Top shelf: 2023 book list.

my favorite reads of the year 📚

Dec 18, 2023

I’m a reader, not a book reviewer. I’d rather spend my time getting into new books or writing essays here. So what you’re about to read is not my review of favorite titles. This is a list of my top reads this year. I’m sharing because I love to steal ideas from others’ reading lists to decide what to read next, so I hope this is helpful for some of you! Let me know in the comments below?!

2023 was a pretty good reading year for me, even though traveling, grieving, and writing means I don't read as much. I've done a lot of all of it this year. As my reading time becomes more precious, I start with what I’ll probably love: memoir and poetry. I’m a quality over quantity reader and that’s even more true when life is life-y. What I care about most is that my reading reflects my intention to learn from a diverse shelf of authors, not necessary genres or styles. This tends to point me to even better reading in the future.

Here are my top reads1 so far, in mostly the order I finished them, and the format or how I read the book, and whether it was a reread.2

Top three titles:

1. Everybody Come Alive, a memoir in essays by Marcie Alvis Walker📱🎧

Whew, this woman can write.

I picked this book up because I appreciate Alvis Walkers’ Instagram, Black Coffee with White Friends. I knew her storytelling style but did not expect to be so flattened and enthralled by her memorable narratives, reflections, and prose. She expertly weaves her family’s history and struggles with how she learned to be a Black woman in America. I read this when I was traveling around the Middle East this summer, at times crying or laughing into the upholstered cloth seats on the bus between Petra and Amman, soundtracked by this book read in the author’s own voice.

This is a soulful, lyrical work of art. It is intimate, entertaining, painful, and compelling. Pick it up. Now. While I highly recommend the book, she also has a Substack I’ve been enjoying these past few months. Subscribe if you want to follow along to

Marcie Alvis Walker

’s Black Eyed Stories newsletter.

2. Between Two Moons, a novel by Aesha Abdel Gawad 📱🎧

Fiction is so tricky for me. I love it or I hate it with really no in between. For example, I so much didn’t like two novels I actually finished I won’t even tell you what they were in order to not inadvertently recommend them because they were both “meh” for me, even though one is a mega best seller.

All that to say: Between Two Moons was not good “in comparison” – it was a stellar read through and through. This is one of those books I couldn't put down and kept telling my husband it was so good and I’ll make dinner later and then never do it because I was too engrossed. I love books with a real sense of place that make you feel like you’ve been there, like this one from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, a predominantly Arab neighborhood in New York City. It's Ramadan, and a lot can happen in a month (or, between two moons.)

The structure was unexpectedly fascinating. The end was inevitably devastating. The family saga so rich with character development, I feel like they're real people and I keep thinking about them as if this were a memoir. If these qualities are your reading style, don’t miss this one.

Also, this one takes the cake for favorite book cover design of my 2023 reads! So interesting and retro.

3. Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul: How to Change the World in Quiet Ways, essays and a manual by Dorcas Cheng-Tozun 🎧

From the publisher:

In Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul, writer Dorcas Cheng-Tozun (Enneagram 4, INFJ, nonprofit/social enterprise professional, and multiple-burnout survivor) offers six possible pathways for sensitive types:
- Connectors relational activists whose interactions and conversations build the social capital necessary for change
- Creatives artists and creators whose work inspires, sheds light, makes connections, and brings issues into the public consciousness
- Record Keepers archivists who preserve essential information and hold our collective memory and history
- Builders inventors, programmers, and engineers who center empathy as they develop society-changing products and technologies
- Equippers educators, mentors, and elders who build skills and knowledge within movements and shepherd the next generation of changemakers
- Researchers data-driven individuals who utilize information as a persuasive tool to effect change and propose options for improvement
Alongside inspiring, real-life examples of highly sensitive world-changers, Cheng-Tozun expands the possibilities of how to have a positive social impact, affirming the particular gifts and talents that sensitive souls offer to a hurting world.

I personally relate most to Connector and Creative in my work, but I also kept notes and ideas about the ways I flow in and out of every one of the others. More than that, the thing about this book that I keep going back to is PERMISSION.

Take this gentle, wise encouragement to be who you are and to find or create spaces that welcome all of you. Movements need all types, but they especially need us sensitive souls if we can show up fully and authentically to bring our unique gifts. We can know who we are and stay in alignment with that truth as a way to combat losing ourselves or doing work that doesn't make sense TO us and FOR us.

It’s hard to move through and change this world without a top layer of skin, but it is also a powerful way of being and our voices matter. You can be you and be of service. If this resonates, do yourself a favor and read this one.

Also on the top shelf:

Favorite Memoir

Truth Has a Different Shape, by Kari O'Driscoll 📱
All My Knotted Up Life, by Beth Moore 📱
I'm Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy 📱
Education of a Wandering Man, memoir and reading records of Louis L'Amour 📙
The Lord Is My Courage, by K.J. Ramsey 📱
The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch 📱
No One Tells You This, by Glynnis MacNicol 📙
Hijab Butch Blues, by Lamya H 📱🎧
They Called Me a Lioness, by Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri 📱🎧

Favorite Poetry

Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Up Your World, poetry anthology edited and commentary from Padraig O'Tuama 📱🎧
Writing the Camp, poetry by Yousif Qasmiyeh 📙
Customs: Poems, poetry by Solmaz Sharif 📱
Bright Dead Things, poems by Ada Limón 📙

Other Favorites (that aren’t memoir or poetry)

Inciting Joy, essays by Ross Gay 📱
Strong Like Water, essays/memoir/self help by Aundi Kolber, LPC 📙
Yellowface, a novel by R.F. Kuang 📱🎧
Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day, by Kaitlin B. Curtice 📙
Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women, essays and journalism by Geraldine Brooks 📙

Currently Reading (and loving)

Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover If a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences, a memoir by Jedidiah Jenkins 📙
19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, by Naomi Shihab Nye 📙
The first draft of my memoir, which I’m still editing! 📓

Faith and I found the library in the maze that is Meow Wolf Denver, Summer 2023.

I owe a huge thanks and love to the authors and fellow writers and readers who've made my life richer and more beautiful. You are my heroes, and I want to be you when I grow up.

I get all my book recommendations from friends and writers, so I hope to hear from you if you’re a reader. Let me know in the post comments if you’ve read any from my list of favorites, or: