Our 2023 Book Hits & Misses

The books we loved and loved to hate

We’re behind the times on our “ins and outs,” as the youth are saying this year. [I’ve never heard of such things—Taylor]. We read a collective 90(?) books in 2023, with Taylor taking the lion’s share of that number.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Here are our rankings:

Couldn’t Put It Down:

• All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir by Beth Moore (R): I laughed out loud and I cried. Riveting storytelling, a fascinating and hard life, with great Southern vernacular to boot. No matter your preconceptions about Beth Moore, you need to read it.

• Maus by Art Spiegelman (T): I generally fly through graphic novels and I did here despite (because of?) the heavy subject matter. It’s both a real life story of the holocaust and a story about being raised by holocaust survivors. It has stuck with me.

Had to Put It Down It Was So Bad:

• Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture by Sara Petersen (R): So many trite “the patriarchy” references with no supporting evidence. She also just seemed to really resent motherhood, which colored how she approached all her subjects.

• The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (T): I feel bad not liking this one because it won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018 and best book of the year by WSJ, NYT, NPR etc. However, if you ask me what happened in the story, what’s it about, I can barely answer those questions. Definitely wanted to put this 900 page thing down but felt compelled by the Nobel. Maybe I’ll like it later in life, read it incorrectly, read it at the wrong time in life, and/or needed to discuss it with friends. All I can say about it is “woof.”

What a Plot Twist:

• Everything Sad Is Untrue: (a true story) by Daniel Nayeri (R): It tells the story of an Iranian immigrant family’s experience. But it was the most unusual style of memoir I’ve read with a story that I didn’t see coming.

• Safe is Not an Option: Overcoming the Futile Obsession with Getting Everyone Back Alive that is Killing Our Expansion Into Space by Rand Simberg (T): Talk about a subtitle! Both too long and provocative. I was persuaded! This short book makes a compelling case for the counterintuitive notion that making safety standards too stringent, actual deployment goes down, so there are fewer opportunities to learn from mistakes. Basically there’s a sweet spot in safety regs in space flight and aviation that’s between none and too many.

Changed the Way I See God/Practice Faith:

• Runs with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best by Eugene Peterson (R): A extremely readable and memorable telling of the Biblical book of Jeremiah the prophet that brought his faith to life and left me with applications that really hit hard.

• The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality by Glen Scrivener (T): I’ve been on a kick with books in this genre like A Secular Age, Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, and Dominion. This is MUCH more accessible of the three. It, like the others, contextualized my faith in the history of what people have believe and currently believe about God and morality. It made me go “Ah ha!” and feel bolder in my beliefs.

It Was Trendy, So I Read It:

• Spare, by Prince Henry: I’m a sucker for all the royal intrigue, so I had to jump on the bandwagon. It did give my more sympathy for how hard his life had been in the constant, relentless paparazzi spotlight.

• Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson (T): “Trendy” for the tech crowd, although it also seemed to have mainstream appeal. Isaacson spent a couple years shadowing and tailing Musk to write this book and apparently caveated publication upon Musk never getting to proofread the copy. I thought it was very readable and gave insight into a controversial figure shaping our future. I found it very memorable too.