A Year in Reading: Jenn Shapland

December 4, 2023 | 15 books mentioned 2 min read

cover Jenn ShaplandBooks that transformed the way I think

Fox and I by Catherine Raven

The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka

Proverbs of a She-Dandy by Lisa Robertson

cover Jenn ShaplandBooks that shook me

Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund

Things I Didn’t Do with This Body by Amanda Gunn

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

cover Jenn ShaplandBooks that wrapped me up in a little cocoon

Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer by Ali Smith

The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay

Happily by Sabrina Orah Mark

cover Jenn ShaplandBooks that reconfigured my own writing

The New Testament by Jericho Brown

From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus, translated by Ann Goldstein

A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux, translated by Tanya Leslie

cover Jenn ShaplandBooks queering the form

Dyke (geology) by Sabrina Imbler

Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer by Ali Smith

cover Jenn ShaplandBooks that articulated something no one else has

Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die by Tawanda Mulalu

Aurelia, Aurélia by Kathryn Davis

New Life by Ana Božičević

cover Jenn ShaplandBooks that changed what I think writing can do

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Milkman by Anna Burns

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin

cover Jenn ShaplandBooks I ate up with a spoon

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman

cover Jenn ShaplandBooks I read when I had COVID

Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Scratched by Elizabeth Tallent

Franny & Zooey by J.D. Salinger

cover Jenn ShaplandBooks I can make hide nor hair of

The Scent of Time by Byung-Chul Han, translated by Daniel Steuer

Books I wish I hadn’t read

None

cover Jenn ShaplandBooks I reread

Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle

The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams

Whereas by Layli Long Soldiercover Jenn Shapland

Books that pissed me off (in a useful way)

Cleanness by Garth Greenwell

The Portable Jung edited by Joseph Campbell

Books I couldn’t stop talking aboutcover Jenn Shapland

Mother Tongue by Jenni Nuttall

Big Fiction by Dan Sinykin

Books that helped me sleep

Middlemarch by George Eliotcover

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Books that helped me be a more functional human

How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price

coverHow to Be an Adult by David Richo

Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt

Achingly good books that come out next year

After Image by Jenny George

Books I’m still reading (year’s not over!)

coverWe Are a Haunting by Tyriek White

After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Nuclear Family by Joseph Han

Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson

coverBooks I may forever be in the middle of

Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis 

More from A Year in Reading 2023

A Year in Reading Archives: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005   

is the author of My Autobiography of Carson McCullers (Tin House), a finalist for the National Book Award and Lambda Literary Award winner. Her second book, Thin Skin (Pantheon), was a Time Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and New York Public Library best book of 2023. She lives in New Mexico, where she works as an archivist for a visual artist.