Read With Me 2023
It’s almost the end of 2022. It’s been a brilliant reading year. I’ll post my annual round up of my favourite reads in about a week’s time because I hate to end the reading year too early. The Christmas hibernation period is such a great time for curling up with a good book I often find a couple of brilliant reads sneak in right at the end of the year.
As many of you know, these last few years I’ve been setting myself a bit of a reading challenge; working my way through an author’s complete back catalogue in chronological order. In 2020 I began with Agatha Christie and the challenge, though a little overwhelming at first, ended up being an absolute highlight in a dreadful year. In 2021, to celebrate his centenary, I read all the Brian Moore novels and stories. This was a mostly brilliant experience. I also read all the Colin Dexter Morse novels. This was not a great experience. This past year I took on Graham Greene and Virginia Woolf; two very different English authors. While the early Greene novels were a bit of a plod, most of the later books were a joy to revisit and I also discovered a few new favourites I’d not read before and had a brilliant time watching Greene adaptations on the big screen. I gave up on Woolf after five novels. Life is simply too short.
This year I’m hoping to read Kurt Vonnegut and Toni Morrison. Both are authors I’m pretty familiar with and already love. However, there are quite a few gaps in my reading I’m keen to fill and I can’t wait to re-read a few of my all time favourites like Beloved and Timequake. Vonnegut has a much more extensive back catalogue and I hope to read his novels, short stories and non-fiction work. I’ve worked it out as approximately one Morrison book per month and about 2.5 Vonneguts. I’ll probably mix and match Vonnegut’s fiction with non-fiction but try to keep in chronological order. Ideally I’ll also read biographies of both writers and watch the documentaries which are knocking about.
I’m posting my booklist below (Morrison at the top, Vonnegut below), in case anyone wants to read along. I’ll be blogging on here occasionally, tweeting under the hashtags #MyYearWithKV and #MyYearWithTM and also posting on Instagram @jancarsonstories if you’d like to follow along with my reading adventures. I have a sneaky suspicion this year’s going to be a great reading year.
