My 5 Favorite Books I Read in 2023

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OMITTED CLASSICS and obvious choices:

RUNNER UPS:

MY 5 FAVORITES I READ IN 2023

FULL REVIEWS:
OMITTED CLASSICS and obvious choices:

RUNNER UPS:

MY 5 FAVORITES I READ IN 2023

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PATRON ONLY REVIEWS:

Death in Venice - Thomas Mann

The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus

H.P. Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulhu (Halloween Special)

Hamlet: Poem Unlimited by Harold Bloom

10 Books to Be Read 2022:

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

The Necrophiliac by Gabrielle Wittkop - Halloween 2021

Death in Midsummer by Yukio Mishima

Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard

The Key by Junichiro Tanizaki

Platforms by Nina Power

Consider This by Chuck Palahniuk

Bookshelf Tour 2020:

The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat

Margery Kempe by Robert Glück

Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

11 Books to be read in 2020:

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

Reading is Expensive (A Rant)

White by Bret Easton Ellis

A Room on the Garden Side by Ernest Hemingway

The Return by Roberto Bolaño

Darkness Visible by William Styron

"Blindness", an essay by Jorge Luis Borges

The Alligators by John Updike

The Diaries of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain

Animal Crackers in My Soup by Charles Bukowski

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

[BetterThanFoodBookReviews]

What were the best books you read in 2023? I’d love to know, please comment below!

[mitch]

As a sci-fi / fantasy nerd, I’m glad to hear you liked Dune! My top 5:

1. The Book of Disquiet - Pessoa
2. Moby Dick - Melville
3. A Canticle for Leibowitz - Miller
4. Blood Meridian - McCarthy
5. Ice - Kavan

[deelak]

Read 55 books last year, hard to choose a top 5 but here goes.

1. East of Eden (became my all time number 1) John Steinbeck
2. Lightbringer by pierce brown
3. Secret History by tartsy fartsy
4. War an peace by tolstoy
5. Ham On Rye Bukowski

Honor ment. Less than zero by easton ellis

[kavkazip]

The Sun also Rises made me get into wine. I loved the scene in the book where they are having a picnic and they place a bottle of wine in the river to make it cold.

[shubhaghosh]

I recommend Buddenbrooks as well as The Magic Mountain

[chazgross]

Your thoughts on Wiseblood got me to thinking about the time someone wrote Flannery O'Connor a letter complaining that "your book left a bad taste in my mouth." Flannery wrote back "you weren't supposed to eat it." Love the channel...All the best in 2024.

[lovepiecozitsawesome]

I didn't really read a lot this year unfortunately, probably because I mostly didn't have the time to watch your videos to inspire me (your love for reading is infectuous). But my top 5 this year, in no particular order, were:
- Hyperion by Dan Simmons
- Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
- White Noise by Don DeLillo
- Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov

Here's to hoping I read more than 10 books this year. Also a happy new year to everyone reading this, and may you have a great upcoming year!

[cheezeh]

1 - A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
2 - The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima
3 - Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
4 - Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
5 - No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

[shoresofpatmos]

My list:

Emil Cioran - The Trouble With Being Born

Thomas Ligotti - The Conspiracy Against The Human Race

Frank Herbert - Dune

Hannah Arendt - Eichmann in Jerusalem

Clive Barker - The Hellbound Heart

[FlintSL]

Cliff, you are without a doubt my favourite YouTuber. Love every video and I only wish they were longer, just thought I'd share that with you

[fiarandompenaltygeneratorm]

My Top 5 Reads for 2023:
1) The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
2) The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
3) The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke
4) The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
5) The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[JeanMenezes]

My 5 favorite books in 2023:

5. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, by Jules Verne

4. Hell House, by Richard Matheson

3. Mindhunter, by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker

2. The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma, by Lima Barreto

1. The Hobbit, by Tolkein

[timkjazz]

The Magic Mountain is well worth the hours, a masterpiece.

[bjwnashe]

Great list, excellent rundown. I agree with you 100% on Flannery O'Connor. Also want to commend you for sticking with literature that truly moves you, rather than following trends and fads. Good job. Cioran and Doyle I have not yet read, but look forward to doing so.

[Rohanposter]

I highly recommend you giving Dune: Messiah a read. It's short, and more of an epilogue to Dune than a sequel that completes the arcs and deepens the themes of the first book.

[the_wisecrack]

I always look forward to your yearly reviews!! Also, 2023 was not much of a good year for me. But your recommendations were pretty comforting!❤️

[maibritton]

O conners " a good man . . " Incredible mindfuck. I have always feared reading southern writers, (lol) now I know why. consider picking up the magazine of southern writing called "The Oxford American" they put out a music issue.

[vitorpr]

This year for me was Absalom, Absalom and Moby Dick

[gudi]

5 Miss Lonely Hearts- West
4 Blood of the Virgin-Harkham
3 Submission- Houellebecq
2 Old Man and the Sea- Hemingway
1 Notes From the
Underground- Dostoevsky

[carlossuarez]

my top 5 this year:
1 - one flew over the cuckoo’s nest by ken kesey
2 - stoner by john williams
3 - emma by jane austen
4 - the brothers karamazov by fyodor dostoevsky
5 - moby dick by herman melville