For years, I have usually included some sort of list of the books I read on social media, discussing the ones I liked the best, and giving them some sort of ranking. 2023 is the first year I didn’t really do that, mostly because by conscious choice I’ve spent a lot less time on social media and so very seldom put any updates on there. That said, I would like to include said list somewhere, so I decided to do it here. I’ll include the full list at the end, but I mainly want to briefly discuss my top books of 2023.
2023 was a weird year for me. For the previous several years, I have read several really impactful, “can’t put them down” books that will likely be among my most favorite reads forever. In fiction I have read Lonesome Dove, Gates of Fire, The Alienist, The Son, multiple Cormac McCarthy novels, Moby Dick, etc. In non-fiction I have read Empire of the Summer Moon, Into Thin Air, Bad Blood, Empire of Pain, Atomic Habits, etc. All of these have captured my attention and kept me riveted. 2023 did not have a lot of those types of books. That wasn’t really by design–I actually didn’t go into the year with much of a plan, and that may be why I ended up reading less and why my reading tended to be much less targeted. That is not to say I didn’t like what I read; overall, I enjoyed almost everything I picked up, but outside of a handful of books nothing really captured me the way it had in previous years.
I did reread some books, which I always like to mention up front as I don’t include these in my “best of” category. If I’m rereading a book, it’s most likely an all timer and so would make any years list of “best of.” But I’ll mention these up front as they are, contrary to most of the rest of the list, books I truly love. Among those was Lonesome Dove, which I read for the second straight year, and may be my favorite fiction book of all time. I’ll likely write about this book at some future date. I also reread Atomic Habits. Most motivational type books are good for initiating positive thinking, but aren’t impactful enough to change behaviors; Atomic Habits is the exception. This book has a huge number of practical, behavioral science suggestions for improving your life and I love it. I also reread one of the Harry Potter books, Prisoner of Azkaban. I love Harry Potter, and the release of the video game Hogwarts Legacy made me pine for a return to that world.
My pick for best book in 2023 was Patrick Radden Keefe’s expose on the Troubles in Northern Ireland, called Say Nothing. This book was among the best investigative journalist books I’ve ever read, and I actually preferred it to Keefe’s other, more widely known work, Empire of Pain. Empire of Pain is an investigative look at the Sackler family’s pharmaceutical empire, but one thing it doesn’t do as well as Say Nothing is to really focus on the fallout of the evil the Sackler family perpetrated. Say Nothing not only looks at the Troubles through the lens of the disappearance of a Belfast mother, but it examines the psychological effects the Troubles had on Northern Ireland long after peace had been declared. Keefe’s work here is tremendous, both digging into the disappearance and who was responsible, but taking the time to reveal how people on both sides of the violence were so negatively impacted that the repercussions are still being felt long after the end of it. It helps but is not necessary to have a real understanding of The Troubles, as Keefe does a pretty good job of giving a broad view, but spends most of his time examining what was happening through the eyes of a handful of participants. I can’t recommend this one highly enough.
My second favorite book was a fiction book called Leviathan Wakes, which is the first book in the Expanse series (which has also been made into a TV show. I’ll say up front that I’m not a fantasy or science fiction reader–most of my reading in recent years on that front has been solely on the recommendations of friends. This was no different, but it struck a chord with me in the way other books have not.) The Expanse is much more grounded science fiction – interplanetary travel exists, but only within our own galaxy, and the effects of such travel on the human body require special chemicals in order to be achieved. What I loved about the Expanse is not just the world that is created, but the characters within it. Many of the science fiction and fantasy books I’ve read, the world exists to service the main character, and everything is built around the “heroes journey” in which one person or a small handful of people have an outsized impact on the world due to special abilities that they possess. The Expanse does not have that – the people who exist in this world are just normal people trying to get by, and the things that happen to them could happen to anyone. The core of the novel focuses around the crew of a spaceship called the Rocinante (nice literary reference for those of you that know), and it’s their interactions that were my favorite part of the book. There’s also a ton of mystery and intrigue, so I think anyone with an interest in a central mystery could enjoy these books. I’ve already read the second (Caliban’s War) and am now in the middle of the third book, Abaddon’s Gate. The books have only gotten better.
Most everything else I read ranged from good to really good, but just shy of great. I did read Ronald C. White’s biography of Ulysses Grant, which was excellent. Dead Man’s Walk, by Larry McMurtry, was a solid prequel to Lonesome Dove, though it never quite achieves what Lonesome Dove does. I read several books in the Outlander series, and those are quite enjoyable if a bit long winded. I also read Charles Duhigg’s book Smarter, Faster, Better, which is a great look at how companies and organizations use certain systems to try to improve efficiency, and how this is adaptable to individuals. It is very good, but like the McMurtry book, just does not quite match Duhigg’s seminal work, The Power of Habit (which, btw, is a good companion piece to Atomic Habits.)
I also have to give a shout out to the absolute dumbest book I’ve ever read, Meg, by Steve Alten. If you want more in depth thoughts, feel free to visit my Goodreads page, where i included a full review. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it; it’s actually quite fun. But wow, is it incredibly stupid. The film, which was based on the novel, is fun but silly–but compared to the book, it looks like a work of genius. Everything in the book was so completely over the top that by the end you are left agape at how ludicrous the plot is, but then again, this is a book about an extinct mammoth shark so I’m not sure what I expected.
My full 2023 List:
- Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon
- The Log of a Cowboy by Andy Adams
- Forgotten Crimes by Suzanne Evans
- Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
- The Princess Bride by William Goldman
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling
- The Road to Middle Earth by Tom Shippey
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
- Indiana Jones and the Philosopher’s Stone by Max McCoy
- The Club by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg
- Dead Man’s Walk by Larry McMurtry
- American Ulysses by Ronald C. White
- Voyager by Diana Gabaldon
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers
- The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
- Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
- Dark Horse by Todd Rose
- Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
- Golden Son by Pierce Brown
- Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg
- Success and the Self Image by Zig Ziglar
- Meg by Steve Alten
- Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey
The Discourse 