Books I Hope to Read in 2023

2022 had the most babies and the fewest books read, both in total, and off of my “to read” list for the year. This was predictable.

I read 7/11 of my “to read” books, and 85 books/26k pages across the year. Nothing earlier than 1950, either, I think (though Goodreads gets this wrong if I read a recent translation of an ancient text sometimes).

I like to read outside my time, and happily, this year I’m guaranteed to, because I’ve signed up for a reading group through the Catherine Project where we’ll be discussing Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams (1904) and The Autumn of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga (1919).

So, why keep assembling this list, if I expect I won’t get to all the books this year? Or at least, why not make the list shorter?

I like making this list because it’s always limited to books I already own, and putting them on the list gives me permission to prioritizing them. I don’t know how many I’ll read this year, but I know it will be more than if they weren’t officially on the list, and I look forward to what I’ll discover.

I’ve grouped the books for 2023 with the books that are most linked to Other Feminisms at the top, and then no particular order to follow.

Motherhood, A Confession by Natalie Carnes The Autonomy Myth: A Theory Of Dependency by Martha Albertson Fineman Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace by Sara Ruddick Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It by Richard V. Reeves Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion by Caroline Walker Bynum Saga of Saints by Sigrid Undset The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography by Carlos Eire Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle by Shannen Dee Williams Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri The Falcon Thief by Joshua Hammer Silas Marner by George Elliot

As the list suggests, I tend to have more non-fiction than fiction coming into my house, and I’d love to know how you pick your fiction reading. I tend to long more for another reader, since I want to talk about the book. I considered signing up for Whale Weekly (a substack of Moby Dick readers) but this didn’t seem like my year!