Hi guys! As the end of the year is approaching… what have been your top 3 books for 2023? I want to hear about your favorites/most memorable reads across all genres that you finished this year.
Mine are as follows…:
- Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll: It was so good I stayed in bed on a Saturday night eating ice cream with my phone on DND to finish the last 100 pages in one sitting lmao.
- The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: first book that made me cry in a while.
- Still Life by Louis Penny: these books are such a vibe and I love how they are so immersive. It’s like a mini adventure-vacation to Quebec every time I read any of the novels from this series, but this one was the first one that got me totally hooked!
Notable mention: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman.
Posting before we enter December so that this racks up a loooong list of recommendations to check out for 2024.
I’m almost positive some are slipping my mind. But two that I read this year that I really enjoyed are:
– The Garden of Seven Twilights by Miquel de Palol. A story about a group of people who wait out a bomb scare by retreating to a wealthy guy’s isolated chateau in Spain. While they’re there, they contend with their interpersonal stuff, but also tell each other stories to pass the time. And it gradually becomes clear that the material and characters in the story show that there’s more going on with the guests (in the present) than they’re letting on. It was so engrossing and so well-written. Like an onion I wanted to get to the bottom of. Highly recommended.
– Dead Babies by Martin Amis. When Amis passed this year, I decided to give some of his novels I hadn’t tried a go. I only read one or two of his books before and wasn’t super into them. But this was a whole different story. Part dark British farce. Part comedy of manners between a group of bohemian students on a wild weekend. And things get pretty wild and hilarious. Several of the moments in the novel live rent-free in my head now. Also highly recommended.
It’s so hard to only pick 3, but I think I’d say:
-
Life Ceremony, a short story collection by Sayaka Murata. Everything she writes is strange and disturbing and beautiful, hard to describe. I read it in a forest sitting in a tree branch with a nice butt-sized bend in it, too, making it doubly memorable.
-
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. His prose is just incredible and I’m a sucker for Faustian tales.
-
Something New Under the Sun by Alexandra Kleeman. I wish this book would become insanely popular and start a bunch of literary trends lol. Never has an author written something that made me and the way I think feel so seen. Surreal, increasingly sci-fi, often funny, and always disturbing take on humans’ relationship to resources and ecological systems in the 21st century.
-
To echo others, it’s hard to pick 3. I don’t think I read anything published this year but here are my top 3 read:
The Stories of Ray Bradbury. A collection of 100 ( I think?) of his best stories. He’s just so good - incredible prose, unique ideas, and very accessible. He’s just a regular guy writing about regular things (aside, of course, from the sci fi/fantasy/horror elements) and that makes his stories so much more moving and terrifying.
I just finished Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr and it was beautiful, moving, brilliant in its weaving of timelines and storylines and characters. I also read All the Light We Cannot See this year and really enjoyed it, as well.
Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons by Raymond St. Elmo. Pure fantastical adventure with a beautiful romance woven throughout. It’s wild ride of gorgeous prose, unusual form, and unreliable narration. Has become an all-time favorite for me and I highly recommend it if you like that sort of thing.
It’s so hard to narrow it down to 3, I feel like I’m probably forgetting one or two, but my list would be as follows (mine are all YA):
-
The Beauty of Darkness by Mary E. Pearson, it is the final book of the Remnant Chronicles series and I think it was an amazing way to wrap it up. I thought the romance was beautiful and it’s one of the few books that I really felt attached to the characters and their stories. Would highly recommend this series if you’re a YA fantasy girl like me.
-
Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren. This book made me cry I’m not going to lie, Macy and Elliot were so adorable and I need an Elliot in my life immediately please and thank you.
-
The Ballad of Never After by Stephanie Garber. I love love love the way that Evangeline and Jacks’ relationship was written in this book and the banter that they have with each other. Jacks is such an interesting character and I love the depth/backstory that was given to him in this book.
-
Two of these were published this year and one was published last year, but I read them this year:
-Starter Villain by John Scalzi -I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy -Patricia Wants To Cuddle by Samantha Allen
Honorable mention to The White Man’s Guide to White Male Authors of the Western Canon by Dana Schwartz. I’d been waiting for this book for a while (I followed the Guy From Your MFA satire account on Twitter and loved the character she created), and even though it was published in 2019, I finally got it this year. It was hilarious.
ETA: Bright Young Woman is on my library hold list! Looking forward to it.