Best Reads of 2023

11 months ago

This is my first time starting a thread, so hopefully it will work.

What were your best reads of 2023?

I couldn't get down to just one book, so here's the list I came up with:

West With Giraffes, by Lynda Rutledge

It took me a while to warm up to this book, but in the end I really, really liked it. Set in 1938 and based on a true event: the acquisition of 2 young giraffes by the then new San Diego Zoo. The setting is well rendered – the Depression, Dust Bowl, Jim Crow South, the coming war—as the giraffes are trucked across the US from New York to San Diego. The settings change with the journey, the story held together by the 3 people in the truck who try to keep the giraffes alive (driver, zoo employee, aspiring journalist) as they meet new people in each town they pass through. Cover blurb quite accurately captures it: Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, WWG explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time..

Foster, by Claire Keegan

Simple first-person narrative of a young girl (about 10 y/o)who is sent to stay with another couple for the last few months of her mother’s latest pregnancy and is returned home once the baby is born. Written from within the girl’s POV, the story must be teased out by the reader – the craft displayed in this beautifully-written narrative is phenomenal – how much you end up knowing about the girl, her family and the husband-wife caring for her, without ever being told a thing other than the little girl’s childishly unaware observations.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

This is the fun one on my list! A wild ride of a space opera with really cool ideas of alternate realities, black hole space and AI’s, but also with depth to the characters and events that make you stop and think. The POV character is an arrogant, unlikeable young woman who discovers that she’s been fed a load of crap by a fascist regime – this takes a lot of growing-up for a 17-y/o to realize and accept; on top of having to learn that the destruction of humanity’s Earth was actually a ‘best-outcome-for-the-many’ within the wider system of linked space-faring civilizations, due to humanity’s aggressiveness. Makes you the reader think too!

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley

Not particularly comfortable for me to read, nor particularly uplifting, but told so well that you are immersed in the not-always-happy black African-American experience of Ptolemy’s life. You see the story only from within the main character of Ptolemy (much like Foster, above), an elderly black man fading into dementia who is given the opportunity to reverse his dementia at the price of a drastically-shortened life. An interesting exploration of the priorities that drive our decisions and what trade-offs we will make to achieve our goals.

Featured Answer

salonva

10 months ago

I have used Goodreads for several years. I love it because when someone mentions a book, I look it up and can see the overall rating ( I don't necessarily look at the reviews), the number of pages, and when published. I can easily add it to my to be read list. Then when I do read it, I mark it as such. It's great for keeping track of what you've read and want to read.

So, I referred back to that for my 2023 books I've read and will list here my high recommendations. I like most books, but I will list those I think are really better than most.

I looked for my 5 star reads, and then whittled it down a bit more.

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

The Lincoln Highway

The One Hundred Yeasr of Lenni and Margot

Demon Copperhead

The Scent Keeper

The Railway Children

Remarkably Bright Creatures

The Shell Seekers

Maureen (of Harold Fry and Queenie fame)

The Hare with Amber Eyes

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Comments (9)

kathy_t
10 months ago
last modified: 10 months ago
Donnamarie - My apologies for taking so long to respond to this thread. I always enjoy seeing everyone's previous-year list of favorites, but apparently we let your thread slip down the list without replying. It was not intentional. I hope others will add their favorites also.

2023 was not a year of great reads for me, but here are the ones I liked best:

Remarkably Bright Creatures -- Shelby Van Pelt

By far my favorite read of 2023. It's hard to explain why this is so good. You just have to trust me and read it.

How Lucky -- Will Leitch

This was probably on my 2022 list also, because I read it twice in two years. Such an interesting story about a severely disabled man doing his best to help out in the world.

The Burgess Boys -- Elizabeth Strout

The story of three adult siblings who share a bad memory from childhood, each now having problems in adulthood and their attempts to help one another ... sort of.

Anne of Green Gables -- L. M. Montgomery

After knowing about this book for about 60 years, I finally read it ... and enjoyed it.

A Week in Winter -- Maeve Binchy

I've read a lot of Maeve Binchy in my time, but never this one until now. Very typical of Maeve Binchy, so if you like her other books, you'll like this one too. It's about the first week of a newly opened guest house on the west coast of Ireland.

Spare -- Prince Harry and his ghost writer

This was not exactly a favorite, but I feel compelled to list it because it was not as bad as many naysayers wanted us to think. I found the parts about his childhood and military service interesting. The part about his wife ... well, I say let those among us who never had a regrettable romantic entanglement be the ones to cast stones. He seems very much in love.
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Carolyn Newlen
10 months ago
Homecoming, Kate Morton

The Last Remains, Elly Griffiths

Goodnight June and With Love from London, Sarah Jio (I like all her books that I've read)

Flags on the Bayou, James Lee Burke

The Lost Man and Force of Nature, Jane Harper

Overseas, Beatriz Williams

The Last Hours, The Turn of Midnight, and The Swift and the Harrier, Minette Walter
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yoyobon_gw
10 months ago
I read so many books it's difficult to sort them out into favorites.

I generally do not read what I am not enjoying......so in essence all that I read are more or less favorites on a sliding scale !

Remarkably Bright Creatures

The Maid

Her Last Flight

Overseas and almost any book by Beatriz Williams

Does anyone keep a notebook of titles which you've read ?

I'm beginning to warm up to this idea....
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Carolyn Newlen
10 months ago
I have alphabetical by author notebooks going back to the mid-nineties with notes on content. When I started ebooks during the pandemic, I began using Goodreads but still keep a title/author list thinking I would enter them as I used to. Now, it is out of hand and I probably will never do that, but I also don't know if I have already read a book without checking GR and then still don't remember what many of them are about.
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donnamira
Original Author
10 months ago
Well it was a pleasant surprise to see this thread pop up! It disappeared a few minutes after I posted it back in December, and I figured it had evaporated into the ether somewhere.

I started keeping a reading journal after the one of these 'best-of-year' threads here at RP about 20 years ago. It's just a table in Word that began with date, author and title; later I added a column for comments. (The notes on each book in my first post all came from that reading journal.) One Word file per year, and once a year I copy the date, author and title columns into an Excel file that I can sort and count up. Besides being useful for making up charts to analyze reading habits (a lifetime in STEM-related work does that to you), that Excel file is handy for our title game, since I only post titles of books I've read. :)

Bon, I've put Remarkably Bright Creatures on hold at the library, since I've heard so much good about it. On the other hand, I tried Overseas that both you and Carolyn liked so much, and gave up after 3 or 4 chapters.

My monthly Zoom Book Chat did an end-of-year roundup as well, and 2 folks put Demon Copperhead on their best-of list, so that is going on hold at the library too.
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yoyobon_gw
10 months ago
A bit OT, but take a look at this book store in Greenwich CT. They rent out this space specifically for book clubs to use for $150.
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kathy_t
10 months ago
Nice book-club space, but $150 to seat six comfortably, or eight uncomfortably? Um, no.

I have kept a book journal since 1991. It's in a Word document. At the beginning of the file, I list title, author and month I completed the book for the current year. Then I write a paragraph or so of commentary about each book and that is filed alphabetically by title below all the yearly lists. I like having it and refer to it pretty regularly. I take the file to the UPS Store every couple of years and have it printed.
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sarahcanary1
10 months ago
I also use Goodreads. I like how I can filter by the number of stars I gave each book. One standout for last year was The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni. Every member of my book club loved it. Lessons in Chemistry was the only book I gave 5 stars to. I liked The Last Caretaker by Jessica Strawser, and have enjoyed every book in William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Conner mystery series.
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