Best Books of 2023

January 1, 2024

Best Books of 2023 (plus some not-so-great books)

It's the end of 2023 and the start of a new year. There are loads of "best books" lists that come out at the end of the year. In 2023, I read 133 books. Some were outstanding, others not so much. My list is completely subjective, just my opinion. Some of the books that I didn't care for got rave reviews from other readers - sometimes that's why I didn't like a book, because it was so over-hyped I was expecting much more. Some readers are also influenced by reviews and think that because Publishers Weekly or some other major reviewing publication says it's a great book, it must be (no, it's not necessarily true). There were a lot of books that were just okay, but just because they didn't appeal to me, doesn't mean that it's not exactly what other readers want. Many but not all of these books were published in 2023 - a few will be published in 2024.

Here's to even more reading in 2024!

The best of 2023 (in no particular order):

• The heaven and earth grocery store - James McBride
• The covenant of water - Abraham Verghese
• Making it so: a memoir - Patrick Stewart
• The museum of failures - Thrity Umrigar
• The river we remember - William Krueger Kent
• Tom Lake - Ann Patchett
• Lady Tan's circle of women - Lisa See
• Flags on the Bayou - James Lee Burke
• The keeper of hidden books - Madeline Martin
• The postcard - Anne Berest
• Juno loves legs - Karl Geary
• Earth's the right place for love - Elizabeth Berg
• Hello beautiful - Ann Napolitano
• Clytemnestra - Costanza Casati
• The measure - Nikki Erlick
• Keeper of enchanted rooms - Charlie N. Holmberg
• What the dead know - Barbara Butcher

Honorable mention:

• The bandit queens - Parini Shroff
• Hang the moon - Jeanette Walls
• Excuse me while I disappear - Laurie Notaro
• Homecoming - Kate Morton
• Vampires of el Norte - Isabel Canas
• The maid's diary - Loreth Ann White
• Silver nitrate - Silvia Moreno Garcia
• The king's pleasure - Alison Weir

The not-so-great:

• Lessons in chemistry - this just didn't ring true for me, although it's gotten rave reviews and has been made into a television show on Apple TV. Generally speaking, I avoid books from celebrity book clubs (Oprah's, Reese's, GMA, etc.).
• The square of sevens - this is one the of few books that I didn't finish. I usually enjoy historical fiction but this book spent a lot of time explaining Victorian customs. I skipped to the last chapter, which neatly explained the previous 300 pages.
• The Jinn-bot of Shantiport - a retelling of the Aladdin story. The author tried unsuccessfully to marry the Arabian Nights and the Murderbot series.
• The house witch - based on the Amazon reviews, I expected this to be better than it was. If the author had cut out the lectures on political correctness that the main character delivers, the book would have been only 2/3 as long and much more enjoyable.
• The whispers - first we had girl fiction (i.e., Gone Girl), then there was woman fiction (i.e., The Woman in the Window), and now we have mommy fiction. Multiple characters repeat multiple times "you don't have children, so you can't possibly understand." I can live without this genre.
• The girls of summer - incredibly slow moving. Rachel, the main character, is TSTL (too stupid to live).
• The ferryman - the first half of the book is great, the second half is a complete bomb.
• Demon Copperhead - a heavy handed retelling of David Copperfield. Lots of people love this - I wasn't one of them.