What was your favorite book of 2023? New Yorkers weigh in
Dec. 29, 2023, 12:42 p.m.
It was a year with so many good reads – here are just a few of them.
If there’s one thing many of us love, it's a good book.
And it’s the time when many media outlets release their “Best Books of the Year” lists.
Rather than declare the best books, we wanted to share some of our favorite reads and hear from New Yorkers about the books that stayed with them in 2023.
Alison Stewart, host of WNYC’s “All of It,” and Jordan Lauf, the producer of the show’s “Get Lit” Book Club, discussed some of their selections on a recent episode.
You can listen to the whole conversation here; an edited transcript is below.
Alison Stewart: Let’s start with fiction. First up is “Small Mercies” by Dennis Lehane, the author behind “Mystic River” and “Gone Baby Gone.”
Jordan Lauf: This book is set in Boston, in the midst of the busing crisis – That's when a court decided that in order to diversify public schools, some residents from majority Black neighborhoods would get sent to schools where there was a majority white population and vice versa.
This, unfortunately, did not sit very well with a certain group of white people in Boston, and this book is set in that white Irish community.
It's about a white high school girl who goes missing on the same night that a Black boy is found murdered. There are theories and questions about whether those two things might be connected.
The main character of the story is this white girl's mother, who has been living in low-income housing in the Irish area of Boston for a long time. She decides to take it upon herself to find out what's happened to her daughter, to do a rogue investigation. It runs her afoul of the Irish mob, the police.
It's a book that really tackles racism in Boston head-on. Readers should just be aware that there is some very racist language in there and the main character herself is pretty racist, but I think it's all in service of the larger point of the story, which is examining race relations in that city in that period of time.
Another crime drama you read and enjoyed was “Penance” by Eliza Clark, and this one has an interesting format.
Lauf: It's a novel, but it's written in the style of a true crime book. The conceit is that you're reading a piece of journalism, written by a guy who's investigated a case in which three high school girls kill one of their friends. He’s trying to get to the bottom of why they would do that.
He dedicates a chapter to each of these girls telling their story, leading you up to the crime. By the end, you're questioning whether this “journalist” is really a reliable narrator at all.
He's someone who has gotten into trouble in the past, and he needs this book as a comeback. It’s an interesting examination of our obsession with true crime.
Let's talk to Yael, calling in from Callicoon, New York.
Yael: I just have to recommend “Foster” by Claire Keegan, which was such a wonderful experience. I cannot recommend this book enough. It's a novella, so you can read it in an afternoon.
We've got a text: "I read 'Klara and the Sun' by Kazuo Ishiguro in 2021, but my love for it carries into 2023 and beyond.” He was one of our Get Lit authors. So whoever's texting that, you can check out that conversation. Up next in your list of favorite novels is "The Reformatory."
Lauf: That's by Tananarive Due, a writer of horror novels. It’s based on the real story of the Dozier School for Boys. People who read Colson Whitehead's novel “The Nickel Boys” might remember that story.
But this one is very different. It tells the story of a boy who gets sent to this reformatory after defending his sister against a white boy in town.
It’s a place that is very violent, abusive. He encounters all of that there, but he also encounters ghosts. He starts to realize that he has a special power to see some of the spirits of boys who have encountered violence, who have died at the reformatory.
Someone else who also notices this is the very abusive and violent headmaster, who thinks, “Oh, maybe I can use this to hunt down these ghosts for me, so I don't have to deal with them anymore.”
It’s a little bit of a cat-and-mouse game between this headmaster, this boy, and between his sister, who is really dedicated on the outside to trying to get him out of the school.
And it is, in part, based on a personal story – Tananarive Due’s own great uncle, I believe, died under mysterious circumstances at the Dozier School for Boys.
It's definitely a little bit spooky. And it's a little bit hard to read.
Lauf: It’s graphic.
I think it's beautifully told. I loved this book.
Lauf: I thought it was one of the most perfect books I read this year.
Let’s talk to Sarah from Astoria.
Sarah: So there's a book I read this year – I heard the title and I read it out of spite, and then I fell in love with it. It’s called “The Shotgun Conservationist: Why Environmentalists Should Love Hunting.”
I am a vegetarian, have been for almost my whole life, and I am very anti-gun. The author of this book lives in Brooklyn. He explores the world of hunting and really upended the way that I think about some of the fake meats – that I eat – and how bad they are for the environment, in terms of how they're destroying local economies.
This book changed my mind on a lot of things. I went in prepared to hate-read it, and ended up loving it. So I just thought everyone should give it a chance.
Thank you for calling in. We've got a text: “'Where there was Fire' by John Manuel Arias, a multiracial, Latinx first-generation American who has lost so much of my heritage due to trauma and shame and fear. This book resonated deeply with me and it was so beautifully written.”
Thank you so much for that text. Another one: “'Glassworks' by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, a multigenerational story about working with glass and inherited trauma as well.”
There’s a text from someone who has a book that’s on your list.
Lauf: I see someone shouting out “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese, who is also the author of “Cutting for Stone.”
This is another of my favorite novels of this year. It tells the story of a family living in a Christian area of India from the early 1900s until closer to today. It's about many generations of this family who are dealing with a mysterious illness that seems to make it so that they are very susceptible to drowning. And the doctors who end up investigating what's going on, and a member of the family who ends up becoming a doctor herself.
And Verghese himself was a doctor. So the medical writing in it is very involved, but also understandable for a layperson.
It’s a very long book. It’s a good one if you're looking for something to sit with by the fireplace this winter.
Let's talk to Jo from Middletown, New York.
Jo: I read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, and it's from 2006. The reason I looked for it was that I heard Gina McCarthy, who was an adviser during the Obama administration with the Environmental Protection Agency, in a podcast with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
I couldn't put it down. It’s a post-apocalyptic book – we don't really know from what – but I think where we are now in the world with the climate crisis and other crises, it's quite powerful.
Jo, thank you. I've got a text: “I loved reading a new memoir, 'Public/Private' by Gail Merrifield Papp, about her 25-year colleagueship and marriage with Joe Papp at the Public Theater. That came out in October.”
I do want to get to a couple of your nonfiction selections as well, Jordan: "The Art Thief" by Michael Finkel … Is the name self-explanatory?
Lauf: It is! It's about one of the most prolific art thieves in history, this guy who was living in France. He stole art from a variety of museums across Europe and he stole almost every other week for a couple of years.
The thing that's so interesting about him is that he didn't sell them. He kept everything he stole in this attic apartment, in his mother's house, where he was living with his girlfriend – just so he could look at it and wake up every day and be surrounded by priceless art.
So, it’s the story of this man, his strange psyche, what makes anyone want to do this, how he got caught.
And then it’s about what happens to the art afterward, which is in some ways, the most fascinating part of the story.
What about memoirs?
Lauf: I am in the midst of reading "How to Say Babylon" by Safiya Sinclair. She is a poet from Jamaica, and this is about her life living under her Rastafarian father, who practiced, I would say, a restrictive sect of that religion, especially when it came to women's rights, women's issues. Like, if you had your period, you were unclean and couldn't come into contact with men.
It’s a bit about her journey to self-discovery and independence outside of her father's way of life. But also I learned a lot about the religion itself and the ways that Rastafarian people have been persecuted by the British and by the Jamaican government over the course of many years.
We're going to go to Merv in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. Merv is going to express something that many people have been texting about.
Merv: I'm recommending "Demon Copperhead." I bought it for my wife for Christmas after hearing Barbara Kingsolver on your show. She loved the book and passed it on to me.
I thought it was a great retelling of one of the great novels and I thought she found a great voice in "Demon Copperhead" and a wonderful retelling of the horrible opioid story in Appalachia, and I loved picking out all of Dickens' characters as we went along.
Merv, thank you for calling in. That is such a good book. Amanda's calling in from Brooklyn.
Amanda: I read Colson Whitehead's "Harlem Shuffle," and then right away had to get "Crook Manifesto." I think they're excellent and one of the characters really resonates with our current mayor, and I'll just leave it at that.
Ah! Did not see that one coming. Thank you so much for calling. Here’s a recommendation from Sam: “I read 'Sea of Tranquility' by Emily St. John Mandel. I've been intimidated by sci-fi, but this introduced time travel in a very accessible and touching way.” Any other books you want to get in before we wrap up, Jordan?
Lauf: Lastly, I want to recommend "Rough Sleepers" by Pulitzer Prize winner, Tracy Kidder. It follows one particular doctor who works in Boston named Jim O'Connell, who treats homeless and houseless populations. It’s the story of his work, his life, and also of some of the patients he's treated over the years. I've been thinking about it a lot as our weather gets colder, and it's just a meaningful book.
Someone has texted: “What about January “Get Lit”?”
Lauf: We are reading "Day" by Michael Cunningham. It’s the story of one family. It follows them on April 5, in 2019, 2020 and 2021, to see how their life has changed over the course of the pandemic. And we are having our event with Michael Cunningham on Jan. 31. And you can get tickets here.