Hi everyone, here are our recommended reads for the week!
*More information on the three catalogs and available formats is found at the end of the list of recommended reads*
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Weekly Suggested Reading postings are published on Wednesday.
And the next Suggested Reading posting will be published on Wednesday, December 27, 2023.
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So many books, so little time!
This is our second week of talking a look at the best books of 2023!
Our recommended reading posting schedule, containing a selection of the best books of 2023, is as follows:
December 13: A selection of the best fiction books of 2023, part 1 (12 titles)
December 20: A selection of the best fiction books of 2023, part 2 (12 titles)
December 27: A selection of the best mysteries of 2023 (12 titles)
January 3: A selection of the best non-fiction books of 2023 (12 titles)
And, as a bonus, just in you case you need something extra to read over the one of the long holiday weekends this month, on December 22, I’ll post a list containing twelve of the best Science Fiction & Fantasy titles of 2023.
And if you wish to do a deep dive into the best of 2023 reading lists – I’ve included reference links at the end of this post.
And without further ado, here is our second dozen of, among best of 2023, fiction recommended reads!
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The Fraud by Zadie Smith
The New York Times bestseller • One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year • One of NPR’s Best Books of the Year • Named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly
“[A] brilliant new entry in Smith’s catalog . . . The Fraud is not a change for Smith, but a demonstration of how expansive her talents are.” —Los Angeles Times
From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed
It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.
Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.
Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.
The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .
Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”
(Recommended by: Library Journal & NYT)
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Glassworks by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s first novel is a generation-spanning epic of family, inheritance, and identity. In Boston in 1910, woman of means Agnes Carter brings Czech glass artist Ignace Novak to create botanical and zoological models for “”the university”” (Harvard). Agnes’ and Ignace’s shared passion for the natural world sustains Agnes as she struggles against the limits imposed by her new and violent marriage. In 1938, Edward Novak leaves his parents in Chicago to apprentice at a glass workshop in Boston. After constant failures, he finds hope in Charlotte Callaghan, heir to a communion wafer company. In 1986, queer window washer Novak cares for her father and her community in New York. Her best friend, Felix, drags her to a Broadway show, where Novak’s life collides with that of young actress Cecily Wonder. Novak Brightman, who goes by Flip, struggles to stay afloat in 2015, while her twin sister, Tabitha, manages their aging mother’s care. Stuck living with her ex-girlfriend, Flip sees only her broken relationships and failures. These intertwined stories explore isolation and connection. With richly drawn characters and deft storytelling, Glassworks is a beautifully crafted, memorable debut. – Starred Booklist Review
(Recommended by: Good Housekeeping)
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Heaven & Earth Grocery Story by James McBride
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, WASHINGTON POST, AND TIME MAGAZINE
“A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel . . . Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing.” —Danez Smith, The New York Times Book Review
“We all need—we all deserve—this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.
Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.
(Recommended by: B&N Book of the Year, Good Housekeeping, NPR, NYPL & Time Magazine)
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Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
ONE OF THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Time, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, New York Post, She Reads
William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable: Sylvie, the family’s dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos.
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?
An exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women, Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.
(Recommended by: B&N & Time Magazine)
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Lone Women by Victor LaValle
World Fantasy Award winner LaValle (The Changeling) returns with a haunting historical horror novel. In 1915, Adelaide Henry flees her California hometown following the death of her parents, for which she feels responsible. Inspired by a testimonial from a single woman who took advantage of a loophole in a homesteading opportunity offered by the federal government, Adelaide makes the trek to Montana with a mysterious steamer trunk in tow. The trunk contains her deepest, darkest secrets, and as her journey unfolds, readers will get a sense of creeping wrongness about the object, which, Adelaide is adamant, must remain locked at all times. When she arrives in Montanna, Adelaide is unprepared for the harsh winter and the unfamiliar ways of her neighbors: “A woman on her own, a Black woman out here in Montana, far from the Black community she’d known in Lucerne Valley, must remain vigilant for her own sense of safety. In truth, she’d never been around so many white people.” As she adjusts to her new life, she finds that escaping her past is not as easy as she hoped, and that her secrets, once out, could spell death for everyone around her. A counter to the typical homesteading narrative, this moody and masterful western fires on all cylinders. Readers are sure to be impressed. – Publishers Weekly Review
(Recommended by: LA Times & Time Magazine)
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The New Earth by Jess Row
Critic Row’s magisterial latest (after the essay collection White Flights) traces the complex dynamics of a New York City family on a geopolitical scale. In 2000, Wilcox patriarch Sandy, a lawyer, narrowly avoids disbarment after unwittingly aiding a client of fraud. A year later, his wife, Naomi, a geophysicist at Columbia University, reveals that her biological father was Black. Then, in 2003, their youngest child, Bering, is fatally shot by an Israeli Defense Force sniper while protesting the Israeli occupation of Palestine’s West Bank. After Bering’s death, her oldest brother, Patrick, goes to Nepal to become a monk. Sandy and Naomi’s marriage, meanwhile, has been faltering since the late 1970s, when they founded a Zen monastery in Vermont, and following a failed suicide attempt a decade after Bering’s death, Sandy leaves Naomi and retreats to Vermont, where he takes a vow of silence. Middle child Winter, a 20-something immigration lawyer, is marrying Zeno, an undocumented citizen, and wants nothing more than the family to be together at their wedding. Winter and Naomi also butt heads, big time, on race (Naomi insists they’re white; Winter identifies as multiracial). As the Wilcoxes reckon with the limits of what they can bear, Winter’s request proves tough to meet. Moments of levity draw the reader in (Sandy on shaving his head: “I look like Mr. Clean, he thinks, allowing himself one glimpse in the mirror, or Yul Brynner”), and the author pulls off many moving metafictional moments (Sandy, again, sensing the text of Row’s novel: “He feels it embrace him, one animal embracing another; it smells like wet fur”). This is Row’s best work yet. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review
(Recommended by: NPR)
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North Woods by Daniel Mason
This remarkable new novel from Mason (The Winter Soldier) is the story of the United States from precolonial times through the present day and beyond, from the perspective of a single house in Western Massachusetts. As the often-tragic tales of its various residents are recounted, Mason employs an array of literary styles and genres, including the Indigenous-abduction narrative, folk ballads, letters, true-crime pulp journalism, insect erotica, and contemporary speculative fiction. Beginning with young lovers running away from their Puritan community, the novel visits (among others) an obsessive apple cultivator and his eccentric twin daughters, a landscape painter whose friendship with a writer blossoms into forbidden love, a phony clairvoyant who for the first time detects real spirits, and a man with schizophrenia who is aware of the ghosts inhabiting the property. Throughout, and especially during times when the house lies vacant, the natural history of the land over time is compellingly portrayed.
VERDICT Although the novel spends varying amounts of time with each successive set of characters, Mason depicts all of their stories with sympathy, sensitivity, and affectionate humor. Epic in scope and ambitious in style, this book succeeds on all counts. Highly recommended. – Starred Library Journal Review
(Recommended by: Library Journal, NPR, NYT & Time Magazine)
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Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
Named a Best Book of 2023 by the New Yorker, Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews
“You should be reading Sebastian Barry. [He] has a special understanding of the human heart.” —The Atlantic
“A prose stylist of near-miraculous skill. . . Barry reaches deep into the messenger bag of mystery fiction and turns the whole business inside out . . . marvelous.” —The Washington Post
“An unforgettable novel from one of our finest writers.” —Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain
From the five-time Booker Prize nominee and 2018-2021 Laureate for Irish Fiction, a virtuosic, profound novel exploring love, memory, grief, and long-buried secrets
Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return of his family: his beloved wife June and their two children, Winnie and Joe. But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.
A beautiful, haunting novel in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God’s Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us.
(Recommended by: Longlisted for Booker Prize & Time Magazine)
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Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
It’s dark. There’s a knock on the door. Eilish, a microbiologist, doesn’t want to answer but she does, the baby squirming in her arms, two older kids squabbling over the TV remote, the oldest not home yet, neither is her husband, an administrator with Ireland’s teachers’ union. It’s him the men want, two secret police officers with the increasingly brutal National Alliance. As everything goes inexorably from bad to worse for this loving family, we are privy to Eilish’s churning thoughts, strategies, anger, and love. Her husband disappears. Restrictions and deprivations multiply. In a moment of lucidity, Eilish’s increasingly senile scientist father says, “if you change ownership of the institutions then you can change ownership of the facts, you can alter the structure of belief . . . change what you and I call reality.” Irish writer Lynch (Beyond the Sea, 2020) conveys the creeping horror of a fascist catastrophe in a gorgeous and relentless stream of consciousness illuminating the terrible vulnerability of our loved ones, our daily lives, and social coherence. Eilish muses over the fragility of the body, its rhythms and flows, diseases and defenses. The body politic is just as assailable. A Booker Prize finalist, Lynch’s hypnotic and crushing novel tracks the malignant decimation of an open society, a bleak and tragic process we enact and suffer from over and over again. – Booklist Review
(2023 Booker Prize winning title)
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River Spirit by Leila Aboulela
The spellbinding new novel from New York Times Notable Author and Caine Prize winner Leila Aboulela about an embattled young woman’s coming of age during the Mahdist War in 19th century Sudan.
Leila Aboulela, hailed as “a versatile prose stylist” (New York Times) has also been praised by J.M. Coetzee, Ali Smith, and Ben Okri, among others, for her rich and nuanced novels depicting Islamic spiritual and political life. Her new novel is an enchanting narrative of the years leading up to the British conquest of Sudan in 1898, and a deeply human look at the tensions between Britain and Sudan, Christianity and Islam, colonizer and colonized. In River Spirit, Aboulela gives us the unforgettable story of a people who—against the odds and for a brief time—gained independence from foreign rule through their willpower, subterfuge, and sacrifice.
When Akuany and her brother Bol are orphaned in a village raid in South Sudan, they’re taken in by a young merchant Yaseen who promises to care for them, a vow that tethers him to Akuany through their adulthood. As a revolutionary leader rises to power – the self-proclaimed Mahdi, prophesied redeemer of Islam – Sudan begins to slip from the grasp of Ottoman rule, and everyone must choose a side. A scholar of the Qur’an, Yaseen feels beholden to stand against this false Mahdi, even as his choice splinters his family. Meanwhile, Akuany moves through her young adulthood and across the country alone, sold and traded from house to house, with Yaseen as her inconsistent lifeline. Everything each of them is striving for – love, freedom, safety – is all on the line in the fight for Sudan.
Through the voices of seven men and women whose fates grow inextricably linked, Aboulela’s latest novel illuminates a fraught and bloody reckoning with the history of a people caught in the crosshairs of imperialism. River Spirit is a powerful tale of corruption, coming of age, and unshakeable devotion – to a cause, to one’s faith, and to the people who become family.
(Recommended by: NYT)
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Tom Lake by Ann Pratchett
Lara’s three twentysomething daughters are back home in northern Michigan, thanks to the COVID-19 lockdown, just in time to harvest the cherries. Emily has already committed herself to the family orchard and farm and her other great love, neighbor Benny. Maisie discovers that she can continue her veterinarian studies by caring for their neighbors’ animals. Only Nell, an aspiring actor, is distraught because of their isolation, but all are ravenous for distraction as they work long hours handpicking cherries, so they insist that their mother tell them, in lavish detail, the story of her romance with a future megawatt movie star. Lara strategically fashions an edited version for her daughters, while sharing the full, heartbreaking tale with the reader. Patchett (The Dutch House, 2019) attains new dimensions of beauty and resonance as she elegantly needlepoints Lara’s life onto the template of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the first play New Hampshire high-schooler Lara acts in, the play that catapults her to Hollywood, then to summer stock at Tom Lake in Michigan, where she comes under the spell of voraciously sexy and ambitious Peter Duke. As this spellbinding and incisive novel unspools, Patchett brings every turn of mind and every setting to glorious, vibrant life, gracefully contrasting the dazzle of the ephemeral with the gravitas of the timeless, perceiving in cherries sweet and tart reflections of love and loss.
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Superlative storyteller Patchett, who recently added the National Humanities Medal to her many awards, is always a must-read for myriad fiction lovers. – Booklist Review
(Recommended by: B&N, NPR & Time Magazine)
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Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
Ever since they met at Yale as freshmen, June Hayward has watched Athena Liu grow into a writer and best-selling author, while June can barely get publishers to look twice at her debut. When Athena dies in a freak incident, June finds and rewrites her friend’s unpublished manuscript about Chinese laborers, passing it off as her own under the racially ambiguous pen name, Juniper Song. The book receives rave reviews, and June skyrockets to the best-seller list, much to the joy of her publishers and literary agent. The public loves Juniper Song. But things quickly spiral downward when accusations of plagiarism arise on social media, and June can’t stop seeing Athena’s ghost haunting her wherever she goes. When her new status is threatened, though, June realizes she will do whatever it takes to stay at the top. In a moment when racial equity and diversity are constant buzzwords, Kuang (The Poppy War, 2018) illustrates the pernicious and codependent relationship between the empowered and the oppressed and explores how one cannot exist without the other. Her magnificent novel uses satire to shine a light on systemic racial discrimination and the truth that often hides behind the twisted narratives constructed by those in power. – Starred Booklist Review
(Recommended by: B&N, Library Journal & Time Magazine)
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Happy reading!
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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Have questions or want to request a book?
Feel free to call the library! Our telephone number is 607-936-3713.
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Note: Book summaries are from the respective publishers unless otherwise specified.
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Reference Links (for December 2023 & January 5, 2024; Best of 2023 recommended reads posts!)
The 10 Best Books of 2023 [Review of The 10 Best Books of 2023] (2023, November 28) . The New York Times; The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/28/books/review/best-books-2023.html
The 10 best mystery novels of 2023. (2023, November 14). Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/11/14/best-mystery-novels-osman/
The 38 Best Books We Read in 2023. (2023, December 5). Literary Hub. https://lithub.com/the-38-best-books-we-read-in-2023/
The 100 Must-Read Books of 2023. (n.d.). Time. Retrieved December 12, 2023, from https://time.com/collection/must-read-books-2023/
Athitakis, M., Kelly, H., & Patrick, B. (2023, December 5). The 13 best novels (and 2 best short story collections) of 2023. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2023-12-05/best-books-fiction-2023-novels
Barnes & Noble (n.d.). Barnes & Noble Best Books of 2023. Barnes & Noble. Retrieved December 12, 2023, from https://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/books/awards/best-books-of-the-year
Becker, A. (2023, December 5). The Best Historical Fiction of 2023 [Review of The Best Historical Fiction of 2023]. The New York Times; The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/books/review/best-historical-fiction-books-2023.html
The Best Books of 2023. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved December 12, 2023, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-best-books-of-2023-180983339/
The Booker Prize 2023 | The Booker Prizes. (n.d.). Thebookerprizes.com. Retrieved December 12, 2023, from https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/2023
Books We Love (2023). (n.d.). NPR. Retrieved December 12, 2023, from https://apps.npr.org/best-books/?year=2023#view=list&year=2023
In a year of book bans, Maureen Corrigan’s top 10 affirm the joy of reading widely. (2023, December 6). NPR. https://www.npr.org/2023/12/06/1217368011/best-books-2023-what-to-read
National Book Awards 2023. (n.d.). National Book Foundation. Retrieved December 12, 2023, from https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-2023/
The New York Public Library: Best Books of 2023 | The New York Public Library. (n.d.). Www.nypl.org. Retrieved December 12, 2023, from https://www.nypl.org/spotlight/best-books-2023
Patchett, A., Beard, M., Myrie, C., Levy, D., Kilroy, C., O’Connell, M., Frankopan, P., Nolan, M., Enright, A., Morrison, B., Paterson, D., Li, Y., Ford, R., Heisey, M., Branigan, T., Grant, C., Thrall, N., Adegoke, Y., & Penman, I. (2023, December 3). The best books to give as presents this Christmas. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/03/the-best-books-to-give-as-presents-this-christmas
Riveting Reads. (n.d.). Library Journal. Retrieved December 12, 2023, from https://www.libraryjournal.com/page/best-books-2023
Some of the Best Books of the Year Are on Sale Right Now. (2023, March 7). Good Housekeeping. https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/entertainment/g42122275/best-books-2023/
These are Science News’ favorite books of 2023. (2023, December 5). https://www.sciencenews.org/article/science-news-favorite-top-books-2023
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Information on the three library catalogs
Digital Catalog: https://stls.overdrive.com/
The Digital Catalog, is an online catalog containing eBooks, Downloadable Audiobooks, digital magazines and a handful of streaming videos. The catalog, which allows one to download content to a PC, also has a companion app, Libby, which you can download to your mobile device; so you can enjoy eBooks and Downloadable Audiobooks on the go!
All card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can check out items from the Digital Catalog.
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Hoopla Catalog: https://www.hoopladigital.com/
The Hoopla Catalog features instant checkouts of eBooks, Downloadable Audiobooks, comic books, albums, movies and TV series. Patron check out limit is 6 items per month.
Hoopla is a Southeast Steuben County Library service available to all Southeast Steuben County Library card holders.
The Hoopla App is available for Android or Apple devices, smart TVs & media streaming players.
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StarCat: The catalog of physical/traditional library materials: https://starcat.stls.org
Card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can access StarCat to search for and request materials available at libraries through out the Southern Tier Library System.
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Format Note: Under each book title you’ll find a list of all the different formats that specific title is available in; including: Print Books, Large Print Books, CD Audiobooks, eBooks & Downloadable Audiobooks from the Digital Catalog (Libby app) and Hoopla eBooks & Hoopla Downloadable Audiobooks (Hoopla app).
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Book summaries are from the respective publishers unless otherwise specified.
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Tech Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
Tech & Book Talk at SSCL 