by I am so excited about this year’s reading! This will be my first year out of education, which is wild. At first, I was terrified about being so rudderless in terms of goal-oriented intellectual pursuits. I’ve spent the last 23 years of my life in very structured educational bounds. Now that my master’s degree is done and I’m out in the so-called ‘real world’, I can read and do whatever I want whenever I want, without planning around course loads or school projects. Time will tell if this is the answer to my prayers I’m hoping it will be. So, having just been discussing how I’m looking forward to having less structure, here are the highlights of my highly structured 2023 TBR!
Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman
I am so incredibly excited to read this book! Reading the diaries and journals of famous people (especially writers) is one of my favorite things to do, and I’m afraid it’s because I am terribly nosy. I love learning what people were thinking, their innermost gripes on the banalest of topics. I read The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath a few years ago and absolutely inhaled it, despite not really enjoying Plath’s other work. I have a feeling this reading experience will be even better; I’ve loved Alan Rickman in everything I’ve ever seen him in, from Love Actually to Diehard to, of course, and especially, Harry Potter. I got a copy of this from Books a Million the other day and had a quick flip through and he apparently also illustrated his diaries, in beautiful full color, and started keeping them in the 1990s! I will report back ASAP with a full review, but I have a feeling that this book is going to be four or five stars for me.
Orlando (Virginia Woolf)
Honestly, I can’t believe I haven’t read this sooner. I took a seminar on Woolf in my undergrad and this was the one book of hers that I had wanted to read. It wasn’t on the syllabus and I was devastated but I’m embarrassed to say that then I quickly let it slip from my mind. In January I’m planning on following Virginia Woolf’s journaling routine, and planning out the video reminded me that this book was out there and that I hadn’t read it yet. I’m going in with no expectations – Woolf’s writing style is kooky and I’m not sure how I’ll cope with reading it in a non-seminar setting, but this year WILL be the year of Orlando.
Spare (Prince Harry)
Who isn’t excited about this book? 2022 was the year of the shake-up for the royal family, and I was living for it. I was living in Glasgow, Scotland when the Queen died and it was genuinely the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced. The streets were empty. Queen Elizabeth’s face was plastered on every screen in the airport.
This picture is from Glasgow International Airport on September 16th. It was a lot to take in at 6 AM.
I’m too young to remember any of the Princess Diana drama, but I’ve watched all five seasons of the Crown and so I feel adequately prepared to devour this book the moment it comes out next week.
Making The Body Beautiful – A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery (Sander L Gilman)
I watched the most fascinating video essay (I’m 80% sure that it was this one – Rhinoplasties: The Depressing Story Behind Why You Hate Your Nose), which prompted me to put this on my TBR and promptly forget about it. It probably would have stayed forgotten if not for the new trend of having your buccal fat removed from your face (????) popping up all over my TikTok feed. I love a good nonfiction book (surprisingly, even the gross ones), and this one promises to have plenty of gore and hopefully anti-patriarchal commentary.
One Last Stop (Casey McQuiston)
I breathed in Red White and Royal Blue like I’d been holding my breath my whole life. I reread it, I cried, I recommended it to everyone I knew. I screamed and disturbed my neighbors when I found out that Casey McQuiston was releasing a new book, AND it was sapphic. I preordered it immediately, and when it arrived I actually kissed the cover. And then I simply never read it. I have no excuse for this. I will be rectifying it as soon as is humanly possible.
