Best Reads of 2023

I read over 50 books a year so many ask “what were your favorites?” I decided to make a list to share.

Foster By Claire Keegan

This brief book, less than 100 pages. Foster is about a neglected and perhaps abused child, sent off to live with relatives for the summer. Their quiet kindness and attention is transformative.  I loved this book so much, I read it twice.  Then I got both my boys and their middle school friend to read it. It was made into a film called The Quiet Girl, which we all watched together. It is equally brilliant.

Joy Poems Editor Christian Wiman

Read this collection when I was first just daydreaming about Joy. The introduction by Christian Wiman alone is worth the purchase.  The poems cover the gambit of the last 100 years. They look at joy from so many different angles, you begin to realize, joy is all around us!  Soak it in! This was another reread as I was asked to discuss the collection with Jessica Hooten Wilson on her podcast The Scandal of Reading which you can listen to here.

Fragile Objects By Katy Carl

It has been a while since I read a collection of short stories as captivating as Fragile Objects by Katy Carl.  The first and title story draws you into the inner life of a child, Bub, as he watches his father navigate the complexities of caring for his aging mother. Bub watches everything but has stopped asking questions,  “he had not stopped having questions; he had just stopped asking them. Adult talk of souls put a stop to children's questions, either by spreading wishful vagueness or inducing deliberate terror.” Carl knows how children think, in fact, she understands the inner complexities of the minds of her characters who are completely different from one another.  The title story ends in such a surprising and jarring manner, that it stays with you. They all do.

Each of the stories end in odd, often, often violent ways much like Flannery O’Connor’s stories.  O’Connor said she used violence as a way “of returning [her] characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace.” There is a sense of that opening for grace in Carl’s collection as well.  These are not tidy stories.  They are complicated and messy much like real life.  What shines through is Carl’s love for each of these characters and the tender gift of grace waiting for these characters in their last moments. 

The Creative Act By Rick Rubin

There are figures from the Hip Hop world that stand out above the rest; Tupac, Dre, JayZ, Eminem and producer Rick Rubin. Rubin produced many of those listed as well as Nine Inch Nails, Johnny Cash and Adele. Maybe you have seen him before, with his long grey beard, on awards shows or music documentaries. He is usually shown in the background, shining the light on the artist, delighting in them like a proud Grizzly papa.

“To create is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. It could be a conversation, the solution to a problem, a note to a friend, the re-arrangement of furniture, a new route home to avoid a traffic jam,” he wrote in his new book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being.

The discussion compelled me to purchase his new book. I naively thought it would be some sort of memoir but this book is more of a Zen treatise on what it is to live a creative life. Each chapter is sparse but wisdom-ful. This book currently lives ON my desk so that I can dip into it when I need a reframing or inspiration.

Geek Love By Katherine Dunn

This sick and twisted book is not for everyone, but I re-read it every few years. Geek Love is the story of Binewskis, a circus sideshow family, whose parents experimented with drug cocktails to ensure that each of their children would be able to make a living in the circus just by their differences. The story turns even madder when the oldest son begins his own religion where self-sacrifice is paramount. I find so much truth in this bizarre novel of making our own gods and the complex relationship with uniformity. Read if you dare and then please, let’s chat about it.

Women Talking by Miriam Toews

This gripping novel is based on true life events. For two years, the women of this isolated Mennonite village thought they were haunted by demons in their sleep but the truth surfaced that they were in fact drugged and violated by men in the community. While the men are gone from the village, the women gather to decide if they should leave, stay or fight.

To complicate the situation further, these women cannot read and do not know the language of the country which they are in.

This is the most theologically rich novel I have read in quite some time.  The characters are rich and complicated and even in the midst of so much sorrow and pain, often funny and posess a deep faith.

Genesis of Gender By Abigail Favale

For anyone who is confused or unclear about a Biblical view of gender theory, Favale weaves historical, biological, theological thought along with personal narrative to clear the air. “Yet this book is not merely an exposé—it is also a powerful, moving articulation of a Christian understanding of reality: a holistic paradigm that proclaims the dignity of the body, the sacramental meaning of sexual difference, and the interconnectedness of all creation.” This was the most important book I read this year.  

Brothers Karamosov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

This summer my teen sons and I read Brothers Karamosov together. 60 pages a week. We met every Wednesday afternoon over smoothies to discuss what we read. I don’t think I would have read the epic novel had I not had the support and deadlines, but I am so glad I did.  I refer to this book every week.  Its storytelling approach to conveying the richest of theology is seared into my heart. I am happy to talk about this book forever. It is a must read and I am told by my friends who are experts on this book that this is the translation to read.

Brideshead Revisited by Evenlyn Waugh

I read this book for the first time on the way back from my solo one-month trip to England this January. I feel God saved it for me for just that moment as many of the places in the novel were ones I went to. I had always thought the book was about the opulent life of the upper class before WW2 and it is, but is a coming to faith novel.  I was not expecting that at all. Holiness looks different than what one expects. The characters struggle with surrendering to God. I loved it so much, I reread it again in June and will do so again, next month.

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr.

A true story that spans 3 generations of a reclusive copper heiress named Huguette Clark, whose father was nearly as rich as Rockefeller and the mansions she did not live in.  She spent the last 20 years of her life in a simple hospital room despite being in excellent health.

She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else. A fascinating page turner of a story.