Largehearted Boy's Favorite Books of 2023

Bands to watch in 2024, interviews with Celina Baljeet Basra & Jeff Tweedy, a new essay by Vanessa Chan, and more

2023 was another epic literary year for me. Whether reading for Largehearted Boy’s Book Notes author playlist series, grad school, or pleasure, books once again provided a foundation of joy, education, and fulfillment.

I have already shared my favorite novels, story collections, poetry collections, and nonfiction books of the year.

These seven books stand out from everything else that I have read all year, and have haunted me since I read them.

Drinking from Graveyard Wells by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu

Yvette Lisa Ndlovu’s Drinking from Graveyard Wells is the most impressive debut story collection I have read since Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. These stories combine folktale and realism to magical effect.

Everything/Nothing/Someone by Alice Carrière

Alice Carrière’s Everything/Nothing/Someone is the most resonant memoir I have read all year, a compelling, visceral, and breathtakingly moving book.

Happy by Celina Baljeet Basra

Celina Baljeet Basra’ s debut Happy is one of my favorite novels of the year, a book that redefines the coming-of-age story with empathy and grace.

LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO by Cleo Qian

Cleo Qian’s LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO is one of the strongest story collections I have read in years, a book that astounds with both its subtlety and complexity.

Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo

If Sheila Heti was Italian and wrote a modern Franny & Zooey, it would approximate how powerful and magnificent Veronica Raimo’s novel Lost on Me is.

Deena Mohamed’s Shubeik Lubeik is the most impressive graphic novel I have read since Chris Ware’s Building Stories. This story of wishes is as thoughtfully told as it is surprising, moving, and imaginative.

Take What You Need by Idra Novey

Idra Novey’s novel Take What You Need is a powerful, compassionate, thoughtful consideration of art, family, and inherent bias. Easily my favorite book of the year so far.

A Playlist of the Week’s Best New Music (3 albums, 40 songs, 2 hours and 6 minutes)

Largehearted Likes:

1. The Franklin Park Reading Series
   New York City’s best reading series continues with another outstanding lineup tomorrow (January 8th), featuring Blake Butler, Claire Donato, Geoff Rickly, and Elisa Gonzalez. If you are ever in NYC on the second Monday of the month, come to Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood for an unforgettable evening hosted by the ever-impressive Penina Roth.

2. The Sunday Long Read
   Three of the week’s best long-form pieces of journalism delivered to your inbox weekly.

3. Antigua
   I have never been much of a beach guy, but a week at Pineapple Beach Club may have changed that.

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Largehearted Book & Music Links:

1. Novelist Eden Robins on managing the work/life/art balance
   If I quit the mental-health-startup job, I knew I could drum up freelance writing to make up for the financial gaps. Sure, marketplace health insurance was technically an option, but it A) is absurdly expensive and B) sucks. What I really needed was the artist’s job unicorn: a lightweight part-time job with benefits.

2. L’Rain’s interview with Marlon James
   “All right, so I’m slightly confused about I Killed Your Dog,” the author Marlon James told L’Rain when the pair got on a call last month. “Is this a basic bitch album or is this an anti-breakup album?” L’Rain, née Taja Cheek, says it’s both, but you could forgive James for asking, since I Killed Your Dog, the third studio album from the Brooklyn-based pop-experimentalist, is many things at once: impressionistic, jazzy, synth-infused, cheeky, self-admonishing, self-exonerating, and delightfully weird.

3. Celina Baljeet Basra on her magnificent debut novel, Happy

   When I found the voice of Happy, it was through the prologue—the cover letter, or letter of application—which he writes to an employee in Italy, while working on a farm. From then on, the structure of the novel, with its many different fragments, its short chapters, its different voices, and its polyphonic nature, sort of came together and it really then poured and was written fast and furious. It was the only way I knew how to write the novel.

4. NYLON’s 10 musicians & bands to watch in 2024

5. An excerpt from Julie Myerson’s novel Nonfiction

6. Jeff Tweedy on Rock Criticism, the Pitfalls of Music Snobbery, and His New Book

   I take that aphorism about how music critics are frustrated musicians and turn it on its head when I think about my life, because early on I thought that writing about music would be more attainable to me. So I tried my hand at writing for fanzines in St. Louis but was too lazy to do it correctly or with any success.

7. What Booksellers Can Teach Us About Reading, Writing and Publishing

   A new essay by Will Mountain Cox.

8. The Fall’s Perverted By Language Revisited 40 Years On

   Perverted is a window into social and psychological derangement, the hysteria of a nation in limbo. The Fall might not offer us answers or happiness in return, but they’re an enlivening force. We’re more alert for our contact with The Fall, even if we can’t put into words exactly what we’re alert to.

9. It's Time to Rewrite the Rules of Historical Fiction

   Vanessa Chan on writing modern historical fiction.

10. PC Music at 10: An oral history of pop’s most influential label

11. Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024

    
    

Last Week’s LHB Feature Posts:

Julie Myerson’s playlist for her novel Nonfiction

Kate Brody’s playlist for her novel Rabbit Hole