Your FAVORITE BOOKS of 2023

Happy Almost 2024! What were your 10 favorite books read this year? Are you going to struggle to get your list down to 10? Are you going to struggle to come up with 10?

Tell us your best reads of the year, and if you're inclined, one line about why they made the list. Our TBR piles will continue to grow!

Best of 2006

Best of 2007

Best of 2008

Best of 2009

Best of 2010

Best of 2011

Best of 2012

Best of 2013

Best of 2014

Best of 2015

Best of 2016

Best of 2017

Best of 2018

Best of 2019

Best of 2020

Best of 2021

Best of 2022

Happy list making!

in order consumed ~

Something in the Heir by Suzanne Enoch

The Searcher by Tana French

Exiles by Jane Harper (Aaron Falk, #3)

The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear

The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia by Candace Fleming (YA/NF)

Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune

The Maid by Nita Prose (Molly the Maid, #1)

Enough by Cassidy Hutchinson (NF)

Thanksgiving Blessing by Marta Perry (An Amish Holiday Novel, #3)

A Christmas Deliverance by Anne Perry (Christmas, #20)

A Quilt for Christmas by Melody Carlson

I'll do like Molly and list books in order of reading.

The House in the Cerulean Sea - TJ Klune - a re-read of my favourite book of 2022.
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis - a re-read of what is probably my favourite book of all.
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
Good Grief, the Ground by Margaret Ray
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

>2 Molly3028: >3 ahef1963: >4 snash: Thank you for sharing your lists! The House in the Cerulean Sea and Cloud Cuckoo Land were on my top ten last year. So good.

It was hard to narrow my list down to 10! My top ten for 2023 in the order I read them:

The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss
The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Wool by Hugh Howey
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
Gangster Nation by Tod Goldberg
All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke

If I had to pick one favorite it would probably be...Project Hail Mary!

>5 PaperbackPirate: I've got Project Hail Mary sitting to my left, just waiting for my lazy self to get to it ... it's a "reward read" for me ... I'm getting closer to having earned it!

I read a lot of excellent books last year, and enjoyed parts of many if not all. Lindbergh, A. Scott Berg, Lloyd James, Narrator, stands out as a particularly worthwhile, interesting read: I read 3 non-fiction works set in that WWI-WWII period, and this one really captured something unique about this time in history. The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History, Joseph M. Marshall, III was a close second for me, in terms of non-fiction.

In the submarine category (don't we all have a submarine category?), I'd place Surface at the Pole, James Calvert as my favorite, with a close second in God & Spies: Based on a True Story, Top Secret Operation, G.M. Matheny simply for the amazement I felt after reading it.

For fiction, I think Middlemarch, which I enjoyed immensely, and David Copperfield were my favorites. And All Systems Red by Martha Wells was a fast, easy read at the end of the year, an easy favorite in Sci Fi. And I'll always read anything by Nick Pirog, who came out with two this past year.

Lastly I'll mention Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino, as a book I'll come back to in the future. It needs to be read a little at a time, not in one full swoop. It's unique and wonderful for visual thinkers.

My 10 favorite books read in 2023 are...

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese
The Fisherman by John Langan
The Trail of the Lost by Andrea Lankford
The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder
Then the Fish Swallowed Him by Amir Ahmadi Arian
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
There There by Tommy Orange
Red X by David Demchuk

>5 PaperbackPirate: I read the Wind Through the Keyhole as well last year. I'm working my way chronologically through the series.