It's time for my annual "books I read this year" list.
In previous years I've tried to break my list up into various genre categories, but this time I'm just going with plain old Nonfiction (20 books) and Fiction (7 books), alphabetical by author in each category.
I hope my list gives you some ideas for books to read in 2023.
NONFICTION
Son of Elsewhere: a Memoir in Pieces - Elamin Abdelmahmoud.
I absolutely loved this book by the Toronto writer/podcaster and former Queen's student. Abdelmahmoud writes with humour, humility, and grace about his experiences as a 12-year-old immigrant from Sudan to Kingston, Ontario and the struggle to fit into a new place where he was instantly defined as Black, an identity that was completely new to him. The author explores his youthful and adult passions such as wrestling, country music, highways, TV shows, and radio -- always making a connection to that concept of "elsewhere," that pull between the "once-home" and the "new home." A beautiful book. (I
also had the opportunity to hear Abdelmahmoud speak at an event put on by
Kingston ArtsFest this past spring, just after I'd read the book; that was a real treat.)
No Cure For Being Human (And Other Truths I Need To Hear) - Kate Bowler.
In this follow-up to Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I've Loved), Bowler talks about her colon cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment and reflects on how our culture of relentless positivity tries to tell us we have unlimited choices and the best is just out there waiting for us. She reminds us that acknowledging our limitations and our fragile humanity is the most truthful way to live. I really enjoy Bowler's frank, funny style -- she can have you laughing one moment and tearing up the next.
Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection - Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie.
I keep this book at my bedside and enjoy dipping into the short chapters about hope, disappointment, exhaustion, the in-between, and more. Each contains a brief reflection, a prayer, and a practice to help readers let go of unrealistic, guilt-producing expectations (of themselves and others) and accept the gift of being an ordinary, imperfect person.
Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole - Susan Cain.
Cain is the author of Quiet, the best-selling book on introversion. In this one she talks about how some people are naturally drawn to sadness and longing and how an acknowledgement of these feelings -- rather than just relentless positivity -- is essential to personal growth and stronger relationships. She talks about the importance of grieving well, the role of sadness and longing in creativity, and the need to acknowledge impermanence, among other things. Excellent book.
The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness - Fr. Greg Boyle.
As in his previous books Tattoos on the Heart and Barking to the Choir, Father Boyle shares moving and humorous stories about the gang members he works with at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, showing how learning to be tender with ourselves and others is life-changing. His books are such a gift.
Atlas of the Heart - Brene Brown.
I have read all of Brene Brown's books (most of which address vulnerability and shame in various contexts), and this is one I think I'll be returning to over and over again to study and absorb. It's essentially a map of emotions and emotion-related thoughts, clustered according to different situations or needs. For example, Ch. 1 is called "Places We Go When Things Are Uncertain or Too Much" and talks about stress, anxiety, worry, avoidance, etc. Ch. 2, "Places We Go When We Compare," addresses resentment, jealousy, schadenfreude, and other emotions. And so on. Very interesting and insightful.
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground - Alicia Elliott.
Another excellent memoir in essays. Elliott was born into a racially mixed family (white Catholic mother and Indigenous father) and this reality shapes how she explores topics like depression, poverty, racism in the legal system, representation of Indigenous people in Canadian writing, and more.
The Sacred Pulse: Holy Rhythms for Overwhelmed Souls - April Fiet.
I had the honour of being an early reader for April's book, and it's lovely. She talks about the need for "holy rhythms" to guide our days, using everyday subjects like gardening, handcrafts, cooking, raising chickens, etc. to invite us to become more present and in tune with the "kairos time" of God.
Once More We Saw Stars: A Memoir - Jayson Greene.
This is a very sad, beautiful memoir by the father of a two-year-old girl who died when a brick fell from a building onto the bench where she was sitting with her grandmother. It sounds horrible and obviously it is, but it's also very life-affirming.
Best Wishes, Warmest Regards: The Story of Schitts Creek - Daniel Levy and Eugene Levy.
I watched all six seasons of Schitts Creek a year or so ago, and Richard gave me this companion book last Christmas. It was a lot of fun to read, containing interviews with the cast, descriptions of the characters and episodes, and tons of photos and fan art.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times - Katherine May.
In this engaging book, May weaves stories and lore about winter with her own experiences, showing the importance of stepping into what winter has to offer and embracing the natural, seasonal cycles."Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again."
Attached to God: A Practical Guide to Deeper Spiritual Experience - Krispin Mayfield.
This book by a therapist explores the different attachment styles people have -- anxious, shutdown, and shame-filled attachment -- and how each one can affect their relationships with other people as well as with God. In all three cases a lack of trust, sometimes resulting from hurtful experiences in childhood and/or Christian community, can prevent us from experiencing God in the way we long to. Then Mayfield goes beyond simply telling us about how attachment theories work to addressing how we can move from anxiety to rest, from shutdown to engaged, and from shame to delight in our relationship with God. So good.
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir - Elizabeth McCracken.
This is a powerful memoir about stillbirth. McCracken, an American, was living and writing in France while she and her husband awaited the birth of their first child; at nine months they discovered the baby had died. McCracken is a brilliant writer, interweaving details about that ill-fated delivery with those of her second pregnancy, so that she moves readers simultaneously toward the devastating events of her loss and toward the joy she and her husband have with their living child.
Do I Stay Christian? A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned - Brian McLaren.
I had only read one other book by McLaren -- A New Kind of Christian -- and that was a number of years ago, so I thought it was time to remedy that. Part I of this book addresses the reasons a person might want to leave the fold of Christianity; Part II addresses the reasons they might want to remain. Then in Part III he discusses some practices and principles which will help us become better people no matter which decision we make, such as becoming more in tune with the earth, committing ourselves to the pursuit of reality, etc. Lots to think about here; I'd highly recommend this.
When We Belong: Reclaiming Christianity on the Margins - Rohadi Nagassar.
Nagassar, a Calgary writer, church planter, and organizer, has written a very interesting and challenging book about deconstructing and decolonizing Christianity. He talks about various barriers to true belonging in society and the church and how racism and white supremacy must be identified and addressed for true liberation to occur. "Institutions are not designed to change; they're fundamentally designed to keep things the same, a posture that comes at the cost of further marginalizing those who have faced abuse and seek justice."
Unprotected: A Memoir - Billy Porter.
I thoroughly enjoyed this inspiring memoir by actor/dancer/singer Porter, whose writing is bigger than life, just like his public and onstage personality. (You may be familiar with his iconic appearance in a black tuxedo gown at the 2019 Oscars.) As a boy, Porter experienced sexual abuse and was rejected by his beloved church for being gay. He writes about how his voice and other gifts took him places he would never have imagined, yet he still had to deal with the trauma of his past in order to truly thrive and love himself.
Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close - Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman.
These co-authors were close friends for many years -- and even started a podcast about women's friendships -- yet they had to acknowledge they were not well prepared when conflicts about racial insensitivity, life changes, and geographical distance strained their relationship. Their belief that their friendship was "too big to fail," combined with how public that friendship was, hindered resolution at first. But the investment they made in the relationship, including seeking a counselor's help, led to a stronger, more intentional bond. This book definitely struck a nerve for me; I read it with a combination of admiration and wistfulness.
The Journey to Wholeness: Enneagram Wisdom for Stress, Balance, and Transformation - Suzanne Stabile.
In this book, Stabile -- whose book The Path Between Us I've also read -- goes in-depth into two main categorizations of the Enneagram, the Triads (Heart, Head, Gut) and the Stances (Withdrawing, Aggressive, and Dependent), in order to help us find balance in stressful "liminal" times. I love the clarity and practicality of Stabile's approach to the Enneagram.
Coming Home: A Spiritual Memoir - Lori Vos.
The author, whom I've known for over 35 years, blends narrative, short essays, and poetry as she recounts her upbringing by abusive parents and her journey to healing and freedom from her past. This was a challenging book because of some of its subject matter and other aspects, but it was an important book for me to read this year, and I'm glad the writer has found peace.
Why Poetry? - Matthew Zapruder.
Zapruder argues that people are intimidated by and resistant to poetry because they've been wrongly taught that poems are deliberately obscure, with meanings that hide behind the words on the page. He looks at poetry more as a way for both poet and reader to make imaginative associations; experiencing poetry is an attitude or state of mind rather than the cracking of a code. I loved this line about the "usefulness" of poetry: "The role of poetry in our time of crisis is the same as always: to preserve our minds and language, so we may be strong for whatever is to come."
FICTION
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke.
This 1,000-page novel of magical realism is about two 19th-century magicians who are at times allies and rivals in their quest to bring back "practical magic" to England. I first watched a seven-part BBC miniseries based on this book and loved it – and in fact when reading the book I found it quite advantageous to have watched the show first. The book is definitely a commitment but very enjoyable.
One Night Two Souls Went Walking - Ellen Cooney.
I really liked this quiet novel about the experiences of a chaplain during one night at her job at a hospital, as she interacts with various patients and ponders questions of the soul, life, and death. I had to keep reminding myself this was not a memoir because it reads so much like one.
Wives and Daughters - Elizabeth Gaskell.
"Mrs. Gaskell" was a contemporary of the Brontë sisters. This novel is one of her best known, about the remarriage of a widowed doctor and the relationships between his own daughter and his new wife and her daughter. I watched a BBC miniseries based on the book and thoroughly enjoyed that, so I decided to read the novel -- but what I didn't know was that the book was not finished before Gaskell's death. You get to the end where everything should be tied up and it just ... stops! It's a delightful book, but if you read it, be prepared for it to be inconclusive (and watch the TV series if you want a satisfying wrap-up).
Firefly Lane - Kristin Hannah.
A friend recommended this novel to me. It's about the 30-year friendship between two women who first meet as kids living across the street from one another: one flamboyant and from a troubled home, one more reserved and from a stable background. It's fairly predictable, and the endless references to time periods are kind of cringe ("Kate put on her tie-dyed t-shirt and bell-bottom jeans while listening to the Carpenters," that sort of thing), but it held my interest. It's quite a good story about two women whose relationship remains strong even through times of conflict and betrayal. (Apparently this novel was made into a TV series too, although my friend says it's very different from the book.)
O William! - Elizabeth Strout.
Strout is one of my favourite novelists and I will eagerly read anything she writes. This book, about the title character from her earlier novel My Name is Lucy Barton, explores writer Lucy's relationship with her first husband, William, and her role in helping him discover secrets from his past. Strout is so good at capturing people and relationships in a few quick strokes. I loved it.
Lucy By the Sea - Elizabeth Strout.
I was thrilled to discover this fall that another Elizabeth Strout novel about Lucy Barton had come out. It's about Lucy's experience through the Covid-19 pandemic as she escapes New York with William for a seaside house in Maine. This one was not quite as satisfying to me; Strout is not a highly dramatic writer, but this felt especially flat and formless. Maybe that was her way of depicting pandemic life – but I didn't find it as compelling as I'd hoped to. I also feel at times that Strout wants to "both-sides" things: for example, to use her characters to try to understand the motives of the Jan. 6/21 White House insurrectionists. I think if you're going to do that, you have to go all in, rather than say "but there were racists and Nazis there too" and then back away, shrugging at the mystery of it all. (There's a whiff of privileged Boomer energy here, despite Lucy Barton's destitute upbringing.) All this to say, if you're a Strout fan you won't want to miss this one, but in my view it isn't one of her best.
The Lincoln Highway - Amor Towles.
I'd describe this book as a "yarn." It begins with Emmett, a teenage boy in 1950s Nebraska, returning home from a work farm after his father's death. He and his little brother decide to drive from Nebraska to California to start new lives and maybe find their long-lost mother. But two friends from the work farm have stowed away in their car and suggest a detour that leads them in the opposite direction, to New York City. It's quite entertaining, with chapters told from the point of view of multiple characters.
(I also started Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land because I'd heard raves about it, but I abandoned it in the early going when it became obvious that a character who commits a terrible act of destruction (very early on, so no spoiler here) is likely autistic. Autistic people are far likelier to be victims of crime than perpetrators, so this inaccurate trope can be really damaging, regardless of the author's intent. Doerr strikes me as a wise author, so this was a real disappointment; I wish someone had warned him against taking this approach -- or if someone did, that he had listened.)
Well, that's my list! Thanks for reading it -- or skimming it, or even just glancing at it and saying "TL: DR -- I ain't reading all that." I'd love it if you'd leave a comment below and tell me if you've read any of these, or if you've read something else in 2022 that was especially meaningful to you.
