At the beginning of 2023, I made it my goal to read 50 books in one year (that’s about 1 book per week!). This was my second year doing the 50 books/year challenge, and I’ve found that it’s the perfect amount of books for me. It’s not too hard (I still have time for all my academic reading), and it’s not too easy (I sometimes fall behind!). I use Goodreads to track my reading habits, and it’s so great to be able to look back on everything I’ve read throughout the year. Here are 5 of my favorites, in no particular order.
March 14, 2023, by The Dial Press
- Hello Beautiful, by Anne Napolitano
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You’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but in this case, I was completely right. The gorgeous artwork at the beginning prompted me to pick this book up, and in the end, I was extremely glad that I did. It’s a modern retelling of Little Women that follows four sisters as they grow up, fall in love, develop their identities, and fall apart. I’m normally not drawn to literary fiction, but the writing in this book was amazing, and the characters felt so alive.
- Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang
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This was the first book I’ve read by R.F. Kuang, and it certainly won’t be the last (I finished reading Babel in January 2024). I couldn’t put this book down, and I thought it was so insightful about the subtle (and overt) racism that pervades the publishing industry. I didn’t expect to learn so much about the process of writing and publishing while reading this book since it’s mostly advertised as a thriller, but I really enjoyed that aspect of the book!
- Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language, by Amanda Montell
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It wouldn’t be a yearly book recap without some feminist nonfiction. Last year, I read Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by the same author, and that book made it onto my yearly recap list as well! Montell (who is a linguist) has a great way of relaying information to the reader in an approachable, funny manner, and you always come away from reading her books with the sense that you’ve learned something important while having fun doing it.
- How to Sell a Haunted House, by Grady Hendrix
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Hand puppets … can be scary? This is something I didn’t know, and I’m not sure how I feel about that fact. Grady Hendrix’s writing style makes horror stories terrifying, funny, and heart-warming. This is an author who is always an “instant-buy” for me, and he has published some truly remarkable books (both fiction and nonfiction). There’s something so interesting to me about using a haunted house to describe family trauma or dysfunction, as the home should be the site of safety. I don’t know how Grady Hendrix made the story of a hand puppet named “Pupkin” into a terrifying tale of generational family conflict, but he did, and he did it well.
- Beloved, by Toni Morrison
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This was a book that I read for a literature class that I ended up doing a lot of writing about. Beloved takes the horrific trauma of slavery and humanizes it in the form of a ghostly apparition that shows up at her mother’s house. It’s a staple in the Gothic genre (of which I’m a huge fan), but it’s also an important read because it examines the intersections of race and gender in an insightful way. Toni Morrison is extremely talented, and I’m looking forward to reading more books by her in the future!
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