new york times book review august 20 2023

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The New York Times Book Review – August 20, 2023

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – August 20, 2023 : The issue features “never before told” narrative histories including a tale of the female botanists who surveyed the Grand Canyon in 1938, a recent biography of the 19th-century “abortionist of Fifth Avenue” and the book on this week’s cover: Prudence Peiffer’s “The Slip,” which brings into focus a thriving artistic community that existed at the southernmost tip of Manhattan in the 1950s and ’60s.

They Overcame Hazards — and Doubters — to Make Botanical History

In Melissa Sevigny’s “Brave the Wild River,” we meet the two scientists who explored unknown terrain — and broke barriers.

BRAVE THE WILD RIVER: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon , by Melissa L. Sevigny

Let’s start this story on a sun-blistered evening in August 1938. A small band of adventurers had just concluded a 43-day journey from Utah to Nevada — although perhaps “journey” is too tame a description for a trip that had required weeks of small wooden boats tumbling down more than 600 miles of rock-strewn rivers. The goal was twofold. First, to simply survive. And then, to chart the plants building homes along the serrated walls of the Grand Canyon.

At New York’s Coenties Slip, an Artist Colony and a ‘Rebellion’

Prudence Peiffer’s “The Slip” is a group biography of six visual artists and the work they created on the edge of Manhattan in the 1950s and ’60s.

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The New York Times Best Sellers - November 24, 2024

Authoritatively ranked lists of books sold in the united states, sorted by format and genre..

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• Combined Print & E-Book Fiction

New this week

by Emily McIntire

The sixth book in the Never After series. A forbidden love develops between the underboss to a mafia syndicate and his fiancée's cousin.

• Apple Books
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LOST AND LASSOED

by Lyla Sage

The third book in the Rebel Blue Ranch series. Tempers and tension may give way to something more between Teddy and Gus.

2 weeks on the list

THE GREY WOLF

by Louise Penny

The 19th book in the Chief Inspector Gamache series. Shifting alliances complicate the frenzied pursuit of a sinister threat.

3 weeks on the list

IN TOO DEEP

by Lee Child and Andrew Child

The 29th book in the Jack Reacher series. Reacher wakes up in a precarious position with no memory of how he got there.

6 weeks on the list

THE BOYFRIEND

by Freida McFadden

A series of recent deaths causes Sydney Shaw to become suspicious of the handsome doctor she started dating.

• Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction

5 weeks on the list

by Melania Trump

The former first lady describes her work as a fashion model, marriage to Donald Trump and time in the White House.

4 weeks on the list

by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey

Our criminal justice system viewed through the struggles of 10 wrongfully convicted people to achieve exoneration.

106 weeks on the list

HILLBILLY ELEGY

by JD Vance

The vice president-elect, in a memoir written shortly after graduating from Yale Law School, looks at the struggles of the white working class through the story of his own childhood.

by Bob Woodward

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist looks at our contentious time through battles in Ukraine and the Middle East and for the American presidency.

28 weeks on the list

by Timothy Snyder

Twenty lessons from the 20th century about the course of tyranny.

• Hardcover Fiction

40 weeks on the list

by Kristin Hannah

In 1965, a nursing student follows her brother to serve during the Vietnam War and returns to a divided America.

7 weeks on the list

COUNTING MIRACLES

by Nicholas Sparks

A man in search of the father he never knew encounters a single mom and rumors circulate of the nearby appearance of a white deer.

THE WAITING

by Michael Connelly

The sixth book in the Ballard and Bosch series. Bosch’s daughter, Maddie, becomes a new volunteer on the cold case unit.

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• Hardcover Nonfiction

33 weeks on the list

THE ANXIOUS GENERATION

by Jonathan Haidt

A co-author of “The Coddling of the American Mind” looks at the mental health impacts that a phone-based life has on children.

9 weeks on the list

CONFRONTING THE PRESIDENTS

by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

The conservative commentator evaluates the legacies of American presidents.

BE READY WHEN THE LUCK HAPPENS

by Ina Garten

A memoir by the cookbook author and Food Network host known as the Barefoot Contessa.

• Paperback Trade Fiction

81 weeks on the list

THE HOUSEMAID

Troubles surface when a woman looking to make a fresh start takes a job in the home of the Winchesters.

8 weeks on the list

FOURTH WING

by Rebecca Yarros

Violet Sorrengail is urged by the commanding general, who also is her mother, to become a candidate for the elite dragon riders.

• Paperback Nonfiction

83 weeks on the list

95 weeks on the list

316 weeks on the list

THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE

by Bessel van der Kolk

How trauma affects the body and mind, and innovative treatments for recovery.

239 weeks on the list

BRAIDING SWEETGRASS

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation espouses having an understanding and appreciation of plants and animals.

20 weeks on the list

by Tom O'Neill with Dan Piepenbring

A reassessment of events surrounding the murders committed by Charles Manson’s followers.

• Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous

16 weeks on the list

THE BOOK OF BILL

by Alex Hirsch

TURKUAZ KITCHEN

by Betül Tunç

259 weeks on the list

ATOMIC HABITS

by James Clear

22 weeks on the list

GOOD ENERGY

by Casey Means with Calley Means

GOOD LOOKIN' COOKIN'

by Dolly Parton and Rachel Parton George with Maurice Miner

• Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover

IMPOSSIBLE CREATURES

by Katherine Rundell. Illustrated by Ashley Mackenzie

A young boy is enlisted to save a place where magical creatures reside. (Ages 10 and up)

THE MILLICENT QUIBB SCHOOL OF ETIQUETTE FOR YOUNG LADIES OF MAD SCIENCE

by Kate McKinnon

Three sisters attend an unusual etiquette school. (Ages 8 to 12)

THE LAST DRAGON ON MARS

by Scott Reintgen

Lunar must save the planet of Mars with a dragon named Dread. (Ages 10 and up)

THE BLETCHLEY RIDDLE

by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin

The siblings Jakob and Lizzie decode wartime secrets during World War II-era London. (Ages 10 and up)

223 weeks on the list

THE COMPLETE COOKBOOK FOR YOUNG CHEFS

by America's Test Kitchen Kids

Over 100 kid-tested recipes from America's Test Kitchen. (Ages 8 and up)

• Children’s Picture Books

CHRISTMAS AT HOGWARTS

by J.K. Rowling. Illustrated by Ziyi Gao

Harry Potter celebrates his first Christmas at Hogwarts. (Ages 6 and up)

HOW TO CATCH A TURKEY

by Adam Wallace. Illustrated by Andy Elkerton

Students try to catch a runaway turkey before their Thanksgiving play. (Ages 4 to 8)

TAYLOR SWIFT

by Wendy Loggia. Illustrated by Elisa Chavarri

A biography of the pop star. (Ages 4 to 8)

MS. RACHEL AND THE SPECIAL SURPRISE

by Ms. Rachel. Illustrated by Monique Dong

Children help Ms. Rachel look for a surprise. (Ages 0 to 3)

CHICKA CHICKA HO HO HO

by William Boniface. Illustrated by Julien Chung

The Christmas edition of "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom." (Ages 4 to 8)

• Children’s & Young Adult Series

817 weeks on the list

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID

written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney

The travails and challenges of adolescence. (Ages 9 to 12)

42 weeks on the list

THE WILD ROBOT

by Peter Brown

Roz the robot adapts to her surroundings on a remote, wild island. (Ages 7 to 12)

750 weeks on the list

PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS

by Rick Riordan

A boy battles mythological monsters. (Ages 9 to 12)

816 weeks on the list

HARRY POTTER

by J.K. Rowling

A wizard hones his conjuring skills in the service of fighting evil. (Ages 10 and up)

by Tahereh Mafi

In a crumbling dystopian world, dark forces want to use Juliette’s superhuman powers. (Ages 14 and up)

• Young Adult Hardcover

10 weeks on the list

A STUDY IN DROWNING

by Ava Reid

Dark forces try to thwart Preston and Effy's efforts to unravel the mysteries of author Emrys Myrddin's Hiraeth Manor. (Ages 14 and up)

WHERE THE LIBRARY HIDES

by Isabel Ibañez

In order to access her inheritance, Inez must marry, but is Whit the one? (Ages 13 to 18)

IF HE HAD BEEN WITH ME

by Laura Nowlin

The coming-of-age love story of Autumn and Phineas. (Ages 14 to 18)

NOTHING LIKE THE MOVIES

by Lynn Painter

In this sequel to "Better Than the Movies," Wes tries to win back the heart of Liz. (Ages 14 and up)

56 weeks on the list

by Alex Aster

Every 100 years the island of Lightlark appears and a deadly competition called the Centennial takes place. (Ages 13 to 18)

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‘NYT’ Names Its 10 Best Books of 2023

BY Michael Schaub • Nov. 28, 2023

The New York Times unveiled its list of its 10 best books of 2023, with five fiction and five nonfiction titles making the cut.

Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting , which was a finalist for this year’s Kirkus Prize and Booker Prize, made the list, with the newspaper hailing the Irish author’s “triumphant return.” Also honored was Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars , which was shortlisted for the National Book Award.

Zadie Smith’s The Fraud made the Times list, alongside North Woods  by Daniel Mason and Eastbound , written by French author Maylis de Kerangal and translated by Jessica Moore.

John Vaillant’s Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World , the winner of this year’s Baillie Gifford Prize and a National Book Award finalist, was one of the nonfiction books to appear on the Times list, along with Ilyon Woo’s Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom , another Kirkus Prize finalist.

Other nonfiction books making the cut were Jonathan Rosen’s The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions , Kerry Howley’s Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State , and Patricia Evangelista’s Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country .

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.

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The 10 Best Books of 2023, According to the New York Times

After releasing their 100 Notable Books of 2023, the New York Times has narrowed it down to their top 10 Best Books of 2023.

Always books. Never boring.

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These are the five fiction and five nonfiction books that the staff of the New York Times agree are the best of the year — after a lot of debate. If you want to browse the long list of all 100, check out their previous list .

Some of the New York Times top ten are consistent across other lists we’ve seen recently, like Chain-Gang All-Stars and Master Slave Husband Wife . Others have seen less attention on other best books of the year lists, like Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs . See all ten below.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray: “This is a book that showcases one family’s incredible love and resilience even as their world crumbles around them.”

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: “The United States of Chain-Gang All-Stars is like ours, if sharpened to absurd points.”

Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal: “The insecurity of existence across this vastness and on board the train emphasizes the significance of human connection.”

The Fraud by Zadie Smith: “As always, it is a pleasure to be in Zadie Smith’s mind, which, as time goes on, is becoming contiguous with London itself.”

North Woods by Daniel Mason: “Mason’s ambitious, kaleidoscopic novel ushers readers over the threshold of a house in the wilds of western Massachusetts and leaves us there for 300 years and almost 400 pages”

The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen: “ The Best Minds is a thoughtfully constructed, deeply sourced indictment of a society that prioritizes profit, quick fixes and happy endings over the long slog of care.”

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs by Kerry Howley: “…a book that is riveting and darkly funny and, in all senses of the word, unclassifiable.”

Fire Weather by John Vaillant: “…the real protagonist here is the fire itself: an unruly and terrifying force with insatiable appetites.”

Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo: “…Woo’s immersive rendering, which conjures the Crafts’ escape in novelistic detail, is equally a feat — of research, storytelling, sympathy and insight.”

Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista: “Offering the intimate disclosures of memoir and the larger context of Philippine history, Evangelista also pays close attention to language, and not only because she is a writer.”

Check out the full list with commentary, as well as links to their reviews, at the New York Times .

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in  Breaking in Books .

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News | Penguin Random House | New York, 12/05/2023

The New York Times Book Review’s ‘10 Best Books of 2023’

The “New York Times Book Review” has published its highly acclaimed annual best books list. Seven of the ten titles on the “The 10 Best Books of 2023” list are published by Penguin Random House U.S. imprints. The list, published in the New York Times Literary Supplement, serves as an important buying recommendation for bookstores and readers across the country.

The book supplement of the renowned U.S. daily, “The New York Times,” has now published its highly acclaimed annual list of best books. And this year, seven of “The 10 Best Books of 2023” are published by Penguin Random House U.S. imprints. Booksellers and readers across the country are known to consult the annual NYT Book Review list for purchase recommendations. This year, the U.S. publishing group is represented by three books in the Fiction category and four works in Nonfiction. In novels, “Chain-Gang All-Stars” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Pantheon), “The Fraud” by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press), and “North Woods” by Daniel Mason (Random House) made the top five. In Nonfiction, the editors of the “New York Times Book Review” selected “The Best Minds” by Jonathan Rosen (Penguin Press), “Bottoms Up And The Devil Laughs” by Kerry Howley (Knopf), “Fire Weather” by John Vaillant (Knopf), and “Some People Need Killing” by Patricia Evangelista (Random House) made the top five. The “The 10 Best Books of 2023” list is based on the “100 Notable Books of 2023” list published earlier by the “New York Times Book Review.” That list already featured an impressive 42 books from Penguin Random House U.S. publishers: 16 in the fiction and poetry category and 26 works of nonfiction books and biographies.

Claire von Schilling Penguin Random House, Executive Vice President, Director Corporate Communications and Social Responsibility Penguin Random House

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The Best Reviewed Fiction of 2023

Featuring anne enright, lorrie moore, zadie smith, anne patchett, colson whitehead, and more.

The points are tallied, the math is done, and the results are in.

Yes, all year long the diligent and endearingly disgruntled Book Marks elves have been mining reviews from every corner of the literary internet. Brows furrowed, stomachs growling, they’ve worked from break of dawn to blink of dusk, seven days a week, scouring the book review sections of over 150 publications—from the New York Times to the Sydney Morning Herald , the Toronto Star to the London Review of Books —all so that we can now say with certainty that these are the best reviewed fiction titles of 2023.

Happy reading!

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

1. The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright (W.W. Norton & Company)

18 Rave • 2 Positive Read an interview with Anne Enright here

“So convincingly has Ms. Enright conjured the archetype of the wandering Irish bard who leaves behind him a legacy of abandoned women and melodious, honey-tongued verse … Is it possible for poems to be fictitious? In fact, these nostalgic odes to love and Ireland are limpid, lilting, wholly credible stand-alone works … One of Ms. Enright’s remarkable feats is to write believably across three generations, capturing epochal differences but also a buried, or even repressed, continuity. The fullness of Ms. Enright’s talent is reflected as well in her treatment of what has come to be known, a bit glibly, as the ‘art monster.’”

–Sam Sacks ( The Wall Street Journal )

2. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (Harper)

19 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an interview with Ann Patchett here

“Not that a heart is not broken at some point, but it breaks without affecting the remarkable warmth of the book, set in summer’s fullest bloom … This generous writer hits the mark again with her ninth novel … Knowing Patchett’s personal history with motherhood makes the fullness of the maternal feelings she imagines for Lara Kenison particularly poignant.”

–Marion Winik ( The Washington Post )

3. After the Funeral by Tessa Hadley (Knopf)

15 Rave • 6 Positive Read an interview with Tessa Hadley here

“This new collection is a great introduction to her work and for those of us already familiar with Hadley, it’s a great addition. Throughout the collection, Hadley spins out character studies of (mostly) women at odds with themselves, their partners, their families, or life in general … Hadley does a wonderful job of weaving past and present together as the sisters are forced to confront their memories and relationships. And, of course, there are those moments of shining prose … Rife with deft and often beautiful prose, and astute but compassionate characterization, this is a wonderful collection.”

–Yvonne C. Garrett ( The Brooklyn Rail )

4. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore ( Knopf)

20 Rave • 9 Positive • 6 Mixed • 1 Pan Read an interview with Lorrie Moore here

“Moore excels in…[the] neurotic but intimate conversations that go nowhere, and the scenes in the hospice are viscerally done … Moore shows that grief and ghosts can be written about persuasively, and wittily, without turning a novel into a horror story … A triumph of tone and, ultimately, of the imagination. For Moore, death doesn’t necessarily mark the end of a story.”

–Abhrajyoti Chakraborty ( The Guardian )

5. Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (New Directions)

15 Rave • 9 Positive Read an excerpt from Kairos here

“A cathartic leak of a novel, a beautiful bummer, and the floodgates open early … If Kairos were only a tear-jerker, there might not be much more to say about it. But Erpenbeck, a German writer born in 1967 whose work has come sharply to the attention of English-language readers over the past decade, is among the most sophisticated and powerful novelists we have. Clinging to the undercarriage of her sentences, like fugitives, are intimations of Germany’s politics, history and cultural memory … She is writing more closely to her own unconscious … I don’t generally read the books I review twice, but this one I did … Profound and moving.”

–Dwight Garner ( The New York Times )

6. August Blue by Deborah Levy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

13 Rave • 8 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Ms. Levy rewards close readers by packing her sardine-can-slim novels with tight connections … August Blue, which builds to a moving climax, is more emotionally accessible than Ms. Levy’s previous novels. But it too encompasses the cerebral and the sentimental, realism and surrealism, love and loss, the drive to create art—and the ambiguities of human relations.”

–Heller McAlpin ( The Wall Street Journal )

7. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

18 Rave • 5 Positive • 5 Mixed Read an excerpt from The Bee Sting here

“ The Bee Sting …ought to cement Murray’s already high standing. Another changeup, it’s a triumph of realist fiction, a big, sprawling social novel in the vein of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom . The agility with which Murray structures the narrative around the family at its heart is virtuosic and sure-footed, evidence of a writer at the height of his power deftly shifting perspectives, style and syntax to maximize emotional impact. Hilarious and sardonic, heartbreaking and beautiful—there’s just no other way to put it: The Bee Sting is a masterpiece.”

–Jonathan Russell Clark ( The Los Angeles Times )

8. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

21 Rave • 7 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan Read an excerpt from Birnam Wood here

“Bold, ambitious … A grand, chilling thriller tightly bound by inescapable concerns … Birnam Wood moves at a faster clip with arguably higher stakes. Make no mistake: It’s a book that grips you by the throat until its final paragraph. Catton successfully scorches the earth with her prose … Little feels certain or safe. The literary novel binds itself with a genre thriller in Catton’s hands … Free to play with form, Catton winds methodically through the minds of her characters … I’ll unabashedly state that Birnam Wood is a brash, unforgettable novel.”

–Lauren LeBlanc ( The Boston Globe )

9. Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)

15 Rave • 10 Positive • 4 Mixed • 1 Pan Read an interview with Colson Whitehead here

“Both deceptively substantive and sneakily funny, a wise journey through Harlem days and nights as lived by Ray Carney, a conscientious furniture salesman and family man who happens to run a little crooked … Whitehead has always had a sharp instinct for the workings of culture … Whitehead’s New York of the ‘70s is a fully realized universe down to the most meticulous details, from the constant sirens and bodega drug fronts to a sweltering, abandoned biscuit factory … A…reminder, as if we still needed one, that crime fiction can be great literature. These books are as resonant and finely observed as anything Whitehead has written.”

–Chris Vognar ( The Los Angeles Times )

10. The Fraud by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press)

20 Rave • 6 Positive • 9 Mixed • 1 Pan

“It offers a vast, acute panoply of London and the English countryside, and successfully locates the social controversies of an era in a handful of characters … Touchet is the most morally intelligent character Smith has written … The book’s structure is uneven. One wishes, for instance, that the chapters would signal their time jumps more consistently … But these infelicities stop mattering when we are deep into the trial and the book turns into a portrait of people with thwarted ambitions, of people who, like Ainsworth, become frauds without knowing … As always, it is a pleasure to be in Zadie Smith’s mind, which, as time goes on, is becoming contiguous with London itself. Dickens may be dead, but Smith, thankfully, is alive.”

–Karan Mahajan ( The New York Times Book Review )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points The ten books with the highest points totals are then ranked by weighted average 

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