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The best books of 2023

This list is part of the best books of 2023.

We've asked 1,608 authors and super readers for their 3 favorite reads of the year.

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My favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of All My Knotted-Up Life

Marissa Burt Why did I love this book?

I’ve appreciated Beth Moore’s non-fiction over the years, but her memoir was a delightful surprise.

The description and setting dripped from the page and transported me across the decades and into the South. With her characteristic humor and depth, Beth told her story with vulnerability, kindness, and a posture that made it feel like I was having coffee with a friend.

I wanted to go slowly and linger with her words, but I also found myself turning the next page and the next because it was so hard to put down. Highly recommend!

By Beth Moore,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked All My Knotted-Up Life as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and Wall Street Journal bestseller!

An incredibly thoughtful, disarmingly funny, and intensely vulnerable glimpse into the life and ministry of a woman familiar to many but known by few.

“It’s a peculiar thing, this having lived long enough to take a good look back. We go from knowing each other better than we know ourselves to barely sure if we know each other at all, to precisely sure that we don’t. All my knotted-up life I’ve longed for the sanity and simplicity of knowing who’s good and who’s bad. I’ve wanted to know this about…


My 2nd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South

Marissa Burt Why did I love this book?

I was initially intrigued by Esau's memoir because I appreciate his NY Times opinion pieces. That same thought-provoking exploration of faith, race, and human connection is evident in this book, and I was delighted to also find a compelling story-telling voice and world-building prose. 

McCaulley’s writing style is engaging and full of immersive details that made me feel as though I was witnessing events unfold in real-time. With compassion and honesty, he revisits key moments as he traces his family’s history and shared identity. 

As I read, I found myself reflecting on the similarities and differences across our divergent experiences of culture, family dynamics, and circumstances within the same trajectory of growing up in the 1980s and 1990s. Highly recommend!

By Esau McCaulley,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked How Far to the Promised Land as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the New York Times contributing opinion writer and award-winning author of Reading While Black, a riveting intergenerational account of his family’s search for home and hope

“A riveting book that invites you into the personal journey of one of the finest writers alive today.”—Beth Moore, New York Times bestselling author of All My Knotted-Up Life

For much of his life, Esau McCaulley was taught to see himself as an exception: someone who, through hard work, faith, and determination, overcame childhood poverty, anti-Black racism, and an absent father to earn a job as a university professor and a life in…


My 3rd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Follow the Devil / Follow the Light

Marissa Burt Why did I love this book?

In what I would call a companion to Lewis’ classic The Great Divorce, Webster offers up a modern-day descent into hell that is theologically thought-provoking, honest, profound, and—perhaps most surprisingly—playful.

The plot is relatively straightforward: a demon visits an ordinary Joe & takes him to hell, where Joe must complete three challenges to see and save his beloved twin sister, who died as a child. Along the way, Joe is faced with the fracturing of beauty, truth & goodness, as well as flashbacks that reveal more of his schism humanity.

The plot is compelling, but it’s Webster’s story-telling, setting details, and multifaceted symbolism that make this story shine, and the literary references and mythic quality had me queuing up for a second read-through to catch the layers.

This has an unexpectedly delightful effect on the reader of feeling like you are journeying with a beloved friend through this difficult and shocking terrain of spoiled goodness and death and sorrow and hope-haunted loss. Highly recommend!

By Jeremiah Webster,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Follow the Devil / Follow the Light as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Can the reality of Imago Dei eclipse the failings of a troubled protagonist? Can the Christian imagination speak to a generation captivated by Stranger Things, Squid Game, and the Marvel universe? Can the means of pop culture advance theological ends? These were just some of the questions I wrestled with during the creation of Follow the Devil / Follow
the Light.
What follows is a supposal, a work of fiction, a dark vision for dark times. There are fits of allegory throughout, but nothing to advance the tradition of Plato, Spencer, Bunyan, Hawthorne, etc. I have no unique access into…


Plus, check out my book…

Storybound

By Marissa Burt,

Book cover of Storybound

What is my book about?

In the land of story, kids go to school to learn to be the perfect character: a brave hero, a trusty sidekick, even the most dastardly villain. They dream of the day when they will live out tales written just for them.

But when an ordinary girl named Una Fairchild finds herself written into a story, she discovers that the magical land is threatened by a dark secret.

As she digs deep into Story's shadowy past, Una realizes that she is tied to the world in ways she never could have imagined—and it may be up to her to save it.