Farewell 2023: my year in (a selection of) books

 I usually read relatively few mainstream novels each year – by ‘mainstream’ I mean non-science fiction. When much younger, I would only read novels, both mainstream and science-fiction. I only picked up serious non-fiction reading during the later stage of my studies, and really got fully into it when I moved to the Netherlands. It started with books like Koestler’s The sleepwalkers, and Pepys’ Diary, and Boswell’s London Journal, and it snowballed from there – to the point that over the last decade, I would read at least twice as many non-fiction books as mainstream novels.

And my science-fiction reads tended to remain stable, at around 25 a year.

Another thing that changed over the last 6 to 8 years is my language of choice: from my mid-twenties to my forties, I hardly read anything in French, my mother tongue – everything I read was in English. Before that (and despite studying English at Uni…) I had hardly ever read anything in English – it all started while living in Ireland and not finding books in French 😊

Then my PhD took over, and my reading (fiction, non-fiction, science fiction) switched to being at least 90% in English. Yet over the last few years, I have gone back to reading in French, even if the balance is still markedly tipped towards English: in 2023, I read one book in French for every 6 books read (13 in French, 62 in English, about 15%).

So how was 2023 for me in terms of books read?

You can find the complete list of what I read here, but what stood out for me were the following (nf stands for non-fiction; sf for Science fiction; nothing means mainstream novels):

• Paul Veyne.      La vie privée à Rome (nf)
• Ian Hamilton.   Keepers of the flame (nf)
• James Boswell. In search of a wife (nf)  
• John Banville The book of evidence
• Michael Ondaatje  The collected works of Billy the Kid 
• George Vigarello. Le propre et le sale (nf)
•  Denis Johnson.  Angels 
• Penelope Fitzgerald. The beginning of spring
• Sebastian Barry.  The secret scripture
• Milan Kundera.  Ignorance 
• Lytton Strachey. Eminent Victorians (nf)
• Alastair Reynolds. Eversion (sf)
• Greg Egan. Scale (sf)

Paul Veyne was (he just died) a formidable historian of Greece and Rome, with an eye for concepts and large-scale thinking. So his books are both informationally incredible, and conceptually deep: he does something with the information, he doesn’t just give it – and he forces you to think. In this one (Private life in Rome), just like in his wonderful ‘Les grecs croyaient-ils en leurs mythes?’ (Did the ancient Greeks believe in their own myths?), Veyne wants us to consider ourselves, our history, its continuity (or lack thereof), and asks us to think about what is – and not just what was. Demanding read at times, but enormously rewarding.

The Hamilton’s Keepers of the flame is a wonderful collection of little histories: those of publishing and of handling a dead author’s legacy. It’s exceedingly well written, and behind the playful anecdotes there are serious questions about the status of an oeuvre, its legitimacy, its coherence, and its reality – when the inheritors pick and choose, how do we know what the author actually produced, or even wanted to leave behind? When the inheritors take it upon themselves to clean up a reputation, to sanitise a work, what are we reading today?

The Boswell is, honestly, almost as good as his London Journal 1762-1763: if you don’t know him, or it, please go and read it as soon as possible. This one (In search of a wife) is our good old Boswell, still racked by doubts, still introspective, still intellectually ambitious, still good-natured, drinking and womanising and whoring way too much but in his inimitable style and voice. A wonderful, wonderful little book.

I read Banville’s The book of Evidence again – for the third time in 25 years I think. To be fair, I re-read his Kepler and his Copernicus 3 times each as well (although not this year). And guess what? I came to a different interpretation of The book of Evidence this time! 😊 This is Banville at his best: unbelievable style, incredibly clever, funny, dark. Banville, quoi…clearly several notches above the rest.

Ondaatje’s Billy the Kid is in the tradition (if you can call it that) of his amazing ‘Coming to slaughter’ (on the re-imagined life of early jazz trumpeter Buddy Bolden): it’s fiction but not as we know it Jim; it’s fiction and non-fiction and it’s something else too. Coming to slaughter remains my favourite, but this one was really special as well.

Paul Vigarello doesn’t write with such fluidity as some other historians, but his Le propre et le sale (The clean and the dirty) is fascinating: a study of the evolution of the idea of cleanliness and dirtiness from late Middle Ages to the 20^th century. As usual with him, this is a social history, weaving together the evolving scientific thinking, social habits and societal developments.

Denis Johnson’s Angels is one of his very early ones, and it shows a bit (it’s less terse than his more recent works, slightly less sparse). It’s not a bucket of laughs by any means – some might say it’s pretty depressing. Yes, I can see that – but it’s also beautiful, tragic, poignant, and he can evoke loneliness and loss and craziness and despair like no-one else.

Penelope Fitzgerald’s The beginning of spring is a gem. A diamond hidden in a nothing-much novel – as is usual with her. If you’ve never read her ‘The bookshop’, ‘Offshore’ or, say, ‘The blue flower’, you don’t know what you’re missing: the hidden, humble genius of English literature. This one, set in Russia before the revolution, is in her usual style: deceptively simple and easy and flowing, but full of nuances and complexity. She’s the one writer you cannot afford to read quickly, as it’s all so much more subtle than what it seems. She was brilliant, she deserves to be read, and read, and read again.

Sebastian Barry’s The Secret scripture is the equal of his ‘A long, long way’ – no mean statement from me here as that earlier novel, set during WW1, is one of the absolute best I’ve ever read. Here, Barry, in his idiosyncratic style (his uniquely beautiful, oral, rolling, wavy, spoken and yet literary style) deals with Ireland but in another way. I can’t say often enough how beautiful and sad and multi-layered this novel is. My favourite book of the year.

Milan Kundera died in 2023, and while he’s one of the most important writers of the last century, his reputation dates back mostly to the 1980s (The unbearable lightness of being, The book of laughter, The joke etc, not to forget his immense ‘The art of fiction’).). Ignorance (written in French although I read it in English) is a monster – about identity, about emigrating, about bilingualism, about loss, about…so much. In my top three in 2023 – easy.

Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians is a classic, dating back to the 1920s, acclaimed at the time by all and sundry which very much included all his friends from Bloomsbury. I always thought his reputation mostly rested on his personality and friendships (with Virginia Woolf and all the others) – but that was when I hadn’t actually read him ☹ I humbly ask for his forgiveness: Eminent Victorians is absolutely brilliant. Extremely well written, acerbically ironic, it’s also a portrait of an age and so goes much further than what it seems to be (four portraits of 19^th Century personalities). Brilliant, it must be said again!

And in terms of science fiction, 2023 was not the greatest year, although honourable mentions must go to Reynolds’ Slow Bullets and Jeff Noon (although is Noon writing sf these days? Hard to tell…). Still, Reynolds’ Eversion, that starts off like Darwin’s The voyage of the Beagle (a very interesting book by the way) is complex enough, and twisted enough, that it stands out.

And how could I not mention Greg Egan, who gave us a few very difficult books to read these last years, but showed he can go in other, more reader-friendly directions too, notably with Scale, a sort of thriller with a major twist and a mind-blowing premise.

It would be remiss of me not to mention Figes’ impressive study of Russia (The whisperers, outstanding), the Boulgakov theatrical novel (if you don’t know his Molière, I recommend it – as his Master and Margarita of course), Voltaire, Darnton on the ‘Encyclopédie’ (my favourite historian), the Dumas I read for the first time (there would be plenty to say here 😊), Le Roy Ladurie, Auden’s commonplace book, and Neal Bauman’s new novel, really good and topical and cruel and funny…and with the best title (‘Venomous lumpsucker’)…so not a bad year at all.

Here's to hoping 2024 will be even better!

Vive la lecture, diverse, foisonnante et enrichissante 😊