Regan’s newsletter publishes book recommendations on a theme and the occasional essay. Subscribe, and you’ll find 3 new book recs in your inbox every few weeks. Past newsletters have covered author completionism, reading routine, women in translation, and more.
My fourth annual year in reading! And a wrap on my second year of semi-regular book review newsletters here on Substack. How crazy to realize—time passes! And so, a bit of reflection at the end of the year is a welcome pause. I like this small ritual, going back to the beginning and tracing the contours of my year. Books tie to memory like specific fragrances do, for me. When I take just a few seconds to recall what I was reading, and when I was reading it, it’s like opening a little window; I can feel the pace of my daily life at that time, feel the weather, remember where I was, who with, how I was feeling. I’m hoping this newsletter might compel you to take a moment to pause and think through your reading year as well.
I include the top half or so of my year of books in this newsletter, all books I liked and would recommend, but if you want to get into the nitty gritty of every rating and review, follow or friend me on goodreads.
At the end of last December, I finished The Garden of Eden, Hemingway’s posthumous, and startlingly contemporary-feeling, novel about a marriage (and love triangle). I was reading about the balmy French coast as I sat through blizzards across Minnesota and Montana, so in the new year, I got myself down to the Caribbean as soon as I could—to visit a wonderful friend in her new apartment, and to read on the beach while she was at work. :) Ayşegül Savaş’s The Anthropologists slowed me down and simultaneously stoked anticipation for a return to routine in the spring semester.1
En route back to New York, I finished Elena Ferrante’s fourth and final novel of the Neapolitan quartet, The Story of the Lost Child (ahh!) and that same day had no choice but to pick up and fly through her much slimmer The Lost Daughter, too—both translated by Ann Goldstein. Before classes began, I read Antonio Di Benedetto’s short investigative novel set in Argentina in the late 60s, The Suicides, tr. Esther Allen.
A few favorite selections from an expansive translation seminar syllabus: I read back-to-back essay collections Stranger Faces by Namwali Serpell, part of Transit Book’s Undelivered Lectures series, and Axiomatic by Australian writer Maria Tumarkin; both were genre-crossing, the first more academic than I expected and the second, associative and diaristic. I read—and wrote about2—The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu by Augusto Higa Oshira and poetry collection A Blind Salmon by Julia Wong Kcomt, both translated by Jennifer Shyue. Finnish/Vietnamese novel-in-snapshots Shade and Breeze by Quynh Tran (tr. Kira Josefson), the powerful book-length poem Dust Sucker by Jen Calleja, and Bruna Dantas Lobato’s soft, bittersweet Blue Light Hours round out the most memorable books of the seminar.
The novels I loved from a short course on radical fiction include Kathy Acker’s mind-warping Blood and Guts in High School and my first Dennis Cooper, The Sluts. Around this time, I also read and was wowed by Vijay Khurana’s The Passenger Seat—a dark road-trip coming-of-age following two teen boys wrapped up in the contemporary crisis of toxic masculinity, loneliness, violence, etc.3
From our spring semester’s fiction lecture, the three that will stick with me: Ford Maddox Ford’s twisting prewar classic The Good Soldier; Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez, tr. Gregory Rabassa; and the apocalyptic-feminist-pastoral novel The Wall by Marlen Haushofer, tr. Shaun Whiteside.
Over spring break, I inhaled Suzanne Collins’ new Sunrise on the Reaping, and it felt like a wonderful reset to read a book solely for fun, however devastating.
For Asymptote Journal’s “What’s New in Translation” column in May, I read and reviewed four books: a moving Hungarian dive into a relationship (and divorce) Deep Breath by Rita Halász, tr. Kristen Herbert; a surrealist novel about life after political incarceration set in Cairo called Sleep Phase by Mohamed Kheir, tr. Robin Moger; Mathias Énard’s enigmatic, and stunning, The Deserters, tr. Charlotte Mandel; and lastly, German filmmaker and writer Alexander Kluge’s story collection Lifespan Narratives, tr. Alexander Booth.
Summer’s arrival! I couldn’t put down Jamie Hood’s memoir Trauma Plot and have recommended it profusely; I also deeply enjoyed the Cuskian, quasi-autofictive The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan. On the first of two summer roadtrips, my boyfriend and I listened to nostalgic classics of Carolyn Keene’s original Nancy Drew series, juxtaposed with James Ellroy’s much-less-PG investigative nonfiction. Later, on the second road trip, Laura Ingalls Wilder carried us across the Dakotas—along with King’s The Shining.
Back in New York, I sped through August Thompson’s Anyone’s Ghost and Claire Jia’s Wanting, both recent debuts about intense adolescent friendships.4 At summer’s end, I fell into a series of unsettling reads: Jane: A Murder, Maggie Nelson’s lyrical search for answers surrounding her late aunt’s violent death; Megan Gidding’s Lakewood, speculative fiction in the world of medical experimentation; and Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men, tr. Ros Schwartz. Eventually, I found calm in E.N. Couturier’s meditative novel about working on a vegetable farm post-grad, Organic Matter, and levity in Sebastian Castillo’s Fresh, Green Life.
For Asymptote’s September and October “What’s New in Translation” columns, I read and reviewed three more books in translation, all very worth your time: Orlanda, Jacqueline Harpman’s witty, raunchy play on Woolf’s Orlando, tr. Ros Schwartz; minimalist memoir-in-essays Things That Disappear by Jenny Erpenbeck, tr. Kurt Beals; and surreal story collection Diving Board by Tomás Downey, tr. Sarah Moses.5
As the fall semester began and picked up pace, I snuck in a few more novels that weren’t assigned on syllabi, including Booker-shortlisted Flashlight by Susan Choi (frustrating, accomplished, moving) and Audition by Katie Kitamura (challenging, elusive). After his Nobel win, I picked up Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai’s Spadework for a Palace; although glad to have followed along the meanderings of the central Melville-obsessed librarian, the beautiful New Directions Storybook edition might have made more of an impression on me than the novella itself.
Between classes, I saw Lily King at the Strand with a dear friend and cried at the end of her newest, Heart the Lover. I buddy-read Annie Dillard’s meditations on writing and living in The Writing Life with fellow writers and book lovers Petya K. Grady and Eve Matheson.
My top reads from a translation seminar this fall include José Donoso’s tale of a transgender prostitute in a dying Chilean town, Hell Has No Limits, tr. Suzanne Jill Levine; the haunting cult classic Notes of a Crocodile by Taiwanese writer Qiu Miaojin, tr. Bonnie Huie; Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, tr. Meredith Weatherby; and, translated by Michael F. Moore6, Italian novelist Mario Desiati’s Spatriati. In another seminar—this one on expat lit—I felt truly blown away by Joan Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer, which is a perfect, intricate puzzle. From a brief course on novellas, Muriel Spark’s charming and smart The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie has stuck firmly in my mind.
Which brings us to now! I’m a few days into reading Mating by Norman Rush, which I’m thrilled to have as my long winter book for the end of the year. And if I finish it more quickly than I expect to, Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady is waiting in the wings. There’s something satisfying about settling into a very long novel as the days get shorter—a sturdy, reliable balance to the festive end-of-year whirlwind.7
I’d love to hear about your favorite reads of the year. Do you reflect on what you’ve read, or plan to set reading goals for next year, or have any books in particular that you’re looking forward to reading around the holidays? And a big thank you, as ever, for reading!
Happy holidays,
Regan
In these annual round-ups, I always try to pay tribute to some of my favorite year-in-reading content that starts coming out toward the end of the year:
And I’m keeping my eyes out for this year’s best-of lists from Words Without Borders, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and especially The Millions’ year in reading series, which I read religiously every December…
Here on Substack, it was Catherine Lacey’s end-of-year round up at Untitled Thought Project that gave me permission to send this one out early; give it a read! We both picked up Savaş this year—and a New Directions Storybook title.
And if you’re still looking for more, here are past years’ reading wrap-ups:
My 2024 Reading Wrap-Up
Regan’s newsletter publishes book recommendations on a theme and the occasional essay. Subscribe, and you’ll find 3 new book recs in your inbox every few weeks. Past newsletters have covered the 5+ Club, the Cure for Autofiction, Women in Translation
My year in reading, 2023
This December, I’ve been clicking open The Millions’ “Year in Reading” essays as they’re published to the site each day, eager like I’m opening the little doors of an Advent calendar. I’ve loved Granta’s “Books of the Year,” The Paris Review’s “Favorite Books of 2023,” and
My 2022 reading wrap-up
For the past weeks, I’ve been tapping open my Twitter app and email inbox anticipating whose end-of-year reading wrap-ups have been published that day. I adore The Millions’ “A Year in Reading” features, publications’ staff favorites (The Paris Review
And I reviewed it for The Whitney Review of New Writing’s sixth issue, which came out this fall.
Our lovely professor!
I want to echo what everyone has already said - this is an incredible list but we all already kind of expect that from you. Thank you so much for being my Erpenbeck sherpa and making time to read Dillard with me and Eve in the middle of such a busy season of life.
The Portrait of a Lady is on my 19th Century Wives Under Pressure list... I won't make you coordinate your reading of such a big book with me but I am so excited that we will both be reading it soon and can yap about it.
What a wonderful year of reading! I’m currently finishing Nadia Terranova’s Farewell, Ghosts (in italian) and will read Claire-Louise Bennett’s latest before settling with my big-book-to-end-the-year, Byatt’s Possession.