reading list: 2023

January 2023: (8)

• How to Be Weird: An Off-Kilter Guide to Living a One-of-a-Kind Life by Eric G. Wilson
• Asian Girls are Going Places by Michelle Law
• How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler
• Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey
• I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
• The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid
• Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown
• Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School by Kendra James

February 2023: (6)

• Please Report Your Bug Here by Josh Riedel
• Cursed Bunny: Stories by Bora Chung, trans. Anton Hur
• The Every by Dave Eggers
• You’ve Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All by Adrian Hon
• Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer
• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

March 2023: (5)

• Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend them Back by Bruce Schneier
• Idol, Burning: A Novel by Rin Usami, trans. Asa Yoneda
• Easy Beauty: A Memoir by Chloé Cooper Jones
• Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time by Shelia Liming

April 2023: (5)

• Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell
• All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley
• The Nursery: A Novel by Szilvia Molnar
• Y/N by Ester Yi
• Flux by Jinwoo Chong

May 2023: (4)

• Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley
• On Browsing: Field Notes by Jason Guriel
• Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us by Rachel Aviv
• Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka, trans. Sam Malissa

June 2023: (3)

• Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital by Elise Hu
• Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity by Antonio Padilla (unfinished)
• Greek Lessons by Han Kang, trans. Deborah Smith
• Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

July 2023: (5)

• Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, trans. Megan McDowell
• Oh My Mother! by Connie Wang
• Witch King by Martha Wells
• Raw Dog by Jamie Loftus
• Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

August 2023: (4)

• The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel
• God, Human, Animal, Machine by Meghan O’Gieblyn
• The Ugly American by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick (class)
• Translation State by Ann Leckie

September 2023: (8)

• Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (class)
• American War by Omar El Akkad (reread, class)
• The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
• The Great Game: Afghanistan by Richard Bean, Lee Blessing, David Egar, David Greig et al. (class)
• When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut, trans. Adrian Nathan West
• The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States (class)
• The 2084 Report: A History of Global Warming from the Future by James Lawrence Powell (class)
• The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria, trans. Ramon Glazov

October 2023: (9)

• Burn-In by P. W. Singer and August Cole (class)
• On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint by Maggie Nelson
• King Lear by William Shakespeare / No Fear Shakespeare (class)
• Ascension by Nicholas Binge
• The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (class)
• Counterweight by Djuna, trans. Anton Hur
• Horse Barbie: A Memoir by Geena Rocero
• Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It by Greg Marshall
• Victor in the Rubble by Alex Finley (class)

November 2023: (4)

• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (reread, class, unfinished)
• Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future by Gloria Dickie
• The Plague by Albert Camus (class, unfinished)
• The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut
• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (reread, class)
• The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell

December 2023: (6)

• National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home by Anya von Bremzen
• Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park (unfinished)
• Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again by Joanna Biggs
• Lone Women by Victor LaValle
• The Militia House by John Milas
• Elsewhere: Stories by Yan Ge

Running tally: 67, as of end of year

Year-end favorites: Cursed Bunny (February), Idol, Burning (March), All the Beauty in the World (April), Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs (May), Our Share of Night (June/July), God, Human, Animal, Machine (August), When We Cease to Understand the World (September), Counterweight (October), The Silent Companions (November), Chain-Gang All-Stars (December)