Top 10 Books of 2023

 

Top 10 Books of 2023

Here is my Top 10 list of books from the last year. I've slowed way down in reading over the last few years,  except for the count of pictures books which the little one just eats up. We read 3-4 pictures books with her every day. I read 56 books this year, averaging 1.08 books a week

1. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. As a bookseller for 30 years, I had many people recommend "The Storied Life Of AJ Fikry" to me. I read it and was disappointed with how much of a soap opera it was. It was OK, but not my cup of tea. After reading so many good reviews of Tomorrow..., I decided to give it a try. I am so glad I did, this is a magical story of real friendship and love. The main characters love each other, but it is a platonic love & friendship based on shared passions. One of the things I really enjoyed about it was how much I learned about video game design and especially about the use of music in games. I am not a gamer anymore, haven’t really been since physical arcades fizzled out long ago, but I absolutely adored this book and highly recommend it.

2. The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer. I loved this book! There isn’t any other book on this list that made me smile as much as this one did. It's a kind of literary Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Heck, it's even dedicated to Charlie. A reclusive author reveals that the winner of a competition among his fans will win the only copy of the manuscript of the final book in his immensely popular series of young adult books. It's a simple book, but it is filled with love for reading and for those around you.

3. The Wager by David Grann. The Wager is a thrilling story of British sailors, shipwrecks, mutiny, and amazing returns to England, all well before the HMS Bounty. Grann recounts the story of a 1700s English warship that sank along the coast of Patagonia. The survivors end up splitting up and taking different routes in trying to get home. Much like the media coverage of the Bounty mutiny, those that returned to England first got their stories heard most loudly by the public. 

4. The Fourth Wing – by Rebecca Yarros. Man, I loved this book. The closest thing to the feeling I got reading the Harry Potter books and I'm very much looking forward to the next book. It’s the story of a young woman sent to a dragon-riding military academy. Yarros borrows from Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books, but it all worked for me (and evidently most of the book buyers in the US). Be aware that it does have a couple of very adult scenes in it and a few too many longing looks.

5. The Ferryman – Justin Cronin. I'm a huge fan of Cronin’s The Passage trilogy, some of the most literary vampire fiction you’ll ever read (Ok, technically not vampires). I was curious what he would come up with next. Having finished it, I’m still not certain what it was, only that I couldn’t put it down. There were lots of “What the Hell?” type expletives uttered. The basic story has been done before, a utopia hiding a dark secret. Of course, nothing is as it seems and you never quite know what is going on, but I loved it.

6. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store – James McBride. This was a little bit of an odd one for me, in that I was almost halfway through the book thinking that I was still in background info for the main story. Then I realized the author had been telling the main story all along, and I was totally OK with that. It's the story of the Jewish and African American families around a grocery store in a small town in Pennsylvania. I enjoyed it very much..

7. Empire of the Summer Moon – S. C. Gwynne. Yep! I finally got around to reading this excellent history of Quannah Parker, first published in 2011. I was about to head to East Texas for Ame's family reunion and I remembered that some of Quannah's story took place in that area. Quannah was a fascinating man raised in a culture totally alien to ours. He did horrible things to the settlers trying to take his tribe's lands but was also an excellent strategist. A fascinating read.

8. Now Is Not the Time to Panic – Kevin Wilson. Wilson continues to amaze me with his writing. I think everything he has written since “The Family Fang” has made one of my Top 10 lists. This one features a prank by 2 teens in a small town that goes viral (well before that is really a thing) and ends up spreading across the nation. Twenty years later as they get closer to being revealed as the originators, their lives may change. “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.“

9. The Last Devil To Die – Richard Osman. The fourth and last, at least for a few years, of The Thursday Murder Club books is probably the best since the first book. I love Osman's characters and the fact that a villain in one book can end up helping the gang in another one. The adventure is set up by the murder of a minor character from a previous book. It is one of those books that made me laugh and cry. Please check out this series if you haven't already.. 

10. Waco – Jeff Guinn. Jeff Guinn does it again with another history book that is both gripping and informative. I thought I knew quite a bit about David Koresh and the Waco firefight, but I learned a lot from reading this. I highly recommend any and all of his history books, but I think “Go Down Together”, about Bonnie and Clyde is my favorite
.

 Here are a few honorable mentions for the year: Mickey 7 & Antimatter Blues both by Edward Ashton, Prisoners of the Castle - Ben MacIntyre, Things in the Basement - Ben Hatke, Razzmatazz - Christopher Moore, Shrines of Gaiety - Kate Atkinson, and Holly - Stephen King. And the worst book I read this year was Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata, a collection of short stories, many of which featured cannibalism. Odd thing is, Murata wrote Convience Store Woman, which was my number 1 book of 2018.