Books of 2023
These are the books I read in 2023. I put an asterisk (*) next to the one(s) I consider the best of the month. I read 57 books.
DECEMBER
The Bee Sting (Paul Murray)
All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaires #1 (Martha Wells)
*Birnam Wood (Eleanor Catton)
The Fraud (Zadie Smith)
NOVEMBER
*Stalingrad (Vasily Grossman)
Soldier Sailor (Claire Kilroy)
The Gathering (Anne Enright)
OCTOBER
*Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (Naomi Klein)
SEPTEMBER
The Late Americans (Brandon Taylor)
*French Braid (Anne Tyler)
AUGUST
*Riddley Walker (Russell Hoban)
Shy (Max Porter)
*Nothing Special (Nicole Flattery)
Saint Maybe (Anne Tyler) [reread – one of my favourite books of all time!)
Either/Or (Elif Batuman)
Hiroshima (John Hershey)
Children of Ruin (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
JULY
Trust (Hernan Diaz)
*I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick (Emmanuel Carrère)
I’m A Fan (Sheena Patel)
Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock (Jenny Odell)
Rebel Mother: My Childhood Chasing the Revolution (Peter Andreas)
JUNE
Death Valley (Melissa Broder)
*The Life of the Mind (Christine Smallwood)
Parable of the Talents (Octavia E. Butler)
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa (Stephen Buoro)
Open Up (Thomas Morris)
I Got a Name: The Murder of Krystal Senyk (Eliza Robertson, Myles Dolphin)
Open Throat (Henry Hoke)
MAY
The Anniversary (Stephanie Bishop)
Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
The Animals of Farthing Wood (Colin Dann) [childhood favourite; reread]
*Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories (Philip Roth)
APRIL
*Yellowface (RF Kuang)
Bring Up the Bodies (Hilary Mantel) [reread]
MARCH
*Trust Exercise (Susan Choi)
*The Inheritors (William Golding)
Vehicle (Jen Calleja)
The Plot (Jean Hanff Korelitz)
Dinosaurs (Lydia Millet)
Hideous Kinky (Esther Freud)
Lightbox (KJ Orr)
*Retrospective (Juan Gabriel Vásquez)
FEBRUARY
The Guest (Emma Cline)
*The Golden Notebook (Doris Lessing)
Elder Race (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Gabrielle Zevin)
2312 (Kim Stanley Robinson)
Ducks (Kate Beaton)
This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone)
JANUARY
Homesickness (Colin Barrett)
*Tehanu (Ursula K. LeGuin)
The Farthest Shore (Ursula K. LeGuin)
Chrysalis (Anna Metcalfe)
The Sunset Route: Freight Trains, Forgiveness, and Freedom on the Rails in the American West (Carrot Quinn)
The Tombs of Atuan (Ursula K. LeGuin)