The Book Shopper

Best Books Read in 2023

Looking through my list of books read this year, (a sidebar on the home page) and comparing it to Best Books Read 2017-2022, this year’s notables share certain characteristics. Besides being compelling reads, they have a thematic unpleasantness (read: misery). Is this just a reflection of 2023 or a pattern of the kind of book I naturally read? Let’s review.

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010) by Timothy Snyder

I became a reader of Tim Snyder when a friend directed me to an interview with the Yale historian and a world expert on Eastern European history. In this interview Snyder predicted that things would happen during the 2020 election that would totally surprise us. I quickly read his succinct On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017) but this year I expanded to his tome Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010).  In the introduction Snyder writes “that the mass killing of the twentieth century is of the greatest moral significance for the 21st century.” The book has added a new chapter includes an updated view of the 2020 election and The Big Lie, which by the way, was an Adolf Hitler technique.

Extensive ramblings can be found at My Random Bloodlands Notes.

Looking back at previous Best Books Read (2017-2022).  I had admired similar books: Josef Skorvecky’s The Bass Saxophone and Other Stories (set in Czechoslovakia), Astra Taylor’s Democracy May Not Exist But We Will Miss It When It Is Gone and Eric Vuillard’s The Order of the Day which tells how Germany annexed Austria in 1938.

Dispatches (1977) by Michael Herr

Books on Vietnam seem to be another pattern in my reading. This year’s offering was Michael Herr’s Dispatches. This short book is a mix of Hunter S. Thompson and George Orwell.  Based on the Thompson manic writing style Herr’s book could be renamed Fear and Loathing in Vietnam, but the comparison to Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia fits as well. Not only did Orwell write candidly about combat and conditions on the front lines during the Spanish Civil War but he also integrated the politics of the country into the narrative as well.  Herr reveals the damaged psyche of the grunt and while questioning the mindset of journalists like himself.  He also reveals cluelessness of the commanders in the field. (Ironically, the U.S. Commander William Westmoreland’s was heavily criticized by others in the military for allowing correspondents access to the frontlines.)

"...some piece of helmet graffiti that seemed to say everything... 'Born to Kill' placed in all innocence next to the peace symbol..."

Herr was one of the screenwriters for the films Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. A line from the movie came back to me as I read the book. It’s the point when the Marines have finished basic training and are marching on review.  Joker (Matthew Modine) narrates, explaining what he has learned: “The Marines do not want robots. The Marine Corps wants killers.”

Dispatches fits on my shelf with other recently read Vietnam classics like Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (Vann was not clueless) and more recently the works of   Viet Thanh Nguyen including the novel The Sympathizer and Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. He writes in Nothing Ever Dies:

"Apocalypse Now and Herr’s Dispatches converge in their honesty about or perhaps exploitation of the nitty-gritty core of war, which is the fusion and confusion of lust and killing, sex and death, murder and machinery, resulting in homicides that were illegal at home but encouraged overseas in the war zone."

The Nickel Boys (2019) by Colson Whitehead

Historically, (historically?) less than a third of the books I read are fiction, but one of my favorite writers has been Colson Whitehead. I’ve read four of his books, but not his most well-known— Underground Railroad. (My favorite is Sag Harbor.)

 In the Nickel Boys two Black teenagers Elwood and Turner struggle to survive in a reform school in Tallahassee during the 1960s. There is plenty of misery and brutality in the book which is more pronounced, because you emotionally become invested in (and root for) the two main characters.

Whitehead’s prose is fast-paced and energetic with description that gives the book some levity. For example:

"After the judge ordered Elwood to Nickel he had three nights home. The state car arrived at 7 o’clock Tuesday morning. The officer of the court was a good ole boy with a meaty backwoods beard and a hungover wobble to his step. He’d outgrown his shirt and the pressure against his buttons made him look upholstered."

Question Answered

I am already anticipating more Whitehead books ahead in 2024 and Eric Vuillard’s A Honorable Exit about the French withdraw from Indochina in the 1950s is already a scheduled read for my book group (GRSG).  

It is rather easy to answer that question about my reading tastes. There are definite patterns in my selections. I can only wonder whether types of books will dominate in 2024. With wars raging in the Ukraine and Gaza, I expect I will gravitate to similar titles in the days ahead.  

Milestone or Millstone

2023 was the year that the Book Shopper blog marked its 500th posting.  And in case you missed the celebration; there was no celebration. Admittedly I thought about renting some space and inviting notables who have made tangential cameo appearances throughout the years (Filmmaker James Benning, rapper Killer Mike and author Thomas Chatterton Williams, Book artist Brian Dettmer, essayist David Shields, photographer Emily Berl) and throwing a party on behalf of the blog. I might have called it “Not the Decatur Book Festival Festival.” For now, this remains a fantasy.

The blog premiered on November of 2008 when I reviewed a showing of “Paperback Dreams”, a documentary on the demise of two bookstores in the San Francisco area followed by a panel from the local book selling scene. Ironically, I have been a book seller myself for three years with my book popup Destination: Books. No brick-and-mortar store for me, which was one of the memorable takeaways (financial ruin) from “Paperback Dreams” along what a soulless gorilla Amazon was and still is as a bookseller.

Yet, the blog plods on. In the early years  I used to “report” on happenings around the city, but that became tiresome as writer events often become almost cliché.  Moreover, the response was underwhelming considering the work I put into it.

However, looking back on the postings about the notables was a fun trip down memory lane and I did learn some things worth sharing. For example, when the poet Billy Collins reminded his readers should not confuse the narrator of his poems with the poet himself.  However when my longtime partner Denise and I ran into Collins outside the chapel at Agnes Scott College before showtime, he seemed charming and whimsical like his poems. Another worthy author event featured the historian Rick Atkinson who wrote The Liberation Trilogy. In the Decatur Library Auditorium Atkinson graciously fielded World War II questions from the audience like it was a game show. 

 Though I continue to march with a one-foot-after-the-other attitude, I have lightened my load by adopting a more wistful format, which I share on a monthly basis. Receiving occasional feedback from you fabled few readers who haven’t unsubscribed me, is always encouraging. But the main motivation of continuing the blog is that it gives me an excuse to generate ideas, to write, knowing I have some hassle-free place to publish it.  A few posts have generated other writing ideas and larger essays on other platforms. One of the most notable was The MARTA BOOK CLUB where I listed the books, I witnessed people reading while riding the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit System for 12 years. It spawned my 2016, Down & Outbound: A Mass Transit Satire, (see video trailer) book.

Well, it’s back to work as I compile my Best Books Read List for 2023. Time to get started on that next 100 to make it to the 600th posting, which I will I expect will drop sometime in 2030. Book your party reservations now.

Clockwise from upper left: James Benning's re-creation of the Unabomber's Library, Brian Dettmer's art work, Shields best known book, Williams and Killer Mike at the Decatur Library, Emily Beryl's photo of Liz Goldwyn at an LA bookstore.