This was finally the year that I got immensely better at quitting books I wasn’t enjoying, no matter how far along I was. I’m pleased that looking back on my year, that means my book count landed much lower but with higher ratings than in the past. Life is too short and free time too limited to slog through boring reads!
Without further ado, my favorite books of 2023:
Novels
Packinko by Min Jin Lee: This story stretches over generations across Korea and Japan, doing an incredible job showing the impact of larger forces through focus on a particular family.
Telephone by Percival Everett: This is the first book I’ve read by Everett but definitely won’t be the last. The story tore me apart emotionally and is written so, so beautifully. I didn’t know until Googling the cover for this post that it also exists in three slightly different versions. With the way the main character introspects, I love this detail.
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith: There’s just something really fun about rooting for a character you don’t actually like. Tom Ripley is a narcissistic sociopath and I was on the edge of my seat hoping he’d pull it off the whole time.
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow: A fun and twisty fantasy novel about suffragists, but witches.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison: This was Morrison’s first (!!) novel. Set in 1941 mostly from the point of view of a young Black girl, it’s not an emotionally easy read, but an incredibly told story with shifting narration throughout.
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff: I love a story told from multiple points of view, and Groff initially intended this to be two entirely separate books. A relationship and marriage recounted by one partner and then the other feels equally disorienting and illuminating.
We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds: Gorgeous, traumatic, mysterious, and at the same time the relationships between the core characters are jokingly described by the author as “‘Gilmore Girls,’ but make it Black and gay.”
Honor by Thrity Umrigar: A story of two women in India navigating entirely different challenges but both wrestling with the idea of home.
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang: I absolutely devoured this book. It feels weightier, but could be described as Harry Potter but with a focus on semantics and colonialism.
More Experimental Novels & Short Story Collections
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer: A very slight spoiler but gotta love an unreliable narrator. Edge of your seat science fiction, well executed.
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri: A collection of nine beautifully written short stories on community, identity, and immigration.
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury: I’m a Bradbury fan but this exceeded my expectations. It’s a collection of previously published individual stories, now joined together with short vignettes and connecting chapters along with some gut punch plot twists.
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado: These short stories are creepy, funny, bizarre, and powerful. From a retelling of “The Green Ribbon” to episode descriptions of Law & Order SVU that become increasingly unhinged, every one of these has stayed lodged in my brain.
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu: This novel written in the format of a screenplay uses the format to continually surprise as you follow the life of Willis Wu, seemingly forever stuck in the role of “Generic Asian Man.”
Long Division by Kiese Laymon: The extremely creative format of this book worked so well for me. Start on either side, read half way through, and flip the book over to begin again. There’s time travel, so much humor and heartbreak and gorgeous writing.
Non-Fiction
Maeve in America by Maeve Higgins: I find Maeve Higgins so charming and delightful and this essay collection about her experience as an immigrant reaffirms that opinion.
Real Self-Care by Pooja Lakshmin: This was a great read — first outlining the escapism of faux self-care and then highlighting both the ways to impact structural change and principals to follow in determining your own true self-care needs. (Bonus: check out Lakshmin’s substack)
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin: Two essays published in 1963 on Baldwin’s experiences of race and religion. Between the World and Me took significant inspiration from this book; highly recommend reading them together.
Succeeding with Adult ADHD by Abigail Levrini: Pretty niche recommendation, but if you too are working through a new diagnosis, this is a great resource!
Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom: This one was challenging for me in a great way. McMillan Cottom describes her life’s work as “I want to raise some really good hell for people who cannot.”
Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond: The author of Evicted on the roots of, and solutions to, poverty in the U.S. I found this both fascinating and motivating.
I’ll follow up soon with some one off short stories I loved this year too!
What was your favorite book this year? Anything I listed that you didn’t like? Any you added to your list?
I enjoyed “Yellowface” by RF Kaung, looking forward to checking out Babel!
Loved Pachinko too! Favorites were Olga Dies Dreaming and The Round House. As far as a non-favorite, did not enjoy the Land of Milk & Honey, it was very dystopian and some of the plot was not ideal as a vegetarian!