(Purchase these and other books I read this year here.)
2024 is only fourteen days away. In a total departure from the near-panic of previous years, I think I’m totally ready for it.
I do hear that there’s this thing called Christmas sometime in between now and the new year that I’m not at all prepared for, but hey–how important could it be?
Not-quite-jokes aside, 2023 has been an interesting year in reading. I’ve read 80-odd books on my own, and if you count the piles of screenplays and romance novels that I powered through for classes I took earlier this year, my true reading total this year is over 100.
As with any year, though, there were books I loved and some that I simply endured. This year’s beloved books, though, were a special breed. I read five things this year that I absolutely adored, and before I forget, I want to big them up one last time before I continue to talk about them just as much in 2024, probably.
Without further ado, here’s what I absolutely loved reading this year.
Shubeik Lubeik, by Deena Mohamed(Pantheon Books, 2023)
This is a gigantic, beautifully bound, and epically illustrated graphic novel, the title of which roughly translates to “your wish is my command.” It’s about an alternative Egypt where wishes are not only real but a vital, tricky part of modern commerce and politics. Three intertwined stories show how wishes infiltrate every aspect of human happiness, and that sometimes, having one’s wish come true isn’t the thing most needed.
Apparently, this was originally published in three volumes and won its Egyptian creator the 2017 Cairo Comix Grand Prize. Aside from that, Deena Mohamed is a brilliant young writer and designer, and the story of the comic’s genesis is fascinating as well.
I read quite a bit of magical North African and SWANA fiction this year without intending to. Perhaps it’s this book that set me on the path. To say it’s a magical story presented beautifully is true, but also an enormous understatement. By the time I’d gotten to the last page, I’d cried, cheered, laughed, sighed, and huffed at the world created between these beautifully embossed covers. I’ve been telling everyone I run across in physical space to go and read this, so I’d be amiss not to tell you all again on the internet–this book is the purest magic, that of a good story beautifully told. Wrap yourself around a copy on a rainy day, please. (You can buy Shubeik Lubeik here.)
The Lies of the Ajungo, by Moses Ose Utomi(Tordotcom, 2023)
One of the things I loved about 2023’s releases is that we seem to be rediscovering the wholesome adventure story again, with an eye for diversity and justice rather than conquest. In fact, if you count Shubeik Lubeik’s breathtaking last chapter, three of the books I adored in 2023 are fantasy adventures with simple stories but complex, rich settings.
The Lies of the Ajungo is mostly a simple story of a boy’s quest to find water to save his people and himself, but the West-Africa-based world that it happens in is so perfectly drawn that it elevates everything into a near-cinematic space. You can see the boy Tutu, his bad-ass adopted aunties, and his ridiculously-named camel traveling across the desert on their simple, essential quest, and you can also see that the world they live in is much more complex than just one task or one injustice. It’s a masterwork of a book, and I loved reading it so much that I made myself slow down so it wouldn’t end too quickly.
I met the author this October at a reading of the upcoming sequel to this, entitled The Truth of the Aleke, and it does not go where you’d think. I gasped aloud in the reading when I realized what was happening, and I have a sneaking feeling that it’ll make my 2024 favorites list. (You can buy The Lies of the Ajungo here.)
Remedies for Disappearing, by Alexa Patrick (Haymarket Books, 2023)
This is one of the best new volumes of poetry by a Black woman I’ve ever read. Representation is no longer rare, but the feeling of being seen and understood and felt on a level deeper than cultural performance and expectation still is. Fellow Black women–these poems see us. They feel us. They know us. Each poem magnifies a little moment of life into a cultural meditation, sometimes in unexpected ways.
The crowning moment is a series of beautifully poignant poems based on stories of Black girl prom nights gathered via Zoom during the height of US pandemic lockdowns.
By the way, a lot of the reviews and blurbs for this book use adjectives like sharp and gritty to describe these poems. They’re not, and that’s racist. What they are is soft, lush, vulnerable, feminine, and wonderfully, gloriously Black. (You can buy Remedies For Disappearing here.)
Fat Ham, by James Ijames (Theatre Communications Group, 2023)
Speaking of wonderfully, gloriously Black…
Fat Ham is both one of the best things I read and the best night out I had all year. It’s a play, a fat Black queer Southern retelling of Hamlet. I initially read it because a bookish friend sent me a copy and insisted, and I cried and laughed and screamed just at the script. Then I saw a live production and cried and laughed and screamed all over again, but for completely different reasons at completely different parts. Fat Ham is that rare piece of theatrical writing that sizzles on the page and explodes on the stage. It’s fun, it’s moving, it’s thoughtful, it’s wise, and at the end of it all turns the tragedy of Hamlet into pure fat Black queer joy. I absolutely loved it, and think you might too. (You can buy Fat Ham here.)
The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty
Shubeik Lubeik is thoughtful adventure and The Lies of the Ajungo is epic adventure. The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, however, is delightful adventure, and that’s hard to come by.
I really don’t feel like anything I say does this book justice. It’s an epic fantasy story about pirates set in the Indian Ocean–primarily Yemen, Somalia, and Oman–during the High Middle Ages. It’s full of magic and fighting and scary villains and heroic derring-do.
But its protagonist is a middle-aged Muslim single mom who really just wants to retire and have her divorce finalized, and that’s not something you find in a fantasy adventure every day. The same for her compatriots, who are all comfortably middle-aged and deadly. This is maybe the most normally diverse thing I’ve read, and none of it seems tokenistic or performative. In fact–in its painstaking attention to historical multiculturalism, this book is one of the few things I’ve come across that also captures the sweet spots of modern multiculturalism as well.
But when all is said and done, it’s about a wild band of marauding pirates trying to make things right despite themselves, and that’s just fun. (You can buy The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi here.)
Fellow readers, I hope your year in books has had as many gems as mine has. If it hasn’t, you still have time to grab one of the above from your favorite indie shop or local library and ring in 2024 on a literary high.
(This is where I have to put the customary disclaimer stating that we have an affiliate relationship with Bookshop and if you buy anything there from a link you click here, we’ll earn a commission. Now that that’s over with, happy holidays to you, whichever ones you celebrate! Please go and read something good! Peace!(on earth, goodwill to men.) )
Equal Opportunity Reader 