I posted these on my Substack on 29 & 30 December 2022, but now I have plans to shut that down so here it is, reposted on my blog. My 2023 stats and favourite books are incoming…
The graphs
Once upon a time, I used to produce nonsensical graphs about the books I read on my blog: if you would like to compare this year to previous years (made more difficult by me always changing the criteria) you can see those here.
This year I didn’t read as many books as usual (last year I finished 110). The unfinished books in this graph are books I made substantial progress on: there’s probably another 30 that I gave up on after a chapter or two. I cannot really explain this book malaise. I also listened to fewer audiobooks than I did last year, which is probably because the place where I work moved and now I can catch the bus rather than drive, which means I can read with my eyes while commuting.
More malaise! While Andrew Roff’s patented grading scheme still has the goods, the ‘not great’ percentage was way up on last year. Have books got worse? I doubt it. Have I got worse at choosing books I like? Possibly. Am I grumpier? This is the most likely explanation.
This one surprised me. Last year, of the books I read many more were borrowed from the library than bought, and I assumed that trajectory would continue. What was this outburst of consumerism? Side note: I participated in Macquarie University’s artist income survey this year, which involved detailing the money I made and spent as a writer and crikey, it was not good. I earned $994 in royalties and $1,262 thanks to library and educational lending. I spent $1,800 on books. So I guess the good news is my book writing covers my book spending. One day I’ll work out what percentage of books bought = books read, which should make for a startling graph.
This graph has stayed consistent throughout the years. I am unable to read old books, even though the percentage of ‘heaps great’ books is much higher for old books than for new books. In the next day or two I’ll do my list of books I most enjoyed reading this year, but so far it looks like the top contenders are from 1961, 1979, 1982 and 1998, as well as a handful from the last two years.
I reckon this might change next year though, because in October I stopped using Twitter and now I have no idea what hot new books other people are reading so I don’t know that I’m supposed to be reading them too. Getting off Twitter has had an odd effect on my reading. I have more reading time, but now that I have no one to talk to about what I’m reading, reading is less fun. This is disappointing and unexpected. I tried reddit’s r/books and it has its charms, but none of those charms include talking with other people about books. If you have any suggestions for good book-talking places (not Mastodon; I’m not ready for that) let me know.
Perhaps the other reason I’ve loved books less this year (and I have loved books less) is that my own book has been so little bought and read. I’ve had a pretty good run with my books up until this last one, so it was a bit shocking to have a book that was very well-reviewed but just didn’t sell. It might be because so many bookshops refused to stock it – it turns out that if your book isn’t in shops, and being supported by booksellers, people just don’t buy it. Consequently, thinking about contemporary novels and going into independent bookshops – both things I used to love – are now mildly painful for me. Hopefully this will pass. Either that, or next year you’ll see a big bump in books from the 1970s borrowed at libraries.
The books
I’ve been having a more difficult time loving books lately, but I did, nonetheless, love a lot of books. I don’t live in a city – on the days I stay at home, I see my husband and nobody else (not even out the window). I’ve given up twitter. I like watching movies set in the past with ostentatious frocks; my husband likes watching movies that are vaguely weird and brutal – consequently, we never really watch movies*. Reading books is my main interaction with brains that aren’t mine. I’ve been trying to diversify what I read, by which I don’t just mean reading books by writers who aren’t white (though I’ve been doing that too), but also different forms, books from times and places that aren’t 2022 Australia, books I haven’t heard anyone talking about. I haven’t really succeeded. You can see from my graphs above that I mostly read books published in the last three years; 40% of the books I read were Australian. But I have been reading a bit more non-fiction and I have been listening to whatever audiobooks were available at the library when I needed an audiobook, which has led to some interesting things.
Anyway, these are some of the books I loved most out of the books I read this year, presented in the order I read them.
Running in the family, Michael Ondaatje (1982)
Most years some book by Michael Ondaatje makes my list of favourite books. I think I’ve run out of books by him now, so either he’s going to have to write something new or next year you’ll see my re-read of In the skin of a lion on here. In my reading spreadsheet my notes for Running in the family just say, ‘everything is so good’. I can say that when I finished I wanted, urgently, to go to Sri Lanka. At the moment I’m trying to write something that is partly family history, partly nature writing, and I would love more than anything to write a book 5 percent as good as this.
Waypoints, Adam Ouston (2022)
What is the point of all this information if it can’t help you find someone you’ve lost? Ouston’s wildly digressive novel interrogates our obsession with data and the impossibility of finding ‘a rock on a beach made of rocks’. It’s fascinating and funny and tragic and packed full of ideas.
A house for Mr Biswas, VS Naipaul (1961)
I am one of those perpetual teenagers who is always looking for a way to rebel but who also doesn’t want to have to suffer too much for their rebellion. Mr Biswas felt like my soulmate. I’d been not reading Naipaul all this time because he’s a jerk, but this audiobook came up at the library when I needed something to listen to, and for the weeks and weeks it took to listen to I was in a world of delight. Over the course of this massive book the thousands of tiny details (many hilarious, many distressing) accrue into something heart-shaking and profound.
An immense world, Ed Yong (2022)
Humans don’t have the foggiest idea what they’re missing. All this obsession with seeing (and only on the spectrum between infrared and ultraviolet): we are living in a tiny sliver of what the world actually is, and calling it ‘reality’. Not many books have fundamentally changed my life but I think this one actually did. Ed Yong will show (ugh: seeing word) you all the incredible ways other creatures have of perceiving reality, all the millions of realities that actually exist, then remind you of all the ways we’re shutting those realities down.
The Twyborn Affair, Patrick White (1979)
Contrary to what you might think (OK what I thought), this is not a cold war spy thriller, it is a modernist (I guess) exploration of gender and identity. I love reading Patrick White because his books are completely unlike Australian novels that are published now and because they remind me that things like switching point-of-view between characters in the middle of a sentence, or failing to explain who anyone in the story is or how they got there, is not actually illegal but just out of fashion. I was inspired by the tomfoolery White got up to in Riders in the Chariot when I wrote A History of Dreams – mostly the chorus-like points of view – and though I can’t claim to be anywhere near as accomplished, I still really enjoy the arrogant intricacy and allusiveness of White’s books. The guy either thought readers were pretty smart, or he didn’t care if they didn’t like what he wrote (more to the point, his publisher thought one or both of those things). Thank you to Kate Kruimink for the recommendation.
Desire: a reckoning, Jessie Cole (2022)
I am not a big reader of memoir but I will read any memoir Jessie Cole writes. I love the clarity, incisiveness, humour and kindness she brings to scrutinising her own behaviour and motivations, and the compelling art that she makes out of what she finds. I love that she always positions herself within the world of other species, recognising the connections and dependencies that create the life she has. Jessie has a sparkling intellect, a massive heart and a kind of bravery I can’t imagine possessing, and her writing is gorgeous.
The giant, O’Brien, Hilary Mantel (1998)
Probably my favourite thing – or the thing that makes me come down on the side of loving or giving up on a book – is voice. The voices I love reading best are, I reckon, those Hilary Mantel and Kevin Barry come up with. I’d never heard anything about The giant, O’Brien until someone recommended it when I was looking for weird historical fiction. Turns out, nothing that weird happens, but Mantel’s voice somehow makes the whole thing feel like it’s in a parallel world. It would be a delight to hear this read aloud.
When we cease to understand the world, Benjamin Labatut (2020)
In case you didn’t already know, mathematics is evil and trying to lure humanity to our doom. The details are all here in this non-fiction novel. I learned a lot of horrible stuff about chemist Fritz Haber and was introduced to the history of English bone mills. If you like facts, some of which aren’t true, and strange connections between (sometimes true) facts, and you’d rather they were partially disguised as a novel, and you’d also like to have your mind blown, then I recommend this book: probably the most interesting thing I read this year.
This devastating fever, Sophie Cunningham (2022)
By October I was kind of sad that I hadn’t been more thrilled by Australian novels this year. Then I read This devastating fever and I felt much better. It was recommended to me by Molly Murn of Adelaide’s Matilda Bookshop. It’s brilliant, Molly said. Is it really though, I said. It really is, Molly said. Molly was right. Many of us try to deal with the massive mess humans are making of the world by writing near-future dystopias or bleak realist novels that use family breakdown as an allegory for climate change. Sophie wrote a novel about trying to write a novel and about colonialist ghosts and about isolation and frustration and despair and watching everything die, and it’s funny and beautiful and sometimes clunky and sometimes graceful and it felt to me very much like being alive right now. I loved it.
Hovering, Rhett Davis (2022)
How does the joke go? Why are really good Australian novels about ‘all this’ like trams, or maybe it’s bananas? Because something about how they all come in a bunch? Anyway, thank you Robert Lukins, author of also-great-book-this-year-but-I-read-it-last-year Loveland, for sending me Hovering. I fell for my usual dumb trick of thinking a book that was totally for me was somehow a book that I wouldn’t like at all (see also: A treacherous country) and ignored this novel for way too long. It’s bloody great. I’ve got a lot of time for adventurous fiction that doesn’t quite land, but Hovering is adventurous and brilliantly executed – there’s real finesse in handling the experiments and nothing feels try-hard or show-offy. It’s thrilling, deep, fun and thoughtful, and has a lot to say about the state of the world without ever banging on about it.
Honourable mentions:
The last two books I read this year were Hernan Diaz’s In the distance (2017) (on paper) and Louise Erdrich’s The Nightwatchman (2020) (in my ears, read by the author) and probably both of them would make this list too if I weren’t too lazy to say more about them. They’re both great!
KM (Kate) Kruimink’s new novel isn’t published yet, but I got to read the manuscript and it’s SO GOOD, so you should all be excited about that.
And for next year? I’m going to read the Doris Lessing novel that Alice Grundy gave me, and I’m going to find my copy of Roadside Picnic so I can finish it, and Nina Allan has a new book out, and I’m going to read this book about snails.
*Until today. Each of us had decided, entirely separately and for completely different reasons, that we wanted to watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1973 film, Stalker.