Select Page

I had such a good reading year, and a good year in general!  Life isn’t perfect but it is so very good.  

I think now that I’ve separated out fiction from nonfiction I can at least make an attempt at ranking these in order the way some people do. 

9.  Cleverlands: The Secrets Behind the Success of the World’s Education Superpowers – Lucy Crehan, 2016.   Not that the international tests are the final word in educational “success” – and the author doesn’t think they are either – but why do some countries do so well?  There is so much to love about this book and so much to think about.  I would read a book called Clevelands II in which Lucy Crehan visited a new tier of another five top performers.  

8.  Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism – Anne Applebaum, 2020.  So interesting, so thought-provoking.  I never would have expected this to be such a personal book, as Applebaum includes many stories of her own friendships that have changed or even ended, as people she used to have so much in common with have gone in a different direction politically.  I definitely want to read everything she’s written now.  

7.  Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown that Shaped the Modern World – Giles Milton, 2021.  So many things I should have known and didn’t!  So many memorable and fascinating people, some of them infuriating and some of them inspiring.  This book was so readable and interesting that I immediately bought two or three other books by Giles Milton and can’t wait to read them.

6.  How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America – Clint Smith, 2021.  I’ve read not that many nonfiction books about race and the legacy of slavery in America, but maybe ten?  Eight?  In my opinion this one is the very best of the ones I’ve read, and is so accessible and so convincing that I think if it were widely included in high school curricula it would change the world.  

5.  The Border: A Journey Around Russia Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway and the Northeast Passage – Erika Fatland – translated by Kari Dickson, 2020.  This was a fascinating travel narrative as well as a geopolitical primer for a part of the world I know all too little about.  If you include this book as a book about Russia, which it really sort of is, I read five books about Russia this year, which isn’t nearly as many as I bought.  (I think buying books about Russia felt like a coping mechanism as things got scary.)

4.  Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772-1804 – Richard Holmes, 1989.  This was the best biography I’ve ever read so of course it was among my top books of the year.  I think even for a reader without any special interest in Coleridge, anyone would love it as a study of personality, creativity, and the resistance we all meet with as we try to live the lives we aspire to.  The second volume is at the top of my stack for 2023.

3.  East West Street – Philippe Sands, 2016.  A devastating story of the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials that weaves together a number of different threads, including the author’s own family history.  It was so heartbreakingly sad and so hard to read in one way, but in another way it was so readable and so important that I felt like I couldn’t put it down, as if my own life depended on the story.  And truly, our lives and those of future generations do depend on people knowing, at least in part, what happened, and understanding, at least in part, how it happened.  

2.  Meditations – Marcus Aurelius, ~170-175 AD; translated by D. A. Rees, 1992.  Obviously, a book for all time, no one has to be told that this is worth reading!  I’d love to read it every year.

1.  The Walls Came Tumbling Down – Henriette Roosenburg, 1957.  Nine amazing books, any of which would merit rereads, but this book and Meditations are two that I literally would read every year.  This is a World War II memoir but it begins when the war ends, and there are so many moments of beauty, loyalty, steadfastness, and courage – all in the midst of utter chaos and so much evil.  One of my book groups has agreed to read this with me in 2023!  I can’t wait to see if they love it as much as I do.  

I can’t believe that I read so many great nonfiction books this year that The Escape Artist, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, and Empire of Pain aren’t even making it into my top nine.  I’d better publish this post, quickly, before I start reconsidering and trying to squeeze them in!