Best of 2023 | My Favorite Reads of the Year
Welcome to a week of Best Ofs, a series of nice things that came out of this year. This week, I'll be sharing my favorite books, purchases, and other whatnot, culminating with my favorite annual post of the year, The Best of 2023. Happy holidays folks!
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I log each of my books read in GoodReads (we should be friends if you do too!) and it's always fun to look over everything I read in the year. There's a definite pattern - this is the year I mostly spent with David Sedaris, or the Queen of England, with some other fun bits and bobs along the way. Here's a few of my favorites, and here's everything I read this year.
Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
It's a slow mover, but the prose is divine. Two colleagues inadvertently buy houses next door to each other, and this book is about how their lives become entangled. Strong redemption arc. This was my favorite book this year.
This was the book that initiated a year of reading through Sedaris' entire library of works. Sedaris is a humorist and an essayist, who focuses much of his work on his family which is roughly as functional as the rest of ours. He and I both come from families flush with sisters, so I especially enjoy ruminations on those relationships.
If you're a reader, you've seen this book EVERYWHERE this year, and with good reason. It's twisty and cringy and as much as you'll dislike the protagonist, you'll have empathy for her too. Alex is a young woman who basically has made an art out of leaching off of other people. Her much older boyfriend asks her to leave his house in the Hamptons and this book follows her decisions in the week following. I couldn't put it down.
Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
Julie sets out to cook her way through Julia Child's famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The result is hilarious and inspiring. Sometimes things go well, sometimes they don't, but on she goes. I decided to cook my way through a slightly less ambitious cookbook this winter as a project, and this book laid the groundwork.
Books about the Royal Family as an entire genre, it consumed me.
This year, I read The Diana Chronicles, Elizabeth the Queen, and most recently, Spare. So you could say I had an obsession and you would be right. They're all biased, either subtly and in parts, or wildly and across the board, and yet, I consumed them voraciously. I enjoyed each book, and also recommend a book I read the year before, The Palace Papers by Tina Brown (she also wrote The Diana Chronicles).
My mother in law gifted me Endgame for Christmas yesterday so my journey with the Windsors continues! I shall be diving directly in!
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What did you read this year? Any favorites to share?
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