20 books I didn’t read this year

The art of not reading is a very important one

“Every morning, I have woken up knowing that I will never run out of books to read. That has been my life.”
—Kenzaburo Oe

Hey y’all,

I stole the idea for this letter wholesale from the great John Warner, aka The Biblioracle, who posted a list of books he didn’t read because he was busy working on his own book. (Sadly, I have no such excuse: I did not write a book this year, but I made a lot of notes for the one I’m gonna write next year! 😂)

Obviously, the list of books I didn’t read this year is endless. No, I didn’t read Middlemarch, War and Peace, or Tristram Shandy. Next year! So I’m arbitrarily limiting this list to 20 books that were published in 2023.

All of these books somehow caught my attention, which, in this day and age, is a huge accomplishment. (If somebody’s even heard about my books I’m amazed and thrilled. I rode bikes with a guy yesterday who said he didn’t think he’d ever met a writer!) These all are books I either bought or checked out from the library.

Next week I’ll post my annual favorite books list, so think of this as a shadow list of what I actually read this year. In some ways, this list might even be more interesting than the list of books I did read this year. It might also end up saying more about my reading life than next week’s post…