Anne’s best books of 2023

[00:00:00] ANNE BOGEL: I might add that to my top five. I don't know what it's going to have to crowd out but I'll figure that out later.

WILL BOGEL: Superlatives. Superlatives.

ANNE: They're tough.

Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read.

Today we have a special episode for you. Readers, every year I love looking back at the books that stood out the most in my own reading life, but we never really talked about that on the podcast till last year when we did a best books of 2022 dedicated episode.

[00:01:01] Last year, my husband Will and I really loved putting together that episode, you loved listening. It was definitely one of our most popular episodes of the year. We're always interested to see what you download real fast.

So I'm happy to say we are doing it again today—taking a look back at my own 2023 superlatives. Look, superlatives are hard and fascinating and illuminating. Today I'm sharing my own best, favorite, and most memorable reading experiences of 2023.

So again, my husband and our show producer, Will Bogel, is coming on for this conversation, and I'm happy to welcome him back. William, welcome to the show.

WILL: Thank you. I'm glad to be back. A little nervous, but glad to be back.

ANNE: It's just talking books with tens of thousands of your favorite readers. Like, what's so hard about it?

[00:01:53] WILL: It is. And I've been on the show a number of times, twice, in fact, this summer, but as we say all the time when we talk to guests, you are an expert in your own reading life, right? So I can come on when we talk this summer about our reading when we went to Europe, right? There was Episode 389 in Will's European reading adventures.

ANNE: Yeah, that was fun. Oh, we were so jetlagged when we recorded that, though. That was rough and really fun.

WILL: That was like as soon as we got back. But I was just talking about what I had read, you know, what I was interested in. And then the team's best books, right? I'm just picking a book that I love, and this is different.

ANNE: I got to say, though, you are an expert in talking to your wife about books and such.

WILL: That's true. I'm almost an expert in your reading life. That's true.

ANNE: You know that's very true. You've got the credentials. Let's do this.

WILL: Well, you mentioned there in the show intro that superlatives are difficult, yet being an expert I know how much you hate trying to name the one best favorite whatever thing. But you actually do this a number of times, right? So last week you actually published two blog posts that were your best favorite something books of the year. And now we get to talk here.

[00:03:09] And then we also have an event coming up where the whole team talks about their favorite books. With those three different ways of kind of encapsulating the year and recapping, what are we going to hear today?

ANNE: Okay. First of all, I want to say superlatives are hard. And friends, I feel like we have to say we do understand it's the show concept that we ask guests to share superlatives every week. And it's hard. They're hard questions. But we think that you readers that you hopefully read a lot of good stuff. It's supposed to be hard. I just want to acknowledge that before going forward.

Also, in the continuing 2020s "what is time" theme, it's actually been more than a couple of weeks. And we're recording this in late December and y'all are listening beginning on January 2nd. So you're going to have to flip back on Modernmrsdarcy.com a little bit more to see my favorite books and my favorite audiobooks of 2023.

[00:04:03] But I hope you'll find that while we're doing those blog posts are a supplement to our conversation today. We're not just having the out-loud version of that blog post, we're talking about new stuff. And that is because something I tell myself to make myself feel better as I share books with readers every week and recommend books to guests and share my own superlatives, knowing that I am definitely going to forget something I absolutely loved and adored, and I won't realize it for a month, which has already happened, but you'll hear about that today, is that there's always an opportunity to talk about another great book.

So since I shared those favorite books on the blog, I've read a little more, I've read a few more favorites. On the podcast. I really appreciate how I get to add more context and nuance than I can just in the brief blurbs we share on modernmrsdarcy.com.

Also, I was very careful on the blog to say these are my favorite books, but not necessarily the best books I read. I want to talk a little bit about the difference today and share some of my best reads, not just my favorites.

[00:05:06] WILL: I will just interject. As a producer who's looking at the guest submissions, we don't actually ask them for superlatives. We ask for three books they love, not their three favorite books.

ANNE: That's true. And that is on purpose.

WILL: Let's not put extra pressure on everybody.

ANNE: That's there.

WILL: So we're talking all about how hard superlatives are. Let's not tell them they have to come up with their three best books.

ANNE: Every once in a while a guest will say, "These are my lifetime three favorites," and I'm just in awe when they can do that because-

WILL: When they know?

ANNE: Yeah, yeah. Those are hard questions.

WILL: I bet I can name two out of your three lifetime favorites though.

ANNE: Are you going to demonstrate?

WILL: No, I'm not going to demonstrate. I already said, like, Oh yeah, I'm an expert in Anne's reading life. That's not actually true. That's not what this episode is about either.

ANNE: I thought maybe you were going to demonstrate something that I think is really true. And one of the reasons the show works is that we're too close to our own reading life sometimes to recognize the patterns and preferences. We have too much data. But somebody from the outside who knows you and can hear what you're saying can say like, "Oh, let me break it down for you."

[00:06:07] WILL: Okay. But that's not what we're doing today. Today we're looking at, as you said, some of your best books, overlapping but partially distinct, I guess, from some of your favorite reading experiences. And to do that, I'm assuming you've kind of flipped through your reading journals to come up with this list. But you still have a lot of books to winnow that down. How many books did you read this year?

ANNE: Well, now I'm afraid to say because a bunch of people in blog comments said that's not possible.

WILL: That's not possible?

ANNE: But it is. I read about 250, which was about 20, 25 more than last year and about 50 less than my record, which was definitely too high and was not impossible, but was not possible with like healthy, healthy mental and emotional state. But it was about 250.

So for my blog posts about my favorites, I shared 12 prints and 12 audiobooks, which felt like a lot of favorites. And also that was about 10% of what I read, which didn't feel unreasonable from that percentage standpoint.

[00:07:12] WILL: No, that sounds great. We have a lot of people saying they want to run more four and five-star books, right? And I think, you know, leaving the year, however many you read, 250 or considerably fewer for the rest of us, I think having 10% where you're like, "Oh, my gosh, those were great books," you're probably doing well.

ANNE: I think so. And I think I read a lot, lot, lot more four-star reads. I feel like it's great to read all those wonderful books. And also a list of superlatives that's a hundred titles strong is unhelpful to me or to y'all listening.

WILL: Sure. Yeah. I have actually started looking because, as I mentioned, we have this upcoming Team Best Books of the year. I've started looking kind of what have I already read, what might be on that list, am I going to squeeze in, you know, my favorite book here in the last couple of weeks of the year? And I have a lot more four-star reads than five stories.

[00:08:08] I just have a big gap where I can't remember what I read. When I say "can't remember", I was writing them down and I still managed to not write them down and I can't fill in the difference there. But-

ANNE: That's so funny because we know that I have a gap as well.

WILL: That's right. And did that make this harder when you're like, I know I have books missing that might have been my favorites.

ANNE: Yes, it really did. I'm so frustrated. I don't know what happened. Although a kind blog reader pointed out to me a correlation that I think is really interesting. So to roll back, I went to sit down and just look at what I read and see what I put little asterisks next to indicate like, Hey, this was a stand-out read.

And I thought that I'd taken thorough records all year, but I had this big gap that the blog reader pointed out correlated with the time I was really experiencing serious lung and airway issues and couldn't talk, was spending a lot of time on the couch.

[00:09:04] I was reading a ton during that time period because I didn't do... like I wasn't climbing the stairs to even do laundry and I wasn't leaving the house to drive much. And I read all the time and I didn't capture it, which baffles me. I have no recollection of this, but I would really like those missing reading journal weeks back. When are you missing your records?

WILL: I did a really bad jump basically all summer, but I think I was able to sort of put back together most of the year. I'm missing August and September.

ANNE: That's understandable. The summertime you're coming and going. Although we were back in town in August and September.

WILL: Oh, yeah, we were out, yes. Thank you. I appreciate you trying to make that better.

ANNE: I was. I was.

WILL: But yeah, they were starting school and into regular routines and I don't know what happened. So that was a significant period in your reading year. As you said, really just kind of hunkered down, had cut out a lot of other stuff. And that was just sort of how you were spending a lot of your extra time since you weren't doing other activities.

[00:10:03] What else was going on in your reading year this year that really had an impact on either the books you chose or the number that you read or...?

ANNE: We haven't debriefed us yet, but I feel like this was a really strange year in a lot of ways. And it's interesting to see how sometimes when my reading life gets really weird it's because something has happened in my life sometimes that's a clue. Like that's a symptom of something.

But this year just... it felt like a rubber band to me, where I feel like I'd be stretched. And I wasn't reading at all or I wasn't read... I mean, you know, not at all for me means, "Oh my gosh, I haven't finished a book in five days." Like that's what we're talking about, friends. And then I would contract and I read like a book a day for ten days.

But the lung and airway situation really did impact my reading life. I was on the couch a ton. I read so much on the couch. I listened to zero audiobooks during this time period.

[00:11:00] But then when I got better and I, you know, talked to all my physicians who were like, "This is what you need to do," and the answer was basically a whole lot of walking, I started listening to so many audiobooks. Like I listened to more audiobooks in 2023 than I ever have before by a lot.

And then we had lots of travel. Last year we had a high school senior and just doing all the college stuff, whether it was all the visits at the end when we were narrowing down between two choices or doing all the applications. I was reading and I was editing and I was helping, but it wasn't in service of my reading life, which is fine. There's no judgment there. It was just different.

Also, we had a child who got a concussion and all of a sudden I was doing a lot more driving than I had been before and that had a direct impact on my reading life I didn't see coming.

And then we traveled a lot this summer. We went to the beach. Our family went to Europe for two weeks. And it was interesting. Like I think I read hardly at all in our hotels in Europe, and I read a whole lot when we were in transit, which just felt like a bit of a yo-yo.

[00:12:03] And then it's just been busy. Like I've been reading steadily but there have been some days where I've only read like 30 or 40 pages, which isn't very much for me, and a lot of weekends where I've read, you know, 300 in the afternoon. Am I missing anything?

WILL: Those seem like the highlights. And I would say you are probably not too hampered if you still managed 250 books this year.

ANNE: A yo-yo.

WILL: A yo-yo.

ANNE: Rubber band, for real.

WILL: You had the ups and downs. Yeah. Well, let's talk about your books.

ANNE: Oh, let's do it. That'll be fun.

WILL: Last year, just as a follow-up, you mentioned two kind of odd patterns that you've gotten into. You were reading bar books. Do you remember this?

ANNE: I do remember the bar books because we were just talking about this when you were looking at what you might be reading next.

WILL: So last year you recommended both We Are the Brennans and Half Moon to me on this episode.

ANNE: Did I really?

WILL: The best books that you did. I listened back to it in preparation. So I've actually read both of those books this year, but I didn't remember at all that that's when you had recommended them to me.

[00:13:06] ANNE: Well, that's so interesting. And I hadn't thought to suss out, okay, what kind of weird themes have emerged this year? I know I read a ton of theater books. Like we almost had a theater category in the Summer Reading Guide, and that does seem to be a publishing trend that's continuing.

One of my favorite titles that maybe will hint at today that I read in 2023 is actually a book that doesn't come out till 2024. And that's true for some of my favorite reads every year. Like some of the best books I read in the year I'm not going to talk about yet because they don't come out till the next year.

I know that this year I read quite a few. Or how about maybe some of my favorites were books that were just off the beaten path for me? Maybe they wouldn't be for some other readers, but they were different for me, and so they stood out as being delightfully unusual and escapist. So I really enjoyed that.

But really I know another theme that I was really surprised to find just common in publishing right now and that landed on my stack where I read a lot of like marriage and divorce memoirs. Marriage in crisis was something that kept appearing over and over. I think let's talk about that. I highlighted a couple of those on the blog throughout the year. But, yeah, we'll talk about that.

[00:14:19] WILL: Okay. What about the French books? Did you return to French books? Because again, listening to last year's episode, you mentioned how the previous years, those would be '21, you had started reading Maylis De Kerangal and really enjoyed those books and were interested in French novels. So in '22 you had read a number of those. And then this year we actually went to Paris. But did you continue reading French novelists?

ANNE: I forgot that that was a trend of my own reading life last year. Yes, I absolutely did. I read several that I think we'll talk about today, including a French novel The Postcard by Anne Berest was one of my... I'm not going to rank it, but definitely one of my very favorite reading experiences of the year.

WILL: Mm-hmm.

ANNE: And we went to Paris, so reading French novels in Paris or on the train out of France. It was pretty great.

WILL: Yeah. And Anne Berest, that was a book club book, right?

[00:15:13] ANNE: It was, that I actually read it for the first time in 2023, but had to read it again because I always end up reading the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club selections twice. I have to make sure that I'm both ready for the author talk and that I really stand behind it and think, Yes, it's a good idea to invite all these readers to read this book together.

WILL: So are there any other authors that we'll recognize either more book club picks or authors that have been sort of your favorite books in previous years?

ANNE: Yes. But not as many as I would have guessed.

WILL: Really?

ANNE: Yeah. Just getting the list, a lot of the books that I really read and loved are from authors that I haven't read before.

WILL: Well, that's exciting.

ANNE: Maybe I was familiar with them, maybe I've now read three books by them because I read something I loved by them in February, but they were new to me in 2023.

WILL: Right. And that's always great to find a new author, especially if it's not a debut, but somebody you just haven't read yet because then you have, you know, several books you can go back to.

[00:16:15] ANNE: Yeah, exactly.

WILL: Okay. Well, we've hinted at a lot of books, but are you ready to get into these?

ANNE: I'm ready.

WILL: So you just mentioned that the delightful escapist, I think you call them romps, that that was one of your favorite categories this year. You want to tell us about some of those?

ANNE: I do. Some of the books that I loved the most that really stood out when I flipped back through my catalog of reading experiences in 2023, the thing is that they were just weird enough, like just off my particular reading pathway to be extremely interesting to me for right now.

And I talked about some of these on the blog, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here. But I read Connie Willis's The Roads of Roswell, which is about a woman who does not believe in aliens or UFOs or any of that but she's flying in New Mexico for a wedding and she gets abducted by a little alien that is shaped like a tumbleweed.

[00:17:22] And I just remember reading this on the couch last winter like you're reading some of the dialog out loud to any family members, including you who are sitting around, because it was just so wacky in a way that just made me giggle and want to share.

WILL: Yes, I remember that being... I think wacky is probably a good way to describe that because you would laugh about it and be like, "What? What?" And you were like, "I don't know if I can explain this. It's just so weird, delightfully weird."

ANNE: Delightfully weird. And I read a lot of really emotional, you know, like, let's talk about what it means to be human kind of books. And these were just so different. And it was a really nice contrast. I read Silvia Moreno-Garcia before and really enjoyed her work. Something I love about her is that she writes in a lot of different genres and her work often is hard to pin into any one genre.

Also, I don't read horror, but her new book that came out this summer called Silver Nitrate, which was in the Summer Reading Guide, had strong horror elements. And I don't do body horror and there was just one little tiny flicker of a scene where I was like, "Oh, I don't know whether I can do this with you, Sylvia." But there was just one but it had enough of a dark kind of humor that it worked. And it was set in 1990 in Mexico City. And, you know, I had like wanderlust this year.

[00:18:47] WILL: I did not read this book. I almost did. I read Burn the Negative, which was a story about a movie that supernatural or weird creepy things start happening around a movie set. Did you read them?

ANNE: No, I didn't. I talked about it with Holland Saltsman when she came on the podcast back in February or March, and that caught your attention. And I was considering it for the Summer Reading Guide but the category filled up before I got to it, is what happened.

WILL: Yeah. So I almost read Silver Nitrate as a sort of a pair to that, and maybe I'll pick that up now.

ANNE: I liked it. It was fun. So it was set in 1990 in Mexico City, and there was a little bit of a puzzle mystery to the plot because two friends have to figure out how to undo the curse they accidentally unleashed when they were dabbling in some filmmaking.

WILL: Oops.

ANNE: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's not a good thing, but yeah, they put it back together. It's okay. They saved civilization. It's fine.

WILL: Oh, good. Okay.

[00:19:48] ANNE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Brandon Sanderson's Skyward was a really fun change of pace for me. This is like a, you know, like a big action space drama about a 16-year-old girl who dreams of being a pilot who always got turned down but, of course, she is the hero they've been waiting for. And then I gave this book to our 13-year-old who then just raced through the whole series, which was fun.

WILL: Yeah, he loved this. I don't think I've read any Brandon Sanderson.

ANNE: I hadn't until this year. Another one that I really liked along these lines was The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. And Brigid on our team listened to this and said, "Anne, I think you need to give this a try."

It's just so boisterous and exuberant. It's about a renegade pirate captain who is a middle-aged mother who is done with that kind of life, and she just wants to enjoy her retirement. But she gets basically blackmailed back into doing one last job.

[00:20:51] So it's a historical, fantastical adventures on the high seas. It was just really fun. First in the trilogy, second and third installments aren't out yet, but I'll keep an eye out for them.

WILL: Did you listen to this one?

ANNE: I did, and it was really good on audio.

WILL: I don't remember you reading it, but I remember you telling me about it. It is Summer Reading book. So like I knew it was around and I thought, "This is so weird. Like retired pirate..." You know, I just couldn't wrap my head around it, but I don't remember you actually reading it. So the audio-

ANNE: Yes. And you know, what you said about the audio reminds me that this book is so fun, but also so nuanced and thoughtful. The audio narration especially is... well, it's superb. There's some bells and whistles that make it really fun to listen to. But also the casting and the tone are just really wonderfully done.

There's a reveal at the very end, and I can give no indication at all as to what that might possibly be. But Brigid said, "Listen for it. Listen for it. You won't miss it." I just thought it was great.

[00:21:55] WILL: Well, superb. It's quite a recommendation.

ANNE: You know, we talk about audiobooks that enhance the experience, they don't just replace what you might experience if you were sitting on the couch reading your book, but add something extra to the story. And this is definitely one of them.

And then I also listened to this book on audio. And was good on audio, but I didn't maybe add anything. But I have talked so much, especially in our Patreon community, about Gillian McAllister's 2022 time travel mystery, Wrong Place Wrong Time, which was both delightfully escapist because it's about a woman who's stuck in a time loop basically. Technically, that might not be 100% accurate, but there's a strong time travel component here.

But also I was just saying how I love those books that probe the human experience and have emotional resonance and ultimately what she has to do in order to go back to her time where she belongs is unravel some things at the root of her most significant family relationships. So like, yeah, this is a time travel mystery with an outlandish premise that was interesting and creative in that way, but also completely my jam in that other way as well.

[00:23:14] WILL: Right. Take complicated family relationships, shove them in a sci-fi novel. You're still there?

ANNE: Yeah. Actually, why wasn't I thinking about...? This one is maybe one of my very best books of the year. I might add that to my top five. I don't know what it's going to have to crowd out, but I'll figure that out later.

WILL: Superlative. Superlatives.

ANNE: They're tough.

WILL: Okay, so those are the delightfully escapist romps. What's your next set of books?

ANNE: Ooh, let's talk about the complex, emotionally resonant reads.

WILL: Now, this is a category I know you always find some favorites in.

ANNE: I do, for real. But let me start with one that I can't believe I forgot for my blog lists, because this is definitely favorite. Not just best, favorite. And that is Congratulations, The Best Is Over! by R. Eric Thomas. And it was in the Summer Reading Guide, so lots of you have already seen this. Oh, wait, we hosted him on the podcast, which that episode is called Insightful and Entertaining Memoirs. And you have to go listen because he is the best and so entertaining. Plus we give you a bunch of book recommendations.

[00:24:17] So this is definitely complex and emotionally resonant. But you know, one minute he's talking about Zoom funerals and working alone and heartbreak and angst, and the next he's talking about celebrity eyebrows. So this is a collection that contains so much of life.

I have bought this book multiple times for multiple friends. It's a midlife memoir. I'm 45. He's talking about the things I'm talking about with my friends. I've been passing this out like candy just so I have more people to talk about it with. I mean, that's not why. It's because I think they will love it. But that's a side benefit of giving somebody a book you love that you are 98% certain they're going to be glad that they read cover to cover in two days.

And then I have a book that didn't appear on that favorites list on the blog, but for a different reason. This is You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith, which I think was one of the best books I read in 2023. But it wasn't a favorite reading experience because—I know we talked about this—I found this book to be so unrelentingly sad.

[00:25:25] And even though I was grateful for that gentle note of optimism she ended on, reading about somebody's terrible marriage is just really sad. So here she's reflecting on her work and on parenthood, especially on the end of her marriage. And she talks about how it was just never the same after her 2016 poem Good Bones became a viral sensation. And y'all it's such a great poem.

If you don't know Good Bones by Maggie Smith... Do I sound like a total cliché of a reader who reads poetry sometimes but not that much? Go google it so you can read it.

But something I talk a lot about with my writer friends is the idea that perhaps success only reveals what was already there. And that's what Maggie Smith is talking about here, how that success revealed the faults in the foundation of her marriage. Can I just keep saying it's so sad?

WILL: Yeah.

ANNE: I'm looking for different ways to say that.

WILL: I don't think there's another way.

ANNE: It was so beautifully done, and I was also so glad it was over.

WILL: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:26] ANNE: And I love what she writes... I'll keep an eye out for what she's writing. But like ooh, this one was hard to read.

WILL: So that made that one of your best books of the year, but not necessarily a favorite reading experience.

ANNE: Yeah. Which I mentioned I read a lot of marriage and crisis memoirs. My favorite is one where they come through the other side. And I don't know if that's coincidence because the tone throughout is so different or if that is why. But I loved How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key, which was a recommendation from a writer friend of mine.

And I have a couple writer friends who I feel like appreciate good story, appreciate good craft. I listened real quick when some people in my circle were like, "Anne, I think you'd like this book." And that's how I picked up this one.

And I was told to listen on audio and I obeyed. And I'm so glad I did, because he has a Southern accent that I wasn't expecting. I never listened to him before, but he was just fun to listen to. And it was really fitting for a story that unfolds mostly in Savannah, Georgia. He and his wife are both from the South. It worked.

[00:27:29] The story begins when the author's wife turned to him after dinner and says, "You know what? I want a divorce." And he's like, "What? And then she tells him she's been having an affair with one of their best friends for a long time."

So this is the story of what happens and how they like finally address some trauma that had just been left and dealt with for many, many years. I think the subtitle is something like The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. And I know my jaw dropped a time or two while I was listening, including I didn't know his wife was going to show up to voice her own chapter in which she shares her point of view about everything that happened.

WILL: Oh, wow.

ANNE: But this book was also sad in many ways, but it was also so consistently funny. And you knew at the beginning that somehow, despite how terrible things were sounding, that they were going to make it through, which of course, affected how you heard every single page.

WILL: Right.

[00:28:27] ANNE: I really liked that. Can I tell you about another nonfiction book I really enjoyed along these lines?

WILL: Is it going to be really sad?

ANNE: No.

WILL: You can tell me even if it is sad, but no, yeah go ahead.

ANNE: No, I mean, sometimes, but really provocative. It's Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer. And I picked this up back in the spring, like maybe March or April. I considered it briefly for the Summer Reading Guide and thought, "I don't know that it feels like that kind of title." But I really enjoyed it.

I have at this point read it many moons ago, but I have thought about this all year long. And I didn't know anything about Dederer or her work. She's a critic. But I was really interested in the topic.

So the subtitle of this is A Fan's Dilemma. And the question is: how can we reconcile our love for art, books, films, paintings—she talks about it all—with the sometimes troubling biographies of its creators? So if so-and-so was a terrible person and we know it, should that change the way that we interact with and feel about the work?

[00:29:42] And I just thought she asked really interesting questions. This is really her thought process. She doesn't have any definitive answers, but she has ideas. So I appreciate the way she said like, this is a new problem. Like it used to be that we didn't know about the real people who created the stuff that we enjoyed but now we live in the internet era where even if you want to, you cannot evade biography.

I feel like she addressed a lot of questions that I knew I had and that I had experienced and talked about with readers here on the show even. And also she introduced topics into the conversation that I just hadn't considered. I really enjoyed it. And I think any book that I'm still thinking about regularly nine months after I read it, is a good read.

WILL: Well, I feel like we talk about this pretty regularly, partially because the topic comes up and partially because, as you said, she doesn't have definitive answers. So like when I'm like, "Hey, yeah, that's tough. What do you do with that?" there's not a clear... I read this self-help book and they taught me to do this one thing and now it's all solved, you know?

[00:30:43] ANNE: Right. But I appreciate engagement with the question. I thought she did that really well. And I did listen to her read this on audio. And I don't know that it really enhanced the experience, but I really appreciated her conversational style. That worked for me.

WILL: Very nice.

ANNE: But then since we're talking audiobooks, I think my favorite audiobook and one that I also am thinking about all the time and recommending all the time is The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donohue. I picked this up on a whim just based on the strength of the description. It was a Libra advance listening copy and I enjoyed it so much.

I'm personally a big fan of introspective first-person literary fiction. This novel reminded me in many ways of one of my favorite novels, and that is This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell. These are not at all similar stories, but the opening is kind of the same in which an incident in the present sends the narrator on a journey into the past where they're reflecting on what happened long ago and what it means for right now.

[00:31:46] So this is about a young woman named Rachel. When the story begins she's living in London, she's happily married, she's expecting her first child and she bumps into someone she used to know in a different country. Wait, hang on. No, not a different country. She's in London. This is back in Ireland.

She finds out that one of her long-ago college professors is now in a coma because of a terrible accident. This discovery prompts her to recall a pivotal year of her life. When she was in her early 20s, she was in university, she met her best friend, James, working at the bookstore and their lives become completely enmeshed with those of this professor, the one who's in a coma and his wife.

This is a story of everything that happened in one single summer. And it was so good. It was so good. I listened to this so fast. I don't mean a high speed. I mean, "Daisy, you want to go on another walk? Is there laundry I can do? Are the dishes clean? Maybe the baseboards need dusting." Like, I just wanted to hear the end of the story. I happened to listen... Oh, this is one of those themes you asked for.

WILL: Right.

[00:32:57] ANNE: I ended up listening just completely by accident to a lot of Irish audiobooks this year. And, oh, the accents were so good in this one. I loved it.

WILL: I actually noticed that. I was thinking, I think Irish accents, Irish books were a theme last year too.

ANNE: Really? Look, I'm a Kentucky girl. It's so novel to me. Like I do love a good accent outside my own experience. I also really loved listening to The Ensemble by Aja Gabel. I've read this before. I read it in print in 2018. It was actually in the Summer Reading Guide back then. But we've just been waiting for the right time to pick this up in Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club.

This was the time. Oh, my gosh, we had such a good conversation. I love her so much. I can't wait for her to write something else. And I want all her reading recommendations because I think we read kind of similarly.

[00:33:47] But this is a story of found family and classical music. It's set in the 90s. It's about four talented young musicians who don't go the usual solo route that would be taken by most people performing of their caliber but instead form a string quartet. And it's like reading a messy family story. I loved it so much. It was terrific on audio. There were bells and whistles to the story because so much of the music they play is used to introduce the chapters.

WILL: Oh, really?

ANNE: This was great. Definitely one of my best audiobook experiences.

WILL: Yeah, that's a fun way to incorporate some of the themes and sort of elevate that audio experience.

ANNE: Yeah, it was great. It really worked. And we got to talk to Aja Gabel about what she would change if she was writing it today, which was also very interesting.

WILL: Okay, that's fascinating.

ANNE: Yeah, I thought so.

WILL: Okay. Speaking of fascinating, those were your complex, emotionally resonant. You know, that's your wheelhouse, right? Do you have a couple of books you want to tell us about that are interesting, which I think is code for this is not what I expected, this was really different?

[00:34:52] ANNE: Yes. I feel like we talk a lot on the show about how much timing matters in the reading life and how the timing is what can make a reading experience really special or also very, very wrong. And this year, we traveled a lot. Going into our trip to Europe, I tried to read in advance that I was ready to go. But what I especially appreciated was the reading I did there and the reading I did afterwards, right? Pictured everything differently in my head than I knew to do before we went.

So a couple of books that really stood out... Well, books. But what I really mean is reading experiences. I think I would have enjoyed Helene Hanff's The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street had I read it last year. But it really landed and felt like a favorite I think because I read it right after we had been... no, during. Before and during we were in London.

WILL: You read it during.

ANNE: Yeah. So this is the follow-up to the cult classic 84 Charing Cross Road, which I know many of you are familiar with. But this is the sequel. She was able to go to London, where she dreamt of going for ages because 84 Charing Cross Road was successful enough to give her some money to pay for the visit.

[00:36:09] And this is her memoir about that time. So she goes, she sets up a home base at a hotel on Bloomsbury Street, and she says that she's treated like a queen while she's there. Like everybody comes to wait on her and invites sort of things and takes her out to dine and to sightsee and all these things. It's called The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street because she says that her British hosts treat her like a duchess.

So she's in London to meet the family of the bookseller with whom she shared that lengthy correspondence that was captured in 84 Charing Cross Road, which we walked to and is now like some not particularly attractive apartments.

But she visits historical sites and she makes lots of friends, and she's always dining and lunching and walking in the gardens and... she has a great time. And we were in London to have a great time and it was perfect.

And then I picked up Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner, which I know was a book I talked about a lot. We talked about it in our European reading episode. I'm not sure this is a book that I would have enjoyed had I read it apart from our trip to Madrid. But this was not on my radar before the trip. I read The Topeka School, which came out in 2019, critically praised, rave reviews. It was not to my taste.

[00:37:24] But I saw this book at Desperate Literature where they had a big stack of them, presumably to sell to tourists like myself who are happy to find them. Because this is about a young American poet who's living in Madrid for a year on a poetry fellowship. And as I read it, I found out, Oh, he's living in a little apartment on a plaza that was just like one plaza over from our hotel.

And he mentioned so many specific places in this book. Like all the streets he walked down are real. He takes trips to Granada and Barcelona, where we just come from. He goes to restaurants that are still there. I just Googled every location and they were all completely real. It had a wonderful sense of place.

I did really appreciate and enjoy the last third where reading this, apart from our trip, I'm not sure I would have gotten to the last third. But he's wrestling with the idea of identity and translation, and I really loved that. But what I really love for all of it was going like, yay, this is exactly where we are. And seeing how this poet in 2004 is wandering the streets of Madrid in the same way that we were, right book at the right time again.

[00:38:35] WILL: Yeah. That is so much fun. You were telling me about Duchess while we were walking through a little garden park in [Elephant & Castle? 00:38:43]. It's just amazing to be like, Oh, yeah, of all the things she's going to visit, I'm going to visit. So I said that was interesting reading experiences presuming that these are going to be slightly weird. But no, that was just interesting... like you talking about the audiobooks, like elevated because you had this other connection to it, you know?

ANNE: Yes, definitely an enhanced experience because of where I was at that time.

WILL: You mentioned Maggie Smith when you were talking about complex, emotionally resonant books as one of the best books you read, but definitely not your favorite necessarily. You have a couple of others that are sort of in that category, right? The best, you know, that you thought were really well done, but maybe not your favorites of the year.

[00:39:27] ANNE: Yes. I'm going to share one because it was so well done. And also just, oh, just like pure devastation. I know some people are into that. Like this book destroyed me, read it, you'll love it. I'm not one of those readers. This is definitely not a book that breaks your heart and then puts it back together again. It just breaks your heart and leaves you there.

This is The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. It was shortlisted for the Booker, which I'm sure is how it made its way to my radar. So I talked about this in the Patreon industry insights bonus about book awards. I got this recommendation from someone I know whose taste in books I really trust and respect who was reading it because he always reads all the Booker shortlists. So that's how it made its way to me. Oh, this is another Irish novel that I read coincidentally that I listened to on audiobook. And the audiobook-

WILL: Really?

[00:40:22] ANNE: Yeah. The audiobook here was so good. It's a focused narration and that was so well done. But this is the story of the demise of one Irish family. It has a lot in common with the Rachel Incident in that the prevailing economic conditions in the region at the time are crucial to the plot.

This one, I hope, my friend said, which was its brilliance. And the publisher's descriptions were quite misleading I think, as they made the book sound so much warmer than I found it to be. And funny. This was called funny. I think I read it warm-hearted once. But what I found this to be was just a multigenerational family saga about the unrelenting and unending troubles of this one ill-fated family.

I mean, this is a stunner. You get to the end and you go, What just happened? Actually, really what you're going is what is about to happen and is there any way out? And you know there's not.

[00:41:24] This is a book that would well reward a flip right back to the beginning and begin reading again, if you can handle that emotionally.

I listened to this on the audio, which was such a wonderful experience. But I'm also well aware, and this may be different for you readers, but audio makes it very easy for me to feel like I am immersed in the story and to really experience it as a story. It is not my best reading format for discerning style and structure and craft, but it was still so easy to see that the character development, symbolism... Oh my gosh, there's so much symbolism. Pay attention to the squirrels. Structure are so brilliantly done.

And something else that I really found to be true that I'd heard was that this is a 700-page book, but it feels like a page-turner that's closer to half that long. And I thought, well, how could that possibly be true? And then I read it was like, ah, I get it now.

Countless content warnings here. Can I just say again, unrelenting and unending troubles and devastation? But I mean, it was really, really good. One of the best books I read, not a favorite.

[00:42:31] WILL: Okay. That sounds like a lot. But really intriguing too actually. 700 pages, that feels like a page-turner. So that was The Bee Sting. Is there anything else? Do you have more books that you think we need to know about as your favorite?

ANNE: Needs to know. Okay. I don't know about "need".

WILL: Anne, we need to know your best books.

ANNE: I do think some strong contenders that I've read just in the past few weeks are Trust by Hernán Díaz. I listened to this on audio and it was great in that format. This is such an interesting and unique story. If you are a structure nerd like I am, there's so much to appreciate here.

I want to see how this book sits with me because I just finished it like a week or two ago. But it's a book about books. It's told in four distinct parts... four different books really? Like part one is a biographical novel based on the life of a Wall Street trader. Part two is an unfinished draft of the autobiography the trader began writing with the help of a ghostwriter. And then part three, you hear from the ghostwriter. And part four I can't tell you what it is because it blows the lid off the whole thing.

[00:43:41] It was fascinating to read. It didn't have that emotional resonance that I tend to see in my favorites, but it was so well done. And then I just finished, and this is another one I want to sit with, Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel.

And William, I've been talking about this one at home. If you're a fan of weird little books, this may be a weird little book. I don't even know how to describe it. It's written by a husband and wife writing team. He's a novelist, she's a poet. It's about a husband and wife writing team who are academics and writers who are stuck at home in early pandemic days in... I think it's like summer, fall 2020.

And the wife of the duo is working on some kind of research project concerning Herman Melville. So she's digging through the historical archives and finding information and just musing to her husband, who is always there because it's the pandemic, about what she's finding and he's commenting and then their kids interrupt them because they need something with Zoom school.

[00:44:40] And they occasionally refer to things that happened in their life, in their married life their repeated references to the bad time. This is not a memoir about a marriage in crisis, but they're references to the time when their marriage was in crisis.

And then they're just throwing out tidbits about, like, oh, well, you know what Lauren Groff says about Moby Dick. You know what Marilynne Robinson and Walker Percy said about Moby Dick. It's like it's a slice of life, a book about books, there's history. There's a whole lot of general nerdery, other people's marriages. Like William, I know I was reading you a little bit about Robert Lowell's and Elizabeth Hardwick's marriage, which is important in the story for reasons.

I think one review said that a big theme is how creativity can really pressure a partnership, which I thought was really interesting. I think this book might be written as a poem. I read it on Kindle, which when it comes to like really discerning lay it on the page and structure, I don't trust it the same way I do a print book. But this book is so strange and fascinating. It's just so unique and in that way it stands out.

[00:45:46] WILL: I was just about to ask if it was delightful because you said that he's always there and so she's kind of mentioning these things that she discovers or whatever. That was my experience, too. Like, you're just constantly like, "Wait, okay, you won't believe this." And like reading off little sections of her discoveries and all to tell me about it.

ANNE: I don't know that it's delightful but definitely captivating.

WILL: Let's stick with fascinating. Fascinating is a good word.

ANNE: Fascinating. I love it. And then I really loved Olga Dies Dreaming by Xóchitl González, which I just read again at the end of the year. But it was so good. Such a good debut. But you know how I mentioned that some of my favorite books I read in 2023 are actually not coming out until 2024?

WILL: Right.

ANNE: So I loved Olga and I loved her sophomore novel, Anita de Monte Laughs Last even more. Y'all are going to see it in the Spring Book Preview, which is right around the corner on January 25th. We're doing it 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time for our Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club and What Should I Read Next? Patreon Community members.

[00:46:52] Oh, this is so good. It's a book set in the art world. It has two timelines, 1985 and 1998, and there are two female artists that anchor the story. One in 1985, that's Anita, and she... I'm not sure what I wanna say about this book. You know what? You're going to hear more about in the Spring Book Review and on the podcast. I've already recorded an episode where I recommend it to a guest. I loved it. I thought it was so smart, so brilliantly done, and also such a page-turner. And those things don't always go together. It's so much fun when they do. Like compulsively readable literary fiction, this is it.

WILL: [inaudible 00:47:28], right?

ANNE: Yes, I love those kinds of books.

WILL: Okay. So people are going to get more of that here in the coming weeks. And we will, again, for the Spring Book Preview offering that ala carte. So if you are not a book club member and you're not yet joined up for Patreon, you could join us just for that event.

ANNE: Yes. Is now a good time to thank our patrons for their support?

[00:47:51] WILL: Yes. It's always a good time to thank our patrons.

ANNE: It's always a good time. The end of 2023 was weird in podcasting and has led to some changes at What Should I Read Next? I know some of you have heard that our ads are different and asked why we decided to do that. We didn't decide. We didn't decide. That was thrust upon us.

And it's been a little strange. And knowing that we have your emotional support and also your very practical, tangible financial support has meant the world to us. So one of the ways we say thank you is with these... Can I call them amazing? It's really fantastic for your reading life events like Team Best Books and Spring Book Preview. We've never done Team Best books for Patreon before, but this year we had a conversation with the team and the question was like, Yes, this started as a Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club event, but why wouldn't we open it to our patrons as well?

[00:48:42] So it just so happens that we have these two marquee annual events happening in January. It's just coincidence, quirk of the calendar, but it does mean that now is a great time to join. If you wanted to do that, that could be at patreaon.com/whatshouldireadnext, and yeah, you'll hear more about Anita and about the new Laurie Frankel novel, which I read the description, I'm like, "I don't really understand what they're trying to tell me this is about. I'm not sure I get it." But then I started reading it and I could not put it down.

It's about acting and adoption and musical theater and family. It's called Family Family. William, I know you and I have had conversations like, Well, you know, they're not family family, but it feels like they are. That's the meaning of this title that looks like family family. And that's how you say it in your head.

But I love this book. You're going to hear more about it. This is one that is hard to describe, but you're going to finish this and go like, Oh, my gosh, who has read this so we can talk about it together?"

[00:49:40] And also Parnassus Books invited me last month to come down to Nashville to host Laurie Frankel and conversation when she's there for book tour. So I'm really excited about that. That's the last week of January. We will make sure that you have details. So anybody in the area or anybody who wants to come can come to that event and meet Laurie and see me and we can, you know, hang out and sign books and go, oh, my gosh, let's talk about it now, because I just told you there was a book that needed to be talked about.

And then I was just writing a Spring Book Preview blurb this morning for another debut I loved. This one is of the like zany, but still has emotional depth variety. But, you know, we're going to save that. We're going to save that for Spring Book Preview.

WILL: Which is just a couple weeks away.

ANNE: Just a few, yeah. Because it's already 2024. How did that happen?

WILL: It is when they're listening. I'm not going to rush through the rest of December.

ANNE: No, because I'm going to read a book a day between Christmas and New Year's, and then I'll have even more to talk about with you in 2024.

[00:50:36] WILL: Yeah. And I'm glad you got to add those couple of titles for Trust and Dayswork, because, yes, it's December and you're still reading even after those blog posts go out and still reading even after we record your best books of 2023. But if you have more best favorite books, I'm sure you'll find plenty of places to talk about them.

ANNE: William, I'm trying to remember if Don't Overthink Your Reading Life was a podcast episode or if I only gave that talk at the Strand in New York City on March 5th, 2020, just before the world shut down. What I want to say is one of the things that helps me not overthink my reading life is knowing that there is always another opportunity to share a great book with readers. And that's very true right now and definitely the top-of-mind thought.

WILL: Very true. Yeah, there's always another opportunity. And according to What Should I Read Next HQ, we did share the live conversation from the Strand on Episode 230.

[00:51:32] ANNE: Did we? All right, well, we'll put that in show notes. And that's a good one. That's worth coming back to. Will, thank you for joining me to talk superlatives again.

WILL: Yes, thank you. Happy to be here. I'm always happy to talk books with you. I said I was nervous at the beginning, I actually forgot about that, so, you know. I hope it didn't come across.

ANNE: I forgot all about that. You're a natural. And I know that we hear from readers all the time that say, "What is Will reading? Because I think he is my books twin." You're going to be on Team Best Books on January 9th sharing exactly that. Do you know what they are yet? Are they still TBD?

WILL: I probably know. I have to just in case. But I'm still reading. That's not happening till January. So-

ANNE: That's subject to change.

WILL: Subject to change.

ANNE: A lot can happen in a couple of weeks. All right. Well, I look forward to hearing what those are because I don't know yet.

[00:52:18] Readers, I hope you enjoyed hearing about some of my favorite and best reads from the past year. We would love to know about the books you loved in 2023, and you can always let us know by joining the conversation in the comment section on the blog. That's where we put our show notes.

We always include the full list of titles we talk about for your convenience and your safety. If you're listening while you're driving, you can always check those out at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

We also share good stuff on Instagram. You can follow us there @whatshouldireadnext and you can follow me @annebogel.

You may or may not know that when you leave reviews on Apple Podcasts, it helps other readers find our show, which is the welcome to our team at What Should I Read Next? HQ. So if you could leave a review, five star rating is nice too. That really helps others find our show, helps us grow our audience, helps us pay our bills, which are all wonderful things. That would be a great way to start the new year.

[00:53:16] And then make sure you're following so you get new episodes in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by Will Bogel, Holly Wielkoszewski, and Studio D Podcast Production. Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading."

ANNE & WILL: Happy reading, everyone.