2023 Book List

Rating: 4/5

How To Think More Effectively

The School of Life

The book is a guide on different ways of thinking and how we can process information through various intentional mental lenses. It's a short book with a few useful mental tricks.

Rating: 5/5

Retracting Claws

Joshua Hickford

Josh's book was suspenseful, dark, and humane. It is a joy to read and genuinely entertaining. I've been lucky enough to know Josh, and seeing his book released was thrilling. I took it on a plane and could not put it down until I had finished it.

Rating: 5/5

Great Thinkers

The School of Life

This book offers a great light touch and overview of many prominent philosophical thinkers for someone with no philosophical background. Some strong opinions from the authors make large claims, but overall, they give an interesting insight into the work of significant past figures.

Rating: 4/5

A Passage to India

E. M. Forster

It was a good book with the potential to be great. The politics and commentary had the potential to elevate the story. However, the author's apparent distaste for all characters made it hard to really enjoy the novel overall.

Rating: 2/5

Sons & Lovers

D. H. Lawrence

It is well-written and descriptive but quite bleak and boring. I could not finish it.

Rating: 2/5

The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner

It was literarily fascinating but overall dark and dreary, with a painful read for the first two chapters.

Rating: 5/5

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes

Anita Loos

Entertaining, light, and easy to read. It makes one chuckle and think about how perceptions of Americans abroad were being formed through parody and satire by American writers. It's truly an entertaining book, not too taxing.

Rating: 3/5

Mosquitoes

William Faulkner

It's a nice story and interesting perspectives on the relationships between artists and patrons. Also, there is a strange plot about lust and relationships.

Rating: 3/5

The Field of Cultural Production

Pierre Bourdieu

It is a useful book for understanding some social theories and topics discussed by researchers of cultural heritage and the arts. It also does relate to my research and will likely be included with some aspects of the theoretical considerations of my thesis.

Rating: 4/5

In Search of Lost Time, Vol 1. The Way by Swann's

Marcel Proust

This is the first novel in Proust's masterpiece. It is incredibly well written, but it takes a while to really enjoy and engage in Swann's and the narrator's stories and experiences.

Rating: 5/5

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X and Alex Haley

This is an incredible book about an incredible man. The story and life are as relevant today as they were in the 60s. Malcolm's story of growth and change over time, the power of travel, and the power of being willing to call people out in need of change was so worth the read. It is likely the best book I've read this year.

Rating: 4/5

Babel

R. F. Kuang

It's a fun story that paints Oxford in many complex lights. It highlights the magic and wonder of the uni and the city but also tackles the stress, otherness, insane traditions, and arrogance within the same environment. I enjoyed this depiction, and the language footnotes were amazing! I found it a bit on the nose with the anti-colonial messaging; here, the excellent writing turned from storytelling to direct lectures. However, this type of writing might be needed for an audience unaware or ignorant of the UK's involvement in global colonialization.

Rating: 5/5

Taste: My Life Through Food

Stanley Tucci

It was a brilliant and light memoir that had me laughing out loud and saving the recipes for later. The intensity of Tucci's love for food is apparent throughout the book.

Rating: 5/5

In the Weeds: Around the World and Behind the Scenes with Anthony Bourdain

Tom Vitale

It is an interesting novel documenting the reality of working with Bourdain as he struggled with his challenges. The book is a trauma or grief dump novel, allowing the author to process the death of an influential figure in his life. For the reader, it offers some passing notes without a major discussion on the impact or purpose of the author's statements.

Rating: 5/5

The Outsider/The Stranger

Albert Camus

It is very short and very existential. Unlike Dostoyevsky, Camus's dive into the mind of a murderer is filled with blunt passages and short observations, and the futility of life is also questioned and eventually redeemed at the end of the novel, albeit with a dark ending. In a short 110 pages, Camus makes quite an interesting story.

Rating: 4/5

Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens

Nice book, easy to read. The story was a fun mystery and had interesting characters. The ending was filled with twists, all of which were impactful, but the darker one was a bit aggressive. Overall, it is a nice story set in a beautiful landscape with tones of conservation and nature.

Rating: 3/5

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Truman Capote

Fine. It's a short story, one of the few places where I'd argue the movie was better than the book. All the characters were kind of pitiful.

Rating: 5/5

Goodbye to Berlin

Christopher Isherwood

It was described as having focused on side stories while the actual march of history progressed quietly behind the scenes. I would say this is accurate. It paints a fascinating and tragic history of mundane life coinciding with some of humanity's darkest parts coming to fruition.

Rating: 5/5

The Lincoln Highway

Amor Towles

A brilliant book! It is a bit misleading about where the adventure would take the characters. It was a dark ending but a great adventure that brought me on a journey. I have read all three of Towles's books, which leave the reader with mixed feelings of success and trepidation. I am a big fan and recommend all of his books!

Rating: 3/5

Ragtime

E. L. Doctrow

This book supposedly captured the spirit of America so well it settled the discussion on the label of the "Great American Novel." Whether that is true or not, I cannot say. However, it does provide some fascinating insight into the story of America and insights into the lives of people who have been fit into an expected system or box their whole lives. The book's climactic adventure was fun, but the musical was better.

Rating: 5/5

Giovanni's Room

James Baldwin

Incredible short story. Well-delivered feelings of hope, loss, joy, and a bit of fetishization of the mystery of Paris from an American perspective. The ending was intense and expected but so well delivered.

Rating: 5/5

Tokyo Express

Seicho Matsumoto

It is a fun murder mystery! The story had me flying through the pages to understand how the murder was committed. The author's usage of actual dates and times to plan and execute a crime that relied on transportation timetables was incredible.

Rating: 3/5

Riders of the Purple Sage

Zane Grey

A book meant to popularize and kick-start the Western genre. It certainly felt like it. The author did their best to describe the incredible natural landscapes of the West, but the story could have been more engaging. A lot of focus is on Mormon men as villains, with Mormon women as godly, innocent people. Many discussions of what it means to be a godly woman were just shy of being interesting and feminist before throwing in an out-of-pocket comment that was uninteresting or sexist.

Rating: 3/5

Invisible Cities

Italo Calvino

This short book outlines various cities that are all different versions or aspects of Venice. It has an engaging underlying narrative of what it means to be a traveler and what we take away from the places we visit. It was a bit too disjointed for me, but well written overall.

Rating: 5/5

If On a Winter's Night a Traveler

Italo Calvino

It is a great book exploring the relationship between a reader and the books they discover. I was amazed at how Calvino could write the first hook chapter of many different types of books so well that I wanted to read each possible book. The book was a love letter to reading and following a story from start to finish.

Rating: 5/5

A Deadly Education

Naomi Novik

This is the first book of a fun fantasy series with a dark take on the magical school system. I had a good time reading this and enjoyed the world-building and sassy characters.

Rating: 4/5

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

Mordecai Richler

I got this book in Montreal because I wanted a story set in Montreal by a local Montreal author. This book does that perfectly by painting a picture of Montreal after WWII through the view of Duddy, a young man growing up in the working-class Jewish community within Montreal. This intelligent young man grows ambitious as he tries to provide for his family and become "somebody." However, in that attempt, he also consumes himself to the point of a nervous breakdown and consumes his relationships. The book provides a great story with powerful insight into life within the Jewish community in Montreal and a heartbreaking ending. Altogether, this leads to a great book.

Rating: 4/5

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Hemingway

Supposedly, it was Hemingway's best book (according to the cover). The writing is incredible as he brings you into the world of a young American fighting in the Spanish Civil War. The book tackles topics of comradery, cowardice, and Hemingway's usual fascination with dying for a cause greater than himself. The action picks up in the last 200 pages as the war becomes a reality for the characters rather than just something they are preparing for.

Rating: 4/5

Fourth Wing

Rebecca Yarros

This book is my first big BookTok book. The fantasy world shows us the joys and adventures of young dragon riders. It drew attention on the Internet for being pretty "spicy" (smut), but honestly, no more than other adult fantasy books. The plot is very fast-paced, which is both a benefit and a shame. The pacing makes the book a page-turner and really easy to read, but you don't get to spend any time learning about the side characters much or settling into the world. As a result, it is a heart-pounding rush, but emotional scenes lose a bit of weight since we don't really get to know anyone.

Rating: 4/5

Bottle Rocket Hearts

Zoe Whittall

This is the second book I picked up while in Montreal. The purpose was to find a series of books set in Montreal and written by Montreal locals. Bottle Rocket Hearts is set in Montreal in the 90s and narrated through the lens of a young woman exploring her identity within the LGBTQIA+ community. In particular, it focuses on the challenge of finding an accepting community, maintaining relationships as identities change, losing friends and encounters with hate, and primarily exploring the role of romantic relationships in identity formation and the road to independence. It would be a 3/5 until the very last chapter dropped the other shoe on the state of the protagonist's romantic relationship.

Rating: 5/5

Death and the Penguin

Andrey Kurkov

It is a hilarious book within an absolutely surreal concept of living with a penguin while trying to live a normal life. Suddenly, life becomes anything but ordinary as murder, obituaries, mafia, and government security forces all converge on an unsuspecting author. Again, a book that, within the last few chapters, manages to deliver a twist and ending so satisfying it caused a verbal expression of surprise. I am excited to read the next book to see what happens with Viktor and Misha the penguin.

Rating: 4/5

The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway

This is my second Hemingway book of the year. I am constantly impressed by his ability to write directly and plainly in such a way that the story unfolds casually. It felt like I was reading a friend's letter or journal about their vacation and what went wrong. It was both about nothing and about the relationships of various not-so-nice people. I suppose it spoke to the idea of the "lost generation," but mostly, it showed many people coping with trauma in their own ways (mostly alcoholism). My copy had a fantastic introduction by Maria Hinojosa, which had a similar tone to a friend sharing their thoughts and opinions about the book.

Rating: 3/5

The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I read Crime and Punishment for summer reading before my final year of high school and loved the writing and the story. The Idiot was my second-ever Dostoevsky book, and the writing and intricate character relationships were just as impactful. That said, this book felt like a male version of Pride and Prejudice, where the plot revolves around characters deciding whether or not they are in love and willing to marry a strange, eccentric figure that shows up throughout the story. While beautifully written, the plot was slow and not too intense.