My favorite books written in the last two years or so
Some recommendations
This started as “my favorite books written in 2023”, but it turned out that many of the books I read this year and really liked were written in 2022. So I changed it to “my favorite books of the last two years”—but then I discovered that two of them were published at the end of 2021, so I added an “or so”. Sheesh. Anyway, they’re all recent.
One of them—GOAT, by Tyler Cowen—I haven’t finished yet, but I’m enjoying it so much that it makes the list.
If you feel like your tastes match mine, I’d be grateful for further book recommendations in the comments.
Fiction:
Michael Connelly, Desert Star
Dennis Lehane, Small Mercies
Ian McEwan, Lessons
Kat Rosenfield, No One Will Miss Her
Kat Rosenfield, You Must Remember This
Richard Russo, Somebody’s Fool
Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility
Non-fiction
Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks
Susan Cain, Bittersweet
Tyler Cowen, GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter?
David Edmonds, Parfit
Prince Harry, Spare. (Great book, but not written by Prince Harry. It’s by J. R. Moehringer, see here for my discussion of Moehringer’s (quite justified) anger of not getting proper credit for his ghostwriting.)
Eric Hoel, The World Behind the World.
Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk
A.J. Jacobs, The Puzzler
Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution
Russ Roberts, Wild Problems
Andrew Shtulman, Learning to Imagine
Edward Slingerland, Drunk
That’s it. I’m sure there are a few favorites I forgot, and I hope they weren’t written by friends.
Best of the best? Tough decisions, but here they are:
Best fiction: Kat Rosenfield, No One Will Miss Her
Best biography: David Edmonds, Parfit
Best science: Edward Slingerland, Drunk
Best general non-fiction: Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks
Again, please add your suggestions in the comments! (I’m looking for new books to read over the holidays.)
I read 4000 weeks just before my diagnosis reduced my 4000 to 3000. It certainly makes you think! All this time we are preparing for the future, we're missing out on the present. What if the future is not coming?
> Inevitably, we become obsessed with ‘using it well’, whereupon we discover an unfortunate truth: the more each day begins to feel like something you have to get through, en route to some calmer, better, more fulfilling point in the future, which never actually arrives.
Great book!
Great recommendations. To add the the list:
Dana Gioia (poet and brother of Ted Gioia) has two excellent books out on Seneca. One is a riveting translation of the tragic play Hercules Furens, and the other is a collection of his sayings and a short bio and overview of his legacy.