Poet, Writer, Editor, Bookshop Reviewer
As with all my annual lists, this only pertains to books new to me in 2023, with no re-reads from previous years (and there are always a handful of re-reads…looking at you, Alan Furst). Without further ado, here are my favorites from this past year, in order.
Read MoreAs with all my annual re-caps, the book didn’t have to be released in 2022 to make the list, it just had to be my first time reading it. No re-reads allowed. My reading slowed down a lot in the last third of the year due to writing and revising a new novel and the holiday madness, but I’m excited to see what 2023 brings. Until then, these are ten can’t miss books that I highly recommend.
Read MoreThe San Antonio Spurs have had a reputations of being a straight-laced, team-first squad for decades, to the point where many fans think they’re boring. This is thanks to the humble, nice-guy leadership of legends like David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Avery Johnson, and so on. The “buy into the system” expectations for this team are as clear as the black and white on their jerseys. But there’s silver in those jerseys too, a gray area for players who are harder to tame and buck at the heavy-hand placed on them by Pop and the front office (affectionally know by Spurs fans as PATFO). Now this list is mostly tongue-in-cheek, and like great heels in wrestling, these are the Spurs players who took a turn toward villainy, providing some drama (be it entertaining or franchise threatening) for a team that is unfairly treated as vanilla, as plain paper, as drama free. They’ve been anything but over the years, thanks to these thorny Spurs in our heels.
Read MoreAs with all my annual lists, the books themselves could have been published in any year, but they must be new to me. I didn’t read as many as I had hoped this year, but I am happy I was able to broaden my reading world with a lot of new authors I hadn’t explored before. If you hadn’t read any of these yet, I highly recommend them!
Read MorePeople have been blogging since the mid-90s, so it’s not exactly a cutting-edge medium for creating and monetizing content, especially when you compare it to things like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and other platforms. But if you’re a wordsmith at heart and want to give blogging a try, I’ve selected ten tips to help you get your passion project off the ground. Now, if you’re looking to monetize your blog, that’s a whole other game, so for now I’m just going to focus on getting your blog up and running in order to attract enough readers to (hopefully) justify any ads you might want to allow on your site. This is advice for someone who wants to share their work, their passion, and their ideas first and foremost, and blogging remains a great way to do that and reach potentially interested readers.
Read MoreThis has been a strange year for reading. It started out with a reinvigorated love of using the local library, and then the pandemic hit. One would think that working from home would allow me extra time to burn through more books than usual, and yet I read less this year than in previous years. I also stumbled into a stunning series of DNF (did not finish) roadblocks than ever before, a whole string of books that lost me a chapter or two in. Oddly enough, many of those books took place in libraries and bookshops, much to my heartbreak. I wanted at least one of them to be good, but they weren’t. However, these books below are the ones that captivated me the most and I’d recommend any of them.
Read MoreAs with all of my annual “best books of the year” lists, these don’t have to be “new” books, but they’re all new to me, and the list includes no re-reads, only first-timers. I’m pretty happy with this year’s overall batch. These are the ones that kept me up late into the night flipping pages and reading on, and as usual, I cheated a bit and added more than 10!
Read MoreWhile I read fewer books than usual in 2016, this annual edition of my Top 10 lists covers a fairly broad range of styles—a rock & roll bio, some YA classics, poetry, apocalypse lit, historical nonfiction, crime, noir, and more. Despite being a pretty miserable year, the good books kept me going. As usual for these lists, I only include books I’ve read for the first time in 2016, but the books can be from any year, brand new or decades old, so long as they’re new to me. I’d love to know what your favorites were this year as well, so feel free to add those in the comments section! Most of all, I hope you enjoy these if you haven’t yet tried them for yourself.
Read MoreIt’s time once again to tally up the books I read over the last year and see which ones held up. As usual, I only include books I read for the first time in 2015, but they can have been published anytime. Oddly, it seems I read fewer books in 2015 than in most recent years, by almost double digits, probably because I moved away from NYC and lost all that subway reading time. Oh well, so it goes. Here’s my top 10. Enjoy!
Read MoreAs usual, my list is formulated as such: The books don’t have to be released in 2014, but I must have read them for the first time in 2014. I noticed this year’s reading trend leaned heavily toward espionage, noir, horror, and genre fiction in general. My goal is to mix it up a little more next year, but then again, the heart wants what it wants. We’ll see. Enjoy the list, and feel free to comment with your favorite books of the year!
10. A World Lost by Wendell Berry
A gorgeous little book that sometimes reads more like a series of character and location sketches than a "story," but it's beautifully done. The main character is a 9-year-old boy whose favorite uncle is murdered and it forever alters the young boy’s simplistic worldview and daydream-like existence in rural America during the 1940s. The prose isn’t minimalist in the way some might use the word to describe Hemingway or Carver, but minimalist in that while not much happens, what does happen is described with a casual insightfulness and innocent wonder, making even the most mundane moments a work of art.
Read MoreAs usual, my list is formulated as such: The books don’t have to be released in 2013, but I must have read them in 2013, and it must be the first time I have read them. I stick to fiction for these lists, usually novels but not always.
10. The Whisperer in the Darkness by H.P. Lovecraft
This is a short novella that is also available for free for your e-reader (it’s in the public domain), which is how I read it. The story concerns a New England scientist who scoffs at the claims of strange, monstrous bodies found floating down rivers after a major flood in Vermont. Soon, a man living in a remote section of Vermont reaches out to him via letters, claiming that these bodies are not old wives' tales, but are clues to a secret that has plagued humanity for centuries. The man in Vermont has witnessed the cult-like, otherworldly beings who live deep in the woods. The beings are aware they're being watched, and they're closing in. The letters escalate in intensity and strangeness as the story unfolds, and our scientist eventually makes the trek to rural Vermont himself, with horrific results. The tale is spooky, fun, and skin-crawlingly wonderful.
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