Books Read 2023

1. “Vladimir” — Julia May Jonas  (January)
2. “Heatwave” — Victor Jestin  (January)
3. “Yardie” — Victor Headley  (January)
4. “White Butterfly” — Walter Mosley  (January)
5. “Food, Sex & God” — Michèle Roberts  (January)
6. “How New York Breaks Your Heart” — Bill Hayes  (January)
7. “Kitchen” — Banana Yoshimoto  (January)
8. “The Glue Ponys” — Chris Wilson  (February)
9. “Three-Fifths” — John Vercher  (February)
10. “Tolstoy’s Short Fiction” — Leo Tolstoy  (February)
11. “Hell’s Angels” — Hunter S. Thompson  (February)
12. “The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break” — Steven Sherrill  (March)
13. “Lives Like Mine” — Eva Verde  (March)
14. “The Never-Ending Present” — Michael Barclay  (March)
15. “Still Alice” — Lisa Genova  (March)
16. “The Men’s Club” — Leonard Michaels  (March)
17. “Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Mornings” — Gwendoline Riley  (March)
18. “Everyone Is Watching” — Megan Bradbury  (April)
19. “Lucy By The Sea” — Elizabeth Strout  (April)
20. “Stolen Focus” — Johann Hari  (April)
21. “Self and Soul” — Mark Edmundson  (April)
22. “Songs of Innocence and Experience” — William Blake  (April)
23. “The Passenger” — Maryam Sachs  (April)
24. “Instructions For The Drowning” — Steven Heighton  (May)
25. “Good Girl” — Anna Fitzpatrick  (May)
26. “This Is Pleasure” — Mary Gaitskill (May)
27. “Saltwater” — Jessica Andrews  (May)
28. “The Home Child” — Liz Berry  (May)
29. “This Way For The Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” — Tadeusz Borowski  (May)
30. “Elizabeth Finch” — Julian Barnes  (May)
31. “Manifesto”  Bernardine Evarisro  (May)
32. “The Professor of Desire” — Philip Roth  (June)
33. “How To Be A Straight A Student” — Cal Newport  (June)
34. “The Night Always Comes” — Willy Vlautin  (June)
35. “Into The Wild” — Jon Krakauer  (June)
36. “Mona” — Pola Oloixarao  (June)
37. “Roman Tales” — Alberto Moravia  (June)
38. “The Voyeur” — Alberto Moravia  (June)
39. “The Poet” — Louisa Reid  (June)
40. “Interpreter of Maladies” — Jhumpa Lahiri  (June)
41. “Wait Until Spring, Bandini” — John Fante  (July)
42. “Legends of the Fall” — Jim Harrison  (July)
43. “Offshore” — Penelope Fitzgerald  (July)
44. “Without Warning & Only Sometimes” — Kit De Waal  (July)
45. “The Restraint of Beasts” — Magnus Mills  (July)
46. “Home To Harlem” — Claude McKay  (July)
47. “Monkeys With Typewriters” — Scarlett Thomas  (July)
48. “The Death of Sigmund Freud” — Mark Edmundson  (July)
49. “The War of Art” — Steven Pressfield  (July)  (again)
50. “The Stranger In The Woods” — Michael Finkel  (July)
51. “Why Teach?” — Mark Edmundson  (July)
52. “Flights” — Olga Tokarczuk  (July)
53. “Digital Minimalism” — Cal Newport  (August)
54. “The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break” — Steven Sherrill  (August)  (again)
55. “In Defense of a Liberal Education” — Fareed Zakaria  (August)
56. “Why Football Matters” — Mark Edmundson  (August)
57. “Allegory” — John MacQueen  (August)
58. “Civilisation And Its Discontents” — Sigmund Freud  (August)
59. “Broke” — Tom Clark (Ed.)  (August)
60. “The Restraint of Beasts” — Magnus Mills  (August)  (again)
61. “Pornocracy” — Catherine Breillat  (August)
62. “Things Seen” — Annie Ernaux  (August)
63. “Aspiration” — Agnes Callard  (August)
64. “The Maintenance of Headway” — Magnus Mills  (August)
65. “The Death of Francis Bacon” — Max Porter  (September)
66. “History of Violence” — Edouard Louis  (September)
67. “The Dig” — Cynan Jones  (September)
68. “20 Fragments of A Ravenous Youth” — Xiaolu Guo  (September)
69. “The Joke” — Milan Kundera  (September)
70. “Fear and Trembling” — Amélie Nothomb  (September)
71. “Pastoralia” — George Saunders  (October)
72. “The Sense of An Ending” — Julian Barnes  (October)  (again)
73. “After The Lights Go Out” — John Vercher  (October)
74. “Sympathy” — Olivia Sudjic  (October)  (again)
75. “The Stalker” — Sarah Alderson  (October)
76. “Trouble Is What I Do” — Walter Mosley  (October)
77. “And Then There Were None” — Agatha Christie  (October)
78. “The Rock Blaster” — Henning Mankell  (October)
79. “Pet Sematary” — Stephen King  (November)
80. “On Writing” — George V. Higgins  (November)
81. “The God Of Small Things” — Arundhati Roy  (November)
82. “Urban Tumbleweed” — Harryette Mullen  (November)
83. “Jack Carter’s Law” — Ted Lewis  (November)
84. “The Talented Mr Ripley” — Patricia Highsmith  (November)
85. “The Chain” — Adrian McKinty  (November)
86. “If I Let You Go” — Charlotte Levin  (December)
87. “Why Football Matters” — Mark Edmundson  (December)  (again)
88. “McGlue” — Ottessa Moshfegh  (December)
89. “Nonfiction” — Julie Myerson  (December)
90. “Crossroads” — Jonathan Franzen  (December)
91. “Story of The Eye” — Georges Bataille  (December)  (again)
92. “The Pleasure of the Text” — Roland Barthes  (December)
93. “Other Men’s Daughters” — Richard Stern  (December)

Books in bold were particularly good.