Best Shit List 2023

Books only this year ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What’s up. Here are the best books I read this year. Several were published in 2023, but that wasn’t a requirement for inclusion. You’ll find the big-ass list of all ground covered below my favorites. Plenty of shorties fluffing up the numbers this year. I’m gonna focus on reading loooooong books in 2024.

In an essay retiring from his column, which was supposed to be about books, my friend Mike Nagel said:

You'd think I'd have more to say about books, having read a number of them over my life, having majored in them in college, having even written a very small one myself, but I don't. Saying things about books bums me out. It makes me feel dumb. So I just buy them, and read them, and then I go grab another one off the shelf, sometimes with my eyes closed.

I too feel like a moron writing about books. I’m not a critic, and I don’t read all that much criticism. As a reader, I’m best as a fan, as a cheerleader for the books and writers who hit me hard. Beyond telling you to read something, forcing a book on you in the mail, or posting pics of the stuff I'm feeling, I usually don't have much to say. Also, my memory for books is challenging at best, so I often can’t even summarize the stuff I finished last month. But I found a few things to say about the ones I loved this year.

Usually, I include music in the Best Shit List, but I didn’t keep good track of my listening this year. If pressed, I’d say it was Viagra Boys, Woods, Lucinda Williams, Dehd, Deerhunter, Connections, the Cure, Venus & the Flytraps, Fontaines D.C., and some unreleased stuff I can’t talk about yet.

I’d be psyched to hear from you on anything below. Hit me in the comments, my inbox, via text, phone, DM, or face-to-face.

Best,
Adam

PS: The new issue of Little Engines is out and free in print.

TWO FAVORITE NOVELS

Someone Who Isn’t Me
by Geoff Rickly

It’s a novel about a guy named Geoff who sings in a band called Thursday who goes to Mexico to take a next-fuckin’-level psychedelic drug called ibogaine to kick heroin. The story is basically true. The drug is not fictional. It’s real, but not well known. It’s only a footnote in Michael Pollan’s landmark book on psychedelics, basically saying, Oh there’s this new one we’re hearing whispers about…

You don’t need to be a fan of Rickly’s band to dig this. I never cared about Thursday. You don’t even need punk rock bona fides or closeness with addiction or recovery. You can dismiss any opinion you might have on autofiction or questions about which people, places, or things in here are real. Although the book uses The Divine Comedy for a loose frame, you’re not required to know classic literature to get into it. I hardly know Dante, but I’m certain this book is a new classic; a book for right now, real time.

S.W.I.M. is for lovers of the novel as a form. It’s for readers comfortable with experimentation, playfulness, and confusion. It’s for people down to suspend beliefs. It’s not for the faint of heart, but for those open to flooding theirs. I heard Geoff call the writing romantic and out of fashion, but I could use more of that in my contemporary novels.

When I learned about Rose Books and this, their debut title, it was a magnetic pull. I’ve been loud about my love for both whenever possible this year. I’ve attended events; I’ve joined groups to be in their orbit. Full-on fanboy reply guy.

I told both Chelsea (the publisher) and Rickly that their arrival in my line of sight had me going: Oh shit, it’s like first finding McSweeney’s, but they’re punks! There’s the sickest sentence on the Rose Books website in the About section: “We believe now is the time to take risks for the sake of beauty.” Mission accomplished.

The Hero of This Book
by Elizabeth McCracken

A deceptively slim tribute to McCracken’s mother, and a beautiful wrestling match with grief. The book unfolds on a walking tour of London as the unnamed narrator revisits a city her mother loved.

I’m always waiting to grieve my mother, or trying to figure out why I’ve not done it yet. I’m happy to lurk on a close bond between a parent and an adult child in a book. In my own life, observing my wife with her mom is the same. Foreign, impressive, a pleasure to watch.

The book doubles as a love note to London, one of the very few cities I say that I love, and the city most unresolved for me. It’s tied to memories from and questions about a short relationship there which didn’t pan out (thankfully).

When I made my full reading list, I broke the titles down into fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. I mistakenly had The Hero of This Book in the true stories column until I pulled it off the shelf and was reminded that it’s billed as a novel. Duh! The grieving narrator tells you directly that she isn’t writing a memoir.

She does it repeatedly:

"Perhaps you fear writing a memoir, reasonably. Invent a single man and call your book a novel. The freedom one fictional man grants you is immeasurable."

In that way, T.H.O.T.B. is like Rickly’s S.W.I.M. You can’t ignore the autofiction-ness of either, and the dance around memoir is necessary for both stories to be told freely, and therefore truly, too.

FIVE OTHER FAVORITES IN FICTION

Nothing to See Here
by Kevin Wilson

The Ghost Writer
by Philip Roth

The Means
by Amy Fusselman

All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque

Acts of Desperation
by Megan Nolan

TWO FAVORITE TRUE STORIES

Don’t Call Me Home
by Alexandra Auder

Another one about the mother. Do they ever stop coming?

Auder grew up in the Hotel Chelsea with her mother Viva, one of Andy Warhol’s superstars. I stayed at the newly Richie-Richified Chelsea on the company dime days before reading this book. Having just left the same hallways, the same stairwell and front desk, it was easy to be in it from the jump with this one.

Beyond the accidental overlap in setting, my two-car-garage upbringing in the ‘burbs of Indianapolis couldn’t be more removed from this story, but it’s important to not relate to books, too.

I am jealous of Auder’s exposure to the most bohemian shit, the most romantic (that word again!) and fucked-up NYC lifestyle. As a father, I wonder how I might find 7-12% of that exposure for my toddler daughter, here in Nashville and in the places we travel. It’s an opportunity I hardly took with my son, who’s about to head to college having been shown mostly fast food restaurants. He has seen divorce, I guess, which is some very real exposure to the world.

Of course, there’s a dark side to Auder’s bonkers upbringing. Viva and Michel—Auder’s father who filmed (exploited?) everything, including her birth—were shitty parents, to be sure. They split up when Auder was young and both made long, dueling lists of ways to put yourself ahead of your child.

My recurring gripe against my own mother is that she sheltered me from the world in the name of Jesus, and I would have liked my dad to have read more books or cared about movies or something, but I am aware that it would be a bummer to have your mother treat you like an adult from the time you were walking. It would not be cool to be consulted at age 11 on whether to abort your baby sister. I recognize that perhaps the model of a stable and seemingly fulfilling career selling insurance might be better than an artsy dad on heroin.

Auder’s writing is effortless, and her honesty is a marvel. It’s a brave book, mucking around in the serious mess of a singular mother/daughter relationship, loving and honoring Viva, and kinda hating her, too. I read that Auder tried to write the book for over 25 years. The short chapters dispersed throughout titled “Now”—Auder in her early 50s and her mother well into her 80s, still tangled up—must have been the secret ingredient needed to get it all down right.

The Diary of a Young Girl
by Anne Frank

I’m baffled by how I got through high school and college without reading certain books, but often grateful for finding them later in life. This is an astonishing read in 2023.

I’m only recognizing now, proofreading this before pressing send, you could say both T.D.O.A.Y.G. and Auder’s book are about a daughter. Anne’s is only available to us to read because her father let the world see it. Of his first reading, he said: “The Anne that appeared before me was very different from the daughter I had lost. I had had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings.” In the book, Anne says, "Imagine how interesting it would be if I published a novel about the Secret Annex."

In an online Q&A which I attended, Auder said her mother hasn’t even read her book.

THREE OTHER FAVORITES IN NONFICTION

Our Band Could Be Your Life
by Michael Azerrad (re-read)

My Life in the Sunshine
by Nabil Ayers

Lou Reed: The King of New York
by Will Hermes

TWO FAVORITE POETRY BOOKS

Red Rover Red Rover
by Bob Hicok

I’m no good at saying what I like about poems.

Returning the Sword to the Stone
by Mark Lender

I’m no good at saying what I like about poems.

AV’s FULL 2023 READING LIST

FICTION:

The Hero of This Book
by Elizabeth McCracken

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
by Deesha Philyaw

No One Left to Come Looking for You
by Sam Lipsyte

Cult Classic
by Sloan Crosley

The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Great Jones Street
by Don DeLillo

The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong

Nothing to See Here
by Kevin Wilson

Our Country Friends
by Gary Shteyngart

Haints Stay
by Colin Winnette

Goodbye, Columbus
by Philip Roth

The Ghost Writer
by Philip Roth

Zuckerman Unbound
by Philip Roth

The School for Good Mothers
by Jessamine Chan

The Anatomy Lesson
by Philip Roth

The Prague Orgy
by Philip Roth

The House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros

The Employees
by Olga Ravn

Acts of Desperation
by Megan Nolan

Gone to the Wolves
by John Wray

Crapalachia
by Scott McClanahan

Someone Who Isn’t Me
by Geoff Rickly

The Abortion
by Richard Brautigan

Notes
by Gauraa Shekhar

Vladimir
by Julia May Jonas

Small Things Like These
by Claire Keegan

Foster
by Claire Keegan

_____s__ (galley)
by Mike Nagel

Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut

A Ballet of Lepers
by Leonard Cohen

Nothing Special
by Nicole Flatterly

The Means
by Amy Fusselman

All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque

Now Is Not the Time to Panic
by Kevin Wilson

Thrust
by Lidia Yuknavitch

McGlue
by Ottessa Moshfegh

Biography of X
by Catherine Lacey

NONFICTION

Heretic
by Jeanna Kadlec

A Man Without a Country
by Kurt Vonnegut

A Heart That Works
by Rob Delaney

You Could Make This Place Beautiful
by Maggie Smith

Happening
by Annie Ernaux

A Woman’s Story
by Annie Ernaux

Novelist as a Vocation
by Haruki Murakami

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
by Haruki Murakami

Tonight I’m Someone Else
by Chelsea Hodson

The Diary of a Young Girl
by Anne Frank

Ernest Hemingway On Writing 
edited by Larry W. Phillips

Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You
by Lucinda Williams

Don’t Call Me Home
by Alexandra Auder

All I Ever Wanted
by Kathy Valentine

The Situation and the Story
by Vivian Gornick

Our Band Could Be Your Life
by Michael Azerrad

Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation
by Steven Hyde’s

Sad Happens: A Celebration of Tears
edited by Brandon Stosuy and Rose Lazar

My Life in the Sunshine
by Nabil Ayers

Easy Beauty
by Chloé Cooper Jones

The Autobiography of Gucci Mane
by Gucci Mane

The 90-Day Novel
by Alan Watt

Lou Reed: The King of New York
by Will Hermes

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination
by Elizabeth McCracken

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution
by Sara Marcus

Keep Moving
by Maggie Smith

Walking through clear water in a pool painted black
by Cookie Mueller

POETRY

Selfwolf
by Mark Halliday

I Feel Fine
by Olivia Muenz

The Tradition
by Jericho Brown

[Insert] Boy
by Danez Smith

Returning the Sword to the Stone
by Mark Leidner

Water Look Away
by Bob Hicok

Red Rover Red Rover
by Bob Hicok