Reading with the Seasons 2023

Dispatch from Writing with the Seasons - December 2023

Welcome to this short dispatch from ‘Writing with the Seasons’. If you’re not already a premium subscriber, you can sign up here to enjoy our essays and audio courses as they unfold season by season. 

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“Reading is the springboard to writing,” says Joyce Carol Oates. “The most useful way to learn about technique, the nuts-and-bolts, is to look at what other writers do,” says Cathy Rentzenbrink. Every book Zadie Smith reads has an impact. They have all changed her life, she says. Every single one of them, even those she disliked. “My writing is a product of hundreds and hundreds of books passing through me."

Reading is a tool we have for learning and improving as writers but, more importantly, it’s something pleasurable. The places I've visited and people I’ve met through books! Nothing settles my mind, clarifies my thinking or makes me feel calmer than reading.

Alison, by Lizzy Stewart

Here are my favourite reads of 2023 in a list that follows the seasons, month by month—imagine them as a series you might read slowly as the year unfolds.

Nature writing, love poetry and an exquisitely illustrated graphic novel by Lizzy Stewart (detail above). Fiction about instinct, rage and a woman becoming a dog. A memoir about life jumping high in the air as a competitive trampolinist.

Have you read any of these? What did you think? What were your best reads of the year? Let us know in the comments below!

Reading offers solace and hope. It’s a joyful, good thing. We need it.

Thanks so much for joining me for ‘Writing the Seasons’ this year! See you in January for another year of writing prompts, tips, ideas and seasonal creativity.

Gemma x