My Favorite Books of 2023
Here are my favorite books from this past year, or as I might alternately title this list- these are the books I finished. It is mostly in chronological order, though not entirely since I can’t always remember when I read things these days.
2. The Nickel Boys — Colson Whitehead
I read Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad a few years ago and loved it. This year I pulled The Harlem Shuffle off the library shelf at the Atwater Village library and immediately enjoyed the early 1960’s Harlem evoked in this work. There is a small-time crime plot here in which the protagonist becomes involved with in his job as a furniture storeroom owner, but for me that was secondary to the rich texture of everyday life in Harlem.
Nickel Boys, also by Whitehead, is based on a real life boys detention facility in Florida. A studious young black boy is sent there after he is accidentally in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the story follows his plight. I didn’t fall into this short book as easily, but it grew on me over time and the final section is brilliant and unexpected- this ending stayed with me for a long time.
3. Novelist as a Vocation — Haruki Murakami
To date, I haven’t been able to get into Murakami’s fiction. But I loved this collection of essays on how he approaches writing. I enjoy the clean and direct style of writing in this book, and the way you get an insight into his structured, monastic life in between the lines. He used to own a Tokyo jazz bar and stayed up all night, and then he changed his life and moved to the country to run and write. I checked this book out after coming across it in a library. I should go back and read his book about long-distance running, which I once read a bit of in a bookstore before deciding not to buy it.
4. The Middle Passage — Charles Johnson
I found this book on a free shelf somewhere. The writing is delightful in this depiction of a fictional sea journey involving a young former slave who becomes a free man in New Orleans, yet accidentally stows away on a ship going to pick up slaves across the ocean. This is not a dour book- it’s funny and the characters are wild, and the main Rutherford Calhoun is a treasure.
5. Climbing the Charts — Gabriel Rossman
Back when I was a grad student at UCLA in 2015, I asked this professor for access to his online recordings of his sociology electives, and then listened to them while riding on the train and bus across Los Angeles. I took two full classes this way- without having to write any papers. He discussed so many interesting ideas that I still think about to this day, and this year I finally got around to reading his book on a topic I find super-interesting: how do certain pop songs become popular, and who are the key players in this process? This book probably isn’t for everyone, but I enjoyed it.
6. The Trance of Scarcity — Victoria Castle
7. Everything is Figureoutable — Marie Forleo
Two “self-help” books that are simply outstanding. I have learned so much from these books, and after underlining the key points I wrote them all up in notes that I refer to fairly regularly. To be honest, I started both books and put them down because they seemed too lightweight, but something about them brought me back. And after pushing through, I gained so much that I feel like I see the world in a different way after reading them. Both of these books were referred from a friend.
8. The War of Art — Steven Pressfield
An excellent short book about how difficult the creative process can be, but very inspiring because it points the way towards overcoming the resistance inherent in doing something new. I will be re-reading this one again this year, because lately I feel I need to tap into its lessons once more in order to overcome the resistance to write and create. Referred by the same friend as above.
9. Hollywood: A Third Memoir — Larry McMurtry
10. Literary Life: A Second Memoir — Larry McMurtry
(+ 300 pages of Lonesome Dove — Larry McMurtry)
I got 300 pages into the epic Lonesome Dove, which I have tried reading a few times before. The old west world that McMurtry creates is wonderful, but even though I made if further this time, I just didn’t care enough about what was going on to keep going. I might pick it up again sometime, and hopefully I’ll remember the plot and characters, of which there are many.
I found McMurtry’s memoirs a much easier read. He writes short chapters and is very self-effacing, explaining how his career writing books and screenplays was very much rooted in good luck. I find his example inspiring, because he just writes without fussing too much. I found the Hollywood memoir on the library shelf in Atwater Villsage, and then ordered the second memoir through the library system.
11. Art and Madness: A Memoir of Lust Without Reason — Anne Roiphe
This was not an easy read because the author Roiphe skips all over different years in the 1950’s and I could not keep track of where she was, but I kept at it because she’s an excellent writer and her story as a young woman in her 20’s running in the NYC literary scene was intriguing. She is candid about her insecurities and relationships in a way that few writers are. I actually read this book about halfway through, then skipped to Epilogue (below) and read that, then returned to this one. I picked Art and Madness off the shelf in the memoir section of the Atwater Village library.
Epilogue, which was on the same shelf, is about the other end of her life, when she is in her 70’s and her husband has died and she is lonely and dating and wondering what comes next in life. Superb writing without much of a plot, which is hard to do but she does it. Of all the books on this list, this book is the standard for the kind of writing I would like to do. She captures the little details about living alone, and the conundrum of whether she wants to put up someone new at her stage of life. And unlike McMurtry (above), who leaves his personal life completely out of his memoirs, Roiphe tackles relationships with great openness and insight.
Thanks for reading this. See the other things I’ve written, including lists from past years, at this link here.
