2023 – Reading and Listening

Sobriety has brought many gifts into my life, including a return to my long lost love of reading. 

It’s not that I ever lost that love; rather, I just treated it poorly. It’s an old tale; my mind drifted, and I fell asleep on it.

In my teenage years and into my mid-20s, it wasn’t like that. I was a voracious, focused reader. In college, I even accidentally earned an English Lit major, just because I read so much.

But over the last couple decades, I doubt there was a single year when I read more books than I could count on one hand. 

I pardoned myself from drinking in November of 2022. 

And in 2023, I read 40 books—in this order:

1. Sweetness—The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton, Jeff Pearlman

2. Whirly Gig: Inside Bob Dylan’s ‘Time Out of Mind’ Sessions, John Lewis

3. Beautiful World, Where Are You?, Sally Rooney

4. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami

5. A Long Walk to Water, Linda Sue Park

6. Open, Andre Agassi

7. There There, Tommy Orange

8. Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña, David Hadju

9. Big Swiss, Jen Beagin

10. Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

11. They Got Daddy–One Family’s Reckoning with Racism and Faith, Sharon Tubbs

12. World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, Aimee Nezhukumatathil

13. It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

14. North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail, Scott & Jenny Jurek

15. The Alchemist, Paulo Coehlo

16. Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, Lucinda Williams

17. You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith

18. The Dutch House, Ann Patchett (audio)

19. Stay True, Hua Hsu

20. Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’, Warren Zanes

21. Fifty in Reverse, Bill Flanagan

22. Dark Matter, Blake Crouch (audio)

23. The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto, Mitch Albom

24. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

25. The Mythmakers, Keziah Weir

26. Letters to a Young Poet, Raina Marie Rilke

27. How to Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back, Jeff Tweedy (audio)

28. Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng (audio)

29. The Last Americans, Brandon Taylor

30. The Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver

31. Diary of a Young Naturalist, Dara McAnulty

32. Financial Management of a Marketing Firm, David C. Baker

33. What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World, Sara Hendren

34. Monica, Daniel Clowes

35. The Breakaway, Jennifer Weiner

36. The Tenth of December, George Saunders

37. World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music, Jeff Tweedy

38. Man in Black, Johnny Cash

39. Let Me Be Frank with You, Richard Ford

40. Be Mine, Richard Ford

Many of these books came to me as strong, personal recommendations, and I’m very grateful for that. I’ve always thought the gift of a book was pretty much the most “serious” gift you can give; you’re literally asking someone for dozens of hours of reading time, plus, hopefully, a few more hours of rich and robust conversation. 

Thank you, friends, for enriching my life with your selections.

All in all, I think this was my favorite year of reading in at least three decades, and maybe ever. I loved almost all of the books on that list of 40. (And had just two DNF’s that I gave up on…for now.)

Below, please find five highlights. 

(If you want, you can click through to read synopses and support independent bookstores at Bookshop.org. Or please, buy local!)

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

“I can’t wait to get back to it; I never want the story to end.”

Isn’t that the best—a book so gripping, storytelling so rich? For me, only once or twice has that feeling ever been more true than it was with this novel. 

On a lot of days and for a lot of reasons in 2023, I just couldn’t wait to get home, light the incense, turn on an ambient playlist, and lose myself in a book.

And then do the same thing early the next morning.

Especially when it came to Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

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Stay True, Hua Hsu

I read a few brilliant memoirs this year (both Crying in H Mart and Open were stunningly good), but I’ll single out Stay True for its vivid and enduring portrait of friendship, and loss, and music, and the life-changing power of each.

A rollicking, sad, hilarious and tragic read.    

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Big Swiss, Jen Beagin

This funny, frisky novel was such a surprising, sanguine and even rueful read; my copy is marked by my popcorn-stained fingerprints. I simply could not put the book down, and finished it in just a couple days.

(It was little surprise when I saw that HBO won a bidding war for producer Adam McKay’s forthcoming adaptation of the book.) 

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World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music, Jeff Tweedy

Jeff Tweedy’s third book is a contagiously joyous read; a love-letter to music—its mystery and its magic—in 50 song-based chapters and a dozen or so reflective interludes.

I bought the book as both a printed hard-copy and an audiobook, read by the author. It’s my recommendation you enjoy World Within a Song in the latter format, as the Wilco frontman’s humor, sensitivity and gratitude come through with such endearing clarity and kindness. It’s like he’s telling these stories just to you, and asking for your own songs and stories after each of his. 

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Be Mine, Richard Ford

The return of Frank Bascombe.

Post-college, the closest I could come to hanging out in an English Lit class was to kick around Borders Books & Music; somehow and for some reason, I picked out The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, which introduced the character Frank Bascombe—a man imperfect, in a country the same. It became my new favorite “contemporary American novel”—introspective, funny, sharp, magnetic.

I immediately read its even-better Pulitzer-winning follow-up, Independence Day.

And then I fell away from literature for pleasure.

Earlier this year—some 25 years after we read Independence Day together—my friend Jason Roemer gifted me Ford’s just-released fifth and final Bascombe novel, Be Mine. (A signed copy no less!) I read its predecessor and then Be Mine, back to back, wrapping myself in Bascombe’s inimitable voice and Ford’s inimitable prose.

I’ve already picked up a 1,300-page anthology of The Sportswriter, Independence Day, and Lay of the Land—the latter being the one Bascombe novel I’ve not read—to start my 2024 reading list with. I figure I’ll tackle all three. (It’s been 27 years since I read the first two, after all.)

When it comes down to it, Ford’s writing is why I love reading.

The books are so gripping, the storytelling so rich.

Anyway, you know how it goes.

I already can’t wait to get back to it. And I never want the story to end. 

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Music

13 favorite concerts of the year, chronologically:

• Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros, Fillmore, Detroit, solo

• Trainhoppers + Rosalind & The Way – A Quiet Night In, The B-Side, Fort Wayne

• Destroyer, Hi-Fi, Indy, with Jason and Robyn

• Joe Henry, Old Town School of Folk Music, Chicago, with Sam

• Boygenius, Clairo, Dijon and Bartees Strange, Re:SET, Columbus OH, with Henry

• LCD Soundsystem, Jamie xx, IDLES and L’Rain, Re:SET, Columbus OH, with Henry

• Dead & Company, Deer Creek, Indy, with my bandmates Casey, Chris, Dan and Phil

• Neil Young, White River Amphitheatre, Seattle, with Henry

• Hiss Golden Messenger – Mas Hiss, Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw, with Erica

• Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Clyde Theatre, Fort Wayne, with my mom(!) and uncle

• Bob Dylan, Murat, Indy, with Rob

• Joe Pernice, living room show, Cleveland, with Erica

• Mike Adams at His Honest Weight, Waldron Arts, Bloomington, with Erica, Henry, Joe and Matt

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In the streaming era, I find it too difficult to make a list of favorite records. But this playlist features a bunch of new songs I love:

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Anyway: what about you—what were your favorites? 

Tell us all about ’em in the comments. :-)

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