Anu Recommends #42
Anu Recommends #42
A 2023 writing and reading wrap-up
Hi and welcome to the Storyteller!
Hope you’re all well. I’m staying away (as much as possible) from any screen-related work for a few more days yet, but I couldn’t not wrap-up my reading and writing year.
It was a slow year on both counts, in comparison to recent previous years, but I’ve still found much to love and enjoy working on, including 40 (!) issues of this newsletter. The one that took the most out of me to write was the Matthew Perry tribute, which if you haven’t yet caught up on, you can read here:
And here’s where you can find issues filed under:
Anu Recommends, Creative Chats, and Story Sunday
If you’re a fellow Tolkienite and want to have all my Middle Earth March posts in one place, look no further 😊
Middle Earth March: journeys, core themes, and choices in Tolkien's work
Middle Earth March: desolation and darkness
Middle Earth March: epic moments and battles, and an ode to hobbits
Middle Earth March: homecomings, partings, the power of storytelling, and a personal essay
Turning the attention to football, I wrote 4 pieces this year for Football Paradise, all of them about Arsenal, after not writing about them since October 2021. You can read them below (in order of publication):
We’ve Got Super Mik Arteta: An Alternative Match Report
Premier League 2022-23: This is our Arsenal
Farewell, Granit Xhaka. Arsenal Was Richer for Having You.
To the Arsenal 1-0: An Alternative Match Report
Speaking of football, I had the honour of copyediting this beauty (buy link here) for my good friends Dave Seager and Poorly Drawn Arsenal.
In addition, a football book I’d edited last year is now finally available for preorder. It’s a book about SSC Napoli, so you can understand why the publication had to be delayed so an epilogue could be added in—it’s not every season that they win a Serie A title!
You can read more about the book and preorder here.
This brings me to my only fiction publication of the year.
‘Ruby Whispers’, my fairytale-inspired flash, is available to buy (or rent for free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited member) in all Kindle marketplaces. You don’t need a Kindle to read it, you can also just download the free Kindle for PC/Android/Mac/iOS and read it there. Sharing three of the main links below:
USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLVNMS5L
India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0CLVNMS5L
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CLVNMS5L
Oh and Summer Melody is now available as a digital copy via the link below:
https://www.amazon.in/Summer-Melody-Anushree-Nande-ebook/dp/B0CNPLF894
If you’d like to read the first five pages of my debut novelette (literary fiction, classical music, London, mother-daughter relationships, friendships, and love), you can do so here:
https://alienbuddhapress.wordpress.com/2021/11/22/spotlight-summer-melody-by-anushree-nande
Last but not the least, I was on a podcast spotlighting Indian youth on non-mainstream journeys.
Anu Reads 2023: favourites
I’ve written before about how personal and subjective reading is; why I don’t believe in ranking or rating books, and prefer to tell you why I loved something or didn’t so you can make an informed decision about whether a story would suit you.
With that caveat, here are the books that kept me joyful company this year, aka books that I will most certainly be revisiting in the future, that left an impact, and many of whom are already among my favourites.
If you enjoy fantastical worlds, cozy fantasy, madcap adventures, well-rounded characters, and witty humour—The Secret Service of Tea and Treason by India Holton, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett, Swordheart by T. Kingfisher, Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
If you enjoy lyrical, experimentally formatted and narrated stories about identity, belonging, home, racism, colonialism, grief, love, and more—Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson, Riambel by Priya Hein, Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah
If you enjoy inventive tales about young adults combating their fates and narratives in worlds where the myths are alive (or they are the myths taking charge of their stories)—Threads That Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou, Girl Goddess Queen by Bea Fitzgerald
If meditative, linked, creative nonfiction essays are your jam—Winter Solstice by Nina MacLaughlin
If slow, literary, epistolary novelettes excite you—Martita, I Remember You by Sandra Cisneros (this is a bilingual edition, with a Spanish translation by Liliana Valenzuela)
If you’re a fan of memoirs, look no further—Hammer Head by Nina MacLaughlin
If you’re curious about the wisdom and wonder of being unsure—Uncertain by Maggie Jackson
If you enjoy romance novels with the best friends-to-lovers trope, country music, crackling chemistry, and an endearing cast of found family—Friends Don’t Fall in Love by Erin Hahn
I also reread the entire Percy Jackson and the Olympian series and the Heroes of Olympus series, as well as You’d Be Mine by Erin Hahn, and Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. I’ve written about the joys (and pitfalls) of rereading earlier this year, but I needn’t have worried with these tried-and-tested favourites, which gave me even more joy this time around (I know I say this every time but it’s true!).
And that’s a wrap, folks! Let me know in the comments or via email how this reading and writing year treated you 😊
As always, please feel free send in recommendations—books, movie, TV shows, authors to interview, ideas of what you’d like me to write on, rants/ramblings/excited monologues, GIFs and memes (especially them) and more. Just drop me a line and turn this into a conversation, even if just to say hi and let me know what you thought of the latest issue 😊 Or share this with someone you think might enjoy it.
This time of year can be hard and overwhelming for many reasons, as much as it is also joyous, as the previous issue’s guest, Nina has captured better than I ever could, so I’m sending everyone restful wishes for the holidays and for the remainder of 2023. I hope you can find pockets of calm, of cheer, of good health, of community, and of peace. Thank you to each and every one of you for your company and support this year; I cannot wait to share another year with you ❤️
Take care and I’ll see you in the new year! First issue of 2024 will be out on January 7.
Anu
If you really like the newsletter, please feel free to buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/anushreenande
If you wish to upgrade to a paid subscription in a currency other than Indian rupees, please email me at anushree.nande@gmail.com (which is also the address associated with my PayPal account).
You can find me on Twitter at @AnuNande (follow for all the football chatter) and on Instagram at @booksinboston.