Books and plants

small things that made me happy last year

Is there a better birthday gift than a book? And if, as it’s handed to you, your friend says, “This was one of the best books I read this year and I thought you might like it, too,” well, that’s pretty unbeatable. Books are a joy, not just the reading of them but their very physicality, as I’ve written about before.

I’ve been looking through the books I read in 2023; keeping lists is not for everyone and certainly isn’t necessary, but I enjoy it; it helps me remember what I’ve read and key thoughts about it—in the moment. You won’t find numbers here, though, because I think we should all read what and how much we like, no matter the tally or genre.

Like last year, there were a lot of comfort reads and audiobooks; Agatha Christie, Terry Pratchett, Georges Simenon, that kind of thing; a surprising amount of audiobooks can be found on YouTube and it’s always worth a search there for what you like. They’re free and I find them perfect for those times when I’m busy or lack the focus for a page. I also delved into some older “golden age” mysteries, reading a few new-to-me authors from that time; some I enjoyed and even the ones that will probably be one-offs were still an education.

There were a lot of good reads, but here are four that stuck: A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark—I’d read her short stories before but this was my first of her novels—a clever way with words and such insight into the human condition, how people behave and why. And the protagonist surprised me.

The second was The English Know Wool by Helen DeWitt. This strange little book was a gift from my sister that can be read—easily—in an afternoon, but as you reach the final page you feel you want to go back and start again because the author has pulled one over on you. It’s fun and sort of—subversive? In a way?

While the Light Lasts and Other Stories is one of the aforementioned YouTube audiobooks and also that rare thing: an Agatha Christie book I hadn’t read, probably because it’s a 1997 collection of her stories previously published in magazines. They were strange and dark little psychological insights, different than her usual mysteries, and may have me reading her Mary Westmacott novels just because it’s so interesting to see her writing in a different voice; in fact that surprise is probably why it’s one of the four at all.

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa turned out to be surprising and unexpectedly touching, one of those books that makes a small tweak or adjustment to how you see the world going forward. It did something I wasn’t expecting and if there’s one thing all these books have in common it’s probably that: they surprised me. I don’t want to say more because if there’s one of the four I suggest you hunt down it’s this one. It’s a special book.

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Obsessive, specialized knowledge is fascinating to me, and back in 2020, perhaps due to the absence of that many in-person conversations, I discovered many delightful YouTube rabbit holes to scratch this itch. Sometimes it’s a vicarious interest—I can’t learn everything after all, but dipping into other people’s obsessions can be fun—there’s a channel called Canned Fish Files, for example which is… exactly what it sounds like. And hilarious. Other times it’s more practical—food and cooking videos are always a delight. But I found myself particularly drawn to… plant YouTube; and even more specifically those people who have (usually small) apartments filled with hundreds of plants.

When I moved into this brighter, airier space, I wanted houseplants. But while my balcony plants mostly thrive, even in winter, I didn’t have the same success indoors. They languished, and unless I realized in time and moved them to the balcony, they died. Some of them perished even then. It appears that watching hours of plant minutiae over several years has had an effect, though, as for a couple of months now I have had three plants that are not only happy in my living room but putting out new leaves as we speak. This brings me a ridiculous, disproportionate amount of joy.

What brought you joy in 2023?