Recently I was talking to a friend about books and reading, and she said: “Um, wait, you read a book a week?” I responded, “Yes, a little more, actually, but right now I’m nine books behind of my annual reading challenge goal of 60 books and I have become a reading slacker.” As soon as I said it, I realized it was bonkers to beat myself up for failing to read more than a book a week. Crikey. I work full-time, and this year I adopted a puppy and finished writing a book of my own! Ending the year at 53 books is hardly a failure. It is a triumph.

2023 was a terrific year of reading.

I read five exceptional books, two of which I added to my all-time list of favorite books (Demon Copperfield and Remarkably Bright Creatures) and another (The Keeper) that inspired me to think about my writing as art and to begin dreaming about a way to incorporate my newfound love of watercolor painting into a future book project. I read books this year that made me cry, made me laugh, and forced me to think differently about the world. I read three massive novels as well as a few light quickies. I read poetry, memoirs, two romances (what?!!!), a couple of thrillers, a biography, the eighteenth book of the Louise Penny detective series I love, and a book about quantum mechanics. In 2023, my brain was stretched by finishing a massive volume of the papers of Jane Addams for work and my own history/memoir, and so I let my reading for pleasure be lighter, choosing books and audio book for the pure joy of escaping into a good story.

Below I have ranked all fifty-three books of my 2023 reading list and provided the brief reviews I posted on Instagram throughout the year. It is an imperfect ranking. The muddy middle of books I gave three or two hearts were harder to sort, and I struggled a bit to weigh novels with nonfiction as well as books with excellent writing with books with important themes. The top ten is solid and the bottom six are well clear to my reading mind. But I will leave you to sort out the middle books you have read on your own terms and, perhaps, even offer comments.

I started keeping track of my reading four years ago, and I enjoy this annual reflection. Books are as important to me as breathing, and taking stock of what a read is as pleasurable as reading a delightful book on my porch, barefoot in the summer. It is a bonus to introduce people to a book I love, and there are many books on this year’s list to recommend. I mostly leave it to you to pick what sounds intriguing to your own reading brain, but EVERYONE who loves great literature and cares about humanity should read Demon Copperhead. Barbara Kingsolver is one of the brilliant writers of our time, but with this timely novel she has secured her status as one of the best American writers of all time.

Happy reading, and Happy New Year.

#1 Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️  Demon Copperhead is the kind of book that breaks your heart and makes you ask new questions about the world in which you live. Kingsolver’s story about rural poverty, the foster care system, and drug abuse (no, not drug abuse; rather the predatory drug pushing by doctors and coaches etc. onto society’s most vulnerable) humanizes the opioid crisis in a way even good journalism cannot. Don’t read this book if you hate to cry, and if you read this story and don’t cry, you need to go looking for a new heart.

#2 Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ My surprise book of the year, this imaginative and compelling novel about a grieving mother and a grumpy, articulate giant Pacific octopus made me chuckle and cry and hold my hands to my heart. This novel is not a silly story with the gimmick of a talking octopus. It is a gorgeous tale of love found in the most unlikely places; and trust me, when Marcellus starts telling his side of the story, you will not dismiss him because he has tentacles. Last year I loved a book with a sentient fig tree and another with a precocious dog. This year it’s an imprisoned cephalopod with a tender heart. It turns out I like a story with remarkably bright creatures, human and otherwise.

#3 The Bookbinder by Pip Williams (2023) ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ I finished this extraordinary novel under my yoga garden umbrella and an extraordinary blue sky. Fitting, a sky so big for the ending of story so illustrative of the hopes and dreams and beauty of women. Pip Williams’ second novel, brilliantly linked to the first (The Dictionary of Lost Words), is glorious; a story of women’s lives, work and class, family and friendships, the divisions of Town and Gown, the power of books, and dreams set in the context of war. So bold and so human, Williams leaves no emotion left unexplored, and history and the human heart are the stars, as bright as the summer sun.

#4 The Keeper by Kelcey Ervick ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ In this lovely and lively graphic memoir, Ervick offers her whole heart. Readers can read and see and feel her story, and so much of it is the story of every woman, conforming and then chafing and then becoming who she is on her own terms. This is a book you read and KEEP and buy another copy for a friend (which I did.).

#5 To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ This book takes you on a long long long wild ride, and where it ends is your own place to write. Wow. I’m reeling a little, I think, from the creative scope of the stories, settings, and characters. The author doesn’t answer all of the questions she raises in her breathtaking tale, and the loose ends are a part of the messy, beautiful mystery of her characters’ human realities (and so I’m not even mad!). I chose the audio book, which is beautifully narrated by a talented cast, who made me cry and scream and laugh.

#6 Winter by Ali Smith (2017) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Ali Smith is the kind of writer who not only creates memorable characters but who make you see the world through their eyes, glazed with the quirky colors of their unique realities. And the characters in Winter are a hoot. Smith is a sensitive writer of crisp prose, spare but rich. Her stories are great and her writing masterful. I loved this second installment of her seasonal quartet. Fine farewell, Winter, I cannot wait until Spring.

#7 Horse by Geraldine Brooks (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ A racehorse named Lexington connects all the people and stories in this gorgeous novel, but the star of this book is Geraldine Brooks. She is so damn good. It takes an extremely gifted writer of historical fiction to artfully connect distant stories across 169 years. And Brooks is the best at weaving history into the present, in Horse covering 1850 to 2019, and illustrating every time for her readers that the past is never really past.

#8 Less Is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ To be human is to be awkward and out of step, to feel like you’re behind, that you may even be lost. No character in modern fiction more embodies this simple, beautiful truth than Arthur Less. Andrew Sean Greer is a wonderful writer. His style is crisp and delicious like a granny smith apple, sweet and good for you but just tart enough to make your lips smile. So funny. So warm. And genuine with a capital G. This novel is a fantastic follow-up novel to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Less.

#9 Her Lost Words by Stephanie Marie Thornton (2023) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Thornton offers a lovely telling of the lives of two historically important women, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. This is excellent historical fiction, bending the story for drama but staying true to the language and contexts of the past. It is astonishing that the woman who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman gave birth to the creative woman who wrote Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died just days after Mary’s birth, but as this novel is correct to suggest that these women were connected by words and writing and the spirits of all brave women.

#10 The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig (2021): ❤️❤️❤️❤️ A lovely, yearning search for words to define the bittersweet. An inventive dictionary for feelings too profound for common language, like: “harmonoia: n. an itchy sense of dread when life feels just a hint too peaceful—when everyone seems to get along suspiciously well, with an eerie stillness that makes you want to brace for the inevitable collapse, or burn it down yourself.”

#11 Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ I gave as a Christmas gift to myself this luxurious book of Kalman paintings of the simple, gorgeous act of holding. Art and wisdom and women holding the world. “What do women hold?” The home and the family. And the children and the food. The friendships. The work. The work of the world. And the work of the human being. The memories. And the troubles and the sorrows. And the love.”

#12 Autumn by Ali Smith (2016) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ This first installment of Smith’s seasonal quartet is lyrical and funny, loveable characters and a memorable relationship at its heart. Smith is a creative storyteller, her narrative here is a jumble of time frames and scenes, but somehow making more sense than strict chronology. I cannot wait to read the next three seasons.

#13 Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Lucy Barton does the pandemic like she does life: imperfectly, but with humor and good intentions, no matter her doubts. “We are all in lockdown all the time,” she says, “we just don’t know it, that’s all.”

#14 The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ The Violin Conspiracy is a compelling novel about the heart and soul of a musician, a violinist for whom music is the North Star. This is a triumphant tale of talent and determination playing louder than the racism and the doubters trying to knock a Black musician off the path of his dreams. The writing is solid until the end, which feels a little stilted and rushed, but Ray’s reunion with his beloved violin is not as important as his beautiful journey of becoming.

#15 The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin (2023) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Hardin’s memoir is a page-turning, straight forward story about addiction, belonging, struggle, fierce motherly love, and finding a path forward through an awful imploding of a life. The writer’s story is remarkable, and her honest telling is a triumph. If it is this hard for a woman of privilege to claw her way back from drug abuse, crime, and incarceration, what our deeply flawed criminal justice system must do to the marginalized is heartbreaking. This memoir is a beautiful personal story, but it should also be a wake-up call to the failures of our society to rehabilitate human beings, who are worthy of a second chance to be a light in the world.

#16 Babel by R. F. Kuang (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Slow burn this one (and LONG!), but in the way that makes you ponder. I am not going to try to explain the plot of this weird novel with footnotes, but this is a fun, funky and imaginative book about identity, power, knowledge, friendship, and the human consequences of colonialism.

#17 Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ David Sedaris’s latest collection of essays is one of his best. He tackles the pandemic, the death of his father, dental work, sibling love, and Hugh (always Hugh😍) with his characteristic snark and astute observations of human foibles. I listened to the audio version read by the author. I always do, because listening to Sedaris read his stories is half the fun—he is hilarious, and this batch of essays gave me an extra happy case of giggles.

#18 An Immense World by Edward Yong (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ This book was not an easy read for me, but despite the limitations of my own science brain it qualifies as accessible science. It is loaded with gob smacking facts about what humans have wrought upon the natural world and fascinating details about animals, both confirming my lifelong suspicion that animals are more complicated than we give them credit for being and cooler and more likeable than human beings. This book most importantly brings home that we are living in the Anthropocene Epoch. And that is not a good thing. If you don’t know what that means, look it up. It is important. No. It’s imperative. “Wilderness is not distant,” Yong writes. “We are continually immersed in it. It is there for us to imagine, to savor, and to protect.”

#19 A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ One of the best in the series, I think. Number 18, and still going strong. Classic Penny. Great characters, suspense, and fast-paced delight.

#20 Spring by Ali Smith (2019) ❤️❤️❤️ Spring starts out like a treatise on the shocking public discord in today’s western world, but it comes round to the stories of humans crossing paths. Smith is so good at bringing characters together, and this seasonal installment has a touch of mystery. The story screams and whispers and floats just a little bit beyond reality. I listened to this one, and the narrator’s voice was perfect, especially for the screaming.

#21 The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ ‼️ SPOILER ALERT ‼️ I love so much about this book: the melody of the writing, the details of India, the humor, the food, and the matriarch. But it is just too bloody long, and when Big Ammachi died on page 519, I simply could not face the remaining 200 pages without her. The book sat on the coffee table for two weeks glaring at me, but now it must go back to the library. Because I could not finish it, I can only give it three hearts (although the writing is worth four hearts). Verghese should have hired a good editor and/or ended the book with this lovey sentence: “It will take time, he knows, to begin to trace the outlines of the massive rent in his life, in the lives of everyone who knew the matriarch of Parambil, and who knew baby Mol. For now it is too large to comprehend, and he bows his head.”

#22 Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen (2022) ❤️❤️❤️ This sweet, ghostly story about an island of misfit human spirits might not go with me far into the future. But the quirky folks and those magical birds were nice to know for awhile. Sometimes a comfortable story is what I need, not great literature. Sometimes I prefer a little fantasy to the sharp, hard edges of reality. “Not everything has to be real to be true.” It did not hurt that I got to finish reading this enjoyable book on my front porch!

#23 Zero Days by Ruth Ware (2023). ❤️❤️❤️ Pure escape on adrenaline and worst nightmares is the stuff of a Ruth Ware novel. Zero Days is a good one if you like spending time in the head of a desperate, terrified woman on the run, which I do, I guess, because in every Ware story my own nightmares aren’t so scary. I never used to like thrillers (and still only rate the good ones with three hearts); but Ware’s stories offer strong women as well as adrenaline and escape. I recognize the women she writes, even if I cannot imagine what those women are going through as Ware unravels their lives.

#24 Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a fusspot. And I love her. What a fun, silly, serious, human story about a lost young woman who finds herself in time.

#25 Justice for Animals by Martha Nussbaum’s (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ The beginning of this book made me sob, the middle made me stretch my brain, and the end gave me a little hope (but not much). Nussbaum’s philosophical argument is compelling, animals deserve justice for their own sake. I believe it, and as an animal lover and vegetarian, I celebrate any philosophy that will move our society and the courts to protect ALL animals. But in a world in which there are humans who do not even care about other humans, I am skeptical. Also, I know so many nice people who eat animals and are nowhere near to accepting the injustice and cruelty of the meat industry. After reading this book I am horrified I ate meat at all and that it took me so long to stop. A comment to my review posted on Goodreads read: “That the book did not make you consider veganism is a strike against it. All the nonhuman animals in the dairy and egg industries end up killed after they’ve been brutally exploited. The dairy cows and their calves suffer MORE than conventional slaughter cattle because of separation between mother and calf, lameness and mastitis.” I have not been able to get this comment out of my head, and I suspect I will get there. For now, I cannot live without butter.

#26 Victory City by Salman Rushdie (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ Rave reviews for Victory City were, I think, more for Rushdie than for this novel, but the sweeping tale of the woman Pampa Kampana and the city of Bisnaga she grew from seeds is compelling. It is a fable of the rise and fall of empire and the folly of men who even in the face of extraordinary evidence to the contrary insist upon the inferiority of women. The book sags a little in the middle, but I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a story that reveals the complex nature of human beings, a story set in an unfamiliar past with human characters that are oddly familiar.

#27 The Hurting Kind, Poems by Ada Limón (2022) ❤️❤️❤️ A collection of whispering poems for every season—spring, summer, fall, winter, and pandemic. Uneven, for me and my untrained eye, but this poet’s voice is so vivid and there were so many lines on which I lingered and lingered and lingered, such as: “The thesis is still the wind. The thesis has never been exile. We have never been exiled. We have been in the sun…” That is a wrap on my books of 2023. I fell seven books short of my goal, but I read several long ones and wrote a book of my own. It was a wonderful year of reading; stay tuned for my reading review blog post coming soon.

#28 Normal People by Sally Rooney (2019) ❤️❤️❤️ Rooney’s tale of two young people is spare but brimming with humanity. From diverse backgrounds defying trite stereotypes, they cling to each other as they awkwardly grow into themselves and come of age in modern Ireland. I particularly appreciated all the things left unexplained and unknown by the author, because life is never a Hollywood ending. The best stories are messy, the details not always so clear, and the nuance an invitation to imagine.

#29 Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg (2022) ❤️❤️❤️ Part memoir and part treatise on friendship, this book is poignant and packed with fascinating stories. I am a legal historian and a close watcher of the U.S. Supreme Court and enjoyed this book more than the average person might, but if you appreciate Totenberg’s brilliantly concise and accessible reporting on the SCOTUS for NPR, you’ll enjoy her memoir (she reads it herself for the audio version). For RGB fans, there is a lot of Ruth to go along with stories of Totenberg’s dinners with other justices across five decades.

#30 Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli (2021) ❤️❤️❤️ Yes, I read a book about quantum mechanics. No, I did not understand it. Of course not. But. I kinda sorta think I got the gist of it, all thanks to the writing talents of Carlo Rovelli. There were sentences in this book that blew my mind. Others made me scratch my head. Some made me feel like a complete idiot. And this one, depressing as it is, was my favorite: “Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which there is nothing.” That’s my key take away? Yes, it is, but I’m not really here, so…

#31 The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (2022) ❤️❤️❤️ Far less compelling than Hamnet, The Marriage Portrait makes a lot of literary florins out of the very short life of Lucrezia, a little-known member of the famous de’ Medici family. The novel is more historically inspired than solid historical fiction, but O’Farrell’s details are thrilling. Particularly titillating is her description of male genitalia, from the imagination of her horrified teenaged narrator, and is all by itself worth reading the book.

#32 The Revolutionary: Samuel Addams by Stacy Schiff (2022) ❤️❤️❤️ It was interesting to lean more about the great American revolutionary about whom I knew the least. He was a deeply principled idealist, whose talents and personality and passion were for made for a specific moment in time. Now I like the beer and the man.

#33 Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney (2022): ❤️❤️❤️ I enjoyed this thriller, set on a stormy night in Cornwall, about a family from hell and the story’s surprising ending that I never saw coming.

#34 The It Girl by Ruth Ware (2022) ❤️❤️❤️ Ripped through this audio book fast and furious, unable to wait to hear the mystery unfold. Ware is a master at the page-turner, and this week in the winter cold I needed a good escape. Imogen Church was the reader, and she was brilliant as usual. I would listen to any book she reads.

#35 Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ Light, amusing, and sweet, Romantic Comedy is, well, um…romantic. Not my usual genre, but I’ve been letting Book of the Month Club broaden my horizons or, more apt, I suppose, lower my brow. This was my first Sittenfeld book, and I’ll read more; she delivered an enjoyable summer read with this one.

#36 The Vulnerables (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ A novel in one breath, held in the long dark night of the pandemic. Life and writing sputter and spin the narrator, a writer, fast, slow, and forward. Nunez is such a good writer, and this novel has beautiful sentences to recommend it. I found it, however, a little too spare.

#37 Taste: My Life through Food by Stanley Tucci (2021) ❤️❤️❤️ Minus the gleeful cooking and eating of animals, (including whales!) and an erroneous attribution to Dorothy Parker, this is an entertaining memoir about food as a way of good living.

#38 Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ A perfectly nice story about a nice woman and her nice family, the paths we choose, and the love and the people we leave behind. The writing is good, but for me reading this novel was only slightly more entertaining than watching the grass grow and not quite as interesting as counting the box cars on a train while waiting at the crossing.

#39 A Wing and a Prayer by Andrea and Beverly Gyllenhaal (2023). ❤️❤️❤️ A sobering tale of the shocking decline of bird populations around the world. Two bird lovers set out to explore North American efforts to save endangered birds, protect bird habitats, and encourage people to watch birds and to do simple things to protect them. The writing is not great, but the message is important.

#40 Throw the Damn Ball, Classic Poetry by Dogs (2013) ❤️❤️❤️ A very appropriate Christmas gift from my niece, this is a silly, clever, fun little book filled with hilarious pictures of dogs. And, of course, a play on a Dorothy Parker poem made it into the collection!

#41 The Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ The Half Moon is not a terrific book, and I wouldn’t recommend to my most discerning reader friends. However, it’s a surprisingly good anatomy of a marriage from both sides, all guts and no glory, and the shit that happens that opens our eyes or leads us astray. It’s a he-said-she-said narrative, which makes the miscommunication a character on its one, equal to the wife and to the husband and to the neighborhood bar they own in the middle of all of it.

#42 The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ Ugh. This was not an enjoyable read. The writing was good, and the descriptive quality and suspense was superb. However, I struggled to cope with the horror of a story about what happens when human beings are reduced to base survival. Not a novel for the softhearted. I appreciate the creative perspective and the writing in this book, but I chafe at the subject matter and bleak landscape of the story. I have enough nightmares of my own.

#43 Cake: A Cookbook by Maira Kalman (2018) ❤️❤️❤️ I bought this book for a baking friend but read it first, before I wrapped it. Kalman’s illustrations are enchanting. And who doesn’t love cake?!! I’m only ranking it at the end of the three-hearted books because I did not assess any of the recipes (although I read them all and they looked amazing).

#44 The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell (2019) ❤️❤️ This book is dark and witty, and the character Henry diabolically (and delightfully) so. I’ve come to appreciate the ability of a good thriller to take my mind away from my hum-drum life for a time, and I find Jewell’s stories an enjoyable short vacation.

#45 The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand (2022) ❤️❤️ This was a mindless, mildly entertaining read, chosen to get my mind off of my busy life. I would not recommend it to anyone who enjoys serious literature. It was a little too Hollywood-happy-ending for me, but it took me away for a little while and accomplished what I asked of it. I would have enjoyed it better had I actually read this “beach read” on a beach.

#46 The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox (2023) ❤️❤️ Fox’s novel was a fast and fun read. I liked the mystery in the beginning of the book, but I was less enamored with the answer to the mystery and the smoochy, romantic, happy ending. Good to sappy in 334 pages.

#47 The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland (2023) ❤️❤️ This novel tells the story of a historic theater fire in Richmond, Virginia, in 1811 from the perspective of four characters affected by the fire. Although it is a fairly well-told story, based on good research, I didn’t love it. The tone was off and the dialogue too modern. P.S. I listened to this book, and the uneven narration may have diminished my enjoyment of the story.

#48 Trust by Hernan Diaz (2022) ❤️❤️ I suppose I can admit the structure of this book is interesting. Sort of. But the story is BORING. Duller than dirt, which is an insult to dirt because at least dirt grows flowers. I do not recommend this book, and I am at a loss to understand why Barbara Kingsolver’s superb Demon Copperhead had to share the Pulitzer Prize with it. One star because I finished it (out of respect for the Pulitzer Prize, although why I respect the Pulitzer committee for fiction I do not know, as it is frequently off in outer space). Another star for the last part of the book, which is weird but interesting, although hardly worth the slog through the pages leading up to it.

#49 Canary Girls by Jennifer Chiaverini (2023) ❤️ Disappointing. Maybe because soccer is boring. But probably because the author failed to make me care about women munitions workers during WWI, a subject that should have been easy for a historian of women’s history to enjoy.

#50 Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano (2023) ❤️ Meh. Actually, quite a yawn fest if I am honest (which I am, of course, honest like Lincoln). If I read this book instead of listening to the audio version, which helped me go to sleep for several nights, I doubt I would have finished it. Surprise, surprise, I’m sideways on yet another NYT bestseller, but this slow-moving family saga, covering the years 1960-2008, is a drag and told by four of the family members, not one of whom I would care to befriend.

#51 Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett (2022) ❤️ Meh. Not a fan of Checkout 19. Or perhaps I am just dumb, because all of the reviews I read about this book could not have been written about the book I just read. It was weird, incoherent, and jerky. The narrator has the habit of telling the reader something and then saying “yeah, that’s right. That’s right. I did.” Annoying and distracting. And disappointing.

#52 Thrust by Lida Yuknavitch. ❤️ Oh boy. Whoa, okay, so, what to say about this one? In the beginning, I thought it was strange but brilliant. In the middle the doubts were creeping in. By the end I felt duped by weird for the sake of weird and structure thrown out the window with no good purpose. I am perplexed. How do books like this get published? There are a handful of astute statements about inequality, colonization, and violence, I suppose, but for what? Do I care for the characters—including a time traveling girl, a talking whale, and the Statute of Liberty? No. No, I do not. Do I understand anything I just read? No, because the author has failed to convince me that I should try. Run away from this one, people. Run TF away.

#53 The Fraud by Zadie Smith (2023) zero hearts, because I did not finish it. The Fraud is a fraud, sorry. I wanted to like what everyone else seems to like in this novel. Alas, I failed to get into it. Boring is all I can say. And bummer.

That is a wrap on my 2023 reading. Now bring on the great books for 2024.