, the story of modern pop?
- Shain Shapiro - This Must Be The Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better
- Ellen Willis - Into the Vinyl Deeps: On Rock Music?
Rewired
1 年Value over volume!