Rather than grapple with things like rankings and ratings and “bests” or even “favorites,” here is simply a list of five things I loved from this year and wish to share with you, in alphabetical order.
Visit my Instagram @JMWwrites for the full posts, including Honorable Mentions.
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5 Books I Read and Loved in 2023
any publication year, alphabetical order
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
A million people have already sung this book’s praises to high heaven, but it deserves it all. Before reading this book, I would not have professed to be interested in memoir or creative non-fiction as a genre. While reading this book, I would have told you it was the only way to be. If you thought Michelle Zauner was a great musician, just wait til you get a load of her as a writer. I recommend reading while listening to her soundtrack for the video game Sable. They pair nicely, contemplative with a gentle power and simple profundity.
Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
This was the year I learned the power of magical realism. It creates a beautiful liminal space of meaning. An author with a naturally poetic voice can stand with a foot in both worlds. Read one way, these stories bring Hawaiian folklore to life. Read another way, the magic infused into the language allows the supernatural text to serve as powerful metaphors for the complexities of real life. The interplay between the magic and the real made Kakimoto’s debut one of the most pleasant surprises of 2023.
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
I love a classic that manages to surprise you. I went into this book already knowing a lot about it. Nothing could have prepared me for the experience. Vonnegut nails the satirical voice. The simplicity of his language makes room for the complexity of the structure and the message. That message is as timely as ever as we watch bombs fall fresh upon the Earth. If only we mere mortals had the power to reverse time, to watch those bombs rise back into the vehicles that delivered them and sew the victims back together.
These Bones by Kayla Chenault
One of two books I read this year exploring social issues through magical realism, closing the liminal gap between regional folklore and the frustrating racial and gender politics of the real world. This one takes place in the American South. It’s heart-rending and breath-taking. Like the previously discussed “Every Drop,” the fantasy in the text doubles for moving poetry when you turn the kaleidoscope on the spectrum from magic to realism. The result is a rich text that wallops you once with the weight of true generational trauma and again with the bleed-through of supernatural forces into our darkly familiar history.
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
You may have seen the hype that got stirred up for this book on Twitter by . . . *checks notes* . . . Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood . . . but yet again, we have a book that’s worth the hype. Two authors telling an epistolary romance through the love-hate letters between two characters, but set against the most imaginative science fiction backdrops. This book will make you fall in love with its heroines, with their worlds, and with the powerful possibilities of beautiful prose. This is the kind of book that makes you fall in love with books. It’s that good.
5 New Short Stories I Read and Loved in 2023
1 per author, alphabetical order, links included
“Can You Hear Me Now?” by Catherynne M. Valente
from Uncanny Magazine
A common trapping of speculative fiction, especially short form, is the gimmick. There is a fine line between gimmick and invention, a line that can be transcended by the right prose, from the pen of the right authorial voice. I suppose it’s the hope of most speculative writers that their ideas be received as inventions rather than gimmicks; it’s certainly mine. I hesitate to even tell you what this story is about, lest an attempt to summarize does it the disservice of reducing it to gimmick. Just go in without expectation and listen. I guarantee you that what you’ll find is entirely of the inventive variety.
“Day Ten Thousand” by Isabel J. Kim
from Clarkesworld Magazine
An ambitious meta-narrative of staggering non-linearity, this story accomplishes with less than 7000 words what many writers work their whole careers to craft. This was Isabel J. Kim’s year, but in the same year Kim was included in the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 compilation, “Day Ten Thousand” feels like the magnum opus. Gustav Mahler once said that a symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything. “Day Ten Thousand” is such a symphony, elegantly narrated by Kate Baker for the Clarkesworld podcast.
“Madwomen” by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
from Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare
There is a spectrum upon which short fiction seems to slide, an axis I suppose all art exists on, but which short stories in particular seem to inhabit. Action vs. Contemplation. Stories that are more meditative versus stories that run on the rails of plot. I am not here to say one is better than the other. But every once in a while you come across a story that convinces you that this is the way stories are meant to be. “Madwomen” exists in the more contemplative realm. The quiet power of its prose and the simple humanity of its story left me feeling that exact feeling: that this is the way stories are meant to be.
“The Magpie Stacks Probabilities” by Arie Coleman
from Asimov’s Science Fiction
There is a wealth of science fiction storytelling in the world of speculative magazines and online publications. It’s always been there. Dune famously arose from this tradition. But this was the first year of my life I dove in. Admittedly, this particular story was released in 2022. But early this year it was the story that opened my eyes to what the storytelling in this world is capable of. Something gentle, something profound, something beautiful, inflected with and rooted in fantastic science fiction but altogether human at its heart.
“What Happened to Our Giant Inflatable Heart” by Angela Corbett
from Sequestrum
Short stories, despite the virtue of their brevity, can be excellent vehicles for the complexity of people. The temptation of the form is over-reduction. But the call-to-arms of the form is revelation. And the greatest revelations that short fiction has to offer are rarely simple. This story is a complicated, nuanced, and evolving look at love, connection, purpose, and community through the prism of its unique cast of characters. If you are searching for the kind of fiction that stops you in your tracks, then stop by Sequestrum and sit for a while in Corbett’s giant inflatable heart.
JMW Writes 
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