January Bonus, Part 2: Several 2023 Books I Want to Read ASAP
My personal list of 2023 titles I'm excited about, after sifting through the list of lists from Part 1: Some already out, some coming soon, and some out not so soonly
In my previous Bonus Reads post from yesterday (see below), I gave you a perhaps overwhelming list of lists featuring hundreds of books coming out in 2023 that have garnered buzz from various literary corners of the internet.
Today’s Part 2 is a much more manageable list of the 26 titles from said lists that I personally will be trying to read this year (well, plus the 6 already mentioned in the previous post, which, just as a reminder, are included in the image below, because they are, indeed, books I’m excited about, having now mentioned them like 3 times).
So, 32 books I suppose. But who’s counting? Oh… right:
A Few (too many?) Selections from the List of Lists that I’m Excited About
Below I’ve pulled 26 of the titles coming out this year (that I haven’t already mentioned) that have piqued my particular interest, in case you might also be interested. These are largely authors I’ve read before, people I have some connection with (real or imagined social media pals), or are books that the writers I trust and follow most closely have highlighted, as well as some titles I saw repeated on several lists that stood out. For your convenience, they’re listed in chronological order of release date and broken down into 3 categories: Books Out Now, Books Out Soon, and Books Not Out Super Soon.
Please note: all block-quoted material is taken directly from the publishers’ websites.
Cheers!
Books Out Now:
Black Women Writers at Work (1984, reissued Jan. 3, 2023) edited by Claudia Tate - Nonfiction
Long out of print, Black Women Writers at Work is a vital contribution to Black literature in the 20th century.
Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after.
This was highlighted by several people, including two of my faves—Megan Giddings on social media and Saeed Jones on the Vibe Check podcast—and it sounds fascinating and essential, and, even though I had not heard of it before now, I’m very glad it has been revived.
Brotherless Night (published Jan. 3, 2023) by V. V. Ganeshananthan - Novel
Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K’s invitation to work as a medic at a field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers and Indian peacekeepers arrive only to commit further atrocities, Sashi begins to question where she stands. When one of her medical school professors, a Tamil feminist and dissident, invites her to join a secret project documenting human rights violations, she embarks on a dangerous path that will change her forever.
A super cool writer I’ve had the chance to hang out with a few times, SJ Sindu (Marriage of a Thousand Lies [2017] and Blue-Skinned Gods [2021]—both excellent, among others) posted about this novel that sounds intense but great.
The Survivalists (published Jan. 10, 2023) by Kashana Cauley - Novel
A single Black lawyer puts her career and personal moral code at risk when she moves in with her coffee entrepreneur boyfriend and his doomsday-prepping roommates in a novel that’s packed with tension, curiosity, humor, and wit from a writer with serious comedy credentials.
This one appeared on a bunch of the lists from the last post and has been favorably compared to The Other Black Girl (2021) by Zakiya Dalila Harris which I very much enjoyed. Looking forward to it!
Ghost Music (published Jan. 10, 2023) by An Yu - Novel
When a parcel of mushrooms native to her mother-in-law’s province is delivered seemingly by mistake, Song Yan sees an opportunity to bond with her, and as the packages continue to arrive every week, the women stir-fry and grill the mushrooms, adding them to soups and noodles. When a letter arrives in the mail from the sender of the mushrooms, Song Yan’s world begins to tilt further into the surreal. Summoned to an uncanny, seemingly ageless house hidden in a hutong that sits in the middle of the congested city, she finds Bai Yu, a once world-famous pianist who disappeared ten years ago.
I love a good realism-turning-slowly-to-surrealism tale, and at the checkout line when I bought it, the independent bookstore employee was also excited about this novel, so that’s always a good sign.
Black and Female: Essays (published Jan. 17, 2023) by Tsitsi Dangarembga - Nonfiction
In Black and Female, Tsitsi Dangarembga examines the legacy of imperialism on her own life and on every aspect of black embodied African life.
This paradigm-shifting essay collection weaves the personal and political in an illuminating exploration of race and gender. Dangarembga recounts a painful separation from her parents as a toddler, connecting this experience to the ruptures caused in Africa by human trafficking and enslavement. She argues that, after independence, the ruling party in Zimbabwe only performed inclusion for women while silencing the work of self-actualized feminists. She describes her struggles to realize her ambitions in theater, film, and literature, laying out the long path to the publication of her novels.
Another one that appeared on multiple lists, this sounds like an essential and engrossing read.
Please Report Your Bug Here (published Jan. 17, 2023) by Josh Riedel - Novel
A college grad with the six-figure debt to prove it, Ethan Block views San Francisco as the place to be. Yet his job at hot new dating app DateDate is a far cry from what he envisioned. Instead of making the world a better place, he reviews flagged photo queues, overworked and stressed out. But that's about to change.
Reeling from a breakup, Ethan decides to view his algorithmically matched soulmate on DateDate. He overrides the system and clicks on the profile. Then, he disappears. One minute, he’s in a windowless office, and the next, he’s in a field of endless grass, gasping for air. When Ethan snaps back to DateDate HQ, he’s convinced a coding issue caused the blip. Except for anyone to believe him, he’ll need evidence. As Ethan embarks on a wild goose chase, moving from dingy startup think tanks to Silicon Valley’s dominant tech conglomerate, it becomes clear that there’s more to DateDate than meets the eye. With the stakes rising, and a new world at risk, Ethan must choose who—and what—he believes in.
I’m pretty sure I first heard of this novel because writer and pal and cool cat Isle McElroy posted about it, and this subject matter is right up my alley and immediately caught my eye.
The Sense of Wonder (published Jan. 17, 2023) by Matthew Salesses - Novel
An Asian American basketball star walks into a gym. No one recognizes him, but everyone stares anyway. It is the start of a joke but what is the punchline? When Won Lee, the first Asian American in the NBA, stuns the world in a seven-game winning streak, the global media audience dubs it “The Wonder”—much to Won’s chagrin. Meanwhile, Won struggles to get attention from his coach, his peers, his fans, and most importantly, his hero, Powerball!, who also happens to be Won’s teammate and the captain. Covering it all is sportswriter Robert Sung, who writes about Won's stardom while grappling with his own missed hoops opportunities as well as his place as an Asian American in media. And to witness it all is Carrie Kang, a big studio producer, who juggles a newfound relationship with Won while attempting to bring K-drama to an industry not known to embrace anything new or different.
Salesses wrote the book Craft in the Real World (2021) which I am ashamed to say I still have not read yet. As a college English instructor, I really should have by now. Add that to my New Year’s resolutions. Anyway, this is a fascinating sounding novel that I look forward to reading soon, too.
Books Out Soon:
Maame (expected release date Jan. 31, 2023) by Jessica George - Novel
Maame (ma-meh) has many meanings in Twi but in my case, it means woman.
Smart, funny, and deeply affecting, Jessica George's Maame deals with the themes of our time with humor and poignancy: from familial duty and racism, to female pleasure, the complexity of love, and the life-saving power of friendship. Most important, it explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures—and it celebrates finally being able to find where you belong.
Featured in many of the lists from my previous post, this sounds great and like it’s one a lot of folks will read and want to talk about.
Couplets: A Love Story (expected release date Feb. 7, 2023) by Maggie Millner - Poetry
A dazzling love story in poems about one woman’s coming-out, coming-of-age, and coming undone
Maggie Millner’s captivating, seductive debut is a love story in poems that explores obsession, gender, identity, and the art and act of literary transformation. In rhyming couplets and prose vignettes, Couplets chronicles the strictures, structures, and pitfalls of relationships—the mirroring, the pleasing, the small jealousies and disappointments—and how the people we love can show us who we truly are.
I’m pretty sure I saw Isle McElroy post about this first as well, and anything they recommend goes directly onto my to-read list. Also a sucker for a story-in-poems.
My Nemesis (expected release date Feb. 7, 2023) by Charmaine Craig - Novel
Tessa is a successful writer who develops a friendship, first by correspondence and then in person, with Charlie, a ruggedly handsome philosopher and scholar based in Los Angeles. Sparks fly as they exchange ideas about Camus and masculine desire, and their intellectual connection promises more—but there are obstacles to this burgeoning relationship.
Compassionate and thought-provoking, My Nemesis is a brilliant story of seduction, envy, and the ways we publicly define and privately deceive ourselves today.
Another one that appeared in multiple lists that just sounds really good.
Dyscalculia: a Love Story of Epic Miscalculation (expected release date Feb. 14, 2023) by Camonghne Felix - Nonfiction
When Camonghne Felix goes through a monumental breakup, culminating in a hospital stay, everything—from her early childhood trauma and mental health to her relationship with mathematics—shows up in the tapestry of her healing. In this exquisite and raw reflection, Felix repossesses herself through the exploration of history she’d left behind, using her childhood “dyscalculia”—a disorder that makes it difficult to learn math—as a metaphor for the consequences of her miscalculations in love. Through reckoning with this breakup and other adult gambles in intimacy, Felix asks the question: Who gets to assert their right to pain?
Dyscalculia negotiates the misalignments of perception and reality, love and harm, and the politics of heartbreak, both romantic and familial.
I’ve attended some virtual events where Camonghne Felix read some of her poetry and have followed her since then. Her latest book sounds incredible, and the subtitle is killer.
The Wife of Willesden (expected release date Feb. 14, 2023) by Zadie Smith - Drama
In her stage-writing debut, celebrated novelist and essayist Zadie Smith brings to life a comedic and cutting twenty-first century translation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s classic The Wife of Bath. The Wife of Willesden follows Alvita, a Jamaican-born British woman in her mid-50s, as she tells her life story to a band of strangers in a small pub on the Kilburn High Road. Wearing fake gold chains, dressed in knock-off designer clothes, and speaking in a mixture of London slang and patois, Alvita recalls her five marriages in outrageous, bawdy detail, rewrites her mistakes as triumphs, and shares her beliefs on femininity, sexuality, and misogyny with anyone willing to listen.
One of our cats is named Zadie after Zadie Smith, so, it’s safe to say I’m a fan, and very excited for her foray into dramatic writing.
Users (expected release date Feb. 21, 2023) by Colin Winnette - Novel
Marrying the philosophical absurdities of life, technology, start-up culture, and family, Users is for readers of Ling Ma, Dave Eggers’s The Circle, and viewers of the hit Apple TV+ original series Severance
In a world rife with the unchecked power and ambition of tech, Users investigates—with both humor and creeping dread—how interpersonal experiences and private decisions influence the hasty developments that have the power to permanently alter the landscape of human experience.
Another novel that immediately jumped out at me, because I’m obsessed with the ways technology and life intertwine, and how fiction can portray the complexities there.
Sea Change (expected release date Mar. 28, 2023) by Gina Chung - Novel
Ro is stuck. She’s just entered her thirties, she’s estranged from her mother, and her boyfriend has just left her to join a mission to Mars. Her days are spent dragging herself to her menial job at the aquarium, and her nights are spent drinking sharktinis (Mountain Dew and copious amounts of gin, plus a hint of jalapeño). With her best friend pulling away to focus on her upcoming wedding, Ro’s only companion is Dolores, a giant Pacific octopus who also happens to be Ro’s last remaining link to her father, a marine biologist who disappeared while on an expedition when Ro was a teenager.
When Dolores is sold to a wealthy investor intent on moving her to a private aquarium, Ro finds herself on the precipice of self-destruction. Wading through memories of her youth, Ro realizes she can either lose herself in the undertow of reminiscence, or finally come to terms with her childhood trauma, recommit to those around her, and find her place in an ever-changing world.
This appeared on many lists as well, and octopi are awesome, so. I’m sold!
The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts (expected release date Mar. 28, 2023) by Soraya Palmer - Novel
Folktales and spirits animate this lively and unforgettable coming-of-age tale of two Jamaican-Trinidadian sisters in Brooklyn grappling with their mother’s illness, their father’s infidelity, and the truth of their family’s past
Telling of the love between sisters who don’t always see eye to eye, this extraordinary debut novel is a celebration of the power of stories, asking, What happens to us when our stories are erased? Do we disappear? Or do we come back haunting?
I’m not gonna lie, I’m a total sucker for a long-winded and intriguing title, and this is one of the better ones I’ve seen recently. So let’s do this thing!
Books Out Not Super Soon:
This Is Not Miami (expected release date April 4, 2023) by Fernanda Melchor, translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes - Nonfiction
Set in and around the Mexican city of Veracruz, This Is Not Miami delivers a series of devastating stories—spiraling from real events—that bleed together reportage and the author’s rich and rigorous imagination.
These narrative nonfiction pieces probe deeply into the motivations of murderers and misfits, into their desires and circumstances, forcing us to understand them—and even empathize—despite our wish to simply label them monsters. As in her hugely acclaimed novels Hurricane Season and Paradais, Fernanda Melchor’s masterful stories show how the violent and shocking aberrations that make the headlines are only the surface ruptures of a society on the brink of chaos.
I enjoy getting to read literature in translation, and this one in particular sounded super interesting to me.
Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother (expected release date April 18, 2023) by Peggy O’Donnell Heffington - Nonfiction
In an era of falling births, it’s often said that millennials invented the idea of not having kids. But history is full of women without children: some who chose childless lives, others who wanted children but never had them, and still others—the vast majority, then and now—who fell somewhere in between. Modern women considering how and if children fit into their lives are products of their political, ecological, and cultural moment. But history also tells them that they are not alone.
Drawing on deep research and her own experience as a woman without children, historian Peggy O’Donnell Heffington shows that many of the reasons women are not having children today are ones they share with women in the past: a lack of support, their jobs or finances, environmental concerns, infertility, and the desire to live different kinds of lives. Understanding this history—how normal it has always been to not have children, and how hard society has worked to make it seem abnormal—is key, she writes, to rebuilding kinship between mothers and non-mothers, and to building a better world for us all.
A perspective that I don’t often see represented with a ton of nuance in popular culture sometimes, this book seems like an excellent deep dive into what it means to be a woman without children.
Chain-Gang All-Stars (expected release date May 2, 2023) by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Novel
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.
Adjei-Brenyah’s previous book, the short story collection Friday Black (2018), made quite a splash and was excellent, so I’m excited to see what his novel-writing is like, and the subject matter, while very dark, sounds like it speaks to the moment we’re living through is this carceral American life.
Dykette (expected release date May 16, 2023) by Jenny Fran Davis- Novel
Sasha and Jesse are professionally creative, erotically adventurous, and passionately dysfunctional twentysomethings making a life together in Brooklyn. When a pair of older, richer lesbians—prominent news host Jules Todd and her psychotherapist partner, Miranda—invites Sasha and Jesse to their country home for the holidays, they’re quick to accept. Even if the trip includes a third couple—Jesse’s best friend, Lou, and their cool-girl flame, Darcy—whose It-queer clout Sasha ridicules yet desperately wants.
As the late December afternoons blur together in a haze of debaucherous homecooked feasts and sweaty sauna confessions, so too do the guests’ secret and shifting motivations. When Jesse and Darcy collaborate an ill-fated livestream performance, a complex web of infatuation and jealousy emerges, sending Sasha down a spiral of destructive rage that threatens each couple’s future.
Featured on a number of lists, including being one of the featured preorders list at Charis Books & More, one of our favorite local bookshops, this sounds like an absolutely wild ride. Sign me up.
Quietly Hostile: Essays (expected release date May 16, 2023) by Samantha Irby - Nonfiction/Humor
Beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wow, No Thank You, Samantha Irby has returned to the printed page with a much-anticipated new collection of side-splitting essays, and not a moment too soon. Irby’s career has taken her to new heights. She dodges calls from Hollywood and flop sweats on the red carpet at premieres (well, one premiere). But nothing is ever as it seems online, where she can crop out all the ugly parts.
I think I’ve read each of Irby’s previous essay collections: Meaty (2013), We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017), and Wow, No Thank You (2020). They are always interesting and surprising and hilarious, so I’m excited for round four.
Yellowface (expected release date May 16, 2023) by R.F. Kuang - Novel
With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
Sounds like some similar vibes to Disorientation (2022) by Elaine Hsieh Chou, one of my favorites from the first half of 2022 (and which I reviewed in my first-ever StoneWright Reads post), and I’ve heard very good things about R. F. Kuang’s Poppy War trilogy, so I’m looking forward to this one, and also to reading those someday soon.
A note on the publisher, HarperCollins: The HarperCollins Union has been on strike for more than 50 days so far with good cause and without management coming to the table. So it’s a complicated issue when it comes to reviewing/promoting Harper-Collins titles at the moment, especially since many HarperCollins authors support the union and yet most are not in a position (power-wise, legally, financially) in a place to oppose management either. Anyway, this book sounds great, and I don’t really know what the best course of action is, but here’s an article from Book Riot about ways to support the union: How to Support the HarperCollins Union During Their Strike
Or, alternatively (though I don’t know exactly what difference it makes): Preorder at Bookshop.org instead.
The Late Americans (expected release date May 23, 2023) by Brandon Taylor - Novel
In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. At the group’s center are Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicates her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who “didn’t seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection.” These three are buffeted by a cast of poets, artists, landlords, meat-packing workers, and mathematicians who populate the cafes, classrooms, and food-service kitchens of Iowa City, sometimes to violent and electrifying consequence. Finally, as each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives—a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered.
Brandon Taylor is one of my favorites. I loved Real Life (2021) and his short story collection Filthy Animals (2022), and he’s one of my favorite writers to follow on social media. Something about his particular voice on Twitter or Instagram just gets me in stitches every time. Can’t wait for this latest novel.
Mrs. S (expected release date June 20, 2023) by K. Patrick - Novel
A sublime and sensual debut novel exploring the nature of queer love and attraction, the transformative power of desire, and the dissonance between self and place, by White Review Fiction Prize shortlisted writer K. Patrick.
Seductive, stylish, and disarmingly wry, K. Patrick’s bold and revelatory debut smolders with the heat of summer as it explores the queer experience and the force of forbidden love.
One of the debut novels The Guardian said to look out for, this sounds super interesting.
The Light Room: On Art and Care (expected release date July 4, 2023) by Kate Zambreno - Nonfiction
“Kate Zambreno’s writing is mysterious, unclassifiable, and yet intimate and familiar,” Jenny Zhang has written. Now, Zambreno offers her most profound and affecting work yet: a candid chronicle of life as a mother of two young daughters in a moment of profound uncertainty about public health, climate change, and the future we can expect for our children. Moving through the seasons, returning often to parks and green spaces, Zambreno captures the isolation and exhaustion of being home with a baby and a small child, but also small and transcendent moments of beauty and joy. Inspired by writers and artists ranging from Natalia Ginzburg to Joseph Cornell, Yūko Tsushima to Bernadette Mayer, Etel Adnan to David Wojnarowicz, The Light Room represents an impassioned appreciation of community and the commons, and an ecstatic engagement with the living world.
This book has been getting buzz from another favorite in the realms of both fiction and social media, Amber Sparks, as well as numerous other writers I follow, and I’m happy to jump on that bandwagon. Sounds like it captures something essential about parenting now.
Crook Manifesto (expected release date July 18, 2023) by Colson Whitehead - Novel
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning Colson Whitehead continues his Harlem saga in a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory.
CROOK MANIFESTO is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family. Colson Whitehead’s kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem is sure to stand as one of the all-time great evocations of a place and a time.
I’ve been a fan of everything I’ve read by Colson Whitehead, from The Harlem Shuffle (2021) to Underground Railroad (2016) to The Nickle Boys (2019) to Zone One (2011) and The Noble Hustle (2014). So I suppose I’m willing to give his latest Harlem novel a shot (lol).
How to Say Babylon (expected release date August 29, 2023) by Safiya Sinclair - Nonfiction
With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.
How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.
Safiya Sinclair was the 2018 poetry contest judge at the lit mag my wife, Ally, and I worked at for a while—New South Journal through Georgia State University—and her poetry collection Cannibal (2016) is excellent, so I’m excited to read some of her prose. So many great memoirs by great poets out in the past several years, so add this to the list. And the comparisons to Educated (2018) by Tara Westover and Born a Crime (2016) by Trevor Noah can go ahead seal the deal.
Okay, that’s it for my January Bonus posts, but, once again, just a quick teaser for the folks who read to the end: I’m super stoked about an unprecedented third Bonus post in a single month, this time from a special guest columnist, that should drop in a few days. It’s gonna be a hoot :)
And finally finally, a quick reminder that Bonus Posts like this don’t go out to everyone’s inboxes because I don’t want to spam you, but you can always find them on the Bonus Reads sections of StoneWright Reads, or in the ICYMI section at the bottom of my official monthly newsletter.
Please feel encouraged to subscribe below (if you haven’t already) to get monthly updates on what I’m reading and some reviews of my faves, and then also feel free to share this post if you enjoyed it. Happy reading!