things i liked in 2023

Dear readers,

This is a big, incomplete list of things - books, films, apps, music - that I enjoyed, found useful, or learned from in 2023. I liked writing this up as a way to take stock of the year. I will try to do this consistently over the next few years so I track my tastes changing, or staying the same… Nothing on this list is sponsored - I get no kickbacks, so I am only recommending something if I truly liked it! - but maybe this will give you ideas if you’re holiday shopping or looking for end of year reading. And vice versa - if you would recommend something you think I’d also like based on what’s on this list, please let me know in the comments.

Books that made me a better writer

Some books I race through for fun; some books I linger over slowly, savoring every sentence and trying to let them sink into my unconscious. These books are the latter type. I picked some of them to help me with some element of Katabasis or another. I picked others on a whim and they’ve helped me with Katabasis regardless.

• Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium

  • This is the anthologized publication of his Norton Lectures at Harvard in 1985. I learned about the Norton Lectures because a bookseller at Harvard Book Store was excited to welcome Viet Thanh Nguyen to town for a signing of his new memoir, A Man of Two Faces. Viet Thanh Nguyen is delivering the Norton Lectures, and they have been fantastic. They are open to the public in person, and available to watch online.

• Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions

• Benjamin Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World

• Ray Monk, Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius

• Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

  • A reread for me. Speaking of Nabokov, my friend got me an edition of Pale Fire with John Shade’s poems printed on index cards and it’s now my favorite special edition book that I own

• Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

• Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

• Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

• Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

• T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

• Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station

• Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

• Yan Lianke, Dream of Ding Village (in Chinese; there is a published translation)

• Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

• Annie Ernaux, Look at the Lights, My Love

• Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays

• Paul Beatty, The Sellout

• Percival Everett, Erasure

  • Read this in preparation of an American Fiction screener I’m seeing on Thursday. Very excited!

Books I enjoyed on audio while I ran

It’s a special type of book that works well on audio and distracts me from the building exhaustion in my legs. My list is a bit random because it all depends on what’s available at at the moment on the library app. Thank you Libby!

• Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

• Ann Patchett, Commonwealth

• Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

• Haruki Murakami, Men Without Women

• Haruki Murukami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

• Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

• Monica Heisey, Really Good Actually

• Ben Lerner, The Topeka School

• Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

• Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

• Janice Y.K. Lee, The Expatriates

• David Grann, The Wager

• Yiyun Li, The Book of Goose

• Naomi Klein, Doppelganger

• Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine

• Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

• Adam Sisman, John le Carré

Films

• Hayao Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron

  • Perfect. My fiance is new to Miyazaki, so I had him watch Totoro with me before we saw this on opening night. He’s a convert :)

• Sofia Coppola, Priscilla

  • This was the first Sofia Coppola film I’ve seen. Whatever she’s got it’s working for me! Excited to sit down and watch The Virgin Suicides when I have a moment especially as I’m rediscovering my fondness for Eugenides.

• Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

• Todd Haynes, May December

  • All the praise for Charles Melton is right!

• The Personal History of David Copperfield

  • Not really a new 2023 film, but I got to screen it for folks at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and it was magical.

• Celine Song, Past Lives

Running accoutrements

The biggest change I made to my life this year was committing to running. Around October I decided I wanted to become one of those people who could effortlessly toss out a 5k in the morning. I have my tight 5k now and it’s not effortless, but it’s also much easier than I ever imagined it could be. I’m working on cutting all the walking intervals out of my 10k now, and I think a reasonable goal is a half marathon by the end of next year, then a full marathon by the end of 2025. Too ambitious? Not ambitious enough? I’ve only just dipped my toes into the world of running so I’ll take all the advice I can get.

• Couch to 5K Runner App - great training program if you’re starting from zero like me. Same company made a 10k running app that I’m now working through!

• LuluLemon Fast and Free Leggings - I like that they have deep leg pockets to store my phone. Also they look great…

• AllBirds Tree Dasher 2 - I read so much advice on running shoes that I no longer know what to believe. All I know is that my AllBirds are comfortable for my foot shape and don’t make my feet hurt after an hour, so I’m sticking with them. Any running experts out there feel strongly otherwise?

• Strava - got the app because everyone said to but I feel like I’ve only used maybe 1% of the functionality. I don’t even follow my friends…I just like to see which running routes are popular when I visit a new city and that’s it! Maybe when I’m done with 10k training I’ll start logging casual runs on Strava instead.

Music

• Olivia Rodrigo, Guts - liked it so much I wrote about it for Time.

• Maneskin, Rush - I rarely go to concerts, so seeing them at TD Garden was a treat. They’re electrifying live!

• Ludwig Göransson, Oppenheimer (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) - most of Katabasis’s third act was written to this score…

• Camille Saint-Saëns - we got a record player over the summer, a friend sent over a Saint-Saëns record, and the rest is history

• Franz Liszt, “Totentanz, S. 525”

• Metric, Formentera II - Metric I have loved you since high school

Productivity

This year is my busiest academic year yet - I’m studying for my qualifying exams in April, teaching both semesters, commuting every week, and trying to finish Katabasis on top of that. I’ve had to get very strict about rationing my time. These tools helped.

• Cal Newport, Deep Work

• Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism

  • I know, I know … Cal Newport’s suggestions and tone don’t work for everyone. But gosh they really work for me.

• Muji notebooks and pens

  • Functional, inexpensive, lightweight, customizable

• Freedom App - blocks any apps you choose at the hours you choose so you save your future self from having to decide whether to sit down and browse Instagram. Has a good desktop version too. I agree with Cal Newport that you should choose when to use the internet instead of being plugged into it all the time, and Freedom helped me break my compulsive need to be online.

What to do you think?

If you saw anything here you also liked, or think I should try something else in a similar vein, please let me know.

Love,

Rebecca