Olivia’s Obama’s End of the Year List

perhaps a lowlier list...

Obama’s 2023 End Of The Year List just dropped - late, I might add… so late that I kind of thought he was abandoning the whole concept. So late that he actually inspired me to pry the torch from his cold dead hands and become the new arbiter of annual MUST-READs despite the fact that I don’t really read that much and I especially don’t read enough recently-released literature to do the job that he’s doing. 

But can I just say something? No, let me fucking say it: he didn’t actually do the job you think he’s doing. Sorry, but do you really think, for one fuuucking second that Obama just happens to consume the perfect combination of culture to make him seem intelligent, hip, and balanced? I mean, maybe. He does seem pretty intelligent, hip, and balanced, but that’s likely because I - like you - have been hoodwinked by his PR team. Which brings me to my point: the list you are looking at is the work of PR people consolidating books from this year that will make him seem intelligent, hip, and balanced. And you all fell for it! You really think Obama has time to read this much? Impossible! Between looking for his birth certificate and helping Michelle research bottom surgery, where would he find the time??????/

KIDDING… kidding… nobody be mad at me, I’m obviously KIDDING!

This is just me trying to justify my own list, and by way of at least six argumentative fallacies and some ironic transphobia and racism, I believe I can rest my case and without further ado bring you…

OLIVIA’S OBAMA’S END OF THE YEAR LIST: 

Actual pieces of media I’ve consumed, which is why almost none of them are cool or of this year.

Unlike Obama, I am curating this list on my own. One woman. One unstable, borderline retarded woman. I’m not even saying that to self-loath, I’m saying that I can offer you a different perspective and a different sort of list: an honest list, a list that combines both the basic and esoteric, a list that is both chaotic and confused. Unlike Obama, I am not afraid to admit to consuming art from canceled artists. Unlike Obama, I don’t care what you think. Unlike Obama, I’m not classy enough to simply list books and recommend them. I'm going to quickly and cruelly review them to the best of my memory, which is, on my best day, spotty and unreliable. My memories - which I’m consistently told are false - will be the engine for this piece! Yay!

Let’s rip off the bandaid and start with books. 

Yeah, I only finished 10 books this year, and so therefore they all have to go on my list, kind of pathetic, but - does it impress you to know that I purchased north of 20 books in 2023? No? Well then… does it impress you that I started about 17, giving up on most of them less than 20 pages in? Also no? Okay well then… I digress.

Okay, one last preemptive comment before I allow you to perceive my list, because now I feel like an asshole for even subtly implying that any of these books are bad, as a writer with mere Substack: anyone who has ever written a book is my role-model and hero; furthermore, anyone who has ever written a book that I’ve been capable of completing might as well be God. I respect and honour every single author and book on this list, and I can’t wait to meet them all in heaven.

Without any further ado:

10. The Novelist by Jordan Castro

Once I understood what he was doing, I appreciated it, and I especially appreciated that it referenced and thereby inspired me to read my #2 book of the year, Woodcutters. The Novelist was an easy and pleasant read,  I just don’t like when it feels like nothing happens in a story, which again, I understand is the ~ point ~ and that the value is to be extracted from the metaphors and the writing style and whatever other literary devices he used that I missed - it’s just not my thing. 

Maybe I’m shallow, maybe I’m stupid, but I feel the same way about life as I do about books: I just like when stuff happens. Good, bad, it doesn’t matter, I just want to feel the rush of eventfulness and unrelenting drama. When people ask me how my year was, I reflect back and recognize the very equal balance of bad and good events, but more notably I notice the sheer quantity of events, which makes me feel good, it makes me feel like I’m living life to the fullest. 

LMao at me talking about living life to the fullest in a book review…. Although, I mean, I guess that’s the big picture when it comes to these lists, reflecting on your year. 

Anyway, my biggest takeaway from reading this is that I think it can possibly be bad to reference an influence in your work, because the result is maybe… revealing your own work to be a watered down version of said inspo. Tea!

9. Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion

A literary classic ranking second to last will surely nullify the value of my list and opinion to many. That’s fine. I thought the titular Slouching Toward Bethlehem essay was brilliant, and of course I loved the infamous On Self Respect essay. And, not to do what I literally just said was bad in the last section, but I have noticed Didion’s influence on my writing, specifically the rhythmic repetition thing she does. In general I didn't love this book, I found most of it dense and soulless, maybe that’s because she’s rumoured to have been autistic. And maybe our retardations are too dissimilar to mesh. Or, maybe I’ll revisit her work in the future when I’m ~fingers crossed~ smarter, inshallah. TBH I mostly just liked carrying around the book and taking pictures with it because I thought it made me look cool. 

8. Happy Go Lucky by David Sedaris 

David Sedaris is probably my favourite writer of all time, if not tied with Lena Dunham (not me further nullifying the value of my list and opinion as well as admitting to more of my influences…) but I literally cannot read about March 2020  - the onset of the pandemic and simultaneous Black Lives Matter movement - as if it’s a memory and not a moment in time we all still feel stuck in. Maybe revisiting it down the line would be different, but it’s almost traumatizing to read him so light-heartedly and comedically chronicle something I really, really don’t want to think about anymore. I feel the same way about stand up jokes, and it makes me wish I published my COVID jokes before it was too late, because if others feel the same way that I do about this, it just feels too late and too exhausting to hear about at this point.

Spoiler Alert + Trigger Warning: Sedaris talks about the death of his father (arguably the main comedic character of his entire body of work) and with the emancipation from his father’s existence, David Sedaris finally admits that he wasn’t just an asshole but actually an abuser and a molester. 

It was such a huge bummer to find out after years of laughing at Lou Sedaris that he was actually a monster the whole time. I know it’s not really fair of me to rank his whole book low on my list simply because I was bummed by the truth, but the thing is I use David Sedaris’ books as a comedic relief, an easy read, a palate cleanser betwixt all the other depressing books that i read, and this one didn’t fit the bill for that.

7. Naked by David Sedaris

Reading his first (or second?) book after reading his masterpieces also slightly disappointed me, but it was still fire and cool to see the foundation of his talents.

6. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzwel

What a depressing, complainy, gorgeously written book. It was like a less exciting, less eventful, but more poetic version of Cat Marnell’s How To Murder Your Life. This one took awhile to read, because again - depressing. She referenced the Bell Jar, which got me to read the Bell Jar. 

5. I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

I rarely read fiction and I rarely read horror but this was a masterpiece. I can’t wrap my head around writing a story like this, I could barely even register the ending… but thank God for reddit and the immense availability of “ending explained” content.

4. I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy

An easy read, a great story, a sad story, a crazy story… I root for Jeanette and her redemption arc in the 2020s and beyond. It's kind of my guilty pleasure to read about eating disorders, so kudos to J McC for her candidness and openness. I read this when I was in a cast in July.

3. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The original manic pixie dream girl! Sylvia and Esther both. I loved this book so much though it was incredibly hard to read during daylight savings & the onset of seasonal depression but I managed to do it by breaking it up with Corduroy & Denim essays. I know everyone likes the Fig Tree metaphor but my favourite metaphor from The Bell Jar was when she gives all of her glamorous clothing to the wind on her last night in New York. I also loved how honest and scathing her inner monologue was when talking about innocent characters who were undeserving of it, characters who should be sympathetic. Esther’s perspective of others was telling of the dark veil of depression: the contempt, apathy, and resentment you have for yourself is extended outward and others become a victim of your contemptuous, apathetic, resentful vibes. I used to romanticize depression and I blame that on music. I used to see my depression as something glamorous, but now, because of Elizabeth Wurtzel, Syvlia Plath and Esther Greenwood I can see how truly hideous it is, and have learned to keep my pain to myself; to save it for my art! Thanks girlies!

2. Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard

Speaking of a scathing inner monologue… this was a resentful masterpiece! A seething sensation! There was something so cathartic about a self loathing piece-of-shit nonstop taking apart all of his friends, peers, and colleagues. At a funeral, no less. And I have Jordan Castro to thank for pointing me in its direction!

1.Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

David Sedaris was already my favorite writer from Me Talk Pretty, Calypso, Theft By Finding, and his various essays in The Atlantic and NYT but this in my opinion is his magnum opus, the best of his work. 10/10 recommend!

And so completes my list. 

Most of the time, I’m reading 2-3 books at once. Most of the time, my rotation consists of one depressing book, one comedic or light-hearted book, and one academic book. You, of course, did not see any of the academic books on my list because despite the hours of effort and miligrams of vyvanse, I still only managed to get forty pages into Paglia’s Sexual Personae. With even less success, I “read” twenty pages of Nietzche’s Beyond Good and Evil and did not absorb a single thing.

This is embarrassing to admit (though, what else is this page for, if not deliberately and willingly humiliating myself?) but reading is hard for me: I lose interest, I zone out, I congratulate myself for reading instead of actually taking in the words on the page (which is absolutely not the act of reading. Maybe it’s meditation, but even that might be giving myself too much credit.) 

So my reading list might mean nothing to you… maybe my song list will mean more? Or possibly less. You’ve probably heard them all and think I’m basic and a hack… or, perhaps you’re basic too and this is reassuring. Maybe, because you are basic too, you already like 90% of the songs on my list, which will mean that the other 10% will become your future favourite songs!

I love Spotify Wrapped season. It’s a trend that’ll never die, it’s frankly brilliant of them to facilitate a mass reflection of how we all felt throughout the year, reminding us of the songs that made us feel so much back in January, March and May; songs we almost forgot about, but now remind us via revisiting those songs. Music is the closest thing we have to time travel. Re-listening to a song can remind us how we felt back then and show us how far we’ve come. It can show us how much can happen in a year emotionally, even if not materially.