My 2023 in Reading

an honest review and my top 10 favorite books.

In early 2023, I set out a goal of reading 45 books, an ambitious number to my standard. I finished reading 39 of them. There are many reasons that I could come up with to explain why I felt short on the number: starting a new job, surgery, two online classes, writing more on Substack, spending more meaningful time with friends and family, more time in the outdoors, having to give up books after reading more than halfway through, and just being lazy from time to time.

I’ve been setting a yearly reading goal for three years now, to build reading back into my daily life, after hitting a pause on reading-for-fun during graduate school. My reading goal always has a specific number, but the number itself does not matter as much as the motivation it serves to encourage me to think of reading as an important part of my life, to be on the lookout for a good read, and to use fragmented time on reading rather than scrolling, and to discover more stories beyond my world of knowing.

In that sense, I did meet my reading goal. I am proud of the books I did get to read, the many different lives I felt privileged to experience, and the incredible stories I was lucky to discover. In 2023, I kept up reading as a weekly routine, if not daily, and built reading, reflecting, and writing (about books) into my life.

My Top 10

In 2022, I wrote my first Year in Reading and compiled my top 10 books. It was a fun project to reflect on the books I read and examine how each of them enriched my reading life (or not), and it sparked many interesting conversations with friends, co-workers, and strangers.

Similar to last year, I asked myself the following questions to come up with the list:

• Do I keep thinking about the book, the characters, the plot, and the stories long after finishing the book, to the extent that I must tell the world about it?

• Do the writing style, story structure, and character development stand out more than other books I’ve read?

• Has this book significantly impacted or challenged my perspectives on life, the world, and people who are different from me, more than the other books I have read that year?

Based on these criteria, here they are - five fiction and five non-fiction, in no particular order.

Fiction

Terrace Story (2023) by Hilary Leichter

Terrace Story consists of several short stories that are seemingly independent but closely tied to one another. A young couple living in a crowded urban apartment discovers a magnificent terrace hidden behind their closet, but this enchanting space only materializes when their friend Stephanie comes to visit. The lives of these characters unfold from there, across generations, space, and time, in the most unexpected ways.

This book is about the profound human loneliness and the desire to be loved. In just under 200 pages, it allows the readers to intimately experience the characters' deepest sorrows and desires. Hilary Leichter's writing is so skillful and magical - using the simplest words to convey the most intricate human longings.

Read my full review here.

Age of Vice (2023) by Deepti Kapoor

Deepti Kapoor wrote a sprawling family saga that takes place in Northern India surrounding three characters: Ajay, a boy who comes from nothing; Sunny Wadia, the heir of a rich and corrupted businessman; Neda, a naive and curious journalist. As the story unfolds, the three of them become dangerously intertwined. A social critique of class, the caste system, corruption, power, and those who abuse it, Age of Vice portrays the rise of modern India where the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. “Age of Vice” is the first novel in a planned trilogy, and I cannot wait for the other two to come out soon.

Read my full review here.

Tomb Sweeping (2023) by Alexandra Chang

A girl finds solace in her father’s passing at a strange funeral for the living. A recent grad overthinks her fading college friendship that has run its natural course. A strained sibling relationship in a mixed-status family comes to light when two strangers meet in the subway. These are some of the brilliant stories in this charming and deeply moving short story collection that explores the meaning of home and belonging across Asia and the U.S.

Radically empathetic and human in her storytelling, Alexandra Chang writes extraordinary stories that delve into ordinary human experiences and bring hope and light into life's plights and darkness.

Read my full review here, along with some of my personal stories mixed in.

Murder on the Orient Express (1934) by Agatha Christie

Yes, I didn’t read this book until 2023. A classic and perhaps the OG of the whodunnit story. The Orient Express, leaving from the Middle East to London, is suddenly stopped by a heavy snowstorm. A murder is discovered, and twelve people become suspects. The Belgium detective Hercule Poirot questions all of them until the truth is revealed. The story is not just about murder but the morality of it. It's a satisfying read and reaffirms why it remains a classic almost a century later.

Fly Already (2019) by Etgar Keret

2023 is the year that I discovered

Etgar Keret

’s ingenious, poignant, and funny writing. This short story collection is a true gem. Keret's whimsical and fantastical stories take you to the most unexpected places. A divorced father tries to buy a cash register for his son's birthday trying to impress; human clones are created so that they could be destroyed by their real-life nemesis for revenge without consequence; and two siblings treat their pet rabbit as their shape-shifted father after their father left home after a divorce. In one story, Keret even breaks the "fourth wall" and directly speaks to the readers from the fictional story. Keret's ability to write about profound human loneliness, love, sadness, and everyday joy in such simple language is beyond wild. Etgar Keret is a treasure!

Nonfiction

In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss (2023) by Amy Bloom

In this heartbreaking yet funny memoir, Amy Bloom tells the story of supporting her late husband’s assisted suicide in Switzerland after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Bloom writes with all honesty about the whole process from suspecting her husband’s memory loss to learning about his diagnosis, and to the final journey they took together to the assisted suicide facility. It’s impossible and unimaginable for most of us to accompany our loved ones through life knowing an end date. Yet, Bloom faces the most unimaginable with grace, wit, positivity, and courage. Her boundary-defying love with her husband teaches us many lessons about loss, death, grief, and the many facets of love and life.

Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto (2022) by Tricia Hersey

This is the book that completely shifted my relationship with sleep and rest. Tricia Hersey founded the Nap Ministry, a movement that provides spaces for the community to rest together through installations and art performances. The book serves as a manifesto for the Nap Ministry, which calls for a collective paradigm shift to deprogram ourselves from the toxic and oppressive grind culture, so that we can rest, heal, and be human. Hersey sees all forms of activities that connect our mind and the body as a form of rest, such as taking hot showers, daydreaming, napping, getting lost in thoughts, being in nature, disconnecting from social media, etc. Hersey urges us to rest, nap, and sleep whenever our body needs because “we're not machines,” she says, “exhaustion will not save us. Rest will.”

Read my full review here.

Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino” (2023) by Héctor Tobar

Our Migrant Souls is an excellent essay collection by the Pulitzer–winning author, Héctor Tobar. The book explores the Latino identity and examines its relativity to whiteness, indigeneity, and blackness across time. Through sharing his own family’s story as Guatemalan immigrants and recounting his experience interviewing Latinos across the country, Tobar sheds light on the often-unseen impact of life-altering, traumatic events on migrant workers’ psyches, such as border-crossing and forced family separation. It’s a book full of poignant and heart-breaking stories, intertwined with moments of triumph and pride.

Read my full review here.

I'm Glad My Mom Died (2022) by Jennette McCurdy

I Am Glad My Mom Died recounts McCurdy's childhood as a child star and her complicated relationship with her abusive late mother. Being forced into acting at the age of six and anorexia at eleven by her mother to "delay" her puberty so that she could play more child roles, McCurdy battled with severe eating disorders and spent years in therapy trying to understand the trauma and abuse her mother put her through after her mother died. Eventually, on the road to recovery and self-acceptance, McCurdy details her far-from-normal childhood and adolescence through this poignant memoir packed with dark truths and humor. Among the many memoirs I read last year, this stands out as a special one for me and, still will be, for many years to come.

The Unseen Body: A Doctor's Journey Through the Hidden Wonders of Human Anatomy (2021) by Jonathan Reisman

Dr. Resiman, a doctor of internal medicine and pediatrics, has practiced medicine in some of the most far-flung places in the world, from the Arctic Alaska and Antarctica, at high-altitude in Nepal, in Kolkata’s urban slums, to the Oglala Sioux in South Dakota. In this book, Reisman takes you on a captivating journey inside the human body from the ear, the heart, and the lung to the different bodily fluids.

Leech therapy for blood clots (still practiced today), the ban on animal lung consumption in the U.S., and the most disliked bodily fluid among medical professionals (mucus) are just a few examples of some of the most fascinating facts I learned from this book. Informative, funny, and well-written, this book renewed my appreciation for the different parts of the human body and how well they work together, for the most part.

Read my full review here.

The Short List

Fiction

• Terrace Story (2023) by Hilary Leichter

• Age of Vice (2023) by Deepti Kapoor

• Tomb Sweeping (2023) by Alexandra Chang

• Murder on the Orient Express (1934) by Agatha Christie

• Fly Already (2019) by Etgar Keret

Nonfiction

• In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss (2023) by Amy Bloom

• Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto (2022) by Tricia Hersey

• Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino” (2023) by Héctor Tobar

• I'm Glad My Mom Died (2022) by Jennette McCurdy

• The Unseen Body: A Doctor's Journey Through the Hidden Wonders of Human Anatomy (2021) by Jonathan Reisman

Tell me in the comments, what were some of the memorable books you read last year of, and what are you looking forward to reading this year?

Related Reading:

My 2022 in Reading

All My Book Reviews