Faithful blog readers (hi, Julie!), you might be wondering why I’m just now getting around to posting my list of favorite books that I read in 2023. See previous post about how I hibernate in winter. Wait, is “hibernate” a synonym for “procrastinate”? Then yes, that. Anyway, it was a strange year, a rough year, a busy year, and I only read 30 books. That’s about 1 every 12.2 days. My lovely wife Jen, on the other hand, is a speed reader. I know this because she doesn’t have her own library card and checks out e-books on my card. My checkout history reads like, “In the last month, you checked out 2 nonfiction books on early American history and 20 romance novels.” The librarians are probably looking at me when I’m in the library and thinking, There’s that guy who comes in here and checks out historical nonfiction but who’s really into the steamy Cynster novels by Stephanie Laurens. Weirdo. Ahem. Let’s move on!

1. We All Want Impossible Things, Katherine Newman. I almost didn’t read this novel because it’s partially about the hospice experience, and we had just suffered a loss in our family. I’m glad I did though; Newman somehow manages to write the funniest and most searingly heartbreaking book of the year about Ash, a woman supporting her closest and oldest friend Edi, as Edi enters hospice. Ash, meanwhile, does not have her sh*t together, and she’s dealing with her two teenage kids, her ex, and several lovers/one-night stands. Very raw, very raunchy, very open-hearted. It was reassuring to read a story about how it’s okay to not be okay and that we all make questionable decisions in the grieving process, but whatever gets us moving forward is okay.

2. The Guest Lecture, Martin Riker. This novel was laugh-out-loud and mind-bending. It’s been a while since I’ve read a great stream-of-consciousness book. The action in this book is limited: Abby is an economics professor invited to give a lecture and is lying in a hotel bed with her sleeping husband and daughter next to her. That’s the plot. She is woefully unprepared for the talk and decides to practice it in her head using the “loci method,” in which you think about a place or building that you are familiar with and assign parts of the speech to rooms in the building. Her topic is twenth-century economist John Maynard Keynes, so she imagines herself giving imaginary Keynes a tour of her home. Hilarity ensues as she gets distracted by things in her (imaginary) house, by Keynes himself, and by thoughts of her past and her most recently denied tenure. Abby’s mind wanders into these topics: feminism, work/life imbalance, economic optimism, climate change, and the insanity of raising children in today’s troubled world. This was one of those books that I made Jen read because I kept reading paragraphs aloud to her.

3. The Happy Couple, Naoise Dolan. It seems as if every year I have a modern Irish novelist on this list, and here we are again. Dolan’s second novel is about Celine and Luke, a couple celebrating their engagement and getting ready for their wedding. Each chapter follows one of the main characters: Celine, a concert pianist who is feeling family pressure and cold feet as the wedding approaches; Luke, who has a history of infidelity and even colder feet; Archie, the best man and Luke’s one-time lover; Phoebe, the bridesmaid and Celine’s sister who in trying to protect Celine might be causing more trouble; and Vivian, a wedding guest who provides the (sort-of) outsider’s view of all of the wedding party’s dysfunction. Dolan’s writing is knife-sharp with wit and relationship analysis.

4. Whalefall, Daniel Kraus. I don’t even know where to begin describing this novel! Jay Gardiner’s guilt leads him to scuba dive off the coast of Carmel, CA, to find the body of his father, a legendary diver who committed suicide. A giant squid appears, and as Jay is escaping the squid, an 80-foot sperm whale rises up and swallows the squid, who in a last gasp reaches out and grabs Jay with a tentacle. Pulled into the whale’s mouth, Jay is forced to fight off the squid and attempt to get out of the whale (who is swallowing Jay through its digestive system), keeping in mind that he only has 1 hour of oxygen left. Gripping and scientifically enlightening (Kraus’ writing reminds me of Andy Weir), the reader is left gasping at every twist and turn in Jay’s dilemma.

5. The Guest, Emma Cline. This tense story is about Alex, a young woman who finds herself ostracized from the Hamptons house of Simon, the wealthy older gentleman who is hosting her (“hosting” is a nice way to put their relationship). Already living on the margins in New York City, Alex tries to find any means possible to staying the week on Long Island to make it to Simon’s Labor Day party and try to find her way back into his good graces. Emma’s poor decision-making (and her dying phone) throw many obstacles in her path; every night is a mystery of whether she will sleep in another rich person’s house, a servant’s quarters, or on the beach. Desperation, living on the margins, class divide, social media appearance vs. reality; this book has a lot to say about modern society.

6. I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai. This thriller gripped me, and I couldn’t shake it from my mind for weeks after finishing it. The protagonist, Bodie Kline, is a successful murder-mystery podcaster and college professor. She gets invited back to the Granby School, the private boarding school from which she graduated high school, as a guest teacher of a podcasting class. The recollection of her time on campus comes back to her, especially the murder of her classmate Thalia Keith during their senior year in 1995. As hard as she tried to put those painful memories behind her, she inexorably finds herself turning over the facts of the murder and subsequent conviction of a school janitor. Slowly, everything she thought she knew to be true falls away as her podcasting students dig into her history at the school and interview former classmates and faculty. This book explores issues of class, race, our society’s treatment of young women, and the sexualization of murder victims.

7. Liberation Day, George Saunders. This collection of short stories by Saunders, a Chicago-based author, is Literature with a capital L. Saunders bounces seamlessly among genres and creates mini-worlds filled with dystopia, oppression, absurdity, biting humor and sarcasm, and, surprisingly, nostalgia for our American past. You can’t help but see modern politics as metaphor in these stories. Even as we laugh at the bizarre circumstances in these stories, there’s an uneasiness or nervousness underlying them, as if we know we aren’t so far away from these unreal places becoming our American future.

8. Walking with Sam: A Father, A Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain, Andrew McCarthy. GenXers will recall McCarthy as a reluctant member of the “Brat Pack,” a group of young actors lumped together by the press in the 1980s (in truth, we find out in McCarthy’s memoir Brat that he was not friends or socialized with any of the so-called Pack). For the last two decades, however, he has been a travel writer, and his latest book is a recounting of his journey with his teenaged son walking the Camino de Santiago, a well-known 500-mile pilgrimage across Spain. McCarthy is open and honest about his strained relationship with his kids, his attempts to improve them, and how his divorce from their mother affected them. We are following not just the 5-week trip by foot along the Camino and the characters they meet along the way (and the fights they have themselves), but also the story of their father-son journey so far. Anyone who has had a kid or was a kid (or has had to travel with kids) will relate.

9. They Called Us Enemy, George Takei with Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker. Takei is best known as Mr. Sulu on the original Star Trek series, for his deep voice, and for his activism. In this graphic novel, Takei tells the story of his experience as a Japanese American incarcerated in a “relocation center” by the US government during World War II. I think that young people might be surprised to find out that this happened in our own country, that American citizens were rounded up and basically imprisoned for their ethnicity, and that there are echoes of this happening in today’s society.

10. Love People, Use Things: Because the Opposite Never Works, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Millburn and Nicodemus are the Minimalists, authors and podcasters who promote minimalism, a lifestyle advocating owning less stuff at its core. In their previous books, on their podcast, and in a documentary, they recounted their journeys to discovering the lifestyle and how it has helped their mental well-being, their health, and their relationships. Here, they further provide an outline for the reader to improve their relationships with their stuff and their loved ones; the end goal is to become unencumbered by material possessions and to live a more intentional life. Every few years, I need to come across one of their books as a reminder.

Books that just missed the cut: Fresh Complaint, Jeffrey Eugenides; Romantic Comedy, Curtis Sittenfeld; The Trackers, Charles Frazier; I Heard the Owl Call My Name, Margaret Craven; Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge, Spencer Quinn; I Am Homeless If This is Not My Home, Lorrie Moore.