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 Covenant of Water

Lois Lowry Why did I love this book?

For starters, the first page and the opening lines were so startling that it would have been impossible not to turn the page. And it begins with a focus on a pre-adolescent girl; I always think when I encounter such protagonists: these are my people.

I was such a girl myself once. I raised daughters. I write for adolescents. When I encounter such a voice, I settle in and enter that world. 

And the world of this book is one that was foreign to me. I’ve never been to India, never much wondered about life there. But Verghese creates the world with such sound and color and mystery and magic that I entered it completely.  Added to that is the pervasive plot element of the practice of medicine and how it affects culture and generations. 

By Abraham Verghese,

Why should I read it?

25 authors picked The Covenant of Water as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SUBJECT OF A SIX-PART SUPER SOUL PODCAST SERIES HOSTED BY OPRAH WINFREY

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

“One of the best books I’ve read in my entire life. It’s epic. It’s transportive . . . It was unputdownable!”—Oprah Winfrey, OprahDaily.com

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Lessons

Lois Lowry Why did I love this book?

I’ve loved most of MacEwan’s books over the years, so I was delighted when a new one appeared and undaunted by its size (close to 500 pages). And it has a fabulous jacket; I’m always influenced by the jacket (book designers take note!).

It starts with the adolescence of the protagonist, Roland (my people, I thought once again), and the incident (okay, spoiler: sexual abuse) that propels him through his life… and the book’s plot.

The plot! Why do people make these decisions? I found myself thinking as first, Roland, and then later, his wife, make choices that had me wanting to call warnings to them. And yet…. it unfolds. Explains. Forgives. And all of it is set against the unexplainable recent history of our world.

By Ian McEwan,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Lessons as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Discover the Sunday Times bestselling new novel from Ian McEwan.

Lessons is an intimate yet universal story of love, regret and a restless search for answers.

When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Stranded at boarding school, his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.

Twenty-five years later Roland's wife mysteriously vanishes, and he is left alone with their baby son. Her disappearance sparks of journey of…


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My 3rd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Haven

Lois Lowry Why did I love this book?

I loved Emma Donahue’s book Room some years back, but when I picked up this one, Haven, and read a description about three Irish monks in the 7th century, I almost put it back down. Yet it captured me on page one.

Three guys of different ages and very different personalities, driven by different motives, and there they are together throughout the book in an isolated, perilous place, figuring out how to survive.

I was absolutely awed by the research she must have done. It is not a long book (compared to my other two choices), but when I closed it at the end, I pondered the ending for a very, very long time.  

By Emma Donoghue,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In this beautiful story of adventure and survival from the New York Times bestselling author of Room, three men vow to leave the world behind them as they set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream, with only faith to guide them.

In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks—young Trian and old Cormac—he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

The Windeby Puzzle

By Lois Lowry,

Book cover of The Windeby Puzzle

What is my book about?

A unique mixture of non-fiction, fiction, and—what should I call it? A personal essay, I guess—The Windeby Puzzle is an account of the finding and anthropological examination of the body of an adolescent whose two-thousand-year-old remains were discovered in a European peat bog.

Based on the available information, it then tells the story (and actually tells it twice, with different info each time) of how this unfortunate teenager may have lived and died.

Interspersed throughout the book are my diary-like musings explaining how I did the research, turned history into a story, and why the reader should care.