In 2021, it was something that looked like a cross between a ziggurat and a pagoda; in 2022, it was reminiscent of Santiago Calatrava’s “turning torso” building; and in 2023, for lack of time and stacking inspiration, just three generic skyscrapers of the books I’ve read this year.
Besides, however we stack them, it is the same simultaneous inward and upward reaching motion. How else do we dig deep for strong foundations while reaching for the sky?
We read.
December
“Does a place become one’s home because this is where one read the greatest number of books about other places?” — André Aciman, Letters of Transit
95. Pleasures of the Table: A Literary Anthology
94. Simple Passion – Annie Ernaux
93. Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss – André Aciman
92. The Violins of Saint-Jacques – Patrick Leigh Fermor
91. Some People Need Killing – Patricia Evangelista
90. Infieles: Twelve Filipino Stories – Quintin Jose V. Pastrana
89. There Are No Falling Stars in China – Marga Ortigas
88. Looking at Pictures – Robert Walser
87. A Little Luck – Claudia Piñeiro
86. The Lady and the Little Fox Fur – Violette Leduc
November
84. Chicken With Plums – Marjane Satrapi
83. Balthasar’s Odyssey – Amin Maalouf
81 & 82. The Rock of Tanios & Leo the African – Amin Maalouf
80. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress – Dai Sijie
79. Stick Out Your Tongue – Ma Jian
77 & 78. Touch & We Are All Equally Far from Love – Adania Shibli
76. The Summer Solstice and Other Stories – Nick Joaquin
75. Heartbreak & Magic – Ian Rosales Casocot
October
72. The Towers of Trebizond – Rose Macaulay
71. Sound of Sugar – Gauri Gharpure
September in Egypt
“It is always Alexandria. You walk a bit / Down the straight road that ends at the Hippodrome / And you’ll see palaces and monuments that awe you. / No matter how much damage it has suffered in wars, / No matter how diminished, it is always a wonderful city. / And then with excursions and books, / And various studies, time passes…” — C.P. Cavafy, Exiles
68. Before the Throne – Naguib Mahfouz
67. Karnak Cafe – Naguib Mahfouz
66. Death on the Nile – Agatha Christie
65. The Cairo of Naguib Mahfouz
64. The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy: A New Translation
63. Out of Egypt – André Aciman
62. Khan al-Khalili – Naguib Mahfouz
August
“Reading itself is an expression of faith, if not the ultimate act of self-help.” — Nadia Wassef, Shelf Life
61. Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller – Nadia Wassef
59. The Barefoot Woman – Scholastique Mukasonga
58. Igifu – Scholastique Mukasonga
57. The First Wife – Paulina Chiziane
July
“And now, tell me, are you reading anything useful? …the virtuous mind never dismisses wisdom even for a day, just as the healthy stomach does not renounce food for a day… and if the soul isn’t nourished by wisdom then it sinks to the level of the lesser creatures.” — Naguib Mahfouz, Khufu’s Wisdom
56. The Bhagavad-Gita
53 – 55. The Cairo Trilogy – Naguib Mahfouz
June
“You open the covers of the book, you fear its mysterious worlds, and then you slowly draw closer to it, like someone standing on the shore, hesitating in front of the water. Then, when you wade out into it, you find you’ve become part of its waves, plunging, rising, and falling…” — Elias Khoury, Children of the Ghetto
48. Paris Stories – Mavis Gallant
47. The Woman Who Killed the Fish – Clarice Lispector
46. The Possession – Annie Ernaux
May
“I still walk into a bookstore or a library convinced that I might be on the threshold that will open up onto what I most need or desire, and sometimes that doorway appears. When it does, there are epiphanies and raptures in seeing the world in new ways, in finding patterns previously unsuspected, in being handed unimagined equipment to address what arises, in the beauty and power of words.” — Rebecca Solnit, Recollections of My Nonexistence
43. Street of Thieves – Mathias Énard
42. Recollections of My Nonexistence – Rebecca Solnit
41. Orphic Paris – Henri Cole
40. The Distance Between Us –Renato Cisneros
39. Shah of Shahs – Ryszard Kapuściński
38. Skylark – Dezső Kosztoláni
April
“You see, every story is like a small stream that eventually spills into the broad sea of thousands of other tales. And if a storyteller dies along the way, another must replace him and carry on the story from one river to the next and on out to sea.” — Bachtyar Ali, The Last Pomegranate Tree
36. Exercises in Style –Raymond Queneau
35. The Remains – Margo Glantz
34. Elena Knows – Claudia Piñeiro
33. Trout, Belly Up – Rodrigo Fuentes
32. The Last Pomegranate Tree – Bachtyar Ali
March
“Some people think of reading only as a kind of escape: an escape from the ‘real’ everyday world to an imaginary world, the world of books. Books are so much more. They are a way of being fully human.” — Susan Sontag, A Letter to Borges – Where the Stress Falls
27. The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Arnim
26. Journey Into the Mind’s Eye – Lesley Blanch
25. The City and the House – Natalia Ginzburg
24. The Algebra of Infinite Justice – Arundhati Roy
23. Every Fire You Tend – Sema Kaygusuz
22. Where the Stress Falls – Susan Sontag
21. Three Summers – Margarita Liberaki
20. The Unwomanly Face of War – Svetlana Alexievich
February
“And so the role of literature on this earth: It is that thing seeking beauty.” — Sait Faik Abasıyanık, A Useless Man
16. The President’s Room – Ricardo Romero
15. The Levant Trilogy – Olivia Manning
14. The Lüneburg Variation – Paolo Maurensig
12 & 13. The Musical Brain and Artforum – César Aira
January
“Our literature teacher at school used to say that everyone had their own language, and that you could understand some with flowers and others with books.” – Burhan Sönmez, Istanbul Istanbul
9. The Balkan Trilogy – Olivia Manning
7 & 8. Istanbul Istanbul & Labyrinth – Burhan Sönmez
6. Portraits Without Frames – Lev Ozerov
5. Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me – Teffi
4. Broken Mirrors – Elias Khoury
3. The Time Regulation Institute – Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
2. Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate – Daniel Mendelsohn
The Book-Butterfly 