Best Books Lists

Also: A $20-billion shipwreck, the return of psychoanalysis, a satire of cancel culture, the real Charles Dickens, and more.

A photograph from Epoca (22 December 1951). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

It’s that time of year again—and, no, I don’t mean for listening to Wham’s “Last Christmas” as you are barreling down I95 to the grandparents’ house, kids spaced out in the back. No, it’s time for those “best books” lists, posted every year by underpaid interns in a desperate effort to make a few more bucks from sponsored links and score some final clicks.

The lists are almost always too long. The New York Times published its “100 Notable Books of 2023” yesterday. The New York Public Library has also published its list of “Best Books for Adults.” There are 70 titles, many of them also on The New York Times’s list. The Vulture has 40 books on its “The Best Books of 2023 (So Far).” BookRiot has 30 on its list.

If you don’t subscribe to the Gray Lady, you can find a list of the 2023 “notable” titles at Goodreads. There are no surprises here, which isn’t to say that all of the books on the list are bad. I thought Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost was OK—started great, ended in a long slog despite her attempt to ramp up the tension. Emma Wilson’s translation of the Iliad made the list, and so did Salman Rushdie’s Victory City. But the nonfiction titles are very New York Times-y and the poetry selections suck, comme d’habitude.

In the end, that’s the problem with such lists. You rarely come across a book you haven’t already read about ad nauseam over the preceding months. Readers of this email newsletter probably know everything they want to know about Emily Wilson’s Iliad and have already decided either to buy it or to pass.

What I want to know at the end of the year are the favorite books of people I know or trust. I always keep an eye out for John Wilson’s list of favorite books. I would also love to know what Barton Swaim’s favorite titles were in 2023 (Barton, feel free to send me an email!) or Collin Garbarino’s (ditto) or Dominic Green’s (my email is ever before thee) or Matthew Walther’s or Rusty Reno’s. I could go on. Not everything done by committee is worthless, but “best of” lists are.

What were your favorite books of 2023? Add them in the comments below! I trust readers of this email, who obviously have impeccable taste, more than I trust The New York Times.  

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In other news, Harper’s has published an excerpt from Christian Wiman’s latest book—a memoir called Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair. Read it here.