My Year in Review Books

What I read and recommend this year

For a period of around ten years, I read roughly 100 books a year. At some point, the marginal benefit of doing this starts to decrease and so I recently made a vow to gradually decrease the amount that I read to a level that is more useful. Personal commitments, work, and other priorities get in the way and I cannot read as voraciously as I once did when younger. I also wanted to learn intermediate level Turkish this year, which I did, and which took some of the spare time that I may have otherwise spent reading. That was a good trade-off and gave me something useful as a skill to build upon.

In 2023, I read a total of 31 books. I think that is a fine amount, and I wanted to share with you the ones that I found were the most interesting and enjoyable.

This is a book about friendship, particularly the friendship between Paul Theroux and the cantankerous V.S. Naipaul. Naipaul has always been a bit of an obsession for me, but on its own this is one of the funniest books I’ve read in years. I really did laugh out loud at several moments, which I hope my fellow subway passengers did not consider a bother. Theroux sends up Naipaul in an incredible way and this book tells the story of how their friendship began, grew, before eventually collapsing as life and egos intervened.

Babur was a Central Asian ruler who invaded India and laid the groundwork for the later Mughal Empire. Despite being a warlord, he had a surprisingly sensitive demeanor which comes across in his preserved memoirs. The Baburnama is basically his diary during his various campaigns in what is now Afghanistan and Northern India. He mixes brutal accounts of crushing enemies with scenes of breaking down in tears at the beauty of ripe melons and so forth. A memorable and unique historical artifact for sure.

I find Orhan Pamuk a bit hit-or-miss, but this was a beautiful novel about a plague that takes place on a fictional island in the late-Ottoman Empire. He seems to have been prompted to write it by COVID but it was a memorable and timeless book that came out of that impulse.

This is an incredible book of epic poetry, which embodies Islamic themes into a story about a group of birds going on a long journey. It is intended to be an allegory into the spiritual journey of Sufism. If you read it in English, I highly recommend the Dick Davis translation pictured above which is truly a pleasure.

This is a great book about the science of health and longevity, which mostly restates conventional wisdom about eating well and working out but explains it in the context of preventative medicine. It is compellingly written and explained, and will give you a great boost to go to the gym and eat both less and better.

A dark novel about race and crime in mid-20th century Chicago. The novel is so mature and serious that I wonder if it could even have been published today. Wright is a genius at immersing you in the world of his characters and I genuinely felt unnerved by this story in the best way.

This book is filed under what some would call the Woke Genghis Khan Thesis, in the sense that it paints a much more positive picture of the Mongol ruler and his descendants than most people accept. I actually found it convincing and thoughtful, even though if it tended to gloss over some of his more infamous acts. Pax Mongolica acted as a cultural zone that indeed had quite a bit of tolerance and prosperity and its sad to see it fade from memory so thoroughly.

Gore Vidal’s classic novel about the Emperor Julian, who tried to enact a pagan restoration of Rome for which he is remembered by Christians as Julian the Apostate. I felt genuinely transported back to this period by Vidal’s writing which is really dazzling in this book, and also learned a lot about the period from this work. Rightly known as a classic.

A touching book about the modern India and its relationship with the Ramayana, the classic story about the Hindu demigod Rama. The book mixes travelogue with short scenes from the ancient story. What really sets it apart is the touching writing of the author, who is clearly a sensitive and kind observer of India with great appreciation for its culture.

This is one of the best books I’ve read on the Israel-Palestine conflict told from the Palestinian perspective. Khalidi mixes memoir with history and produces something that is both readable and enlightening. Everyone is talking about this conflict at the moment so I do recommend this book as a primer. If any readers can recommend me a book they like that deals with history from the Israeli perspective I would welcome their suggestions.