The best books of 2023

This list is part of the best books of 2023.

Join 1,708 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War

Vladimir Alexandrov I this book because...

A searing, brutally honest, brilliantly written depiction of the war that defined an era in American history and a period in my life and in the lives of millions of young men (and women) in the 1960s. 

Dozens of portraits of compelling characters caught in hellish conditions and carrying out seemingly impossible missions against impossible odds.

It is a celebration of incredible bravery by Marines as well as a lament over the appalling waste of human lives and national wealth. A condemnation of myopic and criminal foreign policies, of politicians for their cynical self-interest and ignorance, and of some senior military officers for their egotism and blindness. But also simultaneously a celebration of other commanders for their humanity and wisdom. A portrait of tragic race relations that would spill over into civilian life.

It is a novel about love, ambition, tragic failure, and personal transformation.

By Karl Marlantes,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Matterhorn as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Fire Support Base Matterhorn: a fortress carved out of the grey-green mountain jungle. Cold monsoon clouds wreath its mile-high summit, concealing a battery of 105-mm howitzers surrounded by deep bunkers, carefully constructed fields of fire and the 180 marines of Bravo Company. Just three kilometres from Laos and two from North Vietnam, there is no more isolated outpost of America's increasingly desperate war in Vietnam.

Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas, 21 years old and just a few days into his 13-month tour, has barely arrived at Matterhorn before Bravo Company is ordered to abandon their mountain and sent deep in-country in…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of The Accursed

Vladimir Alexandrov I this book because...

A bravura performance by a brilliant author with total control of her writing skills and an exhaustive mastery of literary traditions, which she deploys with the panache of Horowitz playing Chopin.

Oates has written a neo-Gothic novel filled with demonic manifestations and overwhelming passions that take place against the background of American society (and Princeton University) with all its salient characteristics and problems in the first decade of the 20th century. 

The novel is also, and not incidentally, filled with wonderful, three-dimensional portraits of major American cultural and political figures of the time—Woodrow Wilson, Upton Sinclair, Mark Twain, Teddy Roosevelt, Jack London, and others. Oates’ emotional range is marvelous, and she can communicate the feelings and psychic churnings of a stiff Calvinist on a pulpit as readily as those of a tremulous young woman in a rose garden.

A funny, eerie, assured, and extraordinarily entertaining work.

By Joyce Carol Oates,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Accursed as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This eerie tale of psychological horror sees the real inhabitants of turn-of-the-century Princeton fall under the influence of a supernatural power. New Jersey, 1905: soon-to-be commander-in-chief Woodrow Wilson is president of Princeton University. On a nearby farm, Socialist author Upton Sinclair, enjoying the success of his novel 'The Jungle', has taken up residence with his family. This is a quiet, bookish community - elite, intellectual and indisputably privileged. But when a savage lynching in a nearby town is hushed up, a horrifying chain of events is initiated - until it becomes apparent that the families of Princeton have been beset…


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My 3rd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century

Vladimir Alexandrov I this book because...

A brilliant, exhaustive biography of one of the most important figures in the history of Western ballet and the godfather of American classical ballet.

Homans studied every conceivable source of written information about Balanchine, both published and unpublished, interviewed everyone who could contribute anything to her understanding of him, and went everywhere that had been important in his life, including Georgia in the Caucasus and Russia. 

She informs her exhaustive documentation with a professional dancer’s nuanced and deep understanding and appreciation of Balanchine’s towering balletic legacy.

The result is an unforgettable portrait of a man and a great artist for whom dance and dancers, especially the great ballerinas he loved, were nothing less than an embodiment of his ceaseless quest to elevate the human to the divine, or to use human movement set to music to reach a Platonic ideal.  

By Jennifer Homans,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • “A fascinating read about a true genius and his unrelenting thirst for beauty in art and in life.”—MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV 

Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography and the Marfield Prize for Arts Writing • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the Baillie Gifford Prize

Based on a decade of unprecedented research, the first major biography of George Balanchine, a broad-canvas portrait set against the backdrop of the tumultuous century that shaped the man The New York Times called…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks

By Vladimir Alexandrov,

Book cover of To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks

What is my book about?

A brilliant examination of the enigmatic Russian revolutionary about whom Winston Churchill said, "few men tried more, gave more, dared more and suffered more for the Russian people," and who remains a legendary and controversial figure in his homeland today.

Savinkov's epic life challenges many popular myths about the Russian Revolution, which was arguably the most important catalyst of twentieth-century world history. His goal of a free and democratic Russia remains a poignant reminder of how things in Russia could have been, and how, perhaps, they may still become someday.

Written with novelistic verve and filled with the triumphs, disasters, dramatic twists, and contradictions that definedSavinkov'ss life, this book shines a light on an extraordinary man who tried to change Russian and world history.