2023: Best Books of the Year!
Finally a non-pandemic year and some semblance of a more connected and social life! And I did fall a little bit off the book-blogging wagon due to a lot of travel in the last few months of the year, so let’s just call it good with this entry and then onward to 2024!
Though it wasn’t any 2022, 2023 was still a fantastic reading year with 143 books (according to Goodreads, with an average of 322 pages and an average rating of 4.2 stars) across all sorts of genres. I’m still slowly making my way through Read the World, a challenge to read a book from every country in the world as well as picking up fun books from past lives to discover them again.
As always, I like to make up my own categories every year (see 2022 or 2021), I had a slightly shorter list this year because I really doubled down in my quest to read all of Agatha Christie’s books (22 this year, and deep into her lesser-known books) and completely binged Henning Mankell’s Wallander series (see below). I have a massive stack waiting for me now, so let’s get to it so I can go back to reading…
The buzzy books that were actually worth it: I was suuuper disappointed with some of the year’s buzzy books (see: The Lives of Puppets and Beach Read), but some new(ish) releases were absolutely worth the hype!
Yellowface (R.F. Kuang): So I know this makes me old, but I’m still a physical book girl, and I cannot bring myself to buy hardbacks except in the most desperate of circumstances. So to my unbounded joy we had two trips to Europe in the fall which meant picking up paperbacks in European bookstores that beat their American counterparts to the shelves.
Enter Yellowface, a Goodreads Best Fiction of 2023 winner that takes on the book world. Friends Athena and June met in college and are both authors, but while June has struggled, Athena is a megastar. Athena dies choking on a stack of pancakes (really and no, not a spoiler because it’s the first chapter) and June, now Juniper, decides to steal a first draft of a novel and pass it off as her own. Does it unravel? Yes. Is it an absolute trainwreck? Also yes. But you can’t stop reading.
Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kinsgsolver): So technically this was a 2022 book but I finally got my hands on a library copy in January 2023, so… here it is. I’m unsure I’ve ever read any novel like this one (no, not even the original David Copperfield by Dickens, which I never read despite an undergraduate degree in English literature…) in that Kingsolver’s voice, place, and feel of the novel is stronger and more tangible than any other book that I’ve read. Young Demon (birth name: Damon) is born to a teenage, drug-addicted mother in SW Virginia, and the novel, told entirely in his voice, is how he navigates poverty, foster care, addiction, and general ruin as he tries to just survive. It was incredibly difficult to read at points, but no matter the twists or turns, a small part of me was always rooting for Demon to find a way through all of this mess to something, anything.
The Island of Missing Trees (Elif Shafak): Other than her novel about a young woman’s last ten minutes, 38 seconds of life (so so odd), I’m a big Shafak fan. Her latest book is about Cyprus and the love story of a Turkish girl and a Greek boy. The alternating passages in the book are written from the perspective of a fig tree.
Stay with me here — I know some of you just did an eye roll. As with other books that try something different — be it time travel or choose-your-own-adventure — something like this is a gamble. But in my opinion, it absolutely works, and without spoiling anything, by the end of the book it becomes clear why the fig tree is involved. It’s absolutely worth the read.
Spare (Prince Harry): Having heard so much from the media about Prince Harry, his wife Meghan Markle, and the rifts with other members of the royal family, I was looking forward to this book purely to hear a first-person perspective (okay, and also to compare it to The Crown). I walked away from this book with deep sadness about Prince Harry’s experiences. No one chooses the family into which they are born, and while it seems he lives a life of power and privilege (actually not, come to find out — I laughed out loud about his TKMaxx shopping trips while in a disguise), there are costs to growing up in “an institution” like the royal family, and that attending parties and gatherings seems fine but doesn’t guarantee healthy, supportive relationships. It seemed like Prince Harry felt he belonged in places without his family — with friends in Africa, as well as with his military comrades. The hopeful part of the book is seeing his deep connection with his wife and how they supported each other and built healthy habits together. The book also reminded me that as an information consumer I can support or not support media outlets, so I unsubscribed to a YouTube channel and decided not to pay for any of the media materials that fuel this dynamic (a bit harder to do as an American). Read this book if you’re willing to have an open mind and hear a different perspective than the dominant narrative.
Tom Lake (Ann Patchett): I have a complicated relationship to Patchett’s work, and I’ve had fits and starts with her books. Along with Demon Copperhead, this is probably the most literary book on this list, and while alternating between two character-driven storylines makes me joyous, I realize it’s not for everyone. Half of the book is the love story between Lara and Peter Duke, the former now a mom of three grown daughters and the latter a famous actor. They met at Tom Lake, a woodsy theater spot, and her daughters want to understand what exactly happened between the two of them. This was supremely well-written and had some twists and turns that you might miss if you weren’t paying attention. Perhaps it’s time for me to dive back into her oeuvre!
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women (Lisa See): I’m always drawn to See’s characters, and Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is no different. Tan Yunxian loses her mother at an early age and then is sent by her father to be brought up by her grandparents. Unlike most young girls, she learns about medicine and the body at a time when men were proper doctors and women could only be midwives and were thought of as less clean because of their work. Before long, teenage Yunxian is married and adjusting to daughter-in-law life and her one life’s goal — to produce a male heir. I appreciated the honesty with which See approaches difficult topics — including foot-binding, a practice banned and rare today — and her characters with honesty and kindness. What an immersive world to enter through her words!
If you need a bingeable series, try Wallander: I discovered Henning Mankell through my Read the World Challenge at about the same time that Young Wallander aired on Netflix. From picking up Faceless Killers to rounding out the year with The Troubled Man, we follow detective Kurt Wallender in Ystad, Sweden as he investigates brutal and heartbreaking times while watching his marraige disolve and his health deteriorate. Nordic crime stories are dark, dark, dark, and Wallander is no exception. Mankell hits the sweet spot between readable and literary — which I find a hard balance to strike — as well as weighting character development against plot. As with any series, there are high and low points, but this series would be great for any mystery lover to tackle in 2024!
Current issues: Reading is often an escape from reality, but sometimes it’s the best way to deepen our understanding of the world around us:
Unveiled (Yasmine Mohammed): In this powerful book, Yasmine Mohammed details growing up in an incredibly strict Muslim home in Canada, and that while she lived in a nation where she was guaranteed many rights as a human, all of those were denied to her at home. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book from an ex-Muslim, and in doing so I understand how difficult it was for her to leave the religion because it meant losing her entire family (who she’s not been in contact with since 2004). Over the course of the book, she is abused by her mother and her first husband (who turns out to be a member of Al Qaeda) but because she believes so strongly in her religion, she tries to submit. What I most appreciated about the book was that she rejects many of the popular narratives about Muslims and Islam. Her book speaks for itself. Instead of reading this review, you should read it.
Monsters (Claire Dederer): What happens when a writer, artist, or director we loves turns out to be a monster — or, at least, does monstrous things? This is the questions Dederer sets out to answer in this book. It was quite a meta-experience, this book — how Dederer reveals her own process of writing and how her identity shifts and changes, especially as she connects with other writers and artists. Chock-full of examples, each chapter feels like an essay of sorts that examines a different facet of this issue. Is it okay to like a work if someone “didn’t know any better” that what they did was wrong? Is it fair to apply today’s morals and social norms to artists from previous eras (the best chapter in my opinion as it addresses the third conditional tense problem that is strong in “woke” circles now)? How does who reviews art change how we perceive it? Which voices are not heard in this discussion?
This is certainly a very literary book in that it’s smart and snappy, but I felt this was well-balanced by what felt like the author’s asides to us, her confessions that she *too* has done or thought of things that others might consider monstrous. I also appreciated that she challenged us to get away from “we” (as in what should WE do about this?) and bring it back to the “I.” What is your perspective? What art do you like or dislike and why? What will you allow? At the same time, there are larger things at play (all the -isms) that put the burden on the consumer to decide.
I had no idea how she would wrap up this book, but the last chapter really brought it home for me. We still accept and love the work of monsters who create art because we have all loved a monster in our own lives — a friend, partner, family members, neighbor — and still find ways to love these people. “What do we do about the terrible people that we love?” she writes. “Do we excise them from our lives? Do we *cancel* them? Sometimes. But to do so is an excruciating process, and ultimately goes back to the calculator I introduced in the beginning . . . . How terrible is their terribleness? How much do we love them? And how important is that love to us?”
Conspirituality (Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker): Wow, this was such a fantastic book and a wonderful encapsulation of many hours of podcasts from this fantastic trio. This book knits together several important threads that have led to the modern conspirtuality movement, a blend of conspiracy theory and spirituality that, while bubbling for some time, really came to a head in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Beres, Remski, and Walker speak not only from deep research, but through personal stories with high-control groups and surfacing the stories of others to illustrate these disturbing trends. In a post-truth era, this book helped me make sense of alternative health influencers and incorrect narratives in their current iteration. Thanks for such a comprehensive yet compact review of this important topic!
Invisible Child (Andrea Elliot): Despite our wealth as a country, we continue to fail those in poverty, especially children. Invisible Child tries to make that visible by telling the story of Dasani and her family. Elliott follows Dasani, her parents, and her seven siblings across several challenging years, primarily in NYC. They move from homeless shelter to family to housing and back again, struggling to secure steady employment, education, and support. Dasani articulates her experiences throughout in a way I have never had access to before — how she wants to be a part of her family culture *and* yearns for something different when she is chosen to attend the Hershey Academy in Pennsylvania. I’m not even sure I have the words to describe how any American with privilege needs to read this book.
Easy Breezy: Sometimes you want to breeze through a book with some character development and some thinking, but you’re not ready to crack the cover on a classics. If you need something lighter, what about one of these?
One True Loves (Taylor Jenkins Reid): I *could not* put this book down and I was sneaking in any chance I could get to read some pages. Jenkins Reid really tugs at the heartstrings as she shares the story of Emma, a woman whose husband disappears just short of their first wedding anniversary. Despite waiting for his return, Emma finally moves on, and moves home and reconnects with a high school friend. She and Sam fall in love, and the book opens with Emma receiving a call from her presumed-dead husband, Jesse. Yep, he’s alive. This book really sang for me because the characters were multi-faceted and interesting, and yeah, it was a great love story with a more complex sort of love. I’m really starting to love TJR’s books (except Daisy Jones and the Six, which was buzzy but awful).
Summer Sisters (Judy Blume): How in the world did I miss this Judy Blume book? It follows the story of best friends Victoria (Vix) and Caitlin as they spend summers together in Martha’s Vineyard, a lifetime away from Vix’s family. As time continues, Vix continues to mature but Caitlin is a classic summer child, never really settling down and never really finding happiness. The book opens with Caitlin asking Vix to attend her wedding, so from go we are curious as to what drove them apart. This is Blume at her best, but certainly an adult novel and not for kids with some very saucy passages.
Someone Else’s Shoes (Jojo Moyes): It’s a classic mix-up plot — someone swaps a bag with another — and then some sort of hilarity ensues. In this case, two women in difficult times in their lives slowly wind their ways towards one another. Even though marriage troubles are at the center of both plots, Moyes speaks to us mainly about friendship, how women can support one another, and how creativity and grit tend to win the day. Her books are a calming fresh breeze, so ignore the Goop recommendation on the back cover and read it anyway because its charming.
Random but interesting honorable mentions: So sometimes books defy cateorbies, so just imagine your favorite scent for this book potpourri category that rounds out my post:
The Marriage Portrait (Maggie O’Farrell): This book was *phenomenal* and I couldn’t put it down! Daughter of a duke, Lucrezia is forced to be married very young (at fifteen) to another duke to cement alliances in Italy. Told in alternating chapters from the current day to the past, as a reader we’re trying to determine why Lucrezia’s life is in danger and how she could possibly escape it. The plot twists continue to the end. O’Farrell is a master of this genre and it’s an interesting story about a lesser-written period in history.
I Am I Am I Am (Maggie O’Farrell): Okay, so I might have binged a little on Maggie O’Farrell, but it’s a rare author who can write beautiful historical fiction and memoir. But this book was a phenomenal read in that it felt like you were inhabiting the 17(!) near death experiences of the author, from a thwarted attack to a mugging to drowning and a life-threatening childhood illness. Her nonfiction writing is just as good, if not better, than her stories.
Rough Sleepers (Tracy Kidder): Rough Sleepers details the story of Boston’s homeless through the eyes of Dr. O’Connell, a physician who was expecting to do a one-year rotation in an outreach program but who never left. This book was an intersection of medicine, outreach, and social programming, but it was the stories of the patients — and the care and love Dr. O’Connell had for them — that made me keep reading. Kidder is matter-of-fact and while bringing warmth and compassion to the stories.
Feather Thief (Kirk Wallace Johnson): I tip my hat to the author because he took subjects that I had little to no interest in — fishing flies and bird specimens — and wove facts into a story that I couldn’t stop reading. This is the story of Edward Rist, a young man who stole hundreds of bird specimens from a British museum, sold them on the internet, and more or less walked free. I was especially disappointed to learn about the sale and trade of protected bird feathers and skins even with many international laws forbidding it. Kudos to raising interest about these important topics, and I hope that any remaining participants are held accountable for their actions.
So — that’s that! As always, I’m wishing you a year of reading fantastic books in your coziest corners to escape the madness that is reality.
Cheers, S
P.S. I’ve been blogging less because we’ve been traveling more! I’m working on a blog (or perhaps two) about our family trips to Paris and Rome (Sergio’s family) and Prague, Dresden, and Berlin (my family), hopefully done in the near future. I’ve also been pretty silent on all things health because… I’ve been pretty healthy! I do have a big appointment coming up in February, so we’ll dig into all of that then.
