I’m excited to bring you my list of my top ten favorite books of 2023. Making top ten book lists is a tradition of mine dating all the way back to 1999! In the early years, I just e-mailed my list to a small group of friends and family - then added more and more recipients over the years, then started posting to Facebook, then on this blog, and then a few years ago I started a bookstagram account and started posting my list on there too! So clearly more and more people have seen my list as the years went on.
And it’s not just the audience that has increased - so has the amount of books I read a year. Back in 1999, I read just 53 books, which means my top 10 represented almost 20% of books I read that year. In 2023, I read a record 244 books, which means my top ten represents less than 5% of the books I read this year! No wonder this list was so hard to narrow down! I had only one book this year which I gave 5 stars to, so that was an automatic selection for this list. But I also had 18 books which I awarded 4.5 stars. So to choose between those, it was a combination of how the books affected me, how much they have stayed with me, and how much I have recommended them to other people, and a little dash of gut feeling. And it was really hard to narrow down!
As a reminder, these are books I read in a particular year, not necessarily books which were published that year - though nine of these were in fact published in 2023.
Without further ado, my ten most favorite of the year, listed in alphabetical order by author’s last name:
The Ferryman - Justin Cronin
Shark Heart - Emily Habeck
Exiles - Jane Harper
The Quiet Tenant - Clemence Michallon
Homecoming - Kate Morton
We All Want Impossible Things - Catherine Newman
Charm City Rocks - Matthew Norman
Tom Lake - Ann Patchett
Romantic Comedy - Curtis Sittenfeld
Read on for a little more about each book:
