The Best Things We Read in 2023
Dear Listeners,
Of all the lists and awards that are reigned down on books at the end of the year, this list is my most favorite. I have reached out to past guests from The Stacks in 2023 and asked them to share with us their favorite book they read this year, and the one book in 2024 they're looking forward to. I love the list because, as you know, The Stacks' guests have the best taste in books, and the list is unlike what you get in every other publication. My guests have range.
I hope you enjoy reconnecting with the many voices from our 2023 season.
Chelsea Devantez
Host of Glamorous Trash with Chelsea Devantez
The best books I read this year were almost entirely recommended by Traci! The Other Side and We Were Once Family are massive highlights for me. But there is one memoir that I found via my podcast which I cannot stop thinking about and that is Joyce Maynard's 1998 memoir At Home In The World. Joyce is a voracious writer and I almost felt the book had me in an emotional chokehold as I read about her relationship with JD Salinger when he was 53 and she was just eighteen. I would describe the book as haunting, both as a piece of writing, and in the book's place in culture. In 1998 she was shunned and decried by Marureen Dowd as a 'leech woman' by daring to speak against Salinger, and even after such bravery it would be eighteen more years till we saw a movement like 'me too.'
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: RuPaul's memoir! This is maybe his 5th book, but my fingers are crossed that this time he will finally give us all the wonderful gnarly details of his life story without a filter.
Chelsea was our guest for Episode 248, and Episode 251, where she discussed The Meaning of Mariah Carey.
Lamya H
Author of Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir
The best book I read this year was Bushra Rehman's Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion. It's a beautiful book about a Pakistani girl coming of age in immigrant New York in the 80s, and weaves queerness, Islam and community into a lush, intimate story about friendship.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: Linda Villarosa's Under the Skin. I've read a lot of her brilliant essays about race and health in the US, blending statistics and personal stories, and am looking forward to reading more of her analysis.
Lamya was our guest for Episode 253, where they discussed their book Hijab Butch Blues.
José Olivarez
Author of Promises of Gold
The best book I read in 2023 was Teeth by Aracelis Girmay. Aracelis is one of my favorite poets, so I regularly return to her books. Teeth is her first book of poems, and maybe it's something about where I am or where the world is, but cracking Teeth open felt revelatory. I love these poems. Go read this poem for a sample.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: Say Hello To My Little Friend by Jennine Capo Crucet. I got to read an ARC of this book and it is even more wild, absurd, and incredible than a book set around a Pitbull impersonator turned Scarface protégé promises to be.
José was our guest for Episode 258, where he discussed his book Promises of Gold.
Ari Shapiro
Author of The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening
The best book I read this year was Blackouts, by Justin Torres (and that was before it won the National Book Award, thank you very much). It elegantly blurs the lines between fiction and history to excavate queer stories that have been forgotten or buried. The novel is a multimedia experience, and as soon as I finished the book I wanted to return to the beginning and read it again.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: Next year my colleague Sarah McCammon is coming out with her first book, The Exvangelicals. It combines memoir with reportage, tying her own story of leaving the Evangelical church with a larger social trend of others who have done the same.
Ari was our guest for Episode 262, where he discussed his book The Best Strangers in the World.
Nicole Chung
Author of A Living Remedy: A Memoir
I loved Bryan Washington's Family Meal for many reasons, but what made me cry was the book's exploration of how wrenching and also how bewildering grief can be. We feel Cam's loss, and we also witness how hard and confusing it is for those who care about him—who don't always know what to do or how to help, even though they want to—and this felt so resonant for me, especially after the last few years we've all experienced. I also appreciate how the novel made me consider what it means to have really important history with someone, and how that can shape what we think of as their "truth" without always being 100% true—we often tell ourselves the same stories about people in our lives, and then find out we have much more to learn.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: I recently received a galley of Crystal Hana Kim's The Stone Home, a Drop Everything And Read moment for me. She's a profoundly beautiful writer and I'm loving it so far.
Nicole was our guest for Episode 265, where she discussed her book A Living Remedy, and Episode 269, where she discussed This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris.
Roxana Asgarian
Author of We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America
The best thing I read in 2023 was Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I read it during the worst part of a hellish Texas summer, and was swept up and swept into the human-feeling characters and the visceral depictions of the natural world. It’s the perfect read for when you need a good long epic to fall all the way into.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: The book I can’t wait for next year is Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange. I loved There, There and I heard this one is about Indian residential schools and intergenerational trauma — touching on some themes that have been part of my work reporting on the child welfare system.
Roxanna was our guest for Episode 268, where she discussed her book We Were Once a Family.
Tre'vell Anderson
Author of We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film
Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir shifted something in me when I first read it on assignment to interview author Akwaeke Emezi (for the cover of TIME, shameless plug) back in 2021. "Frank and flat-footed, like a soul singer who commands attention without backup dancers and light shows.... 'Dear Senthuran' is a brutally honest and vulnerable testimony of survival, of the rejuvenating variety that inspires and activates; if it had a soundtrack, the timeless Clara Ward gospel hymn 'How I Got Over' might be on loop" is how I described it then. It was a further clarifying revisit for me this year — in the midst of the publication of my own book(s) — helping me think differently, more clearly about serving audiences beyond the all-consuming white gaze and centering Blackness and queerness and transness along the way. I think all Black creatives -- writers, musicians, artists, balloon animal makers! -- especially those of us navigating less Black spaces, should read this book. Hell, any creative from historically excluded communities!
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: I'm looking forward to reading Raquel Willis' new memoir, The Risk It Takes To Bloom. More Black trans everything, please!
Tre'vell was our guest for Episode 271, where they discussed their book We See Each Other.
Stacey Mei Yan Fong
Author of 50 Pies, 50 States: An Immigrant's Love Letter to the United States Through Pie
The best thing that I read this year was I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. It is the most beautiful book about how the person that brought you into this world and is supposed to be the person that loves and cares for you most ultimately can be the person that does just the opposite. I read it cover to cover in less than two days, feeling all the feelings, relating to it a little too much but gaining such relief of being understood by a fellow human.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: Tender Heart by Hetty Lui McKinnon. It's a cookbook not only about vegetables but about the unbreakable family bonds forged through food and how by cooking those foods you can stay connected to loved ones who you might have lost.
Stacey was our guest for Episode 272, where she discussed her project 50 Pies, 50 States.
Ricardo Nuila
Author of The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine
The best book I read in 2023 was The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths by Brad Fox. This book is such a feat. Fox chronicles the descent of a self-taught scientist and explorer into the oceanic abyss, where he discovers never-before-seen species as well as truths about our senses ("the yellow of the sun can never hereafter be as wonderful as blue can be"), all within a four-and-a-half foot steel sphere, the Bathysphere, a marvel of engineering in 1930. With beautiful prose and a restrained voice - like a whisper heard within the Bathysphere - he complicates the whole white male explorer narrative while immersing us in a Jules Verne-slash-The Origin of Species exploration. Plus the book is gorgeously illustrated with paintings of the species he discovers on his voyage. I'm still thinking about this book.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: I've read a ton of nonfiction in 2023, so I'm looking forward to reading fiction in 2024, specifically from some of the masters. I can't wait to read Zadie Smith's The Fraud, Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger and Stella Maris, and I re-read Train Dreams by Denis Johnson every two or three years, so that's due.
Ricardo was our guest for Episode 275, where he discussed his book The People’s Hospital.
Donovan X. Ramsey
Author of When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era
I finally got around to Ring Shout, a novella by P. Djèlí Clark this year. The story is a dark, historical, Southern Gothic fantasy set in 1920s Macon, Georgia, about a band of Black women warriors on a quest to hunt "Ku Kluxes," and destroy demons summoned by the Ku Klux Klan. It's a mix of so many things I love—history; fantasy; Black culture, spirituality, and dialect. Plus, it's short. The perfect read for a long plane ride or an afternoon to yourself.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: James from Percival Everett. It's a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of "Nigger Jim," a runaway enslaved man and Huck's travel companion. Like many American children, I was forced to read Huckleberry Finn in school. I wanted Jim's perspective then and I'm happy we're hearing from him now by way of Everett, one of our most thoughtful and original novelists.
Donovan was our guest for Episode 276, where he discussed his book When Crack Was King.
The best book I read in 2023 was When Brooklyn Was Queer by Hugh Ryan, who is a phenomenal historian and storyteller of early queer life in America. The book is fascinating, with so many nuggets of little-known history, but also just a page-turner with beautiful sentences. Hard to get all of that in one book!
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: ...on a totally different wavelength, is one of my favorite novelist's new book, Meet The Benedettos by Katie Cotugno. It just came out and is an Italian-American family retelling of Pride and Prejudice, and looks like a romp!
Nora was our guest for Episode 279, where she discussed her book 24 Hours in Charlottesville.
Andrew Leland
Author of The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight
I read Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salama in a concentrated burst in early November, in between hours of news reports from Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza. Thrall’s book focuses on a tragic incident in the West Bank in 2012, where a bus carrying Palestinian schoolchildren flipped onto its side and burned for more than half an hour before authorities arrived to extinguish the blaze. Through his meticulous, relentless reporting, Thrall illuminates not just the details of the crash, but the complex web of historical, political, and social relations that comprised the lives of those it affected, and that created the conditions that caused the rescue’s horrible delay (ambulances detained at checkpoints by the IDF; geographical confusion engendered by the ambiguities of Israeli-controlled roads cutting through Palestinian territory to Jewish settlements). Thrall’s sweeping narrative turns what one might gloss as another depressing headline about a terrible but distant accident into an intimate, infuriating epic.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: One of the first books I plan to read in 2024 is Lauren Markham’s A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging, which blends journalism (Markham is an ace reporter, dogged and precise—her beat is immigration, though she’s written beautifully on disability, too) with the more eccentric terrains of philosophy, literature, and memoir. Markham’s new book is—like Thrall’s—about a tragic fire (in this case, the burning of the Moria refugee camp in Greece) that through her burrowing, expansive engagement, promises to elucidate a much larger socio-political situation. Markham strikes me as the ideal guide for such a journey.
Andrew was our guest for Episode 280, where he discussed his book The Country of the Blind.
Jennifer Baker
Author of Forgive Me Not
It's hard to narrow down but one of the best books I read this year, and one I cannot stop talking about, is BIG by Vashti Harrison. This picture book encapsulates so much emotion! The text is sparse while the illustration portrays such a wondrous and deep story, and the use of colors! Watch Vashti discuss a bit of how she came to make her artistic decisions on such a rich book about body consciousness, self-love, and growing up in a Black girl's body. It's a book I think everyone of every age group should read, learn from, and will feel so immersed in.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2024: House Gone Quiet by Kelsey Norris and skin & bones by Renée Watson because the first pages of both these books has me hyped!
Jennifer was our guest for Episode 281, where she discussed her book Forgive Me Not.
Myriam Gurba
Author of Creep: Accusations and Confessions
The best thing that I read this year was an advanced review copy of Sarah Manguso's forthcoming novel Liars. It's a work of very subtle horror about one of our creepiest institutions: marriage. I hope that it is widely enjoyed.
Myriam was our guest for Episode 285, where she discussed her book Creep.
Michael Harriot
Author of Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
Chain-Gang All-Stars was the best thing I read this year. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah manages to make what is essentially the Mass Incarceration Ultimate Fighting Championship so simultaneously hilarious and thrilling. It is a thoughtful exploration of America’s criminal justice system, and a satire of our insatiable bloodlust.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: On March 19th, you can find me outside of my local bookstore waiting like I’m trying to get Beyoncé tickets. As a childhood fan of Mark Twain’s social satire, I am thirsting to see how Percival Everett’s James reimagines the story of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved character “N*gger Jim.”
Michael was our guest for Episode 288, where he discussed his book Black AF History.
Jesmyn Ward
Author of Let Us Descend
The best thing I read this year was Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation, by Kris Manjapra. This book details how the process of emancipation varied throughout the world, how it was never as clean or neat as we think, and how it often was a contentious, adversarial process that failed to recognize true freedom for the enslaved. It was riveting and so finely argued, and it changed how I see the world and how I understand our present moment. I highly recommend it.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: I’m looking forward to reading Come and Get It, by Kiley Reid, and The Book of Love, by Kelly Link, because I adore both writers’ work.
Jesmyn was our guest for Episode 292, where she discussed her book Let Us Descend.
Farah Karim-Cooper
Author of The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking about Race
My favorite book in 2023 was The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells by Sarah Churchwell. I did not know what to expect when I bought the book at the Bath literary festival, but I went to hear the author speak and was spellbound by her talk and her book. Churchwell bravely traces the role that Gone with the Wind played in creating the myth of white victimhood in America and how that still powerfully shapes current politics. It also convincingly traces a through-line from the Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow to the storming of the Capitol building on January 6th, 2021. Engagingly written and powerfully mindblowing!
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: I am looking forward to reading Undying Book 1: The Kinship of Djinns by sisters Ambreen Hameed and Uzma Hameed. I know Uzma really well and am so excited to read a novel that speaks to my own heritage.
Farah was our guest for Episode 296, where she discussed her book The Great White Bard.
Nathan Thrall
Author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy
The best book I read this year was Stoner by John Williams. A beautifully written story of an entire life and academic career and tragically unhappy marriage, it is also the most convincing depiction I have come across of what it might actually feel like to die.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: The book I most look forward to reading next year is one I have just started: Helen Garner’s This House of Grief, the true story of a father accused of murdering his three children by driving his car into a dam. I am only a third of the way through this brilliant and gripping courtroom drama, re-released in a handsome new hardcover edition by Pantheon last fall, and I can say already that the powerfully restrained writing, the keenness of observation, and the intelligence of the narrator call to mind some of the all-time greatest works of narrative nonfiction, including the three modern classics to which it could be most obviously compared: Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer, and Emmanuel Carrère’s The Adversary.
Nathan was our guest for Episode 297, where he discussed his book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
Traci Thomas
Host and creator of The Stacks
The best thing I read this year was We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian. I was so impressed by the storytelling, the research, and the sheer force of this book. The story of the Hart Family Murders isn’t an easy one to tell, but Asgarian did it with such a devotion to the humanity of the children and their families. The book evoked so many emotions in me, mostly rage at the system and a sense of sorrow for what could and should have been. Asgarian did right by those children when so many people did not.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2024: There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraquib
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