By the end of January of this year, I read and finished three books all at the same time. Some of them I had started in the previous year, but when I looked back upon January, I realized just how much reading I had done. I’m not a New Year’s Resolution type, but in that moment, I adopted one: read more books. In 2022, I had spent most of the year exercising, working out, and getting into peak physical shape for my wedding. Now, as 2023 closes, I reflect upon the books I read and I wonder how in the world I ever got by without some of them.

For anyone interested, here was my reading catalogue for the year of 2023. The bolded titles are my favorites. Consider them instantly and urgently recommended. The cover poster for each category is my favorite of the favorites.

FICTION

Michael Connelly, Blood Work (1998)

Michael Connelly, The Black Echo (1992)

Michael Connelly, The Black Ice (1993)

Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (1887)

Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four (1890)

Ian Fleming, From Russia With Love (1957)

Ian Fleming, Dr. No (1958)

C.S. Forester, The Happy Return (1937)

Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)

Andy Weir, Artemis (2017)

NONFICTION

A.J. Baime, The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months that Changed the World (2017)

Jeff Fuhrer, The Myths that Made Us: How False Beliefs about Racism and Meritocracy Broke Our Economy (and How to Fix It) (2023)

Adrian Goldsworthy, How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower (2009)

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil (1958)

John Keegan, The First World War (2000)

Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

Jeremy Peters, Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted (2022)

James Piereson, Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America’s Post-War Political Order (2014)

Thomas Sowell, Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality (1984)

Thomas Sowell, Charter Schools and Their Enemies (2020)

Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions (1980)

Thomas Sowell, Social Justice Fallacies (2023)

Ian W. Toll, Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (2011)

Ian W. Toll, The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944 (2016)

Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (1969)