What we read in 2023:
Ally: This year the bookstore turned five! It was a full circle sort of reading year for me. Five felt momentous in that many small businesses don’t hit five years, but Old Town Books is here and thriving. Turning five felt like the first time I could relax and read what I wanted to - and not just what I should. It’s also the year I got back to writing. After a harrowing health crisis in the middle of the year, following the birth of my third daughter, I was drawn back to quiet books, nature writing, essays, and voice-driven and slow plotted novels. I also read a ton of romance in those early weeks after giving birth. Romance and its comforting conventions, tropes, and warm fuzzies—they’re perfectly fun, fast paced, and escapist for the postpartum period
Surprising reads:
I recently read Exhibit by R.O. Kwon, and it surprised me how punchy and to the point a sentence can be; how much voice can say about a character. I also was surprised by how such a slim book managed to go deep on dilemmas of art and life; how personal desires can complicate artistic ones. I am a lover of tiny, dynamite books. That may be because of the season of life I am in—I can only “one-sit read” super short novels but I just love enjoying a book that way.
I was also surprised by Reproduction by Louisa Hall. I can’t explain why I liked it so much other than thinking about language again, especially word choice and how the sentences sound. I will read anything that feels like a fever dream prose poem embodied, a little angry. The publisher calls this one “A lucid, genre-defying novel that explores the surreality of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood,” and I have to agree with that. In a letter to the booksellers the author sent with the advance copy, she said “the seams show”. Appropriate for a book that thinks a lot about Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, creating life, and stitching things together. I agree the seams showed. It is a novel in three parts, sometimes choppy. You could feel the effort of it, which to me, as a reader-writer-mother, was divine.
Amnesiac comfort reads:
I gulped down romance, barely letting the story sink in. It was sort of like journaling again after a dry spell, when you need to just practice moving your hands across the page to get back into the rhythm, the habit, of writing. It was like that for me reading romance—a totally rote way of reading, but powerfully happy and routine. The sensation of burning through all of Lorena Bell’s backlist on my Kobo will forever be linked to the depleting but full bodied joy and wonder of caring for a newborn. Could I tell you the name of one character? Or a single plot point? No. The details of the books, true comfort reads, are as transient as those early days with baby.
A book I’d recommend:
To a friend I’d recommend Cross Stitch by Jazima Barrera, translated by Christina Macsweeney. I would ask if we could also read her essay collection On Lighthouses in a mini book club, then spend a long day at a cafe noodling around in our notebooks, trying out our own stories. I am learning I like coming-of-age stories, a new thing for me and in weird symmetry to other books I read this year.
A book I re-read:
This year I have been thinking about aging–-I had my last baby, turn 40 next year, my kids keep doing this odd thing where they don’t stay babies. The three year old still wears a cat costume everywhere; I am preemptively mourning the day she takes it off for good. Life changes every day, it’s radical and unsettling. I’m trying to, if not embrace that fact, then at least accept it. I returned to Diana Athill’s late-in-life memoir Somewhere Towards the End, after seeing her work reprinted in special editions from NYRB, in sleek new editions where Lena Dunham and Helen Oyeyemi offer afterwords.
Su
2023 has been a year of rest and growth for me. I lived out a book nerd dream and quit my full-time job, which has allowed me to live a life that mainly revolves around reading for the second half of the year. I’m excited to share my reading highlights from the year:
A book that surprised me was All the Fighting Parts by Hannah V. Sawyerr. I didn’t think I would be able to internalize and understand a book entirely written in verse, but this book blew me away. The poetry is incredibly powerful while still being very attainable to those new or averse to poetry (me included). I loved every word.
My favorite comfort read of the year was The Dreamatics by Michelle Cuevas. Middle Grade is where my comfort always lies, and this was no exception. It’s Inside Out but for dreams, with a very endearing protagonist, a fun cast of characters, and a wonderful way to understand grief and love. It should definitely be made into a movie!
A book I would recommend to my friends is The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. A middle-aged female pirate with a bad knee begrudgingly comes out of retirement and gets a ragtag crew together for one final hurrah. You’re telling me this doesn’t have universal appeal to millennials?
Lastly, I’ve discovered a new sub genre of lit fic to love, which I’ve fondly labeled “messy woman trying her best.” I think more love needs to go to None of This Would Have Happened if Prince Were Alive by Carolyn Prusa, both for its content and its title.
Jackie
My 2023 reading seemed to alternate between romance, thrillers, memoirs, and fiction. My favorites of the year were varied—at the beginning of the year, my favorite reads were The Daydreams by Laura Hankin and The Guest by Emma Cline, both from our fiction shelf.
The Daydreams tells the story of a group of young adults who were child actors on a Disney Channel-esque TV show. They reunite in the present day in an attempt to film a reunion episode, bringing up the cast drama of the past. I love millennial pop culture nostalgia, and The Daydreams brings up the same thoughts and feelings about child stars of the era that we’ve seen in books like I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
The Guest is the story of a 22-year-old woman kicked out of her older lover’s home in the Hamptons. Told over a short period of time, the woman wanders through life, determined to get back to her lover, while slowly revealing her backstory. Hard to put down, I enjoyed the way the book perfectly captured the feeling of being lost in your early 20s.
The standout book of the year for me was Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll—a fictionalized re-telling of the Ted Bundy murders in Tallahassee. As a Floridian, I’ve been familiar with the story of these murders for decades (my mother was a student at FSU at the time), and the author does a great job of capturing the setting in Tallahassee as well as providing a redeeming story for the women involved.
Kim
While I always have been and always will be a huge sci-fi and fantasy reader this year felt particularly full of amazing reads that got me thinking about tough topics wrapped in amazing adventures, found family, creative world building, and fantastic characters. This year really brought it across ages and some of my absolute favorites that I know I’ll be reading for years to come were:
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Sar
This year, I mostly read older books, ones that have been sitting on my shelf for too long that I finally picked up. My favorites in that group were Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White, This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, and The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He. I highly recommend each of these books to anyone interested in sci-fi/dystopian novels!
This year, along with catching up on reading most of the books on my shelf, I wanted to explore more titles in the horror genre, specifically including body horror as commentary on queerness, and I think I was able to find some really special books to get me started. I also wanted to ensure that I was reading authors who share my values, outlook on the world, and politics since I believe it is very important to ensure we monetarily support authors whose stories and real life action center liberation and amplification of marginalized identities. My favorite books published in 2023 were The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw and Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley. They are very different books—one a beautifully grotesque horror love story, and the other a thrilling Indigenous YA mystery. Warrior Girl Unearthed in particular pulled me in just like Firekeeper’s Daughter did, and taught me so much I was unaware of about Anishinaabe communities and the fight for repatriation of Indigenous items and remains. It is a brilliantly written mystery and provides important education throughout the novel! I hope to read more Indigenous authors—both of Turtle Island and globally—this year and beyond.
Cate
2023 was a year of expanding my reading genres.
The year started off in my usual favorite genres—thrillers and mysteries. I've never met a locked-door mystery or psychological thriller that I didn't immediately feel drawn to. Does the cover feature neon words on a dark creepy background? Is the title about a wife/mother/sister beside/above/near/behind me? Say no more, I'm in!
Then I started working at Old Town Books and quickly realized I had very few recommendations for books outside the thriller world or my favorite children’s books, that are now "classics." I ditched my podcasts, got back into audiobooks, and started to branch out.
I jumped off the deep end into a cozy high fantasy romance, Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree. Despite being a huge departure from my usual world, I loved this book. Once I wrapped my brain around the fantasy worldbuilding and vocabulary, I was hooked, and now I can't wait to read Legends & Lattes.
The next stop was non-fiction. As a lifelong golfer, I was immediately drawn to the new release LIV and Let Die by Alan Shipnuck, a book following the history and ongoing battles between the PGA tour and LIV golf. I had no clue how far back this went and learned so much about the history of the PGA. This is my new go-to recommendation for anyone who has ever enjoyed playing or watching golf, definitely my top "dad gift" of the season.
To really switch things up I moved on to romance, and have since found myself on a massive romance kick. Sophie Kinsella's latest book, The Burnout, is a perfectly cozy and low-key romance that would be an ideal post-holiday read. I also found myself totally enamored with Check & Mate, the new YA romance from Ali Hazelwood, despite knowing literally nothing about chess. Another favorite find was Better Hate Than Never by Chloe Liese, a modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, set perfectly in the kickoff of the holiday season.
Of course, I still managed to sprinkle in some of my beloved thrillers and mysteries. Among my usual favorites were three standouts: the surprisingly casual horror story, Carissa Orlando’s The September House; a fictional retelling of Ted Bundy's FSU sorority murders, Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll; and a Peter Swanson Christmas murder novella, The Christmas Guest (murder and Christmas; who could ask for more??).
I'll keep working through all my new beloved genres while I desperately await new releases in 2024 from my thriller favorites Sarah Pearse and Ellery Lloyd.
Lane
It really has been a year of change–I left my “big girl” job, went back to school for an MPH, and most importantly I grew as a reader. I was a huge book kid but somewhere along the road lost the passion, only to rediscover it with the rise of BookTok in 2020. While I have enjoyed a lot of the books that I read because of influencer hype and I’ve had fun participating in the community created around them, I worry about my reading becoming too limited by the narrow field of what goes viral. This year, I’ve made an effort to broaden horizons and have gotten better at researching books related to my own interests and finding the stories I would have otherwise missed. In particular, one thing I wanted to read more of was literature showing LGBTQIA+ stories, and boy, did 2023 deliver.
I have always loved fantasy, and a standout this year was The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai. This debut novel is one of those special stories that can simultaneously feel like escapist fantasy and make you think more critically about the real world. Set in a world inspired by 1800s Egypt, the book centers around the intersectionality between a womens’ rights movement, the stigmatized ability to wield elemental magic, wealth, and sexual identity. I’m excited for the conclusion of this duology to release in March and to watch Elsbai’s career as an author grow. An honorable mention for my favorite fantasy of the year is Babel by R.F. Kuang.
A happy surprise this year was discovering that I love memoirs. I was sucked into the genre by T Kira Madden’s beautiful and poetic Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls. Her style of writing was striking to me and I clung to the tiny, unremarkable, and largely unpleasant truths that she chose to include. Since then I have been devouring them and some that I can’t get out of my head are Crying in the Bathroom by author Erika L. Sanchez and In the Form of a Question by Jeopardy! champion Amy Schnieder.
Of course, with change comes a need for stability, and what better way to find that than through your comfort books? I’ll never get tired of re-reading Jane Austen and have found a soft spot for Emma lately—well intentioned but chaotic, I feel that way often stumbling through my 20s trying my best!
Kai
This year has seen me widening my range on the literary front. My absolute favorites this year have been:
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1 年Certainly less, we have a young daughter as well ??