In 2023, I read at least 46 books. As in previous years, I can’t provide an exact number. Sometimes I forget to add a book to Goodreads, and I usually don’t count the books I read for Publishers Weekly reviewing, a gig I finally ended in the fall after ten years.And I normally don’t include books I read as background material for my own writing projects. So, about 46 for 2023. Not bad. Not great.

In terms of quality over quantity, though, well, even that seemed to fall a bit short. I rarely deliver a tidy top ten list—usually going a bit over that number because of the many books I loved. For the fiction I read in 2023 (which included books published in other years), I gave five stars to eight novels. But I liked many others without feeling wowed by them. This is totally subjective, of course.

Of those eight five-starred novels that I read in 2023, I’ve already identified three for www.shepherd.com , which I posted about on January 1, 2024.

These represent the kind of novel I’m most drawn to: historical fiction written by women with plots heavily centered on women. I loved the expansiveness of Quinn’s story, which ranges over the two world wars of the twentieth century. (A t.v. series is purportedly in the works. Yay!) I loved how Jiles and Moustakis contained their poetic narratives in a briefer time frame. All three authors excelled at both character and place. I still think about these books often.

I consider Paulette Jiles’s novel an example of a new style of Western, and I would put Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens in the same category. It’s a delectable romp about a plucky teenaged orphan, Bridget, who must support herself in Dodge City. Prostitutes and gunslingers populate this entertaining, thrillerish, action-packed coming out story.

Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X is a compelling mash-up of alternative history and love story, with the widowed C.M. Lucca gathering information about her deceased wife, an artist known as X, to write a “true” biography of her life. A stunning riff on how we create ourselves and how much we can ever really know another person.

Leila Mottley’s debut, Nightcrawling, was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and was an Oprah Book Club selection. It features a teenaged main character, Kiara, who turns to sex work to support herself, her brother, and an abandoned neighbor boy in Oakland, California. It was a tough story to read but beautifully done.

The same can be said of Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshanathan, set during Sri Lanka’s civil war. As Sashi studies to become a doctor, her family unravels, and she loses her four brothers in different ways. It’s a moving meditation on what it means to be a patriot and/or a terrorist during times of great political upheaval.

I was very late to Amor Towles’s debut, Rules of Civility. I’d really liked A Gentleman in Moscow, so when I found a used copy of his first novel, I decided to give it a try. It takes place in the Depression-era United States, following a young woman named Katey as she struggles to carve out a career and develop a relationship with the enigmatic Tinker Grey, who has links to the wealthy and powerful of New York City. It’s a fascinating story that surprised me in several places.

In addition to these eight, there were seven others that I enjoyed reading in 2023. Most centered on families. For some reason I’d left off reading Anne Tyler, so it was nice to return to her with French Braid, a solid example of her signature quirky family drama. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett is a nicely structured path-not-taken story with a lot of heart. Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts is a chilling parent-and-child tale set in an alternate (but scarily plausible) United States. Day by Michael Cunningham is a heart-pulling piece about the affects wrought by the Covid pandemic. And Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s updated, reimagining of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, is a sad—and at times grim—story of a young boy’s search for family.

Rebecca Makkai’s sophisticated mystery I Have Some Questions for You takes place at a boarding high school. Bodie Kane, a former student, has returned to teach a short winter session, and in her spare time digs into the decades-old murder of her roommate there.

The only historical of the bunch is The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann by Virginia Pye. (I posted a review of it in 2023.) I was especially fond of the titular character, a talented Gilded Age writer determined to control her career.

And finally, I read Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. I would describe it as a plus-one to the seven enjoyable books. It’s one of those novels that I always thought I should read, and last year the nonfiction author Laurie Gwen Shapiro, organized an online book discussion of it so I decided to join in. I have to admit that it took some dogged dedication to get through the novel. It has a lot of plot. There are dozens of characters whose names spawn nicknames. There are big political and philosophical discussions. It is a big, big book.

Next up is Part Two: Nonfiction