Best Books of 2023

2023 was a busy year for me. I moved interstate three times - from Sydney to Canberra, then Canberra to Sydney, and lastly from Sydney to Brisbane. And between those moves, I was working in a new role that challenged me in new ways, required a lot of focus, and had me travelling regularly. With that in mind, I read slightly less than I normally do, finishing just 56 books.

I find that reading is easy for me when I am calm and settled. With a year of constant movement and high stress, it was hard to find moments to read and even harder to be able to focus when reading. This is something I am hoping to change in 2024. Less screen time, more read time!

I was also a lot less motivated to read because I read so many flops (of course, this is only my opinion, and I can vouch that my best friend loved a book I hated). My average rating was 3.74 - a downward trend from 2022 and 2021 where my average ratings were 3.83 and 4.01, respectively. Nevertheless, some books shone through and I can present my annual top 10 best reads from 2023, in no particular order.

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (Penguin Random House, 1970)

I acquired this book after hearing booktuber Jack Edwards talk about it on his channel and then forgot about it until I found myself looking for something bookish, short, and comforting. Detailing correspondence between American writer Helene Hanff and various employees of a bookshop in London, you become invested in their relationship and the trust each has in the other, despite never meeting. When I finished reading it, I felt at a loss - I wished they could have all met as they had so dreamed, and I longed for the correspondence to continue as if it could overcome the time constraints of a human lifespan. This is a quick and charming read and I am sure you will laugh and cry as I did.

Paris: The Memoir by Paris Hilton (Dey Street Books, 2023)

I will preface this with a comment that I did also read the Britney Spears memoir, which I found equally as devastating and which put me in the mood for noughties celebrity memoirs. If you were a young person in the noughties, Paris Hilton was the OG influencer and she was everywhere, but she suffered from that distinctly millennial brand of misogyny that made P!nk write the song Stupid Girls, and for the rest of us to write Paris off as a ditzy heiress. I found Paris’ memoir to be much more soul-baring than I had expected, and she graciously addressed the misogyny that had been levelled at her and made space for us to make amends. I was shocked at what she had been through but proud that she had used her experience and her platform to advocate for reform and help others. I went into this book knowing so little about her and finished it feeling like a proud sister.

Wifedom by Anna Funder (Hamish Hamilton, 2023)

I was in my angry feminist reader era in 2023 it seems. My boss raved about Wifedom so much that I instantly went to the bookshop to buy it. Knowing that the book is part-fact, part-fiction, representing the imagined life of George Orwell’s second wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, I struggled initially to enjoy Funder’s style of writing. However, that style is deliberately adopted to exemplify the gaps in the record about Eileen. Where there is nothing, Funder created an interpretation that could almost read as truth - though we will never truly know. Once the story reached Eileen’s years in Spain, I was hooked. I became so shocked at the audacity of Orwell (and, by extension, of men) to exclude and claim the brilliance of women in his life, treating them like servants to his every demand. And I was continuously angered that Eileen occasionally bowed to Orwell, though reading of her independent life made me greatly admire her. In some ways, Eileen’s tale is one as old as time and is broadly relatable. A must-read for all genders - for women to relate and for men to look in the mirror.

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (Vintage, 2013)

I have little to add to what has already been said about this book. It is a work of art, with complex relationships, raucous adventures, and the most beautiful settings. It is a work of art.

So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, 2023)

In 2023, I became enamoured with Claire Keegan’s writing. I read almost all of her books, one after the other, devouring them as if I had an unending hunger. So Late in the Day is a most poignant tableau of love and life in its most ordinary settings. In following the perspective of a man, Cathal, who recently split from his lover, the book could be a perfect companion for Dolly Alderton’s Good Material. Keegan writes deceptively - you start by feeling sorry for Cathal, then angry at him for his treatment of women, then pity that he has not learned to be a better man, perhaps even forgiving that he lacked such men in his own life. But your feelings remain so complicated because these characters feel like strangers as you peek briefly through a window into their lives. So Late in the Day is a short epic that will follow you.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, 2022)

As promised, more Claire Keegan. This was the first book of hers I read and it was impossible to not crave more after finishing it. From lyrical sentences to sharing Irish history in a novella that packs a punch, this book is perfect from start to finish. The book is a look at the Magdalene laundries run by the Catholic Church in conjunction with the Irish State, “where an estimated 30,000 Irish women were incarcerated between the 18th and 20th centuries”. Through Furlong, a father whose own mother had been one of the unmarried girls hidden away, we are told this history through real memory and emotion. It is unforgettable.

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang (HarperCollins, 2023)

This book was everywhere this year, and for good reason. It was the perfect fiction read - containing cultural criticism, characters you love to hate, and brilliant plot twists. I flew through this book and decided I needed to start reading the rest of Kuang’s work. Perhaps because of its incredible success, there was criticism that it was too long or was a disservice to the discussion about race, class, and the publishing industry. As is evident from the cover, Yellowface primarily discusses cultural appropriation, race and class representation in the publishing industry, and who can tell certain stories. Kuang inverts the question by writing, as an Asian American woman, from the perspective of a white woman who takes credit for a work largely completed by her Asian American peer. Kuang highlights all the shades of grey in the matter and makes both leading characters somewhat of a villain. As a reader, you might find your heart beating faster from the stress of whether you’re a good person or not, depending on who you think is in the wrong or right and various points of the book. Indeed, Kuang said to the New York Times “Reading about racism should not be a feel-good experience … I do want people to be uncomfortable with the way that they’re trained to write about and market and sell books, and be uncomfortable with who’s in the room, and how they’re talking about who’s in the room.” Outside of this discussion, I felt the book was an interesting exploration of how we handle criticism, in whatever form it takes - be it anonymous online comments, feedback from employers or colleagues, or admiration from fans. More than a fun read, Yellowface left me with so many bigger questions to consider and that, to me, is what a good book should do.

The Yield by Tara June Winch (Penguin Random House, 2019)

Winch is an incredible and lyrical writer, who expertly weaves words from Wiradjuri language into the text, gifting that knowledge to the reader. The story itself connects the words into the web of the protagonist’s life, making a personal dictionary of sorts. The Yield weaves together personal histories to create a tale about one’s connection to their country, or home, and the reclaiming of lost histories, drawing a parallel to the idea of language loss that has led First Nations organisations and communities in Australia to focus on promoting language so that it is not lost forever. The concept of this book is multi-layered and complex, and Winch delivers it perfectly.

Domestic Interior by Fiona Wright (Giramondo Publishing, 2017)

This was one of many fantastic poetry books I read in 2023, but it stood out to me on account of its accessibility. It explores the self in the home, our relationships with others, and to space, both external and internal. It makes the ordinary and suburban an event, draws comedy from the mundane, and explores heightened emotions captive in domestic spaces. It is set in Sydney, this may have been part of why I loved it so much, having moved away from Sydney twice in the past year.

My Body by Emily Ratajkowski (Quercus, 2021)

I wanted to read this after seeing so many mixed reviews about it. Some argued it that it was set to be a modern feminist classic, others argued that it only set women back further. In the end, it is a book about one woman’s experience and nothing more. Reading about how Ratajkowski’s childhood and start in modelling impacted her relationship with her body, and then how the social capital of having an attractive body changed her relationship as a whole person with society was not groundbreaking, but interesting nonetheless. I am someone who appreciates an own-story narrative and I felt that Ratajkowski reclaimed her story, and wrote it beautifully.

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