A 2023 Reading List by Greg Shaw
Better late than never. Here are the books I most enjoyed reading last year.
Reading is a very personal experience. For this reason, you will notice that I’ve included a few stories about why these books resonated with me.
Stealing a book by Margaret Verble (bookshop.org)
A reviewer compared this novel with To Kill A Mockingbird – a drama built upon legal and social justice. The author of Stealing is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, and her setting is northeastern Oklahoma where I once worked as a journalist, including for the Cherokee Advocate tribal newspaper. This is a sweet and then terrifying story of a young Cherokee girl who ends up in the nightmare that was Indian boarding schools. I can imagine some saying, why read something so depressing? My response: this novel is about the greatness of the human spirit and the beauty that is Cherokee community culture.
In my early twenties I was a speechwriter for the Secretary of the Interior, a cabinet position focused on our public lands and the environment. During that brief time, I read every naturalist and environmental book I could get my hands on. It’s a rich bookshelf. Brinkley, one of the most engaging historians in generations, brings to life the Long Sixties, stretching from the late 1950s into the 1970s. This is the story of activists, including scientists but also artists, pushing America toward environmental reform is as strategic as it is inspirational.
Harold a book by Steven Wright (bookshop.org)
Steven Wright has for a very long time been my favorite comedian. Deadpan and cerebral, he can make you think differently about the world in only a few sentences. Harold is the story of bright boy with a load of insights and a load of laughs. Ideas arrive on the wings of birds, literally. Readers may or may not agree with me, but it reminds me in some ways of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner) a book by Hernan Diaz (bookshop.org)
If you love literature, read this. Genius. Diaz explores truth and deception behind unfathomable wealth and the writing of a bestselling novel from 1937, Bonds. Winner of the Booker Prize for 2022.
The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) a book by Abraham Verghese (bookshop.org)
If you love literature, read this, too. Verghese is a treasure. Set in Kerala, India, the novel tells the story of three generations in which at least one family member dies of drowning. In this region, water is everywhere. It is a beautifully told story with the medical insight you would expect from this professor of medicine at Stanford University. It’s an Oprah’s Book Club chose this for 2023. Oh, and the audiobook is narrated by the author who has a stunning range of voices and accents!
President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier a book by Cw Goodyear (bookshop.org)
The aforementioned historian Douglas Brinkley has competition. Mr. Goodyear takes the story of our 20th president and makes him the story that fills in those lost, bearded presidents between Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.
August Wilson: A Life a book by Patti Hartigan (bookshop.org)
In 2004, the Seattle Public Library reopened the visually stunning building you visit today. My wife and I attended its grand opening to hear Architect Rem Koolhaas speak (acidly of the Seattle skyline) but the keynote speaker was playwright August Wilson. There are a handful of speeches that will remain with me forever, and his was one of those. He told us that he had dropped out of the Pittsburgh public schools, and the next day walked into the Pittsburgh public library. With wonderful rhythm he then recited a long list of what he had read and what he had learned from each book. Standing there beneath the windowed ceiling I can remember hoping that someone was recording this. Set to music, what a wonderful song it would make. No one was recording. But Patti Hartigan fortunately recorded Wilson’s life. We even exchanged messages about her book and my magical experience!
The Creative ACT: A Way of Being a book by Rick Rubin (bookshop.org)
This is a meditation on creativity. It’s a meditation on silencing yourself and being open to receiving “the signal.” Anyone on the planet can harness the signal for creative thought. If you are a creative or wish to be one, this is the book for you.
Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom a book by Carl Bernstein (bookshop.org)
If Robert Redford as Bob Woodward in All The President’s Men is a hero, this will make Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein your newest hero. This is as much a great memoir about journalism as it is a truly great history of Washington, D.C. – not just the political Washington, D.C., but the city that produces entrepreneurs and socialites.
I told a famous editor once how much I enjoyed reading books like Tina Brown’s The Vanity Fair Diaries and the late New Yorker great Lillian Ross’s Here But Not Here and Reporting Always. He agreed, describing media memoir as “candy.” I want candy! George Weidenfeld is a book publisher whose story is that of sustaining book publishing in order to bring new and unexpected voices to the public. As a small publisher myself, I found it both informative and also provocative.
New York society today might be hedge funds and AI, but the story of Brook Astor reminds us that early New York society had something to do with harvesting fur. I love history books that fill in the void of our understanding between one era and the next. I admire Anderson Cooper’s artful way of merging memoir and historical research.
What do scientific revolutions have in common? From wood fire to steam power? Kuhn offers a theory (spoiler alter: smarties entering one field from an unrelated field) that is a must read for the AI era.
Oliver Twist and Ebenezer Scrooge are the Dickens characters known to most. In this novel, I loved getting to know Pip. Like Oliver and Scrooge, we can see ourselves in Pip and his perilous aspiration for personal, business, and societal success. The Audible version read by Simon Prebble is miraculous.
Butcher's Crossing a book by John Williams and Michelle Latiolais (bookshop.org)
John Williams’ Stoner and Butcher’s Crossing might be two greatest American novels that are least read. With great artfulness, Williams answers this question: what is it in humans that would drive an entire animal species to near extinction? Butcher’s Crossing is the story of an eastern man who goes West in search of a livelihood. Ken Burns’ The American Buffalo is in many ways based on this biography of an improbable, shaggy beast at the center of many of the country’s most mythic and heartbreaking tales.
John Singer Sargent: Oversize Edition a book by Carter Ratcliff (bookshop.org)
I love ghostwriters. John Hay (the Hay in the Hay-Adams Hotel across a plaza from The White House) was one of Abraham Lincoln’s trusted associates. Lincoln trusted him to write letters and speeches. Lincoln treated Hay’s drafts as just that, drafts. Ghostwriters, like portraiture artists, listen and watch. Several years ago, I read All Of The Great Prizes by John Taliaferro, a wonderful biography of John Hay with a portrait of John Hay painted by John Singer Sargent. It caused me to want to know more about the painter, so I read The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent in His World by Paul Fisher, and purchased the giant volume of the painter’s work in the link above. Books send us on journeys. This is a beautiful collection of art.
Most Way Home a book by Kevin Young (bookshop.org)
I learned about the poet Kevin Young from John Yau’s The Passionate Spectator, part of the University of Michigan’s Poets on Poetry series. “Highlights of this collection include an essay on the poet as art critic, a study of the relationship between Kevin Young’s poetry and the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat.” I loved that written-visual relationship but I also loved Kevin Young’s focus on rural themes, something we’ve been encouraging with Pulley Press.
How to make rain
Start with the sun
piled weeks deep on your back after
you haven't heard rain for an entire
Growing season and making sure to face
due north spit twice into the red clay
stomp your silent feet waiting rain
rain to bring the washing in
rain of reaping rusty tubs of rain wish
aloud to be caught in the throat
of the dry well head kissing your back
a bent spoon for groundwater to be
sipped from slow courting rain rain
the falls forever rain which keeps
folks inside and makes late afternoon
Ron Padgett: Collected Poems a book by Ron Padgett (bookshop.org)
Ron Padgett was born in Tulsa. We are both native Okies. His collection is deep and rich. I love his simplicity, beauty, and humor. Tulsa Kid is a favorite collection with poems about typewriters, chocolate milk, an orange man, and my favorite – Elegy to a William Burro,
If you are suffering and unknown
There is always the possibility
That you are horrible
And if a jumper cable were attached to you
The sudden rush of power would be too much,
Annihilating the unit was meant to energize.
The poem goes on to tell us about Arnaldo, the King of Chili Dog Chains. If you know Tulsa, you know we have the best Coney Island hot weiners.
