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 Mad Hatter Summer:  A Lewis Carroll Nightmare

Mark Davies Why did I love this book?

This is an imaginative mystery centered on the people who inhabited the world (Oxford and London) of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) after the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

As an Oxford local historian myself, I think the author captures the atmosphere and detail of Victorian Oxford superbly well and sustains the suspense to the end, as Dodgson becomes embroiled in a series of events that involve him being blackmailed and being treated as a murder suspect.

Many familiar elements of Dodgson's life and many of his real associates are included, and there are numerous subtle nods to the text of Wonderland. And Dodgson's (to modern eyes) controversial friendships with and photographs of children are not swerved – indeed, they are central to the plot – but are astutely incorporated and believably explained.

This book is thought-provoking, instructive, enthralling, and convincing. 

By Donald Thomas,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mad Hatter Summer as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The man the world knew as Lewis Carroll, author of the adventures of Alice, was known to his colleagues in the Christ Church Common Room as the Reverend C. L. Dodgson, a middle-aged Oxford don. His hobby was photography, especially of pubescent girls 'in their favourite dress of nothing to wear'. When evidence of the Reverend's pastime falls into the hands of Charles Augustus Howell, the infamous Victorian blackmailer, and a murder victim is fished out of the Isis, Inspector Swain is called to investigate the case that casts the shadow of doom over Dodgson. 'One of the most entertaining…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of Castle Rackrent

Mark Davies Why did I love this book?

The originality of this novel in being a first-person narration by a Catholic working man on an English-owned Irish estate is extraordinary (as too its original popularity, since its readers must largely have been from the class which is described so unflatteringly in the novel!).

Edgeworth clearly took her inspiration from her own Irish workforce and, indeed, her own dissolute, spendthrift, conniving, or weak-willed relations, hence the novel’s reliability in terms of historical accuracy – enhanced by her own explanatory Glossary.

Sir Walter Scott loved it, and Jane Austen (whom Edgeworth outsold in her day) was a fan – so who am I to disagree?

By Maria Edgeworth,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Set in Ireland prior to its achieving legislative independence from Britain in 1782, Castle Rackrent tells the story of three generations of an estate--owning family as seen through the eyes-and as told in the voice-of their longtime servant, Thady Quirk, recorded and commented on by an anonymous Editor. This edition of Maria Edgeworth's first novel is based on the 1832 edition, the last revised by her, and includes Susan Kubica Howard's foot-of-the-page notes on the text of the memoir as well as on the notes and glosses the Editor offers "for the information of the ignorant English reader." Howard's Introduction…


My 3rd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of Queen Camilla

Mark Davies Why did I love this book?

Quite simply, because it’s hilarious – and so very prescient in envisaging, many years before the reality, how various members of the British royal family might turn out.

The premise is that Queen Elizabeth and her nearest and dearest have been consigned to an exclusion zone in republican Britain, along with other work-shy, dissolute, and villainous spongers.

Given the title, it is no spoiler to say that Camilla does indeed become queen, with hierarchal ramifications – the different directions followed by Harry and William, for instance, are amusingly predictive of our current reality.

All the while, there are the dogs – who, unbeknown to their owners, have a complete understanding of everything that is being said and provide a comic, insightful running commentary.

By Sue Townsend,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

New Novel.


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Alice in Waterland: Lewis Carroll and the River Thames in Oxford

By Mark Davies,

Book cover of Alice in Waterland: Lewis Carroll and the River Thames in Oxford

What is my book about?

A world-famous Oxford story from a distinctive angle: the key role of the River Thames in the creation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The book takes the reader on a literary journey of discovery along some ten miles of the picturesque river of which Lewis Carroll and his ‘merry crew’ of the real Alice and her sisters were so fond.

Combining excerpts from Carroll’s diaries and the ‘Alice books with images, memoirs, and other fiction, Alice in Waterland sets the Oxford scene of the time and sheds light on the real places, people, and events that stimulated Carroll’s imagination.

This new, longer, hardback third edition includes much new material, including some poignant limericks by Carroll, which were discovered by the author.  

Book cover of Mad Hatter Summer:  A Lewis Carroll Nightmare
Book cover of Castle Rackrent
Book cover of Queen Camilla

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