The Best Books I Read in 2023

Resuming an interrupted tradition: the year's highlights, listed alphabetically, by author. With a pride of place given to 2023's revelations, lodestars: Annie Ernaux, Jon Fosse, and Clarice Lispector:

Fiction and Poetry

By Annie Ernaux

A Man's Place

A Woman's Story

Simple Passion

The Years

The Young Man

By Jon Fosse

Aliss at the Fire

Morning and Evening

Scenes from a Childhood

The Shining

Trilogy

By Clarice Lispector

Near to the Wild Heart

The Hour of the Star

Too Much of Life: The Complete Crónicas

Only Yesterday, by S. Y. Agnon

Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times, edited by Neil Astley

Half-Light: Collected Poems, 1965-2016, by Frank Bidart 

The Course of Love, by Alain de Botton

Swag, by Elmore Leonard

Paradais, by Fernanda Melchor

Men Without Women, by Haruki Murakami

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

Dream Story, by Arthur Schnitzler

Selected Poems, by Giuseppe Ungaretti

Chilean Poet, by Alejandro Zambra

NonFiction

The Highly Sensitive Person, by Elaine N. Aron

Nothing Personal, by James Baldwin

Faith, Hope, and Carnage, by Nick Cave

Existential Kink, by Carolyn Elliot

The Myth of Normal, by Gabor Maté

Life's Work, by David Milch

The 12 Week Year, by Brian P. Moran

Novelist as a Vocation, by Haruki Murakami

Existentialists and Mystics, by Iris Murdoch

Come as You Are, by Emily Nagoski

Letter to a Young Poet, by Maria Rainer Rilke (trans. by Damion Searls)

The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin

La Seduction, by Elaine Sciolino