My top 5 books of 2023

Another year-end means taking a hard look at my reading journey; it means noticing how books have become both checkpoints and time capsules.

2023 was primarily a year of exploration — picking up for the first time books about writing itself (Bird by Bird, Letters to a Young Poet), Russian literature (The Best Short Stories by Fyoder Dostoevsky, The Master & Margarita), and the casual brilliance of James Baldwin (Another Country, Giovanni’s Room). At the cusp of new beginnings and life transitions, it was also a year of moral exploration; from essays on sociopolitical norms (Invisible Women, Minor Feelings, The Right to Sex) to philosophy (Sophie’s World). Finally, to no surprise, my long-time love of short story collections dominated the list at exactly 7 of the 30 books read this year.

In celebration of a personal tradition (2022 here) and an obsessive need to catalog everything I consume, here are my top 5 books of 2023, in no particular order — 

1. Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller

Genre: Nonfiction, Science, History, Psychology, Philosophy, Auto/Biography… etc. 

Favorite quote:

“I have come to believe that it is our life's work to tear down this order, to keep tugging at it, trying to unravel it, to set free the organisms trapped underneath. That it is our life's work to mistrust our measures. Especially those about moral and mental standing. To remember that behind every ruler there is a Ruler. To remember that a category is at best a proxy; at worst, a shackle.”

Thoughts:

This book tops my list of greatest of all time reads because of the sheer literary real estate it covers without feeling ambitious. It’s a peculiar tale of an obsessive taxonomist who happens to be responsible for bringing eugenics to America, but it’s also Miller’s mechanism to explore happiness, meaning, and her personal journey with loss. It’s a collection of interesting tidbits on psychology and evolution, but it’s also a revolution against order, a reminder to embrace both the boons and banes of chaos. Miller writes with a quirkiness and scientific expertise that translates well into the themes of the book — if fish don't exist, what does that mean for us? If I had to indiscriminately recommend only a single book on this list, simply because at least one element about this book would resonate, it would be this one. 

2. The Woman Destroyed by Simone De Beauvoir

Genre: Fiction, Short story, The Female Experience

Favorite quote:

“Reflections, echoes, reverberating back and back to infinity: I have discovered the pleasure of having a long past behind me. I have not the leisure to tell it over to myself, but often, quite unexpectedly, I catch sight of it, a background to the diaphanous present; a background that gives it its color and its light, just as rocks or sand show through the shifting brilliance of the sea. Once I used to cherish schemes and promises for the future; now my feelings and my joys are smoothed and softened with the shadowy velvet of time past.”

Thoughts:

A pleasant departure from the heavily theoretical 1949 feminist scripture of The Second Sex, De Beauvoir also excels at imbuing a range of emotions in her collection of three fictional novellas: a melancholic meditation on aging, the devastating aftermath of a child’s death, and the building resentment in the face of infidelity. Through experiences both ubiquitous and (fortunately) niche, De Beauvoir’s inexplicable ability to build empathy for her vivid characters demonstrates a true and complex understanding of human nature. This collection specifically shines a light on the female experience through three different writing forms — prose, stream of consciousness, and journal entry. Other than her lyrical writing, the common thread amongst these stories is the profound, passionate inner workings of a woman lamenting, raging, and despairing. 

3. Another Country by James Baldwin

Genre: Fiction, The Bisexual Experience

Favorite quote:

“[New York] seemed to have no sense of whatever of the exigencies of human life; it was so familiar and so public that it became, at last, the most despairingly private of cities. One was continually being jostled, yet longed, at the same time, for the sense of others, for a human touch; and if one was never — it was the general complaint — left alone in New York, one had, still, to fight very hard in order not to perish of loneliness.”

Thoughts:

Without leaving a single element of love and life untouched, Baldwin details two loosely intertwined stories in New York and Paris that center queer relationships and interracial dynamics of the 1950s. Baldwin’s tangible curation of experience living in these two cities is uniquely beautiful, his writing persistently stylish, making this the hardest novel to choose a best quote from. In addition to an insightful general outlook, Baldwin explores intimate topics such as love and identity with heart-wrenching clarity and unparalleled talent. Perhaps most impressively, Baldwin’s shameless examination of topics considered taboo at time of publication has deservedly catapulted his work as an iconic contemporary author and activist. 

4. Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong 

Genre: Nonfiction, Essays, Autobiography

Favorite quote:

“We keep our heads down and work hard, believing that our diligence will reward us with our dignity, but our diligence will only make us disappear. By not speaking up, we perpetuate the myth that our shame is caused by our repressive culture and the country we fled, whereas America has given us nothing but opportunity. The lie that Asians have it good is so insidious that even now as I write, I’m shadowed by doubt that I didn’t have it bad compared to others. But racial trauma is not a competitive sport. The problem is not that my childhood was exceptionally traumatic but that it was in fact rather typical. Most white Americans can only understand racial trauma as a spectacle.”

Thoughts:

As one of the most impactful books I’ve read this year, Minor Feelings is an intimate, brutally honest, and historical exploration of the Asian American racial identity accomplished through mini narrative studies of well-known figures (Yuri Kochiyama, Theresa Cha), while weaving in Hong’s personal experiences. Race is so involuted that thinking about it is a heavy, weary task; to this effect, Hong does a brilliant job at acknowledging the complexity of racial dynamics in America while bringing devastating clarity into the conversation. For example, Hong rebels against the singular, market-tested “ethnic story” and fights for the expression and acknowledgement of minor feelings: “the sediment of everyday racial experience.” Regardless, her eloquence never comes at the expense of thoroughness — managing simultaneously to challenge and validate my prior views.

5. Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder

Genre: Philosophy, Fiction

Favorite quote:

“Life is both sad and solemn. We are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other — and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.”

Thoughts:

The entire history of western philosophy is nested within a whimsical adventure that Sophie, a 15-year-old Norwegian girl, embarks on when she begins receiving a series of mysterious letters. While the plot alone left me wanting, it serves as the perfect apparatus for an educational, breadth-over-depth, yet brightly intriguing book worth rereading. The narrative style not only contextualizes dense subjects — from ancient Greek philosophy to Marx’s manifesto — it also naturally compares and contrasts the various periods, philosophers, and modes of thought through dialogue. I went into this book expecting to begrudgingly Learn Something, but I came out of it delightfully surprised by how much it was a joy to (albeit slowly) digest its contents.

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Honorable Mentions:

“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” 

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle 

“It seemed to me—articulated in words of today—that not only did she know how to put things well but she was developing a gift that I was already familiar with… she took the facts and in a natural way charged them with tension; she intensified reality as she reduced it to words, she injected it with energy.”

Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend 

“Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them, they had set about creating something else to be.”

Toni Morrison, Sula

“A boy, at best, can adore his mother, but a girl can understand her. When the doctor told me it was a girl, I thought, Now I will be understood. That was my happiest moment. The idea of a daughter.”

Ling Ma, Bliss Montage 

“Works of art are infinitely lonely, and no approach to them is as useless as criticism. Only love can grasp them, and hold them, and so be fair to them.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.”

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird 

“And isn’t that how you become tender, vulnerable? The tissue-softening marination of your own mind, the quicksand of mental indulgence?”

Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

“Manuscripts don’t burn.” 

Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita 

Happy Holidays! :)