Share: Book Recommendations Based on my 2023 Reading

Fiction and Non-Fiction

It seems that year-end lists begin to circulate around late November, which I always think is too soon because there’s an entire month yet to happen at that time. I’ve been pondering my best-of 2023 reading list for a couple of weeks and decided to take time on this last day of December to organize my year in books. I read 58 books in 2023, so I had a lot to chew on as I considered what has meant the most to me in terms of books. I’ve split my fiction recommendations out from non-fiction and have made sub-lists within non-fiction to highlight the areas I focused on this past year: grief, aging, memoir, and general non-fiction. You will find this entire list with links to purchase from Powell’s, an independent bookstore based in Portland, OR, here. (Note that I earn a small commission in the form of Powell’s credit with any purchase from my Powell’s bookshelf.)

Fiction

In 2023, I read 17 novels and one graphic novel. Here are the fiction books I count in my top five for the past year:

• The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman - A magical realism novel set in the fictional town of Blackwell, Massachusetts, where local legend says Johnny Appleseed planted a mystical apple tree known locally as the Tree of Life. With each chapter the reader travels forward in time and gains the perspective of a Blackwell resident or visitor. In Hoffman’s novel The Invisible Hour, which I also read in 2023, Nathaniel Hawthorne visits Blackwell and encounters its (fictional) sites and lore.

• This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub - A heartwarming novel featuring time travel, search for self, and the reality of mortality.

• The novel Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner reads to me like a Coen Brothers film. The character of Fleishman is human and endearing. (Incidentally, this is the only novel on my list that is not a story involving magical realism.)

• Skylight Confessions: A Novel by Alice Hoffman - This aching novel weaves threads of discontent, searching, and self-destruction into a family’s eventual story of what could be considered redemption. 

• The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan - A lighthearted and rich story of Laura, a woman who inherited her employer’s estate, including a collection of found items he commissions her to return to their rightful owners. Characters include a grumpy ghost and a young woman who can sense objects’ stories by touch.

Graphic novel - Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds with art by Jason griffin tells a visceral story familiar to everyone who paid attention during the pandemic and racial tension of 2020 that continues today.

Honorable mention: In 2023, I read two mysteries in Marcie R. Rendon’s Cash Blackbear mystery series. The time and place of the novels’ setting—the Fargo-Morehead area in the 1970s—is familiar, and the stories offer a glimpse of Indigenous life in the rural US.

Non-Fiction (Grief)

Of the 10 grief-related non-fiction books I read in 2023 following the unexpected death of my 50-year-old brother-in-law, these are the three I found most helpful:

• Danish poet Naja Marie Aidt in When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl’s Book brings readers along as she unfolds her heart-wrenching experience of her son’s tragic death.

• Natalie Taylor and her spouse Josh had been expecting their first child when Josh died in a freak accident. In Signs of Life, Natalie recounts her journey over the course of her first year without Josh from utter shock and pain to life as the single mother of an infant to what begins to look like healing.

• In The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying, wife, mother of young boys, and poet Nina Riggs recounts her experience of living with—and eventually dying from—breast cancer. Riggs’s perspective, specifically about living the days you have as I reflected on here—continues to resonate profoundly with me.

• Honorable mention: Reading the memoir Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, about her mother’s decline and death from cancer, felt like I was virtually hanging out with Zauner through her grief and that I had company in my own sadness. Everyone finds different ways through grief, and Zauner’s way was to learn to make traditional foods her Korean mother had prepared throughout Zauner’s time growing up.

Non-Fiction (Aging)

Following my jag of reading very sad grief books, I moved on to books I hoped would help me come to terms with getting older. (Because everything in Western culture tells us that we must hide appearances of aging and continue to look and act youthful.) In 2023, I read 5 books in this category, and the two I would recommend and may even re-read in the future are:  

• A Glorious Freedom: Older Women Leading Extraordinary Lives by Lisa Congdon is an illustrated collection of women who have made inspiring accomplishments at age 40 or older.

• Radiant Rebellion: Reclaim Aging, Practice Joy, and Raise a Little Hell by Karen Walrond, which I wrote about here.

Non-Fiction (Memoir)

Memoir is another category of non-fiction I read in 2023, primarily by audiobook and primarily Black women’s stories:

• Finding Me: A Memoir by Viola Davis led me to the guilty pleasure of watching all six seasons of How to Get Away with Murder.

• Listening to The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times felt as if Michelle Obama were a girlfriend imparting lived wisdom and cheerful encouragement.

• After hearing mention of it in Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement by Tarana Burke, I was inspired finally to listen to …

• Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which I followed with …

• Maya Angelou’s Autobiography #2, Gather Together in My Name. (I am still intrigued to learn how Angelou bridged from her turbulent early adulthood to becoming an internationally renowned writer. I will plan to read her third autobiography in 2024.)

• Kerry Washington achieved her goal to write her memoir, Thicker Than Water, around themes rather than linearly, as she discussed in this episode of We Can Do Hard Things.

Non-Fiction (General)

Finally, I read almost 20 general non-fiction books. The four I recommend are:

• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson is an enlightening and engaging history of the conditions under which Black families moved to northern states and their experiences in their adopted northern cities.

• Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond should be required reading for Americans to help them understand why poverty in the US remains a seemingly unsolvable problem and to help them learn what policies contribute to ongoing issues and what could help solve the problem.

• In Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer poetically describes peoples’ connections with nature and exhorts readers to consider living with reciprocity toward the earth and her bountiful gifts to us. 

• Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May helped me get through the long winter season of 2022-2023. I expect I will turn to Wintering in future years to remind me of humans’ resilience and the value of appreciating the dark, cold season we endure each year.

As mentioned at the start of this article, a bookshelf full of this entire list of recommendations is online here at Powell’s, an independent bookstore based in Portland, OR. (I earn a small commission in the form of Powell’s credit with any purchase from my Powell’s bookshelf.)

What did you enjoy reading in 2023? Do you set a reading goal each year? What do you look forward to reading in 2024? I look forward to hearing from you to hear about the books on your lists.