7 Best Books I Read in 2023

I would like to wish all my followers a very Happy New Year! ✨ – let the year 2024 bring only joy, happiness and the fulfilment of all your wishes! Below is my list of 7 best books I read in 2023 (the best books I tend to read happen to be classics, and I am excluding non-fiction, graphic novels and short story collections).

I. My Ántonia [1918]

by Willa Cather – ★★★★★

This touching coming-of-age story by Willa Cather (Death Comes for the Archbishop, A Lost Lady) centres on Jim Burden’s friendship with one immigrant girl, free-spirited Ántonia Shimerda in Nebraska. Cather’s elegant prose simply enchants, and Jim’s distinctive voice is unforgettable, with each chapter brimming with soulfulness as it tells of immigrants’ hardships and sacrifices made through the years. It is a deeply nostalgic look at a life passed, as well as a sweeping expose of rural life in the late 19th and early 20^th century America.

II. Go Tell It On The Mountain [1953]

by James Baldwin – ★★★★★

James Baldwin’s debut is a staggering book that focuses largely on John Grimes, step-son of the minister at the Pentecostal church in Harlem. John tries to make sense of his upbringing, environment and above all – all the expectations placed on him by others. This is a multi-dimensional and at times multi-perspective novel which also reveals issues of sexuality, racism and attempts at fitting in while remaining true to oneself. Baldwin’s prose cuts like a knife and yet remains touchingly lyrical throughout as the story recounts the accumulated heartbreak.

III. Cancer Ward [1967]

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – ★★★★★

This Russian classic introduces us to a cancer ward in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, USSR in 1954, and to its patients and doctors: charismatic exiled man Kostoglotov, authoritative civil servant Pavel Rusanov, young “intellectual” Demka, dutiful, but lonely doctor Vera Gangart, and bold and happy-go-lucky nurse Zoya, among many others. The book underscores the lonely, stifling nature of the horrible illness, with the touch of irony here and there about the condition, as well as says something on the doctor’s inherent guilt, and cancer treatment dilemmas. This book is a monumental work in every respect, and, like every true classic, manages to come across as both – deeply personal, and all-encompassing and far-reaching.

IV. Pnin [1957]

by Vladimir Nabokov – ★★★★★

This novella reminded me of Nabokov’s The Luzhin Defense, which I read last year. Pnin is a humorous, bitter-sweet examination of a man constantly out of his depth in this world. Professor Timofey Pnin is a Russian language professor at Waindell College, USA who tries hard to be a good teacher and a good friend, all with a varying success. Nabokov penned his character relying on his own experience of teaching Russian literature at Cornell University in the 1950s, and there has never before or since been a character like Pnin in fiction. The book is a pure joy to read from the very first page until the very last.

V. The Custom of the Country [1913]

by Edith Wharton – ★★★★★

“...she was not happy. She had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them” (Wharton, 1913/2003: 370).

The Custom of the Country is a more cutting, more caustic, more satirical look at New York’s elite society in the Gilded Age than Wharton’s two other famous novels – The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. Here, the author replaces delicacy and sympathy with her heroine’s monstrous search for glory, money and prestige – at whatever cost. Undine Spragg is a somewhat spoilt girl from a well-to-do family in Apex who sets a goal to become the crème de la crème of New York’s society. She marries an aristocrat whose principles and views are in stark contrast to her own, but her wants only grow from henceforth. Superficiality and mediocrity are limitless, and hunger for success is insatiable. The Custom of the Country is a perfection of a novel.

VI. The Toilers of the Sea [1866]

by Victor Hugo – ★★★★1/2

“A novel of quiet, unassuming and yet extraordinary beauty, as well as a moving tribute to the sea and its people,” was my conclusion upon finishing this book. This is Victor Hugo’s tribute to the Channel Islands archipelago, where he spent some 15 years in exile. In this novel set in Guernsey, the lives of Mess Lethierry, a pillar of society, his beautiful niece Déruchette and seaman Gilliatt cross paths and the centre of gravity is ship Durande (as was Notre-Dame de Paris in the novel of the same name). Comparisons can also be drawn with both Jack London’s masterpiece Martin Eden [1909] and Thomas Hardy’s classic The Woodlanders [1887].

VII. The Post-Office Girl [1982/2008]

by Stefan Zweig – ★★★★1/2

“The Heart asks Pleasure – first –/And then – Excuse from Pain –/And then – those little Anodynes
/That deaden suffering –/And then – to go to sleep –/And then – if it should be/The will of its Inquisitor
/The liberty to die –” (Emily Dickinson).

These lines from Dickinson’s poem convey the spirit of this unfinished novel by Stefan Zweig. It is an incredibly lucid account of one girl’s transformation from a poor village postal worker to the society’s “darling” at the centre of attention (the original title can be translated as The Intoxication of Transformation). The heroine’s descend will be as rapid as her ascend. The charm of the book is in its observational, deliciously suspenseful prose full of psychological insights. This is an emotional journey to the depth of one soul opening itself to the experience of a lifetime.