I read 55 books in 2023 for my own pleasure, plus another 13 in my capacity as a nonfiction book reviewer for Publishers Weekly before I took a hiatus from that role. 2023 felt like a fantastic year in reading, for me: I continued to really love reading on my couch during meals, enjoying daylight and soft music in my living room; I continued to make good use of my local library, often making it the meeting place for a coffee break with my gentleman; my old television stopped updating and was unable to render color, which meant that I read instead of playing video games or watching movies until I replaced it in the summer. For all these reasons, I was surprised that my final book count came in lower than last year! Perhaps a good reminder to myself: quality over quantity.
Of the books I read in 2023, these were the 15 I loved best.
Deliciously bleak period fiction
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker, mid-20th century Scotland
Ex-wife by Ursula Parrott, featuring New York in the 1920s
Relevant to my interests
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin [Gaming, making a career out of creativity]
Yellowface by R. F. Kuang [Publishing, literary scandals]
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill [Being an art monster, trying to balance your creative life with your work and family]
Do You Remember Being Born? by Sean Michaels [AI, the creative process, aging]
Speculative fiction of great beauty and big feelings
White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link–every short story is a banger!
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder)
I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself by Marisa Crane
Really good ecofiction!
The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell
Life-changing nonfiction
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May: beautiful reflections on cold weather culture, deep winter traditions, and how to let yourself rest.
Pipe Dreams: The Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet by Chelsea Wald: SO much I didn’t know about why American plumbing and sanitation is the way it is, what challenges are presented by this system (like the combined sewers that sometimes overflow in Philly), and what the future of toilets might look like.
Nonfiction but make it candy
Here are a few short poems and stories that I linked in earlier roundups but which lingered in my mind long after I read them:
Zelda Fitzgerald by Aria Aber
Friday Night by Gwen E. Kirby
99 Ways to Tell a Story by Matt Madden
Love and the deli counter by Jill McDonough
My X by Molly Giles
How Many by Bryan Washington
The Pregnancy Game by Michelle Ross
2023 was the year I started paying for newsletter subscriptions. I have bought three: Culture Study, which gives me access to the world’s best comment section; HEATED, which is one of my favorite sources for climate news; and most recently Men Yell At Me, because I realized that I was reading every one of these the moment it landed in my inbox, and the Dingus of the Week feature makes me laugh. Other newsletters I enjoy include Drilled (more really excellent climate reporting), Burnt Toast (food, diet culture, perfection culture), and Episodes (which is irregular but has some delicious pop culture writing in its archive).
Your turn! What did you love this year?
Sara Davis 