The top 10 books of 2023
As determined by me, a guy with no credentials whatsoever
Every year I eagerly read various publications’ Best Books of the Year lists, partly to trawl for interesting titles I may have missed, but, let’s be frank, primarily to flatter my own tastes by seeing if they’ve selected anything I’ve already read.
The problem is, most years I’ve only read a couple of books that came out during the allotted timespan. Dude, there are literally centuries of books to catch up on! But this year I read more than usual - like a positively indulgent amount: 219 books as of this writing. Goodreads has informed me that I’m in the top 25% of readers this year (whatever that’s actually supposed to mean - by number of books, number of pages, what?). Admittedly, a very significant proportion of those books have been quick-read graphic novels and kids’ books, though on the other hand there are a few dozen picture books I never bothered to log. Still, it’s a lot - and for once, I’ve read enough books from the current year to make my very own top 10 list!
Truth be told, these are almost ALL of the 2023 books I read this year - there are only a few that didn’t warrant inclusion. Luckily, my radar for what I’ll like is pretty strong, so all the books I picked were in some special way powerful, impactful, informative, entertaining, or any combination thereof. I highly recommend everything that’s listed here.
Which of these, if any, have you read? Which do you want to read? Keep me posted, I’d love to talk about them!
Bunny & Tree, by Balint Zsako
I love wordless picture books, but sometimes they’re in danger of feeling like less than the sum of their parts - by giving the reader so much opportunity to project their own interpretation, they can come across as either too facile or too vague. That is not the case in this stunning, hand-painted opus about two unlikely friends on an unlikelier adventure. The central narrative is so peculiar and formally inventive, and the imagery on each page is so richly and strangely rendered, that it feels like nothing else I’ve ever read. It’s also an incredibly satisfying physical artifact - thick and heavy, teeming with color and promise.
Cary Grant's Suit: Nine Movies That Made Me the Wreck I Am Today, by Todd McEwen
This brisk work of memoir-cum-movie criticism is filled to jostling with laugh-out-loud observations and insights about growing up in the shadow of Hollywood. McEwen is an archetypal self-loathing boomer who simultaneously revels in and regrets his generation’s dictatorial nostalgia. Whether discussing his childhood neighborhood’s self-serious Wizard of Oz reenactments, his unhealthy obsession with seeing Chinatown in theaters as many times as possible, or basking in the title essay’s luminous reading of Hitchcock, few things I read this year provided me with more sentence-by-sentence pleasure.
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, by Naomi Klein
I just wrote an entire post about this one, so I won’t say much here other than that I could hardly imagine a stranger or savvier portrait of the weird limbo that was 2023.
Edith Holler, by Edward Carey
I wrote a bit about Carey this fall, wondering where this author/illustrator has been all my life. Though brand new, this book feels dredged from an alternate-reality past. Set in Norwich, England, in 1901, it tells the story of a young girl who was born in her family’s grand theater and doomed never to set foot outside its walls. As a recovering (and recently relapsed) show person, this metaphor was intriguing out of the gate, but the world that Carey creates from this premise is grotesque, exciting, and effusively imaginative, marshaling elements of Dickensian melodrama, eldritch folk horror, and Borgesian metanarrative to create something fresh and new out of janky old parts. Plus, you can download the book’s illustrations as a PDF to print and create your own toy theater, and what could be better than that?
Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day, by Dan Nott
I borrowed this nonfiction comic from the library for Dash but highly enjoyed it myself. It’s a wide-ranging, clever, and evocative explanation of the physical systems that keep our society moving, presented with great aplomb and, in its candor about the negative effects of these systems alongside their massive benefits, without the slightest hint of condescension toward the younger readers it’s aimed at. The simple visuals do a great job of distilling highly complex concepts into something that nearly anyone can appreciate, which went a long way to reinforcing my shaky understanding of these crucial things we take for granted every day.
Information Desk: An Epic, by Robyn Schiff
I shared a wee excerpt of this book the other week. Basically, if you love the Metropolitan Museum of Art as much as I do, you have to be interested in a book-length poem that uses the Met as its setting, muse, and bête noire. Schiff worked at the titular desk a couple of decades back and draws upon her experience learning its ins and outs - including less-than-pleasant experiences with predatory co-workers - to build a uniquely American story about value in various forms: what we value, how we value it, and what we’re willing to endure, overlook, or engage in as we pursue it. It’s also very funny and welcoming, so don’t let its use of carefully arranged rhythmic lines scare you away!
Milton Glaser: Pop, by Stephen Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
I’d be hard pressed to name an artist who did more to shape the visual world inside my head than Milton Glaser. This delightful art book covers a wide swath of work from his most prolific area, from iconic pieces like his Dylan poster and Signet Shakespeare covers to a wealth of wonderful obscurities. A desert island book if there ever was one. (I was also lucky to see an adjacent exhibit featuring much of the original work depicted in the book, which I wrote about here.)
Monica, by Daniel Clowes
If you have even the slightest interest in comics, the latest book by the legendary Gen X cartoonist needs no introduction. I’m delighted to say that it more than merits the hype. On the surface, you can call it a coming-of-middle-age story in which the title character reckons with her troubled upbringing as she tries to find a way to live in the world as a confused but hopeful adult - a tale that doubles as a reflection on the sordid legacy of the late 20th century. But that doesn’t give credit to the book’s bone-deep, nearly Lovecraftian weirdness, as Monica wanders in and out of a kaleidoscopic range of creepy/funny/ambiguous situations. Clowes has always walked on the razor’s edge of snark, but this book veers sharply from that borderline glibness to create a work of hard-won visual and narrative poetry that exceeded even my (very high) expectations.
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, by Claire Dederer
Over the past few years, we’ve all wondered what to do about art we love that was created by horrible men. When we learn about the horror, do we disengage, double-down, or dither? Dederer starts this highly personal, very funny exploration of the subject by wishing for a calculator that would allow you to enter all the variables to determine whether liking, say, Rosemary’s Baby is “okay” or not. Her answer, of course, is that there’s no such thing as “okay,” and we’re all on our own. But that deep ambiguity is refreshing, even a relief - we’re free to make our own choices, case by case, according to our own needs and desires. I very highly recommend this one to anyone who struggles with these subjects - so, to anyone, really.
Our Strangers, by Lydia Davis
Davis is a master of the miniature, whose short stories operate at a strange junction between poem, comedy sketch, and Beckettian parable. Her unnamed narrators are endlessly pithy, though often quite self-satisfied and delusional, and as each brisk vignette marches in a stately manner across your line of vision, you can’t help but squint and ask, “Wait, is that me down there?” I feel like her work has become a bit more accessible over the time since I read her Collected Stories (which I drifted through over about seven years), but it still has bite - this is actually a perfect introduction to her oeuvre. (I wrote a little more about it here.)
BONUS: West of the Sea, by Stephanie Willing
It’s unfair to lump this with the rest of the selections above - of course I love it, because I love the person who wrote it. Stephanie is a longtime friend and collaborator from our theater days, and this novel for young readers is her literary debut. I genuinely believe more coming of age stories should involve the protagonist’s discovery that she is a shape-shifting amphibian cryptid with the power to see into the pre-human past. The story is very moving for anyone who’s ever felt like an outsider (so, everyone), and its flights of fancy are grounded in the sort of tactile detail that makes the geography of Texas a character in its own right. Stephanie’s generous spirit and boundless imagination spring out from every word. She narrates the audiobook herself, as is fitting for such a fine and generous actress. Buy 10 copies today!
Finally, in case this isn’t enough for you to worry about, here’s a list of books written at any time in the past that I found particularly compelling/enjoyable this year. If I wrote about it previously in The Jeff Stream, I’ve linked to it.
The Case of the Missing Men/The Cursed Hermit, by Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes
Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut (first reread since high school)
Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (I worked through this one for three years!)
Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delaney
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton
Eight-Lane Runaways, by Henry McCausland
Either/Or, by Elif Batuman
The English Heretic Collection, by Andy Sharp
The English Understand Wool, by Helen DeWitt
Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction, by Brian Dillon
Haven, by Emma Donoghue
The Journalist and the Murderer, by Janet Malcolm
Kick the Latch, by Kathryn Scanlan
The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir, by Vivian Gornick
Picnic at Hanging Rock, by Joan Lindsay
Prague Full of Ghosts, by Miloslav Švandrlík and Jiří Winter Neprakta
Recitatif, by Toni Morrison
Samaris, by François Schuiten and writer Benoît Peeters
The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson
Suzuki Beane, by Sandra Scopettone and Louise Fitzhugh
The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas (okay, I’m not actually finished yet, but I’m close!)
Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, by Jia Tolentino
Here’s to more reading in 2024. What could possibly be a better distraction from a world in collapse?