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 Simple Passion

Maya Slater Why did I love this book?

It is unlike anything else I have read, a kind of forensic pathologist’s report on the body and brain of a woman, her younger self. She dissects a sexual affair, which absorbed her completely. There is nothing tender or sentimental here.

A divorcee in her 50s with grown-up sons, she neglects her career, scouring the shops for silk underwear and stiletto heels, reliving the details of their latest bedroom gyrations and longing for the next encounter. The (younger) man, who likes fast cars and sharp suits, wants the sex, nothing more.

Ernaux’s honesty, unsparing detail and detachment are extraordinary, and narrated in a limpid, simple, impeccable style, well worthy of her Nobel Prize.

By Annie Ernaux, Tanya Leslie (translator),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

A New York Times Notable Book

In her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion.

Blurring the line between fact and fiction, an unnamed narrator attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her 2 year relationship with a married foreigner where every word, event, and person either provides a connection with her beloved or is subject to her cold indifference.

With courage and exactitude, she seeks the truth behind an existence lived entirely for someone else, and, in…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Slipstream: A Memoir

Maya Slater Why did I love this book?

At 79, Howard looks back on her life. Beautiful and talented, she lacked any instinct for self-presevation, and was exploited by numerous well-known men of letters.

She drifted through life feeling helpless and disregarded, but unable to take any initiative, allowed her baby daughter to be taken away by a nanny, and ended up monstrously mistreated by her husband Kingsley Amis. The combination of miserable passivity and amazing frankness is unique, and I found this book unputdownable.

By Elizabeth Jane Howard,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Slipstream brilliantly illuminates the literary world of the latter half of the 20th century, as well as giving a highly personal insight into the life of Elizabeth Jane Howard, one of our most beloved British writers.

'This is a brave, absorbing and vulnerable book' - Guardian

Elizabeth looks back over the course of her eventful life, providing a story of as full of love, passion and betrayal as her novels.

Born in London in 1923, she was privately educated at home, moving on to short-lived careers as an actress and model, before writing her first acclaimed novel, The Beautiful Visit,…


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My 3rd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of The Wind in the Willows

Maya Slater Why did I love this book?

This may be a children’s book, but reading it as an adult I found it poetic, funny, and deeply moving.

The characters keep switching from being real animals to Victorian bachelors with comfortable residences, and there are constant hilarious touches, like Toad combing his hair (!) before an outing. Things have changed since 1908, when it was first published, and the portrayal of nature now seems terribly poignant – the seasons succeed each other peacefully, the river flows in all its beauty: nature, it seems, will stay the same forever. How I envied Grahame and his world!

By Kenneth Grahame,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked The Wind in the Willows as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 8, 9, and 10.

What is this book about?

Spend a season on the river bank and take a walk on the wild side . . .

Spring is in the air and Mole has found a wonderful new world. There's boating with Ratty, a feast with Badger and high jinx on the open road with that reckless ruffian, Mr Toad of Toad Hall. The four become the firmest of friends, but after Toad's latest escapade, can they join together and beat the wretched weasels?

PLUS A behind-the-scenes journey, including author profile, a guide to who's who, activities and more.


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Book cover of Fathers and Children

What is my book about?

Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Children is a book full to bursting with life, both comic and tragic. At the heart of this novel about love, politics, and society, strong beliefs and heated disagreements, illness and death, is the generational divide between the young and the old. When the young university graduate Arkady and his mentor, the nihilist Bazarov, leave St. Petersburg to visit their aging parents in the provinces, the conflict that ensues from the generations’ clashing views of the world—the youths’ radicalism and the parents’ liberalism—is both representative of nineteenth-century Russia and recognizably contemporary.

In this fresh new translation Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater have captured Turgenev’s subtle humor, his pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, his compassion, and, above all, his skill as a storyteller