Hello, dear readers and happy Tuesday! I’m back with a bookish column today and we’re talking all about my favourite books of 2023, why I rated them so highly, and why you should consider reading them too.
Last year, I chose to set myself free of reading challenges and just see where reading takes me. I learned a lot from that decision, but the main thing is that it didn’t make me enjoy books any less. On the contrary, having no challenge meant I had no destination. It was all about the journey. And, what do you know, I ended up reading 45 books, which is the exact same number as in 2022.
I dabbled in many genres I normally would avoid and pushed myself out of my comfort zone a lot last year. I also strived to read more poetry, which ended up being a huge success, as four of the nine books I rated five stars were poetry books.
Today, I’m talking about five of those nine absolute favourites, choosing not to include rereads and an anthology from 2022.
‘Night Sky With Exit Wounds’ and ‘Time Is a Mother’ by Ocean Vuong
Ocean Vuong’s debut collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, is what got me back into poetry this year. For context, I’m a poet and I used to be a lot more active in reading and interacting with poetry before I moved to the UK. Since being here, I’ve been dealing with more pressing things that have been keeping me tragically away from poetry.
I’m so glad I got to experience Ocean Vuong as one of my first contemporary poets in English. I picked up his most recent collection, Time Is a Mother, shortly after Night Sky With Exit Wounds and I devoured both with the love and fierceness they deserve.
The imagery is so powerful it shakes you, the themes are raw and uncensored, and his lyrical voice so memorable you can’t ever forget it.
Here’s a snippet that rocked my world completely:
I remember it. His voice —
it filled me to the core
like a skeleton. Even my name
knelt down inside me, asking
to be spared. — Ocean Vuong, THRESHOLD, from ‘Night Sky With Exit Wounds’
‘Our Wives Under the Sea’ by Julia Armfield
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield is a tiny novel that packs a punch. When Miri’s wife, Leah, returns from an underwater research mission that ended in terror for the three-person crew, she is completely changed. What was supposed to be a standard three-week trip turned into a six-month-long ordeal, in which Leah and her two colleagues were trapped in a submarine deep under the ocean. Now back at home, Leah is acting strange, refusing to communicate, and displaying some strange physical changes.
We follow both Miri and Leah’s perspectives as we watch the mystery, as well as their relationship, unravel. The book is incredibly concentrated, with intense, convoluted emotions and a complex study on love, marriage, friendships, and nature that fascinated me page after page. If the motif of the sea with all its eerie and undiscovered depths intrigues you, this is a book you can’t miss.
‘Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit’ by Jen Campbell
Jen Campbell is an author and book reviewer who I discovered through BookTube. She is a queer, disabled author who writes about fairy tales, folklore, motherhood, disability and representation. Last year, I finally caved and bought her latest poetry collection, Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit, after reading the poem The Hospital Is Not My House when it won the Spelt Poetry Competition in 2022.
Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit is a magical and harrowing collection of honest, beautiful poems that treat the disabled experience as an inhabited space which the reader gets to explore. It’s an experience like none other and a collection that leaves you gasping for air and searching for your place.
Here’s an abstract from The Hospital Is Not My House:
The hospital is not a place for literature. The lights are out and the young girl tiptoes to the edge of a tree, by which we mean the edge of a bed. By which we mean the edge of a corridor, where she is searching for the bathroom. The bathroom being the wet field that half-hides the moon. Half-asleep, the girl questions how she can hold the moon when she cannot hold anything — Jen Campbell, The Hospital Is Not My House, from ‘Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit’
‘Ithaca’ by Claire North
I (like most people) am obsessed with Greek myth retellings. Ithaca must be one of my favourites. Told from the sassy and exquisite narrative voice of the goddess Hera, the book follows Penelope, Queen of Ithaca as she tries to keep reigns of her kingdom in the absence of her husband, Odysseus.
As Penelope receives suitors in her home to claim kingship of an island with almost no men (most men having been lost at Troy), we witness a quiet but fierce queen as she affirms her stance, cleverly manipulates those who plan to backstab her and ultimately creates a women-only army that defeats the nightly attackers who attempt to take over the island.
I enjoyed the dense story that swept me off my feet from the first few pages, the unique narrative voice that’s tired of everyone’s antics, and the quiet support goddesses give to their favourite queens.
Those were my most notable five-star reads from 2023. If you’d like to see my quick impressions on the two re-reads that made the list, watch my reel on the @coffee.time.reviews Instagram and give us a follow while you’re there!
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Eliza x
Coffee Time Reviews 