My Top 9 Books in 2023—and a Question

Plus: 6 Honorable Mentions, a Retrospective, and Tips for Reading More in 2024

Photo by Pimthida

This year proved a big one for Miller’s Book Review. I started 2023 with just over eleven hundred subscribers, and I’m currently a skosh under 3,700. Thank you for coming along for the adventure! The growth mostly boils down to your ongoing engagement and sharing.

I’m sure that’s what grabbed the attention of the powers that be at Substack who named Miller’s Book Review a featured publication in July.

Thanks to you!

I’m quite proud of that distinction, but it never would have occurred without your interest and support. Besides, you keep it challenging and fun. I’m profoundly grateful you keep opening my emails and sharing these essays and reviews with your friends. Thank you!

My Top 9

I read 83 books this year and reviewed 59. Since I’m happy to quit a book that’s not doing it for me, I’d say most of them were pretty good. That said, some were clearly better than others. What follows is my top-nine books for the year and six honorable mentions.

My top 9 includes history, biography, fiction, philosophy, and more.

1. Gregg Hecimovich, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts. Review: “She Wrote Her Way to Freedom”

2. Martin Puchner, Culture. Review: “‘Culture Is a Huge Recycling Project’”

3. Sam Miller, Migrants. Review: “On the Go: The Age-Old Human Adventure of Migration”

4. Shusaku Endo, The Samurai. Review: “Shouldering the Burden of Belief”

5. Erich Hatala Matthes, Drawing the Line. Review: “James and the Giant Question: Should We Cancel Roald Dahl?”

6. Anna Funder, Wifedom. Review: “George Orwell: Terrific Writer, Terrible Husband”

7. David Brooks, How to Know a Person. Review: “All by Ourselves: Redeeming Loneliness”

8. Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country. Review: “Undoing the Damage We Do Each Other”

9. John Wyndham, Trouble with Lichen. Review: “What Sort of Catastrophe Do You Prefer?”

It’s hard to say enough good things about these books. Hecimovich’s Hannah Crafts biography is a triumph of historical and literary research. Puchner and Miller’s books could easily be read as a pair—both arguing for the fundamental richness of a world in which people and ideas are free to mix. What about Endo’s The Samurai? Why not his better-known Silence? I think they also work well—maybe best—as a pair. But I found The Samurai especially poignant, hence its position on the list.

Funder and Matthes’s books also make a good pair as they deal with the same fundamental problem: What do we do with public figures who misbehave in private? And Brooks’s How to Know a Person does as well, arguing people are complex, not cancelable.

Then there are a couple of my favorite novels from the year—Paton’s because it’s so moving, Wyndam’s because it’s so fun. Both are thought provoking in wildly different ways.

Honorable Mentions

But I can’t limit myself to just nine. I have a few others I want to call out.

Don’t sleep on these! Fiction, memoir, and a bit of brain science.

• Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Review: “The Little Girl Who Helped Beat the Nazis”

• Esau McCaulley, How Far to the Promised Land. Review: “’A People Born of Trauma and Miracle’”

• Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women. Review: “‘Among the Dragons, There Will Always Be Heroes’”

• Richard Deming, This Exquisite Loneliness. Review: “All by Ourselves: Redeeming Loneliness”

• Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Review: “Resistance Is Not Futile: It’s How You Stay Sane”

• Andy Clark, The Experience Machine. Review: “What’s Reality? Make Your Best Guess”

I leave these unranked because any one could have come before another in the list. All are profound and worth attention. Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a gem and the crown of my 2023 classic novel goal. Kesey’s Cuckoo’s Nest is much different but both deal with the irrepressibility of the human spirit. So do McCaulley and Moore’s memoirs.

Along with those, Deming’s exploration of loneliness and Clark’s investigation of the mechanics of cognition provide compelling insight into the daily experience of being a person in a fraught but fascinating world.

Discovering the power inherent in the above novels and memoirs was partly what prompted my 2024 reading goal, which will contain both more classic fiction and memoir. I talk about that here and will be sharing my final reading list for the goal this weekend. Here, by the way, were last year’s top 9 and honorable mentions.

What about the question flagged in the headline? I want to know your favorite books from 2023. What are they? Please share those in the comments below. I love end-of-year lists. They let me know what I might have missed and give me ideas for the upcoming year. Plus, I love hearing what excites other people.

Highlights

Last year was notable in several other ways worth mentioning. In the summer I began doing Q&As with authors—including both Gregg Hecimovich and Martin Puchner. I’ll be continuing this feature in 2024 and already have a few great ones lined up. Other Q&A highlights from 2023 include Nick Gillespie and Hollis Robbins. You can find all the Q&As here.

Perhaps not surprising, but C.S. Lewis proved popular. I was, however, not expecting him to prove so popular. In the current ranking of my top-seven posts, four concern Lewis:

• “Giving Thanks for C.S. Lewis”

• “C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot: How Rivals Became Friends”

• “All the Authors We Forgot Along the Way”

• “Postscript to the C.S. Lewis–T.S. Eliot Story: ‘A Grief Observed’”

In terms of total traffic, the Lewis–Eliot rivalry story attracted more eyeballs than any other post.

Are there any posts I wished had received more attention? I figure everything I published in 2023 got the appropriate level of attention except maybe one piece. I felt particularly proud of—and perhaps a tad too clever regarding—my review of Simon Garfield’s history of encyclopedias, All the Knowledge in the World. What made that review special? It has exactly 26 paragraphs, all alphabetical.

Anything else stand out? I have to mention my 2023 classic novel goal. What a delight that proved to be. I selected (with your input) twelve novels to read and review through the year and found myself grateful for every one of them. I can’t wait to get started on 2024’s list.

Everything Read and Reviewed

What follows is a list of every book I read and reviewed in 2023:

1. Edward Wilson-Lee, A History of Water

2. Massimo Pigliucci, The Quest for Character

3. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

4. Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women

5. Chuck Klosterman, The Nineties

6. Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio

7. Brandon R. Byrd et al., Ideas in Unexpected Places

8. Angel Adams Parham and Anika Prather, The Black Intellectual Tradition

9. Hollis Robbins, Forms of Contention

10. Claude Atcho, Reading Black Books

11. Jens Andersen, The LEGO Story

12. John W. Kropf, Color Capital of the World

13. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

14. Mary-Alice Daniel, A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing

15. Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness

16. Peter Burke, Ignorance: A Global History

17. Henry Cloud, Trust

18. Tracy Maylett and Tim Vandehey, Swipe

19. Louis Markos, From Plato to Christ

20. Erich Hatala Matthes, Drawing the Line

21. Joseph Heller, Catch-22

22. Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

23. Martin Puchner, Culture

24. Eugene Vodolazkin, A History of the Island

25. Jamie Kreiner, The Wandering Mind

26. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

27. C.S. Lewis, The Reading Life

28. C.S. Lewis, On Writing (and Writers)

29. Sam Miller, Migrants: The Story of Us All

30. James Crawford, The Edge of the Plain

31. Ray Edwards (with Jeff Goins), Read This or Die!

32. Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country

33. Sigrid Undset, The Wreath (Kristen Lavransdatter, Book 1)

34. Sigrid Undset, The Wife (Kristen Lavransdatter, Book 2)

35. Sigrid Undset, The Cross (Kristen Lavransdatter, Book 3)

36. Andy Clark, The Experience Machine

37. Tara Isabella Burton, Self Made

38. Simon Garfield, All the Knowledge in the World

39. Eric Hoel, The World Behind the World

40. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

41. Peco Gaskovski, Exogenesis

42. John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids

43. Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

44. Anna Funder, Wifedom

45. Esau McCaulley, How Far to the Promised Land

46. Henry James, A Turn of the Screw

47. Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

48. Gregg Hecimovich, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts

49. Sly Stone, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

50. John Wyndham, Trouble with Lichen

51. John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos

52. John Wyndham, Stowaway to Mars

53. John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes

54. John Wyndham, Foul Play Suspected

55. David Brooks, How to Know a Person

56. Richard Deming, This Exquisite Loneliness

57. Shusaku Endo, Silence

58. Shusaku Endo, The Samurai

59. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Everything Unreviewed

And here’s everything I left unreviewed—or mostly so. I just posted one-sentence takes on each of these 17, but that hardly counts as a full review.

1. Charles Portis, Norwood

2. Charles Portis, True Grit

3. Charles Portis, The Dog of the South

4. Charles Portis, Masters of Atlantis

5. Charles Portis, Gringos

6. Simon Winchester, Knowing What We Know

7. Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge

8. Nicholas Spencer, Magisteria

9. Stephen De Young, Apocrypha

10. Mark Gregory Pegg, Beatrice’s Last Smile

11. John Anthony McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church

12. Karen Swallow Prior, The Evangelical Imagination

13. Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

14. Wolfram Eilenberger, The Visionaries

15. Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way

16. Nick de Semlyen, The Last Action Heroes

17. Matt Lewis, Filthy Rich Politicians

Now, I know what you’re thinking: 59 and 17 don’t equal 83. You’re right! I also read all seven of the novels by C.S. Lewis’s friend and fellow Inkling Charles Williams. I’m still planning on reviewing them, possibly before New Year’s, possibly just after.

1. Charles Williams, War in Heaven

2. Charles Williams, Many Dimensions

3. Charles Williams, The Place of the Lion

4. Charles Williams, The Greater Trumps

5. Charles Williams, Shadows of Ecstasy

6. Charles Williams, Descent into Hell

7. Charles Williams, All Hallow’s Eve

Reading More in 2024

When I first mentioned I’d read 83 books this year, a few people asked me how I possibly manage to read so much. My typical answer is that I basically have just one hobby and you’re looking at the results of it. That said, there are some practicalities and strategies involved.

When I first launched Miller’s Book Review, just before I started the regular publishing schedule, I posted my nine tips for reading more in the coming year. This link will take you to the post with its explanation for each point, outlined below, and the few additional links below will take you to posts that elaborate highlighted point.

1. Keep track

2. Switch formats

3. Cut back on TV

4. Take books everywhere

5. Follow your whims

6. Vary your genres

7. Read several books at once

8. Seek suggestions

9. Quit at any time

To that list I’d add a tenth: Set a goal. It doesn’t have to be crazy ambitious, but a goal you track—and toward which you put some regular effort—is a great way to accomplish pretty much anything. They didn’t build the Empire State Building all at once. Rather, every brick and beam eventually added up to the completed structure. A reading goal works the same way.

Every little bit adds up

So that was 2023, more or less. Now I want to hear from you: What were your favorite books in 2023? Share those in the comments below.

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