Books I Read (and Loved) in January 2023
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In the Everything of 2022, one of the things that fell by the wayside was one of my favorite forms of self-care: reading for pleasure. I read for work and I read for school and I read for news, but I didn’t spend nearly as much time as I would have liked reading just to read. And looking back, I’m certain that contributed to the Small Depression Spirals I hit throughout the year, leading up to the Big Depression Spiral I landed in for the holidays.
As I began figuring out how to climb out of that hole, a digital library hold I’d placed on Kazuo Ishiguro’s sci-fi novel Klara and the Sun came in, and I jumped in without a second thought. It was the first book I read in 2023 and it gave me the momentum I needed to pick up another book, and another.
This year, I’d like to do monthly round-ups of what I’m reading, both to give me space to reflect on those books soon after finishing, and to help me track my favorites as we move through the year! I’m kicking things off with my five favorite reads from January 2023, as seen below and on Instagram. (Speaking of which, if you’re not following me on my new Instagram account, what are you waiting for?)
Klara and the Sun
Klara is a solar-powered Artificial Friend whose observational skills border on genuine empathy. When she’s chosen by a chronically ill child named Josie to be her companion for the next several years, Klara’s understanding of the world changes significantly, especially as Josie begins to grow up.
This dystopian sci-fi novel is a character-focused treatise on love and empathy, and it’s a beautiful, emotional read.
Manhunt
The world ends with a deadly virus that mutates men into feral, terrifying creatures whose only drive is hunger. For longtime friends Beth and Fran, two trans women whose survival depends on hunting and harvesting men’s organs lest the virus come for them too, the apocalypse is brutal and bloody and also full of yearning. When they meet Robbie, a Native trans guy who’s going it alone rather than risking trust in another person, they form an unlikely found family and face off against militarized TERFs, a billionaire bunker brat, and their own demons all at once.
Manhunt absolutely blew me away, and I felt like I could not put it down. Do not miss this masterpiece of queer and trans horror.
Galatea
How does it feel to be the sculpture molded by Pygmalion, rather than the misogynist sculptor himself? Galatea is a short story from the perspective of the “perfect woman” Pygmalion created, as she’s trapped in a hospital desperate for something More and plotting how to get it.
Madeline Miller is one of my favorite authors. This story holds incredible depth thanks to her skillful application of the written word across an arguably negligible number of pages, responding almost solely to a tiny part of the myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Ninth House
Alex Stern is not the kind of girl you’d see in a pamphlet for Yale University. However, she has a unique skill that makes her useful to one of the college’s secret, magical societies: She can see ghosts. When her mentor goes missing, she has to use her relationship with the dead to track him down while also solving an allegedly unrelated murder.
I devoured this book and immediately jumped into the second title in the series (see below). Leigh Bardugo’s debut adult novel is as gorgeous and cunning as her YA work, without pulling any punches. It expertly walks the line between dark, tense, magical mystery and character-driven navigation of grief and trauma. I cannot recommend it enough.
Hell Bent
Hell Bent picks up a few months after Ninth House concludes, and Alex Stern has had the first truly safe summer of her life. However, her relationship with ghosts has changed dramatically and her mentor is still missing. Complicating things further, she’s being blackmailed by an old and dangerous acquaintance, the governing board of her society is cracking down, and two people have been murdered. Whatever her feelings about her powers now, she has to set them aside to resolve the disparate parts of her life before they crash together and send her tumbling down.
Ninth House is even more gripping than its predecessor. The world-building is delicious, the character growth is top tier (especially because it reinforces the fact that healing is never linear), and the imagery is divine.
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