We asked the past year’s podcast-guests for the favorite books they read in 2022 and the books they hope to read in 2023 for the TENTH ANNIVERSARY edition of our special year-end  Guest List episode! Twenty-two guests participated, so listen to the show to hear about the books they loved this year, and use this page to check out all the books, as well as their past episodes!

Photo of my 2022 books (not incl. comics & some e-books) by me.

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The Guests

Jonathan Ames – 14:35

• Killer in the Rain – Raymond Chandler
• The Six Perfections: The Practice of the Bodhisattvas – Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Jonathan’s 2023 goals

• More books by Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Richard Butner – 16:10

• Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
• Booth – Karen Joy Fowler
• The Dark Ride: The Best Short Fiction of John Kessel – John Kessel
• These Prisoning Hills – Christopher Rowe

Richard’s 2023 goals

• Freshwater – Akwaeke Emezi
• The Punchdrunk Encyclopaedia – Josephine Machon
• Maybe some Jennifer Egan and some David Gilbert, finally
• Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

Howard Chaykin – 20:00

• The Peter Cotton novels – Aly Monroe
• Anthony Mann – Jeannine Basinger
• Once Upon a Time In Hollywood – Quentin Tarantino

Howard’s 2023 goals

• Moscow Exile: A Joe Wilderness Novel – John Lawton

Joe Ciardiello – 19:35

• Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld – TJ English

Darryl Cunningham – 4:10

• Life’s Work: A Memoir – David Milch

Darryl’s 2023 goals

• Hilary Mantel’s other (non-Wolf Hall) books

Eva Hagberg – 5:25

• The Premonition: A Pandemic Story – Michael Lewis

Eva’s 2023 goals

• • The Three-Body Problem – Cixin Liu (tr. Ken Liu) (and here’s that print she mentions)

Kathe Koja – 27:40

• Final Harvest: Poems – Emily Dickinson

Kathe’s 2023 goals

• I, Caravaggio – Eugenio Volpe

Ken Krimstein – 12:00

• A Soldier of the Great War – Mark Helprin
• Unsung Hero: The Story of Robert McNeill (American Splendor) – Harvey Pekar and David Collier

Ken’s 2023 goals

• Don Quixote – Miguel Cervantes (tr. Edith Grossman)
• Sometimes A Great Notion – Ken Kesey

Glenn Kurtz – 17:40

• The Changing Light at Sandover – James Merrill
• The Impostor – Javier Cercas
• Nox – Anne Carson

Glenn’s 2023 goals

• The Books of Jacob – Olga Tokarczuk
• The Passenger – Cormac McCarthy
• Stella Maris – Cormac McCarthy

W. David Marx – 2:35

• Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity – Ricahrd Rorty

David’s 2023 goals

• Ernst Gombrich on art, and more Leonard B. Meyer on music

Dave McKean – 3:10

• Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures – Merlin Sheldrake
• Heavy Light – Horatio Clare

Dave’s 2023 goals

• Fiction of Umberto Eco
• Works by Assyrologist George Smith

Wallis Wilde-Menozzi – 8:50

• Memoirs from the Women’s Prison – Nawal El Saadawi (tr. Marilyn Booth)
• Winter Recipes from the Collective: Poems – Louise Glück

Wallis’ 2023 goals

• Septology – Jon Fosse

Jim Ottaviani – 9:35

• Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands – Kate Beaton
• How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question – Michael Schur
• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life – George Saunders

Jim’s 2023 goals

• The Speeches & Writings of Abraham Lincoln – Abraham Lincoln

Celia Paul – 7:00

• Daybook: The Journal of an Artist – Anne Truitt

Celia’s 2023 goals

• Yield: The Journal of an Artist – Anne Truitt
• Prospect: The Journal of an Artist – Anne Truitt

Nicole Rudick – 10:55

• Small Things Like These – Claire Keegan
• How To Be Both – Ali Smith
• Punks: New & Selected Poems – John Keene
• Rereading (nearly) all of Joanna Russ’s output

Nicole’s 2023 goals

• The Guest Lecture – Martin Riker
• Unshuttered: Poems – Patricia Smith
• Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for for Justice – Cristina Rivera Garza
• Perennial Fashion Falling Presence – Fred Moten
• True Life: Poems – Adam Zagajewski (tr. Clare Cavanagh)
• The Lost Journals of Sacajewea – Debra Magpie Earling
• Where I’m Coming From – Barbara Brandon-Croft

Jerry Saltz – 22:30

• Ninety-Three – Victor Hugo

Jerry’s 2023 goals

• Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Dmitry Samarov – 21:45

• The Largesse of the Sea Maiden – Denis Johnson

Dmitry’s 2023 goals

• The Books of Jacob – Olga Tokarczuk

David Sax – 15:10

• Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life – William Finnegan

David’s 2023 goals

• More Usula K. Le Guin

Ruth Scurr – 24:45

• Small Things Like These – Claire Keegan
• These Days – Lucy Caldwell
• Sell Us The Rope – Stephen May

Ruth’s 2023 goals

• Ways of Life: Jim Ede and the Kettle’s Yard Artists – Laura Freeman
• The Future Future – Adam Thirlwell

Sebastian Smee – 30:25

• Septology – Jon Fosse

Sebastian’s 2023 goals

• Under The Volcano – Malcolm Lowry

Peter Stothard – 25:40

• Who Saved the Parthenon?: A New History of the Acropolis Before, During and After the Greek Revolution – William St. Clair
• The Classical Parthenon: Recovering the Strangeness of the Ancient World – William St. Clair

Peter’s 2023 goals

• Many poems of Horace

Marina Warner – 28:30

• Misericordia – Benito Perez Galdos (tr. Charles de Salis)
• Independent People – Halldor Laxness (tr. James Anderson Thompson)
• Agitated Air: Poems After Ibn Arabi – Yasmine Seale and Robin Moger
• Dandelions – Thea Lenarduzzi

Marina’s 2023 goals

• Grey Bees – Andrei Kurkov (tr. Boris Dralyuk)
• On Marriage – Devorah Baum
• Hollow – Brian Catling

Gil Roth – 30:45

• All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life’s Work – Hayley Campbell
• Letters to Gwen John – Celia Paul
• The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem – Julie Phillips
• John Aubrey, My Own Life – Ruth Scurr
• “Philip Roth: A Counterlife
  Philip Roth: A Counterlife” – Ira Nadel
• Midlife: Humanity’s Secret Weapon – Andew Jamieson
• Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan – Darryl Pinckney
• What Is Now Known Was Once Only Imagined: An (Auto)Biography of Niki de Saint Phalle – Nicole Rudick
• Flint and Mirror: A Novel of History and Magic – John Crowley
• The Latinist – Mark Prins
• Old Poets: Reminiscences and Opinions – Donald Hall
• Against the Day – Thomas Pynchon
• Joseph Anton: A Memoir – Salman Rushdie
• Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
• The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
• Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
• Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
• Blindness – jose Saramago
• Gratitude – Oliver Sacks
• Intoxicated by My Illness: And Other Writings on Life and Death – Anatole Broyard

Gil’s 2023 goals

• Mourning Diary – Roland Barthes
• To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
• A Room of Ones’ Own – Virginia Woolf
• Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy – Olivia Manning
• Fortunes of War: The Levant Trilogy – Olivia Manning
• MOAR DONALD HALL ESSAYS
• Forms of Enchantment: Writings on Art and Artists – Marina Wanrer
• The Poems of Emily Dickinson – Emily Dickinson
• MOAR POEMS

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