As promised, this week I am doing a bit of a wrap up of my 2023 reads.
I read 213 books in 2023, after making a resolution to read less than the year before (in 2022 I read 143 books). Oops. If you follow me on social media you would have seen my top 23 books of 2023.
Confession time… it was very hard to make that list and I went through my reading list and when I had reached 23 books, I stopped. My social media list was really just a small snippet - and in fact, was less than half of the REAL list.
Many of these will be familiar to you if you have been following along for the year, and others on this list I am yet to review.
There are 52 books on this list, so it could be a good “book a week” list for 2024?
So without the confines of a catchy post, here are my favourites from 2023…
In no particular order:
New Zealand Fiction
The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey
Pet by Catherine Chidgey
Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly
See You in September by Charity Norman
The Bone Tree by Airana Ngarewa
Better the Blood by Michael Bennett
The Secrets of Strangers by Charity Norman
Historical Fiction
The Memory Keeper of Kyiv by Erin Litteken
All the Broken Places by John Boyne
In Memoriam by Alice Winn
The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson
The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Go As A River by Shelley Read
I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
General Fiction
The Other Half of Augusta Hope by Joanna Glen
Maame by Jessica George
All My Mothers by Joanna Glen
Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent
Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel
Isaac and the Egg by Bobby Palmer
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfield
Another Life by Kristin Hannah
The Push by Audrey Audrain
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth
Water by John Boyne
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Non Fiction
The Mother Wound by Amani Haydar
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in New York City by Andrew Elliott
The Only Plane in the Sky – An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff
My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World's Deadliest Migration Route by Sally Hayden
Frontline Midwife by Anna Kent
Grand by Noelle McCarthy
A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney
The Storyteller by Dave Grohl
The Sun Does Shine – how I found life and freedom on death row by Anthony Ray Hinton
The In Between by Hadley Vlahos
Wifedom by Anna Funder
Paris by Paris Hilton
Barbra by Barbra Streisand
Strong Female Character by Fern Brady
Straight Up by Ruby Tui
I would love to know what your favourite books were from 2023 (hopefully your list is not quite this long?) because life is too short to read bad books.