This Is Not a “Most Anticipated” Book List
Also: A history of Mormon architecture, Christian Wiman in the madhouse, and more.
I don’t care for most “Most Anticipated” book lists that are common at this time of year because they read like an advertising campaign organized by the big five publishers rather than a list of books chosen by an individual. All the lists I have read so far have included Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions for You, and Kashana Cauley’s The Survivalists, none of which I have a desire to read. And most of these lists tend to focus on books that “explore themes” of racism, immigration, and “modern queer life,” and I am not interested in these things either—at least not when someone has nothing new to say about them.
But instead of complaining, I thought I would share a few 2023 titles that I have stumbled across—and I do me stumbled—that I am interested in reading. Strange or not, none of these titles have been listed on any other “Most Anticipated” book list I have read so far:
Chris Patten, The Hong Kong Diaries (Allen Lane, January).
Patten was the last British governor of Hong Kong from 1992 to 1997 and handed over the island to the Chinese. In these diaries, he describes “how Hong Kong was run as a British colony and what happened as the handover approached. The book gives unprecedented insights into negotiating with the Chinese, about how the institutions of democracy in Hong Kong were (belatedly) strengthened and how Patten sought to ensure that a strong degree of self-government would continue after 1997. Unexpectedly, his opponents included not only the Chinese themselves, but some British businessmen and civil service mandarins upset by Patten's efforts.”
Charles Reagan Wilson, The Southern Way of Life: Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South (UNC Press, January).
I am a sucker for books on the South, and this one by Charles Reagan Wilson, who directed the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi for many years, looks particularly interesting.
Sarah Hart, Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections between Mathematics and Literature (Flatiron, April).
As a former math major who eventually turned to literary studies, how can I resist a book on the connections between math and literature. On the jacket, Hart writes that “We often think of mathematics and literature as polar opposites. But what if, instead, they were fundamentally linked?” I don’t know about that “fundamentally,” but “linked,” yes, as all things are.
Albert Camus, Travels in the Americas: Notes and Impressions of a New World, translated by Ryan Bloom, edited by Alice Kaplan (Chicago, April).
These are Camus’s journals from a trip he made to America in March 1946 and a tour of South Africa in 1949. They have never been translated into English and contain Camus’s “unguarded first impressions of his surroundings and his encounters with publishers, critics, and members of the New York intelligentsia.”
Marvin Olasky and Leah Savas, The Story of Abortion in America: A Street-Level History, 1652–2022 (Crossway, January).
This will likely be a difficult read, but my understanding of the history of abortion in America is woefully spotty, so a history not only of the practice of abortion but of figures who fought for and against will be welcome.
James A. Adams, Jr., William F. Buckley, Sr.: Witness to the Mexican Revolution, 1908–1921 (University of Oklahoma, March).
This may be a touch on the academic side, but I enjoy reading all things Buckley and can’t pass on a history of William Junior’s father’s involvement in the Mexican Revolution.
Kate Cooper, Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine’s Confessions (Basic, April).
This history of four women in Augustine’s life could be wonderful or terrible. The title isn’t particularly reassuring. Were these women “queens”? What does the author mean by “fallen”? But anyone who has read Augustine’s Confessions has likely wanted to learn more about his mother and his mistress in particular, and I am looking forward to see if this book has anything of substance to offer, though it may turn out to be one of those terrible speculative “cultural” histories. We’ll see!
I have two books about books on my list so far. First, there is the story of Shakespeare’s First Folio by Chris Laoutaris called Shakespeare’s Book: The Story Behind the First Folio and the Making of Shakespeare (Pegasus, April). Then there is Brian Lake’s Librorum Ridiculorum: A Compendium of Bizarre Books (HarperCollins, April), which is a “celebration of all the weird and wonderful books to be found at an antiquarian bookshop.”
Marion Turner, The Wife of Bath: A Biography (Princeton, January).
This book about the real woman behind the character in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was published in 2022 in the UK and will be brought out in the United States this year by Princeton. I read a review of it in Literary Review and put it on my list. Like the Augustine book, this could be wonderful or terrible.
Caleb Smith, Thoreau's Axe: Distraction and Discipline in American Culture (Princeton, January).
In this history of “attention,” Smith argues that our preoccupation with being distracted is not new but goes back at least to the nineteenth century and the concern that new technologies had “damaging mental effects.”
Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Songs for the Fast and Pascha (Catholic University Press of America, January).
This is a new English translation of the four complete madrāšē cycles, which are the “oldest surviving poetry composed for these liturgical seasons in the entire Christian tradition.”
I only have two works of fiction on my list so far: Charles Frazier’s latest novel, The Trackers (Ecco, April), and Eugene Vodolazkin’s A History of the Island (Plough, May). Shame on me, I know.
As far as poetry is concerned, I am looking forward to Julia Spicher Kasdorf’s collection As Is (Pittsburg, January), Mark Jarman’s Zeno’s Eternity (Paul Dry, January), Dana Gioia’s Meet Me at the Lighthouse (Graywolf, February), Brian Brodeur’s Some Problems with Autobiography (Criterion, February), and Devin Johnston’s Dragons (FSG, March).
What new books are you looking forward to reading in 2023? Feel free to post your recommendations in the comments.
In Harper’s, Christian Wiman writes about his time at a mental institution. It’s not what you think.
Sam Kahn writes about the invention of the invention of Shakespeare: “What’s curious about the idea that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays is that, for over two hundred years after his death, there was barely a whiff of rumor that anyone other than Shakespeare had written them, and then, around 1850, there was something in the water, and several people, completely independently, came to the same novel conclusion: Francis Bacon, the statesman, man of letters, and founder of modern science, was the literary genius behind Hamlet and King Lear, The Tempest and Henry V, and all the rest. Sometime around 1845, the idea got ahold of Delia Bacon, a writer and lecturer living at the time in New Haven, Connecticut. She was not related to Francis, though it is hard to believe that the coincidence of their names didn’t mean something to her.”
Allan Massie reviews Blood, Fire & Gold: The Story of Elizabeth I & Catherine de Medici: “Both Catherine and Elizabeth inclined to an alliance. Both sought an understanding that, as the division of Christendom deepened, might prevent a cold war from becoming hot. ‘Peace between the two realms was at stake,’ Ms. Paranque writes. As for the two sovereigns, ‘the tone of their correspondence suggests that they both knew it.’ In addition, they seemed to feel an affinity. Their letters were amicable—despite bouts of testiness on Elizabeth’s part—though of course diplomatic exchanges are seldom models of sincerity. Perhaps (it was proposed) Elizabeth might marry Henry, Catherine’s second son? Catherine was keen, Elizabeth hesitant. Elizabeth did feel the lack of a husband but was politically more secure without one—certainly more secure, in Protestant England, without a Catholic prince. At the time, Elizabeth’s position was easier than Catherine’s—and Catherine’s position would grow more difficult.”
A history of Mormon architecture: “By building a massive temple in Washington, D.C., in the late 1960s, the religious organization long associated with Utah not only declared its return to its historic roots ‘back East,’ it also claimed a place in the capital of the free world, asserting itself as both an American and a global religion. It is remarkable that a church with the end of the world right in its name—the “latter days” immediately precede the Second Coming of Jesus—is currently grappling with its own material and spiritual history. Just before the D.C. Temple was dedicated in 1974, the Church literally threw open the doors of the 16th “House of the Lord” to curious politicians, dignitaries, and the public. (Unlike meetinghouses, which are open to all, temples ordinarily admit only baptized members who have received the approval of local church leaders.) Some 750,000 people visited the temple during that monthlong open house, making it a publicity jubilee for the missionary-minded institution. The D.C. Temple opened its doors to all again this past spring, after three years of renovation and two years of COVID-related delay. This time, 350,000 people visited in person, and hundreds of thousands more watched video walkthroughs online.”
In The Critic, Dan Hitchens argues that Shane Meadows’s This Is England ’88 is a masterpiece of Christian art: “In the final episode of Shane Meadows’s This is England ’88 there is an astonishing scene, so beautiful, so moving, so theologically sophisticated that I can scarcely believe it actually appeared on British TV.”
In praise of church bells: “A few weeks ago, however, I cracked open the window and something odd happened. I heard the heavy peal of bells, coming from somewhere out in Georgetown, perhaps only ten blocks away. I looked down at my watch. It was twelve o’clock. ‘We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow,’ I murmured to myself, mimicking the utter dejection of the Orson Welles Falstaff in my favorite filmed Shakespeare adaptation. When the last echo of the ringing faded, I closed the window.”
On drinking songs: “The drinking songs of the Jewish Passover Haggadah and Christian worship make the point more directly: wine is a divine gift that, drunk with the correct ceremonies, rids a community of its guilt and resentments. The eucharistic hymns in Act I of Wagner’s Parsifal—sung in chorus—celebrate this idea as well as any work of art. The vertical drinking song’s message is clear: Dionysus is a god, and wine is a divine gift to be accepted in company and in a posture of worship. This divine imperative is less obvious in horizontal drinking songs—that is, drinking songs that have no thematic interest in worship of a god: Schubert’s ‘Trinklied’ lieder, Mozart’s so-called Champagne Aria from Don Giovanni, Richard Hovey’s tankard-swinging barroom choruses, sea shanties, and sporting anthems. The medieval drinking songs collected in the Carmina Burana maintain a connection to the divine, but usually by way of blaspheming it.”
I'm looking forward to several, even as I look warily at the unread books from this year on my unsteady stacks.
Here are five, in no particular order:
1) Mere Natural Law: Originalism and the Anchoring Truths of the Constitution, by Hadley Arkes (May)
2) The Call of the Tribe, by Mario Vargas Llosa (January)
3) The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin (January)
4) The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction, by Jamie Kreiner (January)
5) Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future, by Patrick Deneen (June)
For 23 years I've been anticipating the third volume of Nicholas Boyle's biography of Goethe. I suppose that by now I'm hoping rather than anticipating. I'm sure it will be worth the wait whenever it arrives.