Author Icelandophile Viking enthusiast Saga scholar Random reader
The best books of 2023

This list is part of the best books of 2023.

We've asked 1,624 authors and super readers for their 3 favorite reads of the year.

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My favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Karitas Untitled

Nancy Marie Brown Why did I love this book?

Karitas Untitled is an unforgettable novel about the burden and joy of being an artist. Growing up in early 20th-century Iceland, Karitas is a clever child who sees things others do not: elves, ghosts, and the rainbow embedded in the color black.

Despite crushing poverty, she achieves her dream of attending the Royal College of Art in Copenhagen and marries the most beautiful man she has ever seen—only to learn that the unending labor of being a mother alone while he spends months at sea, leaves little time or energy for art.

But Karitas does not give up. Her story speaks to every woman who struggles to find time for herself—and succeeds.

By Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir, Philip Roughton (translator),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A portrait of an artist trapped by convention and expectations but longing for the chaos that can set her free.

Growing up on a farm in early twentieth-century rural Iceland, Karitas Jonsdottir, one of six siblings, yearns for a new life. An artist, Karitas has a powerful calling and is determined to never let go of her true being, one unsuited for the conventional. But she is powerless against the fateful turns of real life and all its expectations of women. Pulled back time and again by design and by chance to the Icelandic countryside-as dutiful daughter, loving mother, and…


My 2nd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Woman, Captain, Rebel: The Extraordinary True Story of a Daring Icelandic Sea Captain

Nancy Marie Brown Why did I love this book?

I love true stories of strong women who defy our expectations. Iceland’s fishing industry in the early 1800s would seem to be a man’s world.

But Captain Thurídur was one of many women who rowed out into the icy North Atlantic in open boats—and in winter, no less—to catch the fish that powered Iceland’s colonial economy.

Haunted by a ghost, a believer in elves and omens, Thurídur could read the waves and weather like no one else. Her catches were legendary. Best, in her 50 years at sea, not one of her crewmembers drowned. 

By Margaret Willson,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A daring and magnificent historical narrative nonfiction account of Iceland's most famous female sea captain who constantly fought for women's rights and equality-and who also solved one of the country's most notorious robberies.

Every day was a fight for survival, equality, and justice for Iceland's most renowned female fishing captain of the 19th century.

History would have us believe the sea has always been a male realm, the idea of female captains almost unthinkable. But there is one exception, so notable she defies any expectation.

This is her remarkable story.

Captain Thuridur, born in Iceland in 1777, lived a life…


My 3rd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

Nancy Marie Brown Why did I love this book?

Like the fictional Emily Wilde, I’m a scholar who’s captivated by elves and faerie lore. I’ve visited out-of-the-way villages on icy islands in the far north, like Emily’s Ljosland, looking for the hidden folk. But Emily, unlike me, actually found them—or they found her—putting her and her friends in peril of their lives.

Author Heather Fawcett’s love and respect for the ancient lore of the north shines through in this wonderful exploration of friendship and belonging. I’ll be looking for the sequel.

By Heather Fawcett,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town in the far north to study faerie folklore and discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love in the start of a heartwarming and enchanting new fantasy series.

“A darkly gorgeous fantasy that sparkles with snow and magic.”—Sangu Mandanna, author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is…


Plus, check out my book…

Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland's Elves Can Save the Earth

By Nancy Marie Brown,

Book cover of Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland's Elves Can Save the Earth

What is my book about?

"Icelanders believe in elves. Why does that make you laugh?" asks Nancy Marie Brown in this wonderfully quirky exploration of our interaction with nature. Looking for answers in history, science, religion, and art from ancient times to today, Brown finds that each discipline defines what is real and unreal, natural and supernatural, demonstrated and theoretical, alive and inert. Each has its own way of perceiving and valuing the world around us. 

Illuminated by her own encounters with Iceland's Otherworld-in ancient lava fields, on a holy mountain, beside a glacier or an erupting volcano, crossing the cold desert at the island's heart on horseback Looking for the Hidden Folk offers an intimate conversation about how we look at and find value in nature.