books I read in 2023

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius

★★★★★

This was the single best book I read this year. It's an evergreen classic for a reason. Marcus Aurelius' wisdom transcends his own life and even his epoch of history. To read this book and be touched by his words is to be calmed and grounded in a powerful way. I will re-read Meditations many times.

I Am a Strange Loop

Douglas R. Hofstadter

★★★★★

This is a crucial and accessible stepping stone on the path toward developing a nuanced model of consciousness. Recommended for anyone beginning to wrestle with difficult questions related to philosophy of mind. Depending on the reader's current perspective on modeling oneself and others, Hofstadter may catalyze significant personal breakthroughs in theory of mind.

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman

★★★★★

This book's prescience has been praised for decades, and the accolades are well-deserved. Postman teaches how to think using the frame of understanding a culture through its primary communication mediums, and recognizing the ways in which a widespread change of communication mediums has reverberating second-order effects throughout a society.

The Medium is the Massage

Marshall McLuhan

★★★★★

Pairs well with Neil Postman. This is a fascinating little multimedia book about the way our perspective on the world is shaped by the media we use.

12 Rules for Life

Jordan Peterson

★★★★★

There are very few books that I universally recommend. This is one of them. It's one of the best books I read this year, and I think basically anyone would be better off in life having read this book, compared to if they didn't read it. It's not a perfect book, and I have disagreements with Peterson; however, that makes his thoughtful writing all the more worthwhile to engage with.

Atomic Habits

James Clear

★★★★☆

The core material is very solid. I wish the book were edited down to about half the length.

Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens

★★★★★

The Signature of All Things

Elizabeth Gilbert

★★★★★

House of Leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski

★★★★★

Norse Mythology

Neil Gaiman

★★★★★

The Martian

Andy Weir

★★★★★

This was my second read-through of The Martian. It's peak modern hard sci-fi.

Gideon the Ninth

Tamsyn Muir

★★★★★

Strong contender for best fiction I read this year. The writing is sharp, clever, and always one step ahead of you in the best possible way. Stunning originality and immersive worldbuilding that doesn't hold the reader's hand. The prose feels somewhat jagged until you become accustomed to the style; then you fall in love with the subtle rhythm of it. This is the kind of book that makes you want to read anything and everything else the author has written.

Harrow the Ninth

Tamsyn Muir

★★★★☆

Phenomenal, admirable sequel that does not surpass the glory of its predecessor but still stands strong beside it. Well worth reading if you loved Gideon.

Annihilation

Jeff VanderMeer

★★★★★

Outstanding novel -- among the best fiction I read this year. Suspenseful, immersive, unsettling.

Authority

Jeff VanderMeer

★★★★☆

Satisfactory follow-up to Annihilation. Similar atmosphere, but different setting.

This Is How You Lose the Time War

Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone

★★★★☆

Cryptonomicon

Neal Stephenson

★★★★☆

This was my first-ever Neal Stephenson book. It took me a super long time to get through this; it's a dense read. I was impressed with how Stephenson masterfully interweaves narratives spanning multiple generations. His prose is delightful.

Foundation

Isaac Asimov

★★★★☆

Classic sci-fi; worth reading. Unique in my mind because the narrative revolves around sociopolitical events unfolding on the scale of centuries, rather than following individual characters.

The Illustrated Man

Ray Bradbury

★★★★☆

I read this short story collection for the first time a decade ago. Bradbury delivers excellent classic sci-fi. These are stories I expect to read to my children someday.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Stuart Turton

★★★★☆

Unexpectedly fun mystery novel. It's a good casual read; the chapters go by surprisingly quickly. It's not substantive literature, but it perfectly scratches the itch for clever, smartly-written fiction.

Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse

★★★★☆

There Is No Antimemetics Division

QNTM

★★★★☆

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Taylor Jenkins Reid

★★★★☆

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

★★★★☆

Artemis

Andy Weir

★★★★☆

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

★★★★☆

The Song of Achilles

Madeline Miller

★★★★☆

The Golden Compass

Philip Pullman

★★★★☆

Unsong

Scott Alexander

★★★★☆

Holes

Louis Sachar

★★★★☆

Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories

QNTM

★★★★☆

Lovely little collection (about 100 pages) of sci-fi short stories. Can be read in less than two hours, and all of the stories are quite good.

The Mysterious Benedict Society

Trenton Lee Stewart

★★★☆☆

The Mountain in the Sea

Ray Nayler

★★★☆☆

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The premise is so promising, but the writing doesn't deliver. The pacing drags and lurches in fits and starts; some chapters felt like a chore. The book never fully hooked me. It's a decent novel, executed imperfectly.

The Gone World

Tom Sweterlitsch

★★★☆☆

This book wants so badly to be Inception and Tenet and Primer, but it doesn't quite measure up. It was an enjoyable read, but in the end it didn't satisfy me the way the first half made me hope that it would.

Crying in H Mart

Michelle Zauner

★★★☆☆

The Wisdom Jesus

Cynthia Bourgeault

★★★☆☆

King Warrior Magician Lover

Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette

★★★☆☆

Conceptually intriguing, but there is little substance and little depth. It's an analysis of masculine psychological development through a lens of Jungian archetypes. Seems like a potentially useful frame for some people and some situations, but not much more than that.

The Order of Time

Carlo Rovelli

★★☆☆☆

I didn't enjoy reading this. It's a short little pop science book. I found it to be dry, difficult to follow, and not especially informative. If you want to understand the concepts in this book, read Wikipedia instead. If you want to read a fun pop science book, read a different one.

The Dawn of Everything

David Graeber and David Wengrow

☆☆☆☆☆

I'm not rating this book because I didn't finish the entire thing. I got about halfway (several hundred pages!) and became bored because the authors seemed to be talking in circles and building up elaborate revisionist anthropological theories with fairly flimsy evidence. I might be right or wrong; either way, I didn't make it through the whole book.