I know, I know.
Some days it seems our list-making has gone haywire. A book list every half year? Why not distill it quarter-by-quarter or grow even more particular?
But if we’re being totally transparent, I need this. So many moments in the day conspire to rob a little of our humanity. Stopping to take stock, as often as possible, keeps my memory and my soul working in concert, tethering me to that which makes me feel most myself, makes me feel like more is possible than this current version of myself.
With that, a brief turn of appreciation to the 15 books that have felt most like home in the first six months of 2023. So many other titles deserve their due—and I’m trying, through avenues like my weekly Friday Five list.
And there are so many more, even books by friends, just waiting near a desk or a bedside to have their moment.
So there’s nothing complete about this list, and yet it holds real weight with me. I hope you discover something here to offer belonging and ballast in the six months to come.
Lauren Camp, “An Eye in Each Square” (poetry) If Lauren Camp didn’t write books, we’d have to bottle the wine in her poems, saving it for rainy days and birthday parties and every other moment we long to feel human. In Camp’s latest, a sort of conversation with the late painter Agnes Martin, the poet considers the most elemental forces of art and life—line and line break, color and circumstance, the sacred geometry of everything—and blesses it all.
Dave Eggers, “The Eyes & The Impossible” (fiction) Ostensibly for young audiences, stream-of-conscience sentences and an unflappable spirit commend Eggers’ latest to older readers too. Written from the ancient wisdom of a dog overseeing life in a vast park, the story becomes a lovely adventure through friendship and toward genuine freedom.
Charles Frazier, “The Trackers” (fiction) In sleepy San Francisco jazz clubs, and into Ansel Adams visions of the West, Frazier (“Cold Mountain”) tells the tale of a WPA muralist beset by mystery, ill-fated romance and conversations about what makes his country both beautiful and ugly.
Catherine Lacey, “Biography of X” (fiction) Do we have any hope of separating the art and the artist? What about the person who seems to know them best—friend, lover and spouse? Where do we draw the line between performance and reality in all our lives? Lacey bobs and weaves around, and dances with, these questions in a fictionalized biography of a truly magnificent creative chameleon.
Alex Mar, “Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy” (nonfiction) This book of quiet revelations examines how one case shaped the way we apply the death penalty to young people, complicating—and, in some ways, distilling to their purest forms—what we know of forgiveness, innocence and reconciliation.
Jennifer Maritza McCauley, “When Trying to Return Home” (fiction) This set of stories, stretched across the United States, honors (and adds to) an abiding canon of place while locating the homes which live inside us. Mothers and daughters, novice nuns and men who want to be better (maybe)—all handle compasses, and all navigate the wilds just outside the truest versions of themselves. Check out our conversation here.
Jenny Molberg, “The Court of No Record” (poetry) Creating a triumph of voice, and a perceptive read of our troubled institutions, Molberg draws on specific cases and more universal heartaches to trace the frayed threads between survivors, abusers and a legal system tripping on its duty to protect lives. These poems are surprisingly hilarious and uncommonly humane. Read my interview with the poet here.
Jason Myers, “Maker of Heaven &” (poetry) An inspired theological dictionary, a Great American Songbook, an Eden in its own way, Myers’ collection confesses both our inherent connectedness and the countless ways we deny it. Myers always writes toward reclamation while keeping his senses sharp, chronicling the many, many people, places and things which make life worth living.
Jose Olivarez, “Promises of Gold” (poetry) These poems form a love letter to the poet’s Mexican-American community and, as he notes in an introduction, a recognition of American promises kept and broken. Body-moving rhythms and heartfelt characters enliven a work of true excellence.
Karisma Price, “I’m Always So Serious” (poetry) The best poets write around the stuff of life, connecting every dot and fulfilling every reach for love and music and meaning and justice. Karisma Price announces herself as a poet capable of all this and more; every page of this collection sings—whether deep blues, staccato jazz or anthemic pop—and draws you into the song.
Jeff Sharlet, “The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War” (nonfiction) Transcending—and damning—the usual “dispatches from Trump’s America” we’ve grown all too accustomed to seeing, Sharlet’s latest digs up the roots of our democratic demise, weaves together past and present trouble, and offers lyrical reminders of the national soul we need to retain and revive.
Curtis Sittenfeld, “Romantic Comedy” (fiction) Set against the life of an SNL-esque sketch show and the pandemic which halts it, Sittenfeld’s whip-smart, sweet-but-never-saccharine-novel subverts rom-com gender tropes and gives the gift of truly likable characters with love worth cheering.
Maggie Smith, “You Could Make This Place Beautiful” (memoir) As I’ve noted elsewhere, we’re lucky to be living in the time of Maggie Smith. Here, the poet models what it means to write personal history (or histories of any kind): practicing charity while never sacrificing an ounce of perspective, flipping the angles, finding the music, prioritizing the heart, and forever thinking about how we’re bound to one another for good.
Michael Farris Smith, “Salvage This World” (fiction) An impending hurricane and the Pentecost winds of unholy revivalists bear down on an already fragile family in Smith’s latest. Few modern novelists write the South as well as Smith; none can imitate his ability to locate the soulfulness in seemingly empty vessels.
Patricia Smith, “Unshuttered” (poetry) An extended conversation with the generations, Smith’s newest book writes in response to collected photographs of African-Americans from the 19th century. Written before and beside the faces in these images, these poems are a glorious reckoning and an act of love for those who came before.