I don’t see finishing another book by the end of the year. So here is a list of the books I finished this year. I always add finished because I often stop reading books for various reasons: 1)I forget where I put them, and then when I find them I don’t care anymore; 2) I lose interest; 3) I find the book tiresome, or obvious;4) the book is dreadful; 5) I become distracted and start reading something else. I also add finished as a qualifier, because I sometimes suspect people’s list of books read is more about competition (LOOK, I’ve read a bunch more books than you!) than it is about reading what you want to read. So, here is my list: 2023 books
The Wasteland: a biography of a poem by Matthew Hollis
Black No More by George Schuyler
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak
The Needle’s Eye by Fanny Howe
Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
Less by Andrew Sean Green
When We Were Orphans by Kazaa Ishiguro
Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
The writing Life by Annie Dillard
The Dance Most of All by Jack Gilbert
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Forget the Alamo by Burrough, Tomlinson, and Stanford
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Finalists by Rae Armantrout
Pierre Reverdy Selected Poems translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Gasoline by Gregory Corso.
Breathing the Water by Denise Levertov
Fully Empowered by Pablo Neruda
Flower Wreath Hill, later poems by Kenneth Rexroth
Four Unposted Letters to Catherine by Laura Riding
The Heat Will Kill You First by Jeff Goodell
The Now by Albert Goldbarth
Fathers and Children by Ivan Turgenev
The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Poetry as Insurgent Art by Laurence Ferlinghetti
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea
Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich
Hermetic Definition by H.D.
Singing at the Gates by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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