What you should be reading or for that matter eating, thinking, drinking or anything else in 2023 is for you to decide of course, so I offer the following in a spirit of guidance rather than direction (and also in accordance with my New Year’s resolution to be a beacon of generosity and goodwill in a dark universe). Yeah right.
As the calendar flips over from one year to the next, we’re bludgeoned with lists, recommendations, advice, words to the wise, predictions and a plethora of spurious intelligence from equally spurious experts. Why on earth would I want to add to the deluge?
Well, with books it’s very hard to choose. As an example, the book club I belong to is held in a book cafe in Adelaide called The Mockingbird Lounge, which is a bibliophile’s paradise. As well as selling secondhand books, gifts, coffee, cake and so on, they organise and run book clubs for book lovers of all stripes. Our club meets in a room lined floor to ceiling with books, books on the mantelpiece, the tables and basically everywhere except the floor. Looking around, I’m always confounded by choice. Cover after cover catches my eye and demands to be read.
Bookstores and libraries offer similarly overflowing banquets for the booklover. And then there’s online, an Amazonian universe in itself. Guidance, then, is called for.
Again though, there is a glut. The publish button only just pressed by anonymous fingers everywhere on the “best books of 2022” lists, the internet is heaving again with “most anticipated books of 2023”. Objectivity is at a premium here, as it is with anything bookish. And who’s got time to trawl through every man and his dog’s chart toppers, chosen from (if recent years are anything to go by) a possible field of millions?
Not anyone who has a life, obviously. So that leaves me, and I have trawled through a number with the goal of identifying whether there is any kind of consensus. Not for myself alone, but for you, perplexed reader. (And another caveat: I have no idea whether these various arbiters made their choices based on literary merit, market potential, which dare I say it was likely the case with “Spare” or a combination of both, or for that matter how unbiased they may have been).
All that aside, here’s the list of sites I surveyed, chosen randomly. There are many more, but I had to call a halt somewhere if this post was going to make it into 2023.
This is what I found. There’s a reasonable degree of consensus among the 12 surveyed sites, ranging from 7 to 0 books in common. I’ve listed the top hitters below as star ratings in descending order.
7 STARS
I Have Some Questions for You” by Rebecca Makkai (recommended by Kirkus, Goodreads, SheReads, Elle, Oprah, Time)
Goodreads Blurb: “… a stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, with a transfixing mystery at its heart. Timely, hypnotic, and populated with a cast of unforgettable characters …”
Publication Date: Feb 21, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Viking
“The Survivalists” by Kashana Cauley, Fiction (recommended by Kirkus, Goodreads, SheReads, Elle, Oprah Daily, Time)
Goodreads Blurb: “A single Black lawyer puts her career and personal moral code at risk when she moves in with her coffee entrepreneur boyfriend …in a novel that’s packed with tension, curiosity, humor, and wit from a writer with serious comedy credentials.”
Publication Date: Feb 21, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Viking
“Yellowface” by Rebecca F. Kuang, Fiction (recommended by Goodreads, BooklistQueen, SheReads, Elle, Oprah Daily, Time)
Goodreads Blurb: “…Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.”
Publication Date: May 16, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: The Borough Press
6 STARS
“Birnam Wood” by Eleanor Catton, Fiction (recommended by Kirkus, Goodreads, SheReads, Elle, Oprah, Time)
Goodreads Blurb: “… a stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, with a transfixing mystery at its heart. Timely, hypnotic, and populated with a cast of unforgettable characters …”
Publication Date: Feb 21, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
“Spare” by Prince Harry, Biography/Memoir (recommended by Goodreads, Vogue, SheReads, Elle, Vulture, Time)
Goodreads Blurb: “For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief. “
Publication Date: Jan 10, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Random House
“Romantic Comedy” by Curtis Sittenfeld, Fiction (recommended by Goodreads, SheReads, Elle, Oprah Daily, Time)
Goodreads Blurb: “With her keen observations and trademark ability to bring complex women to life on the page, Sittenfeld explores the neurosis-inducing and heart-fluttering wonder of love, while slyly dissecting the social rituals of romance and gender relations in the modern age.”
Publication Date: Apr 4, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Random Hou
“Chain Gang All Stars” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Fiction (recommended by Goodreads, Elle, Kirkus, SheReads, Oprah Daily)
Goodreads Blurb: “Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means. “
Publication Date: May 2, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Pantheon Books
“The Late Americans” by Brandon Taylor, Fiction (Recommended by Goodreads, SheReads, Elle, Oprah Daily, Vulture)
Goodreads Blurb: “A novel of intimacy and precarity, friendship and chosen family, The Late Americans is Brandon Taylor’s richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life.”
Publication Date: May 23, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Riverhead Books
“Quietly Hostile” by Samantha Irby, Essays (recommended by SheReads, Oprah Daily, Time, Goodreads, Elle)
Goodreads Blurb: “A much-anticipated, hilarious new essay collection from #1 New York Times bestselling unabashed fan-favorite Samantha Irby invites us to share in the gory particulars of her real life, all that festers behind the glitter and glam.”
Publication Date: May 16, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Vintage
5 STARS
“Victory City” by Salman Rushdie, Fiction (recommended by Goodreads, The Australian, Elle, Time)
Goodreads Blurb: “The epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries–from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie”.
Publication Date: Feb 7, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Random House
“Hello Beautiful” by Ann Napolitano, Fiction (recommended by Goodreads, BooklistQueen, SheReads, Elle)
Goodreads Blurb: Vibrating with tenderness, Hello Beautiful is a gorgeous, profoundly moving portrait of what’s possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.
Publication Date: Mar 14, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Dial Press
“Crook Manifesto” by Colson Whitehead, Fiction (recommended by SheReads, Elle, Oprah, Time)
Goodreads Blurb: “Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning Colson Whitehead continues his Harlem saga in a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory.”
Publication Date: Jul 18, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Doubleday
“The Guest” by Emma Cline, Fiction (recommended by The Australian, Vogue, SheReads, Elle)
Goodreads Blurb: Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline’s The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.
Publication Date: May 16, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Random House
4 STARS
“Lone Women” by Victor Lavalle, Fiction (recommended by Goodreads, Vulture, Oprah Daily, Lithub)
Goodreads Blurb: “Blue skies, empty land—and enough room to hide away a horrifying secret. Or is there? Discover a haunting new vision of the American West from the award-winning author of The Changeling.”
Publication Date: Mar 28, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: One World
“VenCo” by Cherie Dimaline, Fiction (recommended by Kirkus, Goodreads, Elle, LitHub)
Goodreads Blurb: “Lucky St. James, a Métis millennial living with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella, is barely hanging on when she discovers she will be evicted from their tiny Toronto apartment. Then, one night, something strange … she finds a silver spoon etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM, humming with otherworldly energy”.
Publication Date: Feb 7, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: William Morrow
“Our Share of Night” by Mariana Enriquez, Fiction (recommended by Goodreads, Elle, Oprah Daily, LitHub)
Goodreads Blurb: “A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travels to her family home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed.”
Publication Date: Feb 7, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Hogarth
“Age of Vice” by Deepti Kapoor, Fiction (recommended by Kirkus, Goodreads, Oprah Daily, LitHub)
Goodreads Blurb: “Equal parts crime thriller and family saga, transporting readers from the dusty villages of Uttar Pradesh to the urban energy of New Delhi, Age of Vice is an intoxicating novel of gangsters and lovers, false friendships, forbidden romance, and the consequences of corruption. It is binge-worthy entertainment at its literary best.”
Publication date: Jan 3, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Riverhead Books
“Pineapple Street” by Jenny Jackson, Fiction (recommended by Vogue, Elle, Time, LitHub)
Goodreads Blurb: “Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart escapist novel that sparkles with wit. It’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots and everything in between, and the insanity of first love.”
Publication Date: Mar 7, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Pamela Dorman Books
“Take What You Need” by Idra Novey, Fiction (recommended by Elle, Vulture Oprah Daily, LitHub)
Goodreads Blurb: Passionate and resonant, Take What You Need explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most, and what can be built from what others have discarded–art, unexpected friendship, a new contentment of self. This is Idra Novey at her very best.
Publication Date: Mar 14, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Viking
“Old Babes in the Wood” by Margaret Atwood, Stories (recommended by The Australian, Oprah Daily, Time, LitHub)
Goodreads Blurb: “A dazzling collection of short stories from the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, stories that look deeply into the heart of family relationships, marriage, loss and memory, and what it means to spend a life together.”
Publication Date: Mar 7, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Chatto & Windus
“Family Lore” by Elizabeth Acevedo, Fiction (recommended by SheReads, Elle, Time, LitHub)
Goodreads Blurb: “From bestselling, National Book Award–winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives.”
Publication Date: Aug 1, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Ecco Press
“The Half Moon” by Mary Beth Keane, Fiction (recommended by Goodreads, Booklist Queen, Vogue, LitHub)
Goodreads Blurb: Taking place over the course of one tumultuous week, The Half Moon shows off Mary Beth Keane’s skilled storytelling and generous spirit as she carefully explores a marriage in crisis, what it takes to make a life with another person, and the true meaning of family.
Publication Date: May 2, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Scribner
“A Living Remedy” by Nicole Chung, Memoir (recommended by Time, Goodreads, Elle, LitHub)
Goodreads Blurb: “Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another – and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and tragic inequalities in American society.”
Publication Date: Apr 4, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Ecco Press
“Happy Place” by Emily Henry, Fiction (recommended by Goodreads, The Australian, SheReads, Elle)
Goodreads Blurb: “A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.”
Publication Date: Apr 25, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Berkley
“Homecoming” by Kate Morton, Fiction (recommended by The Australian, BookBub, Booklist Queen, Elle)
Goodreads Blurb: “Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of the grand and mysterious mansion, a local delivery man makes a terrible discovery. A police investigation is called and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing murder cases in the history of South Australia.”
Publication Date: Apr 4, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Mariner Books
3 STARS
“What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez” by Claire Jimenez, Fiction (recommended by Goodreads, SheReads, Elle)
Goodreads Blurb: “A deeply powerful, raw debut novel that’s “equal measures hilarious and haunting” (Crystal Hana Kim), of a Puerto Rican family in Staten Island who discovers their long‑missing sister is potentially alive and cast on a reality TV show, and they set out to bring her home.”
Publication Date: Mar 7, 2023
Publisher/Link to book: Grand Central Publishing
THE OTHERS
Of the others (recommended by 2 sites or less), I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention “I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home” by Lorrie Moore, (one of my favourite authors) “The Shards” by Brett Easton Ellis (a founding member of the so-called Literary Brat Pack) and the stunning “Still Pictures: on Photography and Memory” by the late Janet Malcolm, reviewed by me here. It’s great also that two of the featured books above are by debut authors, Jenny Jackson’s “Pineapple Street” and Claire Jimenez’s “What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez“.
So, there you have it. Many contenders for a place on your TBR list for the rest of the year! For me, whose reading preferences are haphazard and accidental most of the time, I’m looking forward to reading Kate Morton’s “Homecoming” because it’s set in Australia, Emily Henry’s “Happy Place” because it sounds like fun and the new Margaret Atwood because I love her short stories.
