2023 Reading List

For my own reference, and to add context as I hopefully keep up with blogging about what I'm reading in 2024, I'm documenting what I read in 2023. (I've also posted my 2022 list.) The list is arranged in the order the books were read.

1. Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey (Richard Ayoade, 2014)

2. In Other Words (Jhumpa Lahiri, 2015)

3. Cinema Speculation (Quentin Tarantino, 2022)

4. The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro, 1988)

5. The Autograph Man (Zadie Smith, 2002)

6. Age of Cage: Four Decades of Hollywood Through One Singular Career (Keith Phipps, 2022)

7. Sitti’s Olive Trees (Ndaa Hassan, 2021)

8. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (Eric Schlosser, 2013)

9. A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole, 1980)

10. American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World (David Baron, 2017)

11. The Man Who Died Twice (Richard Osman, 2021)

12. The Bullet That Missed (Richard Osman, 2022)

13. The Physics of Everyday Things (James Kakalios, 2017)

14. The Switch (Elmore Leonard, 1978)

15. Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius (Nick Hornby, 2022)

16. The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine (Ben Ehrenreich, 2016)

17. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (Rashid Khalidi, 2020)

18. Trust (Hernan Diaz, 2022)

19. Player One: What is to Become of Us (Douglas Coupland, 2010)

20. Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun (Erik Larson, 1994) 

21. Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic (Simon Winchester, 2023)

22. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, 2005)

23. Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 (Simon Winchester, 2003)

24. I Have Some Questions for You (Rebecca Makkai, 2023)

25. The Man in the Brown Suit (Agatha Christie, 1924)

26. Cleopatra: A Life (Stacy Schiff, 2010)

27. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Thornton Wilder, 1927)

28. By the Pricking of My Thumbs (Agatha Christie, 1968)

29. Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury, 1962)

30. Hold Fast Your Crown (Tiens ferme ta couronne) (Yannick Haenel, 2017) (Translation by Teresa Lavender Fagan, 2019)

31. Summerland (Michael Chabon, 2002)

32. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (Mary Shelley, 1818) (1831 revised third edition) [Includes the short stories “A Fragment” (Lord Byron, 1819) and “The Vampyre: A Tale” (Dr. John William Polidori, 1819)]

33. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Michael Chabon, 2007)

34. Closer You Are: The Story of Robert Pollard and Guided By Voices (Matthew Cutter, 2018)

35. Richard Ayoade Presents The Grip of Film by Gordy LaSure (Richard Ayoade, 2017)

36. The Parisian or Al-Barisi (Isabella Hammad, 2019)

37. Fletch (Gregory Mcdonald, 1974)

38. Whit Stillman: Not So Long Ago (Various, 2023)

39. Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Dana Stevens, 2022)

40. The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy, 1997)

41. Confess, Fletch (Gregory Mcdonald, 1976)

42. Fletch’s Fortune (Gregory Mcdonald, 1978)

43. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton, 1967)

44. The Last Devil to Die (Richard Osman, 2023)

45. Martin Eden (Jack London, 1909)

46. Fletch and the Widow Bradley (Gregory Mcdonald, 1981)

47. Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever (Matt Singer, 2023)

48. The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession (David Grann, 2010)

49. The Roaring Game: A Sweeping Saga of Curling (Doug Clark, 2007)

50. The Luminaries (Eleanor Catton, 2013)

51. Fletch’s Moxie (Gregory Mcdonald, 1982)

52. Fletch and the Man Who (Gregory Mcdonald, 1983)

53. Perfect Circle: The Story of R.E.M. (Tony Fletcher, 2018)

54. Carioca Fletch (Gregory Mcdonald, 1984)

55. Fletch Won (Gregory Mcdonald, 1985)

56. Fletch, Too (Gregory Mcdonald, 1986)

57. Son of Fletch (Gregory Mcdonald, 1993)

58. Fletch Reflected (Gregory Mcdonald, 1994)

59. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) (Jules Verne, 1870) (Translation by David Coward, 2017)

60. Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall (Zeke Faux, 2023)

61. Worn: A People’s History of Clothing (Sofi Thanhauser, 2022)

62. Flynn (Gregory Mcdonald, 1977)

63. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (David Grann, 2023)

64. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (Rebecca Solnit, 2009)

65. The Buck Passes Flynn (Gregory Mcdonald, 1981)

66. Flynn’s In (Gregory Mcdonald, 1984)

67. Flynn’s World (Gregory Mcdonald, 1999)

68. The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man (David W. Maurer, 1940) (Read 1999 edition with introduction by Luc Sante)

69. The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew (Alan Lightman, 2013)

70. Two Weeks in the Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook (Roger Ebert, 1987)