Reading List

My Calendar Reveals How I Spent The Year

The first book I read (or re-read) in 2023 was Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. It was for a course that I was to start teaching on “writing about cities.” I had also promised myself, after having read the book The Artist’s Way the previous year, that I was going to enjoy an “artist’s date” each week—and the first documentary I watched was Agnes Varda’s “Faces and Places.” During the weeks that followed I read Janet Malcolm’s Iphigenia in Forest Hills and watched David Hockney’s “A Bigger Splash”; Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies and Ken Loach’s “Sorry We Missed You”; made paintings on wood panels and watched, on Hua Hsu’s recommendation, “Aftersun”; re-read Play It As It Lays as well as Emmanuel Iduma’s I Am Still With You. This brings us to the end of February (my journal also records the many games of pingpong I played with my son, Ra). In March, certain days are scratched out because appointments had to be canceled and then I have recorded my father’s death on March 19. During that time I sat in the ICU, I read a new biography of Hanif Kureishi by Ruvani Ranasinha that I had needed to blurb. I got Covid immediately afterwards and then worked on revisions of my forthcoming novel, My Beloved Life. Also for that same course on cities, I re-read Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers and for my “artist’s date” I watched “Shakespearewallah.”

Spring had arrived in full force: I was teaching a course in Fishkill prison and my journal records that I painted forsythias on a wood panel. I read Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro’s Letters to A Writer of Color (to which I had also contributed an essay on “authenticity”) and watched the film “Luzzy” made by my former Vassar student, Alex Camillieri. Re-read Mohsin Hamid’s Exit, West for class and watched “Quartet,” the film adaptation of the Jean Rhys novel. I was working on the The Yellow Book and for my “artist’s date” I visited MoMA for their Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit. The following week, early May, I participated at a PEN event, read books on the Ganga at the New York Public Library (one book by Raghubir Singh and the other by Mukul Kesavan and Sanjeev Saith), and watched “Downtown 81,” a film on Jean-Michel Basquiat. I re-read Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (but cannot remember what was the immediate motivation for it) and pored over paintings by Vanessa Bell. The daily entries show that I often went walking at the Vassar Farm during those weeks. I watched “Heat and Dust.” I continued to work through the summer and later on making changes to the manuscript of both My Beloved Life and The Yellow Book. At the beginning of June, I finished an oil painting called “Yellowwood” and watched a documentary “Turn Every Page.” During the week that followed, I read Sheila Heti’s Pure Color and Claire Keegan’s Foster.

In the middle of June I taught at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop with a wonderful cohort than included the fantastic writers in the photo above, and this was a highlight of the year, maybe even the decade. And immediately after that I left for a trip through towns and cities beside the Ganga. This Substack started during that trip. I hadn’t taken my calendar on my travels so it doesn’t record what I read during that time: I remember at least two titles: Alexander Frater’s Chasing the Monsoon and V.S. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness. In late July, I was at Yaddo, writing about my India trip and painting oils. I read Vauhini Vara’s Immortal King Rao and Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These. Watched a film called “A Dangerous Method” because it was recommended by one of my fellow residents at Yaddo who was working on psychoanalysis. My son was required to read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 as a part of his summer reading for school and I gave him company. Also finished re-reading Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Beginning of Spring. ( I see that half of my reading was just a re-reading; I enjoyed it very much. But how many new books am I going to be able to read? Not more than a thousand or so, alas.) Read Raj Kamal Jha’s novel The Patient in Bed Number 18 and watched “Haider.”

My fellowship at the NYPL started in early September. I read Zadie Smith’s The Fraud and Yiyun Li’s Wednesday’s Child. Then, Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay as well as Moonglow. Watched Mani Kaul’s “Siddheshwari.” I re-read Salman Rushdie’s Shame and watched Gita Mehta’s documentary on the Bangladesh liberation. The following week I read Eva Baltasar’s Boulder and during the week after that I read Girish Karnad’s play, Tughlaq. The fellowship had gifted me time to wander and so I read George Saunders’s guide to writing, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. That same month, October, I re-read J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians. Then I re-read Justin Torres’s We the Animals and watched Abbas Kiarostami’s “Close-Up” which had been recommended by Teju Cole. I also read Teju’s novel Tremor which I had read in a slightly different form earlier. After a drink with a friend in late October, when he spoke highly of Graham Greene, I re-read The End of the Affair. Also, thanks to Mark Sarvas, I watched the play “Sabbath’s Theater.” That month I attended two galas, wearing a tie borrowed from Seth Anziska, the Yaddo annual gala and also a gala hosted by Words Without Borders. For my artist’s date the following week I watched the film “Rewind & Play (But It’s Not Nice).” Also, I read a play titled “The Father and the Assassin.” All this time, I should note, I used to have an hour-long monthly meeting with a mentee, Vimi, for Unlock Her Potential: at Vimi’s reques, I would read for our discussion around twenty pages each month of Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower.

In early November, I returned to painting after a gap of two or three months; by now I had finished the last bits of work on My Beloved Life and The Yellow Book. In mid-November, for my presentation at the Cullman Center, I wrote an essay about the process of writing of My Beloved Life, in particular my fears about my father and his death. To gather material for this piece I read other writers writing about the death of their parents, particularly fathers: Martin Amis, Experience; Sharon Olds, The Father; Louise Glück, Ararat; Susan Cheever, Home Before Dark; V.S. Naipaul, Letters Between a Father and Son; Annie Ernaux, A Man’s Place. For my own thinking on another project, I watched all the videos made by the group Karwan-e-Mohabbat and for my “artist’s date” I watched yet another Merchant-Ivory film, “The Householder.” I read Tessa Hadley’s Clever Girl on the recommendation of Geoff Dyer. (My calendar only provides a list of readings without judgment or commentary but I did describe these last few titles in a short piece for Granta.)

The year was fast coming to an end. I was headed to the Bangalore Literature Festival in December and I read two books enroute: Devika Rege’s Quarterlife and Vivek Shanbhag’s Sakina’s Kiss. I had made a promise in an earlier Substack that I would read the work of my fellow fiction writers among the Cullman Fellows. After my return from India in mid-December, I read Caoilinn Hughes’s novel Wild Laughter, and am now reading Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X. I didn’t have an “artist’s date” during these past weeks but then I got a chance to visit the Artist Gallery of Ontario twice during the last days of the year. I took notes in Toronto and hope to produce more art during the coming months. (The painting above is one that I saw at the A.G.O. It is a painting by the Canadian artist, David Milne. On my drive back to the States through rural Canada, with snow having fallen the previous night, I thought again of Milne.) When I go to my office at the Cullman Center today, am going to ask Caoilinn and Catherine to watch “American Fiction” with me soon, and that will be my first “artist’s date” of the year. If you have read so far, maybe you will tally the number of books I managed to read during 2023. I’ll hope to do better next year!