My favorite books of 2023

A dozen of my favorite reads this year! I hope you discover some to enjoy. 💛

Novels

This was an especially rich year for fiction in my reading life. Much love and appreciation goes to my book club of two (I call it B2 for short) partner, Suse, who is an erudite book picker!

Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

One of my top reads of the year. Not easy, but SO worth it! A re-telling of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield set in the southern Appalachian mountains in the opioid era, featuring a really engaging protagonist as he grows from boy to man. A Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction in 2023, this book just celebrated a year on the New York Times bestseller list. Extraordinary! With a fabulous ending.

Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

On the family farm during the early pandemic, her three daughters beg Lara to regale them while picking cherries with her story of acting in summer stock in her twenties and her affair with Peter Duke, who became a movie star thereafter. Lara is a wonderful storyteller who possesses deep poise and calm. Meryl Streep’s audiobook narration is delicious, and Ann Patchett is a national treasure. 🙂

Read my full review: Don’t miss this book: Tom Lake

Dani Shapiro, Signal Fires

Excellent! Gripping, actually. Shapiro is such an elegant and compelling writer in both fiction and memoir. In this one, she does a great job with character and emotion, and deep perception of both the lights and darks that life provides. I particularly love Waldo, who, through much of the book, is a child, but then I have three sons. 🙂

Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

On the off-chance that you’ve missed this sensation—this is the book to grab if you’re looking for a totally engaging read that is irresistible, funny, touching, original, vibrant, and (at the time) revolutionary. With a love story and a dog woven in. Brilliant chemist Elizabeth Zott, struggling in the male world of science, becomes the star of a cooking show. But she’s not just teaching women to cook. You’ll see.

Anne Berest, The Postcard

Publisher’s Weekly calls it “An unflinching look at antisemitism past and present…The more Anne learns of her family, the more powerful her story of reclaiming her ancestry becomes. This is brilliant.” A true story written as a novel, it’s also an elegant, exquisitely written work of literature that illuminates our human understanding. It all starts with a postcard.

Narrative Nonfiction

I’m realizing that I love this genre! Where nonfiction becomes compelling and engaging through storytelling.

Clint Smith, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery

How is the history and legacy of slavery acknowledged in the United States? Starting in his hometown of New Orleans, Atlantic Magazine author and poet Clint Smith shares his quest to experience the landmarks and monuments that hold the narrative. His reflections and insights are intimate, profound, and precious. Superb.

John McPhee, Heirs of General Practice

I would read anything John McPhee wrote. A New Yorker writer par excellence, his facile mind is a wonderful window into our world. Here, he captures the experience of young doctors entering practice in an emerging specialty—family practice—in rural Maine. How I wish this were the medicine we experience today! I’ve shared with multiple friends who have loved and shared with multiple friends. A good one!

Memoir

Viola Davis, Finding Me

About her own book, Davis says, “In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever…For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you.” Fierce, bold, truthful, and beautiful. Her narration on the audiobook is a knockout.

Hua Hsu, Stay True

A 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner, this is an elegant memoir on “…friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art, by the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu.” Happenstance and impermanence play prominent roles in deep college friendships made via proximity and sometimes taken away by random violence that is too much a part of life in America. Meaningful.

Buddhist

Kevin Griffin, Living Kindness: Metta Practice for the Whole of Our Lives

I thoroughly enjoyed this very gentle book about weaving lovingkindness into everyday life. Metta is not only a meditation technique—it’s a radical approach to life based on the Buddha’s teachings on wisdom, ethics, and compassion for all beings. Griffin explores the challenging and rewarding art of living this way.

Helen Narayan Liebenson, The Magnanimous Heart: Compassion and Love, Loss and Grief, Joy and Liberation

A beautiful guide to skillfully responding to painful human emotions with meditative inquiry and insight from a senior teacher endowed with exceptional wisdom, strength, and calm.

Poetry

Clint Smith, Above Ground

Two books in one year by the same author! His work is exceptional. One of his interests as a poet is the side-by-side nature of mourning and joy in human lives, for example, never more present than when writing a book about reckoning with the history of slavery while being a new dad! This collection is so sweet and so close to the heart of things, both the pain and the beauty.

Love,
Jo

Photo by Anna Meshkov