This is New Year's Day, for what that's worth, & I've seen several posted lists of what people read last year, so I thought I would write one too. I have for decades kept a list of books I've read, which is the closest thing to a diary I've ever been able to maintain; reviewing a list from years ago & seeing the names of what I was reading then brings back to me time & place & circumstances in a way little else does.
The list is books I've finished, cover to cover, within the calendar year. I really mean cover to cover; just as I'm one of those people who watch movie credits to the very end, until the lights go back up, or the disc returns to its main menu, I read introductory materials to footnotes, all the way through. I will admit to skimming some of the less essential adjuncts, & more & more I'm skipping introductions, or looking at them once I've finished the book. You have to be careful with these things – apparently we're not supposed to be interested in plot twists, which are freely given away in intros & footnotes. I was extremely annoyed years ago when reading George Eliot's Felix Holt the Radical, not a work whose storyline is a cultural commonplace, that a footnote blithely revealed a family relationship that Eliot didn't want us to realize until much later.
I mention cover-to-cover because I start the day with reading that won't be on the list, as I didn't "finish" those volumes in the year. First I read a chapter of the King James translation of the Bible. I started doing this years ago, when a more pious friend posted something on Facebook about reading the Gospel of Luke in December: it has 24 chapters, so if you start on 1 December & read a chapter a day, by Christmas Eve you will know "the reason for the season". I already knew but decided to do this anyway. & after that I kept on, hopping from book to book, until last year I decided to start with Genesis 1:1, In the beginning. . . . So I can tell you that if you read a chapter a day, at the end of a year you will be near the end of the First Book of Chronicles, which to me is possibly the most tedious book of the Bible, combining as it does the long lists of genealogies / censuses with smatterings of Jehovah the interior decorator (the divinity is extremely fussy about how his dwellings are ornamented). But I persist, as the more poetical books are within sight.
Then I read one poem by Emily Dickinson. The problem I've always had reading her is that her rhythm is so strong that I would gulp down a dozen or so of her poems & then realize I had almost no idea of what she was saying. So I started reading one poem a day. Just one, & I read it over a couple of times, slowly & quickly & again slowly. I use the Thomas Johnson edition, because although there have been others published since then this is the one I have. I started a Dickinson a Day over two years ago, & I'm about halfway through the poems. Then I read anywhere from one to six pages in Finnegans Wake, though I should probably write a separate entry on that.
So on to what I read in 2023:
A Tale of a Tub by Ben Jonson Reading through all of Jonson's plays is, like many of my reading plans, something I've been meaning to do for years. As they say, so many books, so little time. So I finally started this year; first of course I had to find a ore or less usable edition of the complete plays, & Tale of a Tub was the first play in the one I found, which was published in four volumes by Oxford University Press over forty years ago. The annotations are a bit spotty, which is not a big problem for me as I've read enough poetic drama of the period to get the tone & vocabulary, but what's really annoying is the abbreviation of the speech prefixes. As with baroque opera, the often convoluted & sometimes fantastical actions are clear enough when you see them on stage, but if you're not great with names to start with, as you read the hiccupping succession of Tur., D. Tur., Pup., Lad., &c, will require numerous looks back at the list of characters (that's Turf, Dame Turf, Puppy, & Lady Tub, & how much do you save in printing costs by not spelling out such things?).
The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens I had finished 2022 by re-reading The Old Curiosity Shop, a wild prose poem of a book that I love more each time I read it. Yes, I am well aware of Wilde's little quip about needing a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell. How naughty Wilde could be! & mocking the sentiment of a previous generation is a surefire way to épater les bourgeois. But I will point out that even at his most theatrically emotional Dickens never wrote anything as utterly shameless as The Selfish Giant. Anyway, I was in the mood for more Dickens, & decided to re-read Drood. Dickens, of course, died before completing it, or indicating what direction it would go in. I had forgotten how much opium use it had, & there are some interesting moments concerning racial difference in Victorian England, so reading it is as fascinating as it is frustrating.
Morgante by Luigi Pulci, translated by Joseph Tusiani This is an extremely long narrative poem from the early Italian Renaissance, about a giant, Morgante, who gets involved with various Christian knights in the Crusades. I had started it in 2022. It's comical & entertaining & endearing, with a bit of a Rabelaisian satirical edge to it. Interestingly, at the end of this year I started re-reading Eliot's Romola, which will not be on this list as I haven't finished it yet, & Pulci gets quoted by several of the characters, as a sharp-viewed satirist.
Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith This one, which I had been looking forward to for several years, was disappointing. It is based on the life of an actual English woman of a preceding generation, though as is usually the case under those circumstances, Meredith adapts the life as he will. It ends with an entirely undeserved happy ending for the protagonist (she marries the man who has loved her all along, & who, in the meantime, has become quite wealthy), after she betrays another man she has been seeing (she sells to the press a political secret he told her in confidence). If you're curious about Meredith, let me recommend instead The Egoist, which reads like Jane Austen retold by late period Henry James.
The Civil War by Lucan, translated by Susan Braund Another one I've been intending to read for years. An interesting epic, with baroquely Seneca-like moments & an intriguing, almost contemporary view of the ever-fascinating Cleopatra.
The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizake, translated by Seidensticker I had read this many years ago, & 2023 seemed to be my year for re-reading such things. A wonderfully rich & subtle novel about Japanese life in the middle of the last century, involving four sisters, who range from traditional to rebelliously "modern". After finishing it I rewatched Ishikawa's film, which I also had not seen in years, & . . . it's fine, & often lovely to look at, but much slighter than the novel. Some of that is inevitable, given the length of the book & the wide-ranging freedoms of the novelist. But my Criterion edition oddly described the film in a note as extremely faithful & then a paragraph later points out a major change from the novel (involving, spoiler alert I guess, though it's not in the novel, a brother-in-law having romantic feelings for one of the other sisters).
Pericles, Prince of Tyre by Shakespeare & an unidentified collaborator I re-read Shakespeare's plays over & over. This is one of the strange & beautiful final romances.
Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life by Ian Gibson Reading a biography of Lorca had been on my Intended list for years, so I finally read one. This is a solid & honest life. I will admit that as the end neared I read more & more slowly, as I couldn't bear his looming murder by Franco's fascist thugs.
The Wheels of Commerce by Fernand Braudel This is volume 2 of Civilization & Capitalism, Braudel's look at the underlying structures that shape the world. Starting this trilogy was one of my pandemic projects, though I paused it at some point to read Henry Adams's Histories of the Administrations of Jefferson & Madison as my history books. The Braudel had more economics than I was expecting (numbers in general are not my strength) so it was a bit of a stretch for me but I found it worth reading.
The Thebaid by Statius, translated by Charles Stanley Ross Like Lucan's Civil Wars, another interesting epic that is not as well known as it once was; this one is about the struggle between the sons of Oedipus for control of Thebes.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë Again, a re-read of something I'd read so long ago it's almost as if I hadn't read them (though it's odd what bits stick in the memory). The Tenant has a male narrator & an elaborately structured disclosure of the participants' lives & a manuscript within the novel in which the female protagonist tells her own story, which has been hidden from the people around Wildfell Hall, where she has found a somewhat fallible refuge. It is a grim tale of youthful idealism falling in love with someone who turns out to be what we would now call a substance abuser. As with many Victorian novels, you have to wonder why sensible divorce laws were not adopted sooner. Anne is not as well known as her sisters perhaps but if you like their work you'd like hers. Agnes Grey is a slimmer, slighter work than Tenant; it involves a young woman who is forced by financial reality to go out as a governess, & while being quite virtuous & high-minded herself, she manages to describe her employers & pupils in a way that is both straightforward & hilariously cutting. Re-reading these two was going to be part of re-reading all the Brontë novels, but Emily & Charlotte will have to wait until (possibly) this year.
The Winter's Tale by Shakespeare Again, one of the weird & wonderful final romances. This play is frequently described as "the one in which a statue comes to life" but that's not really what happens: what happens is that a woman who is falsely accused of adultery by her husband the king has to live in hiding for sixteen years & then is brought out, poses as a statue for fifteen minutes, & then is allowed to rejoin the world.
A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare It had been a while & this play is always lovely to revisit.
Chéri and The Last of Chéri by Colette, translated by Roger Senhouse Again, a writer I had been intending to get to for years; in 2022 I finally did, & I continued in 2023 with these two novels, both part of an omnibus volume titled 7 by Colette that I bought used years ago. It has an introduction by Janet Flanner, another name that should mean more today than perhaps it does. (How nostalgic one gets as the years change!) This is a fascinating look at a male beauty in the louche & liminal world between the independently wealthy & the bohemians; how he ages, how the older woman he loves ages, & what happens as youth goes & the world changes around him. There is a newer translation, published by New York Review Books, that I would like to read, but I'm trying to learn not to buy books unless I have actual plans to read them soon.
Decadent Poetry from Wilde to Naidu, edited by Lisa Rodensky This Penguin anthology was also something I started during the pandemic. It doesn't do to rush through any book of lyrics, particularly ones as ripe as those by the decadents of the late nineteenth century. As with Wilde's remarks referenced above about Little Nell's death, a previous generation's decadence, like its sentimental sorrows, can seem a bit risible to a succeeding generation. But if you find some truth & beauty in the pallor of sin & mocking coral lips & vine-wreathed curls, & of course in sexual ambiguity & complexity, then let me recommend this compilation.
Yerma by Federico Garcia Lorca, translated by Michael Dewell & Carmen Zapata Not my favorite Lorca play, but I re-read it before seeing The Shotgun Players' production, which turned out to be a disaster (I didn't write it up at the time but might at some point as a review of their on-going season).
The Palliser Novels: Can You Forgive Her?, Phineas Finn, The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Redux, The Prime Minister, & The Duke's Children (expanded edition) by Anthony Trollope Once again, novels I had read years & years ago that I re-read this year. I had started when PBS showed its dramatization, The Pallisers (when I picture Lady Glencora I still see Susan Hampshire) & I read the novels one by one over the years. This time I read all six in succession. I was a little concerned that this might be Too Much, but it works very well & I recommend it. Since I last read the novels, some heroic editors have recreated Trollope's initial version of The Duke's Children, which he was forced to cut severely before publication, so the more complete version is what I read. (& let me add I am grateful that Silverbridge was spared from marriage to the tediously self-pitying & entitled Lady Mabel Grex in favor of a sparkling American girl.) Some fascinating things about the re-read: people talk ad nauseum about how Victorian women "had to marry for money" (without exploring the class assumptions in that statement), but Trollope is a useful corrective, as many of the young men he describes also have to marry for money: being a member of Parliament or a young barrister didn't really give you enough income to advance in The World. Trollope is also sensitive in ways I hadn't remembered to how important their beauty can be to men: Phineas Finn is one, but not the only one, of his male characters whose lives are influenced in subtle but major ways by their good looks. Again, a useful corrective to the usual gendered view. I had re-read The Eustace Diamonds a few years ago, separately from the series, & considered skipping it this time but I'm glad I didn't. It's a more acid take on society than in the other novels in the series, & as such appeals to me.
The Perspective of the World by Fernand Braudel The third & final volume of Civilization & Capitalism.
The Case Is Altered by Ben Jonson The second play in the collection. I also have the Cambridge Ben Jonson & will probably pick up the series using that set, which spells out the speaker's names.
Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare I've always had a soft spot for this play, even when it was routinely described as Shakespeare's worst. Its reputation has been rehabilitated to some extent; seeing it on stage is no longer the rarity (or impossibility) it once was. It's actually quite a magnificent play in many regards, anticipating King Lear & other later plays. Of course it's not at the level of Lear; what else is? The wild & relentless violence can remind a modern audience of films by Tarantino, aside, of course, from its roots in the classical tradition of Ovid & Seneca. I re-read the play thinking I might go to the Oakland Theater Project's performances of Taylor Mac's Gary, A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, but for various reasons (including their lack of will-call tickets) I ended up not going. I did rewatch the excellent Julie Taymor film at some point.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens I had been intending to re-read this one for years (yes, I do keep saying that!). I mentioned to a friend that I was re-reading it & it turned out she had recently done the same thing, & found the novel a bit thinner than some of the other, much longer, Dickens novels. I wouldn't really disagree, but obviously it's still compelling & haunting. &, once again, there were whole episodes I had forgotten, but moments (Joe sending the message "such larks" or Herbert Pocket cheerfully slipping in that Pip shouldn't eat peas with his knife) that stuck with me. I had also remembered a passage in which Pip, who had been somewhat embarrassed by his blacksmithing biceps (the fashion in male bodies then was very slim, idealizing the build of aristocrats who didn't need to labor), found them useful when he had to attempt rowing Magwitch to safety, but I'm not sure that passage is actually in there. Speaking of memory, it's probably time for me to re-read In Search of Lost Time.
Ibsen: A Biography by Michael Meyer As with the biography of Lorca, I'd been intending for years to read this hefty volume. An insightful & thorough view of the man who created modern drama.
Against Venice by Régis Debray This slim volume is part of a lovely boxed set of works on Venice issued by Pushkin Press, which I have been slowly working my way through. I was in Venice once, over twenty years ago, for a day & a half, & found the city as magical as reputation & cliché insisted: as I wandered & wondered through the narrow foggy streets, it looked exactly as I had expected, based on photos & films & paintings, but it was still entrancing. I don't know if I even want to go back there, given how unexpectedly powerful the experience was. I read this book in one evening, when I had COVID. I had been looking forward to spending that night hearing Ian Bostridge singing Schubert's Winterreise, one of my favorite pieces of music, but instead I was isolated in my house, exhausted & a bit feverish, while my annoying idiot neighbors were having a very loud party. Reading this attack on the image of Venice as kitsch became for me part of my memory of that whole situation.
Othello by Shakespeare It had been a while since I'd read this one.
Shaw & Ibsen: The Quintessence of Ibsenism & Related Writings, by Shaw edited by J L Wisenthal Part of my on-going Ibsen (& Shaw) thing. I think Ibsen is a weirder, more poetico-mythic playwright than he is sometimes given credit for being, so I was interested to see that although Shaw emphasized the social aspects of his plays, he was well aware of the other, stranger & more inwardly psychological currents. This was an excellent collection, as it contains not only Shaw's Quintessence of Ibsenism, which, as Shaw himself states, was intended as a Fabian Society polemic, but also his other writings on Ibsen, including reflections in personal letters & stage reviews.
The Lady from the Sea by Ibsen, translated by Eva Le Gallienne Part of my on-going Ibsen thing. Le Gallienne was a major theatrical figure, & her translations were designed for the stage (she is also the daughter of the poet Richard Le Gallienne, who appears in the Anthology of Decadent Poets mentioned above).
A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe A few years ago at beloved Moe's Books in Berkeley I found a set of Radcliffe's complete novels, issued years ago by the Folio Society (they have since pivoted more to modern genre fiction). I had read one of her novels in college & didn't much like it – that was The Italian, which I re-read a few years ago & liked much better. I think I had to accustom myself to a less realistic & psychologically inward type of novel before I could appreciate Radcliffe's stylized romances, with their exquisite depictions of nature & their refined chills, along with their almost commedia-like cast: the lower classes are comical supporting characters, the young lovers are noble, the evil people are unscrupulously evil. You have to get into her mood, but once you're there, Radcliffe is quite compelling in her weird combination of poetry & horror.
The Best Picture by Aldous Huxley & The Piero della Francesca Trail by John Pope- Hennessy Two short works about the great painter, published in one slim volume. They were written when della Francesca was perhaps not the art history demi-god he is now (or is he still? these things change so quickly!), but instead a pearl prized by connoisseurs. The last time I was at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, one of my favorite places on earth, I, excited by travel & the Samuel Adams beer I'd had in their charming café, ended up ordering a print of the della Francesca Hercules that hangs in the museum. It's in the room regarding me as I type this. There's something about the pearly light & dignified stillness of Francesa's paintings that works its way into the hearts of the susceptible.
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm Another re-read, & as I re-read, I was struck by how many epigrams had stayed with me in the decades since I first read it. It's a bit disjointed, more so than I had remembered, & though it's frequently described as a satire on Oxford – a very specialized topic, of perhaps limited interest to those outside its orbit – it struck me more as a satire on romance in general. A slippery & comic novel.
Shy by Mary Rodgers & Jesse Green This is the autobiography (as told to & annotated by Green) of the late composer & writer, daughter of Richard Rodgers. Her life, which might look glamorous to an outsider, was quite complicated & often sad in many ways, & she describes it in a straightforward yet thoughtful way. Her parents were both very difficult, but she looks back on them with an understanding & forgiveness that is complex & considered. She talks about some of the closeted homosexuals she knew (including her first husband, who was physically abusive) in a way that is understanding of what life was like for them, at a time when psychologists considered them disordered & "fixable". Her life of seeming privilege was one of stress & difficulty & uncertain attempts at re-inventing oneself. You really get a sense of what she must have been like, & admire her for her attempts to keep moving forward.
When We Dead Awaken by Ibsen, translated by Eva Le Gallienne His last play, his weird final testament to the world. I did actually see it staged once, but it was a Robert Wilson production, & so more of an adaptation. All I can remember of the performance is that at one point the four main characters were front of the stage doing a little soft-shoe number & chanting When – We – Dead – Awaken over & over.
My Mother's House by Colette, translated by Una Vicenzo Troubridge & Enid McLeod Another one, this time a sort of autobiographical look back, from the Colette omnibus mentioned above.
Henrik Ibsen & the Birth of Modernism by Toril Moi Part of my Ibsen thing. A fascinating look at Ibsen in the context of the development of Modernism in the arts, with particular emphasis on the role of Idealism in the nineteenth century & Ibsen's examination of that now often forgotten philosophy of life.
The Wild Duck by Ibsen, translated by Eva Le Gallienne It had been a while since I'd read Ibsen's plays, so I'm making up for lost time this year. This one is so painful to revisit, though, if you know what happens to the daughter.
The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris & Jean de Meun, translations by Charles Dahlberg & by Charles Dunn Dahlberg's translation is prose & Dunn's poetry; I read the two translations side by side. The work is the sort of abstracted & systematic allegory that was more popular in its time than it is now, & perhaps more ironically intended than current readings out of context might suggest. It's a certain height of medieval romance, though not as rich as Chaucer (but what is?). Anyway, this is another work I had wanted to read for years, & I finally got to it (twice!).
Edmund Spenser: A Life by Andrew Hadfield There is surprisingly little biographical information available about Spenser, as Hadfield acknowledges; the book is a model of describing the world & influences & political realities of someone whose life is more interesting to us than it was to his contemporaries. His asperities towards my Irish ancestors are something to grapple with. Yes, reading this was a prelude to starting a re-read of The Faerie Queene.
Kid Brady Stories & A Man of Means by P G Wodehouse These are early works by Wodehouse, & honestly not as much fun as I had hoped. Worth reading if you like him, as I do, but not near the level of his more celebrated works. But sometimes such lesser works have their period charms (if you're willing to overlook some period racism as well).
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox Another re-read. I didn't remember much about it besides being a bit disappointed by the first reading; when I decided to give it another go, I couldn't find the edition I had (probably I had sold it at some point to a used book store), which ended up being a good thing, as I used the Oxford World's Classics edition, which is superior in annotation & introduction to the one I had (which possibly had neither notes nor forward). The novel is still a bit uneven, & I found myself often exasperated with the delusional heroine, but you can also see the complex appeal of the romances that have entranced her: they portray a world in which women like her (beautiful, accomplished, & of high station) have considerable, though frankly unrealistic, power. There are funny satiric scenes of 18th century life, which also make clear why the isolated heiress Arabella would prefer the world of her romances. It ends a bit abruptly. But it's well worth reading if you enjoy 18th century novels.
Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, translated by W S Merwin I ended the year revisiting this weird & wonderful work, though this time in Merwin's translation, which I hadn't read before. Quite seasonally appropriate, as it takes place over Christmas / New Year's.
& so on into a new year, with several books already in progress. . . .
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