Favorite Books of 2023

The library within me

My books are all in boxes. We started moving in late September. I put to the side one red bin of books that I thought I might need. But, as I watched the movers pack away shelf after shelf, I feared I would start writing or planning classes or reading these handful of books and reach out for a book that had since been packaged up. I thought of Erich Auerbach, the author of the 1940s Mimesis, who wrote his magnum opus on all of Western literature without access to his library, or any library of any substance. He was in exile in Istanbul to escape the Nazis. When a colleague questioned the dean of Istanbul University about the meager library, he responded, “We don’t bother with books. They burn.” In opposition to the destruction of books, Auerbach penned Mimesis. It’s existence reminds me of the significance of my library—the one put away in cardboard in my garage and the one that cannot be burned but daily lights up within me.

To celebrate that reality, let me list out my favorite reads from 2023 (those that I remember though I cannot currently see their pages). *These are my favorite reads, meaning they are not necessarily the best books, to echo John Wilson’s caveat, and they did not necessarily come out in 2023.

Poetry

I truly loved What Kind of Woman by Kate Baer. A friend brought it to book club and read aloud from the collection. Her poems give names to mysteries of existence that I thought were ineffable and with humor. The poems sound didactic at first, with imperatives like, “Burn your speeches, your instructions,/ your prophecies too.” But then she hooks you with images that reflect your gaze and finishes with either a gentle reminder of reality, or a smack across the face.

If you’re in the market for poetry collections, let me recommend three others that I read this year:

• Meet Me at the Lighthouse by Dana Gioia

• Clint Smith’s Above Ground

• My Hollywood and Other Poems by Boris Dralyuk

Fiction

Other than the twaddle that I read after I gave birth and the few dozen British mysteries I inhaled by Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie, I read some amazing novels this year. I’ve written about Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy elsewhere, so let me uplift Carol Shields’s 1995 novel.

The Stone Diaries was a Pulitzer Prize winner in the 1990s, but I had never heard of it. The story follows the rather uninteresting life of Daisy Goodwill from birth in 1905 to death near the end of the century, somehow stunning us with an intimate portrait of this woman’s life. “Do you think her life would have been different if she’d been a man?” one character asks—a question every woman reader already knows the answer to.

Plays

It goes without saying that I highly recommend Dorothy L. Sayers’s plays (You can hear Kaitlyn Schiess and I discuss The Zeal of Thy House on The Scandal of Reading podcast). But an unexpected delight this year was Zadie Smith’s The Wife of Willesden based on Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath.” Plays are not read for pleasure enough. Personally, I enjoy reading the genre. My favorite playwright of the moment is Lauren Gunderson, but I’m not alone on that one. If I can prioritize the time, I plan to be in the front row of “Tempestuous Elements” in DC, a play based on the life of Anna Julia Cooper. Anyone else read plays? What should I read?

Memoir

How to choose which of these AMAZING memoirs was my favorite this year!?! Of all the books that I read this year, these three titles were my overall favorites:

• Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad is Untrue (even the title is beautiful)

• Beth Moore’s All My Knotted-Up Life

• Esau McCaulley’s How Far to the Promised Land

Dorothy Day once lamented that she only knew how to write about her own life; but when you find your genre, embrace it. This year, these memoirs (and Nayeri’s is more of a novel really) enhanced the genre, broke through its confines, and taught me more about God through the lives of the authors. I listened to all three on Audible, and I felt like I was sitting among friends, learning how God wrote their stories.

*If you love Nayeri’s work as much as I do, then subscribe to The Scandal of Reading podcast to hear our conversation soon on Calvin & Hobbes.

UPDATE: How could I neglect to mention Harrison Scott Key’s memoir How to Stay Married? I’ve recommended it to so many people and even reviewed it for Christianity Today. Every book that Key has written has been outstanding, but this one is my favorite. I could re-read this one again and again and get more out of it. Highly recommend.

Religion

Because I endorsed Evangelical Imagination by Karen Swallow Prior, you already know how much I loved it.

I read two books on art this year that helped me see better: Russ Ramsey’s Rembrandt in the Wind and Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt’s Redeeming Vision (which received an Award of Merit in arts and culture; the same award I received for The Scandal of Holiness last year).

Revelation for the Rest of Us changed my entire way of reading “Revelation”—Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett’s book on this became our Sunday school class at our church. If you read Nobody’s Mother by Sandra Glahn, you’ll NEVER read 1 Tim 2:15 the same again. I dare you.

But my favorite book in religious nonfiction this year was Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church by Nijay Gupta. The Englewood Review of Books agree: they selected it for their Advent calendar of favorites. The book shows you all these women in the New Testament that you may have never noticed were there! And, of course, there’s a whole chapter on Junia, which is the name of my fourth child, born this past June. I’m a little biased.

History

Raise your hand if you read history as a genre? While I had to stop listening to two audiobooks in history (Humanly Possible and The Heart of the Sea), I thoroughly enjoyed Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It by Janina Ramirez. I discovered so much—about women who were kings! and Viking warriors! and preachers! There are not enough exclamation points to convey my joy for this book.

If I can name a really old book as my favorite in this category, it would be Hope and History by Josef Pieper. Whenever I read Pieper, he changes my paradigms. I think I understand something about the world, be that leisure, tradition, faith, and then I read his book and realize how much I have to learn.

Two honorable mentions: How the Word Was Passed by Clint Smith (lyrically written, engrossing, and eye-opening) as well as Andrew Wilson’s Remaking the World (which I’ve decided to teach in my spring Humanities course).

Your turn

All in all, I read about 60-70 books this year. I wish I could say I finished every book that I started or that I loved every book I read, but that would not be true. There are half a dozen titles more that I could recommend, but for now, I’d like to hear from you. What books changed your heart or mind this year? And, as I think through those books coming out in 2024, what books are you most looking forward to?

Happy Advent!

“[The Gospel] is too serious for comedy, too contemporary and everyday for tragedy, politically too insignificant for history.” —Erich Auerbach