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Hi friends,
I’m just as ready to put 2023 behind me as I’m sure you are by now, so let’s get this show on the road. After yesterday’s semifinals, these were our standings:
Which leaves us with a top three: Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. So without further ado, below are my official Best Books of 2023 final rankings:
Round Three:
Third Place: Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
The fun thing about this being a bracket is that while I wouldn’t necessarily say this is my third favorite book of the year, I’m pleased that Yellowface has managed to fight its way to the top all the same. It doesn’t come close to the other two finalists in terms of lasting impact and emotional resonance, but as a satire about publishing, it has a distinct appeal to readers invested in this industry.
If you missed my initial review (and don’t feel like revisiting the August newsletter), Yellowface is about a white author who steals her late Asian-American friend’s manuscript about Chinese soldiers during WWI and passes it off as her own under a racially ambiguous pen name. As an Asian-American author writing a white protagonist, Kuang is in a unique position to call out some of the worst cycles of bias that have been perpetuated by those in positions of privilege in the industry via her narrator’s thoughts and behavior. Kuang wants us to feel shocked—she wants us to think, “Oh my God, she can’t say that,” when June thinks or speaks disparagingly about other writers and readers of color—and yet the shock comes not from the sentiment itself but the fact that it has been spoken aloud. In other words: Kuang goes there, sticks our face in the mess like an untrained dog, then washes her hands of it all. A worthy showing for this highly entertaining, if slightly niche read!
Second Place: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
This was so hard!! I flip-flopped a lot, but what my decision came down to is the fact that this book is ultimately SAD. Don’t get me wrong, I loved being knocked out by this book. It’s beautiful and insightful and moving and I do wholeheartedly believe there is value in experiencing the full range of human emotions through literature, but at the end of the day, I would simply prefer not to be sad! I would prefer to have a bit of hope, as a treat, and unfortunately, there is very little of that by the end of Never Let Me Go.
By no means do I mean to put anybody off from reading this—ultimately, it is #2 of the year for a reason and that reason is I believe it to be a profoundly important and impactful work of literature, but it’s heavy enough that I would recommend going into it with enough mental/emotional space to sit with the discomfort. That said, please read this one and come talk to me about it! Let’s be devastated together :’).
First Place: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
This book, on the other hand!!! The aforementioned full range of human emotions is undeniably present, and I would be lying if I said this one didn’t also make me sad—there may even have been tears! But what makes this one the ultimate winner of my Best Books of 2023 bracket is that the sadness is balanced out by an overwhelming amount of love. In fact, it wouldn’t even be sad if so much love had not preceded the sadness. And there are so many different kinds of love present, including friendship love, romantic love, familial love, creative love, and the ultimate respect that comes from experiencing so many facets of love within the same relationship.
Often when I think back on a book, my first thought is the memory of how I felt when it was over. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow had one of my favorite endings of all time, because (and this isn’t a spoiler!) it ends almost exactly how it begins. Thematically, this restart was the perfect ending for a book about video games, but emotionally, the suggestion that the story was only just beginning anew was everything I wanted for the two main characters. I didn’t need to know how their story ended because I didn’t want it to end—I wanted them to remain open to a whole lifetime of friendship and creative potential and mutual respect borne of years and years of loving each other in different ways. With this ending, we get to believe that this is true. So for the sake of this bracket (and for always), I hereby declare that love WINS!!!
Honorable Mentions:
Above are some of my favorite runners-up from the year! Though all of these books fell short of the official monthly top spot, let’s just say this year’s bracket would have looked a lot different had some of these been in play. Maybe I’ll do a bigger one next year? In the meantime, I’ll do one last push for you to check out the Lit Chat archives for reading inspiration if one of these covers catches your eye, and I’ll also remind everyone that all of these books are neatly organized by month on my Bookshop storefront! And if you want these posts straight to your inbox, then go ahead and click the button below to subscribe on Substack.
Thanks so much to everyone for reading with me in 2023, especially those of you who have reached out to chat about these and other books or who have shared this newsletter with other fellow readers. I so appreciate you!
ALSO I almost forgot, but I will be sending an email out soon to those interested in joining my little in-person reading show & tell club! If you’re local to NYC and haven’t already let me know you wanna come, reach out! Tentative date is Saturday, January 20th with more details to follow.
Until next time, happy reading and cheers to many more good books in 2024!
❤ Catherine
Catherine Thoms 