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 Philip Roth: The Biography

Marco Manfre Why did I love this book?

This lengthy (807 pages, plus acknowledgements, notes, and an index) biography of the esteemed late American author Philip Roth is fascinating, perceptive, and illuminating.

As one who has read all of Roth’s books, I enjoyed learning about his writing method, along with who and what influenced him. Blake Bailey, the author of this deeply insightful and brutally frank biography, makes it clear, that, despite Philip Roth’s lifetime of denial, he was, more often than not, the main character in each of his works of fiction.

As I read Philip Roth, the Biography, I connected to the great novelist in ways that I have never been able to do while reading his voluminous output of fiction. Even as I learned about his numerous faults, including his inability to accept criticism, I could not help but continue to admire Philip Roth, both as a writer and as an individual.

I always enjoy reading well-written biographies, especially those about writers and artists. Besides the fact that Philip Roth, the Biography reads like a fast-moving work of fiction, it provides a great deal of insight into the mind of a great writer, one whose body of work will remain part of the American canon well into the future.

Blake Bailey offers an open window into the life of a man who, despite the fact that he was world famous, had always been and, to a certain extent, remains an enigma. 

By Blake Bailey,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Philip Roth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Appointed by Philip Roth and granted independence and complete access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the postwar literary scene.

Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a lower-middle-class Jewish milieu to achieve the heights of literary fame, how his career was nearly derailed by his catastrophic first marriage and how he championed the work of dissident novelists behind the Iron Curtain.

Bailey examines Roth's rivalrous friendships with Saul Bellow, John Updike…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of The Bluest Eye

Marco Manfre Why did I love this book?

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, which was first published in 1970, is a short, utterly astounding, beautifully crafted novel. As with Morrison’s other works of fiction, The Bluest Eye reveals in stark, sometimes harsh, occasionally exquisite detail, the hardships and traumas suffered by her characters.

Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved; she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

The Bluest Eye takes place mostly in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison’s own hometown. As such, it is semi-autobiographical, while, at the same time, offering a window into the struggles of countless other African Americans living in post-World War II America. 

By Toni Morrison,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Bluest Eye as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Read the searing first novel from the celebrated author of Beloved, which immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in post-Depression 1940s Ohio.

Unlovely and unloved, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged white schoolfellows. At once intimate and expansive, unsparing in its truth-telling, The Bluest Eye shows how the past savagely defines the present. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison's virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterised her writing.

'She…


My 3rd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of Stones from the River

Marco Manfre Why did I love this book?

Stones from the River imagines the life of Trudi, a girl with dwarfism, during the period of time from the end of World War I through the years of the Third Reich in the fictional town of Burgdorf, Germany.

More than anything else, Trudi, who is raised by a loving, understanding father and basks in the warmth of others in her small town, wishes to grow. As a child and a young woman she spends hours each day in futile attempts to lengthen her body, ultimately coming to the realization that she will always be who she is.

During the course of this beautifully written, evocative novel Trudi experiences a short, heady period of romantic love, followed by years of loneliness and regret. In the end, she comes to understand that she and she alone is responsible for the direction of her life and the degree of happiness and satisfaction that she experiences.

By Ursula Hegi,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Stones from the River as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An epic novel charting the course of German history in the first half of the twentieth century follows Trudi Montag, a dwarf who serves as her town's librarian, unofficial historian, and recorder of the secret stories of her people. 20,000 first printing.


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Excavating the Truth

By Marco Manfre,

Book cover of Excavating the Truth

What is my book about?

On a gray October afternoon, Grayson Simmons discovers something surprising about himself. That revelation doesn’t just upset the applecart, but smashes it to pieces, forcing him to decide how to reconstruct his life.

Grayson wonders what it means to be a member of one so-called “race” or another. Who is Black? Who is white? Is a person who is the product of an African-American father and a white mother, Black, white, or something else?

During the course of Excavating the Truth Grayson learns about the violent death of the young man who had been his father. That, followed by a great deal of soul searching, forces him to conclude that, even though one's skin tone should not matter, in twenty-first century America it still does.