The best books of 2023

This list is part of the best books of 2023.

Join 1,707 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2023

Book cover of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

Alan Bollard Why did I love this book?

I read this book, soon after it was published in 1963 in the middle of the Cold War. I was young and naïve. It grabbed me then.

This year I picked it up and read it again, a good test of a book’s endurance. It was as vital as ever – a British agent sent across the Iron Curtain, and some brutal, arresting, questioning, and occasionally enlightening things that followed. It became the first of a new and powerful genre, the espionage novel with a flawed spy, moral inconsistencies, deceptions, and an ending that reflected the inconsistencies of the time. Oh, also it was a damn good read!

By John le Carré,

Why should I read it?

18 authors picked The Spy Who Came in From the Cold as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Our Kind of Traitor; and The Night Manager, now a television series starring Tom Hiddleston.

The 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling novel that launched John le Carre's career worldwide

In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse-a desk job-Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of Berta Isla

Alan Bollard Why did I love this book?

This is a curious book. At one level it is an exploration of a marriage in Spain and a working career in Britain.

At another level it is a story about the covert life of a spy. It is all about secrecy, deception, and self-deception. After being pulled into the novel you start to question what is really going on, and you stay that way for much of the book.

Marcel Theroux writes: “Throughout the book, he enacts his characters’ various degrees of puzzlement in winding digressions about the mists and vapours that obscure our knowledge of each other and ourselves.”

Trigger warning: bad stuff happens and you have to endure agonisingly-long sentences at times. But nevertheless its fascinating.

By Javier Marías,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Berta Isla as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A thrilling new literary offering from the acclaimed author of The Infatuations and A Heart So White

'For a while, she wasn't sure that her husband was her husband. Sometimes she thought he was, and sometimes not...'

Berta Isla and Tomas Nevinson meet in Madrid. They are both very young and quickly decide to spend their lives together - never suspecting that they will grow to be total strangers, both living living under the shadow of disappearances.

Tomas, half-Spanish and half-English, has an extraordinary gift for languages and accents. Leaving Berta to study at Oxford, he catches the interest of…


My 3rd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Alan Bollard Why did I love this book?

I don’t know that I exactly ‘loved’ this book, more that I was endlessly impressed and intrigued by it.

Just after World War I, Keynes was part of the British team negotiating reparations at the Versailles Peace Treaty. He was so angry about the way the Allies were insisting on punitive penalties on the defeated Germans that were far more than that country could ever pay, that he resigned in protest, stormed off to his friends in the Bloomsbury Group who owned a house in the country, and in six weeks wrote this bitter yet very readable polemic.

He was rude about all the Great Power leaders, and his forecasts that the Germans would pay almost nothing, and build resentments that would lead to political strife turned out to be tragically accurate. The book sold 100,000 copies in 12 languages in the first 6 months, changed the way the League of Nations operated, and is still real today.

By John Maynard Keynes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Economic Consequences of the Peace as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes - The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind. Very few of us realize with conviction the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economic organization by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century. We assume some of the most peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural, permanent, and to be depended on, and we lay our plans accordingly. On this sandy and false foundation we scheme for social improvement and dress our political platforms, pursue our…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Economists in the Cold War: How a Handful of Economists Fought the Battle of Ideas

By Alan Bollard,

Book cover of Economists in the Cold War: How a Handful of Economists Fought the Battle of Ideas

What is my book about?

Economists in the Cold War is an account of the economic drivers and outcomes of the Cold War, told through the stories of seven international economists, who were all closely involved in theory and policy in the period 1945-73. For them, the Cold War was a battle of economic ideas, a fight between central planning and market allocation, exploring economic thinking derived from the battle between Marxist and Capitalist ideologies, all the while living their own personal dramas.

This is a story of the Cold War, told through the eyes of seven international economists, all involved in economic policy in the period 1945-73. For them, the Cold War was a battle of economic ideas, a fight between central planning and market allocation, derived from the war between Marxism and Capitalism.

Book cover of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
Book cover of Berta Isla
Book cover of The Economic Consequences of the Peace

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