Top 10 Books of 2023
Elizabeth Moore
Let’s just say 2023 was not my year of reading. The goal was the same as the past five years—to read fifty books. Alas, I read twenty-six. I realize that’s still a lot of books, yet I can’t help but recognize I am not the reader I once was.
As a matter of fact, I am not the person I once was. I left my job in publishing, I traveled, I maxed out my social battery, I wrote a lot, I moved. Time was given to other things and that’s okay. When I read, I read for comfort, for pleasure, and to check a few books off of my “I should have already read this” list. I didn’t read many new releases and I didn’t explore or experiment much. It felt weird to not be slamming back one book per week, but I was honestly so flooded with existential thoughts that running, boxing, and writing took priority.
However, quarter-life angst aside, I did manage to read a few stellar books. Here are the top ten with contextless and grammatically incorrect comments sprinkled throughout. Enjoy!!!
10. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
The thing about this book is that no one should read it unless you are a pretentious publishing girlie who has to for professional and social relevancy. It’s so dark and painful and annoyingly brilliant that I couldn’t look away. I didn’t necessarily ~enjoy~ reading this but I’m glad I did and will be thinking about it for a long time—about how living a full and rich life means being totally, terrifyingly awake.
9. The Irrational Season by Madeleine L’Engle
Lots of deep sighs. Lots of scribbling furiously in the margins. Lots of trying to hold onto the magic of kairos only to have it inevitably slip away. Madeleine writes about spirituality and incarnation with curiosity, luminosity, and the loveliness of an ordinary woman caught in the rain.
8. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
With its black-and-white illustrations and sharp, imaginative wit, this book helped me step out of the worrisome Real World and reminded me that the world is also full of enchantment, challenges, beauty, humor, and friendship if we will only humble ourselves and look for it. A delightful, brilliant classic.
7. Enchantment by Katherine May
The way I am obsessed with Katherine May. This book is for anyone who seeks the realm of everyday magic, where the elemental and spiritual meet. (Aka: Lovely essays, charming writer, every day experiences turned into treasures.)
6. Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson
Here’s the thing: I just encountered my soul’s long lost brother, and I will heretofore be living my life like Andrew Peterson & friends. This book set me back on the path toward home and inspired me to live with imagination, glory, wonder, discipline, tenacity, and a clear view of my calling.
5. These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett’s essays make me want to smile, write, weep at death, and hug my parents, my friends, and my heroes. Reading this made me grateful for the gift of being alive today.
4. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
If a book about a magical library exists, you know I’m all in. If it comes with a side of existential questions, seasoned with dread and joy, I’m eating that shit up.
3. Babel by R.F. Kuang
Bursting with imagination and history, this book is a love letter to linguistics and the power of words. It was a whole thing, I can’t even begin.
2. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
What a beautiful and sad winter book—utterly haunting and captivating. This got me in my emo feels for real. Still marinating on how dialogue with Faina was all sans quotation marks and that has me going into deep thought spirals. I’m obsessed with fairy tale retellings and this satisfied me deeply.
1. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
I fell into this book in the first chapter. Not because of any riveting plot (though there are two love stories—one spicy, one steady) but because a mother and her three daughters get to sort out the past, present, and future together. Very Little Women-esque. This quiet-but-powerful glimpse into one family’s life is about the stories we share and the ones we don’t. It’s also a book about memory. About how the past holds treasures and secrets and snippets of us, reasons why we made the decisions that we did. I’ve read other Ann Patchett novels and liked them okay, but the timing of this book aligned with my heart in some miraculous way. It spoke to the part of me that longs to be tucked away on a cherry farm, recounting the past with my daughters, aware of the ways life could have gone differently, yet grateful it turned out the way that it did.
Complete List of 2023 Books:
Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas by Charles Moore
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
The Irrational Season by Madeleine L’Engle
Notes on Love by Lauren Windle
The Hurting Kind: Poems by Ada Limon
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson
Enchantment by Katherine May
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Babel by R.F. Kuang
This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley
The Alphabet of Grace by Frederick Beuchner
The Alchemist by Paulo Cuelho
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
My Brother’s Book by Maurice Sendak
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Beholding by Strahan Coleman
One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
Evergreen Chase by Juneau Black
Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler