Good news — good books are everywhere!
We’re only three months into 2023 and I’ve already found my favorite books of the year, so far.
Always an avid reader, I’ve been reading more than usual this month as sickness (bronchitis, followed by covid) left me listless and fatigued. Along with countless episodes of Call the Midwife and Grey’s Anatomy, good books are always good company.
Here are my latest favorites books:
NOVEL
Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson
In this sly, suspenseful novel, a man unwinds the tale of his success. An intimate and engaging tone kept me riveted from start to finish.
ESSAY
Violation: Collected Essays by Sallie Tisdale
With a keen eye and boundless curiosity, Tisdale has worked as a nurse and writer for decades and has written books and essays on rich and varied topics, from nursing homes to reality television. Skilled and prolific, it’s a mystery why this Oregon writer hasn’t achieved greater recognition.
Throughout this collection, I've underlined passage after passage, page after page. And her essay on abortion, Fetus Dreams, is the most compelling piece I've read.
The introduction sets the tone, as she looks back at 40 years of published essays:
Certain themes recur; why should this ever surprise us? Life is just following a trail along a mountain. The path loops back to the same view time and again. Sometimes we see all the way across the plain and sometimes we’re lost in the woods, but the perspective is a little higher each time. So I return again and again to questions about the nature of the self, what it means to live in a body, why we are all lonely, how to use language to say what can’t be said. These are questions of intimacy and separation, and the answers are ambiguous at best. Long before I knew how to describe it, I liked ambivalence. Certainty has always seemed a bit dishonest to me.
NON-FICTION
The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine by Ricardo Nuila
Where do you go when you have no (or insufficient) health insurance and are turned away from hospitals, clinics and doctors? With great empathy, Dr. Nuila reveals the roots of our broken healthcare system and a hospital serving as a model that emphasizes people over payment.
See Also: God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet
SELF-HELP
You Are An Artist: Assignments to Spark Creation by Sara Urist Green
From fanciful to practical, this book offers more than 50 ideas and prompts to stir creative juices in both artists and writers. It worked for me; the interviews with artists and the examples opened my mind and got me energized to play with words.
POETRY
Love and Other Poems by Alex Dimitrov
At turns seemingly simple yet pleasingly deep, Dimitrov’s third book of poems shines with language that is direct, themes that are easy to navigate, and a location distinctly New York. Poem Written in the Back of a Cab runs 14 pages but never seems bogged down. The title poem, Love, spans 10 pages with an in-the-moment pace. After reading a great deal of opaque and overworked poetry, Dimitrov’s work feels fresh and unfettered.
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The world turns on words, please read & write.
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