NYT's 100 Notable Books of 2023

Each year, NYT staff pore over thousands of new books, seeking out the best novels, memoirs, biographies, poetry collections, stories and more. Here are the 2023 standouts, selected by the staff of The New York Times Book Review.

Showing 1 - 9 of 9  There are a total of 99 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Easily slip into another world"
Star rating for Easily slip into another world
Description:
"An autobiography of one of the towering figures of contemporary American music and a powerful meditation on history, race, capitalism and art"--
Book cover for "How to say Babylon"
Star rating for How to say Babylon
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"[This] is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. [It] is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about." --Publisher.
Book cover for "A living remedy"
Star rating for A living remedy
Description:
In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you'd hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them. When Nicole Chung graduated from high school, she couldn't hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university...
Book cover for "My name is Barbra"
Star rating for My name is Barbra
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"The long-awaited memoir by the superstar of stage, screen, recordings, and television Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in popular music. She has been nominated for a Grammy 46 times, and with Yentl she became the...
Book cover for "Pageboy"
Star rating for Pageboy
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
The Oscar-nominated star who captivated the world with his performance in Juno finally shares his truth. "Can I kiss you?" It was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans...
Book cover for "Sink"
Star rating for Sink
Description:
Stranded within an ever-shifting family’s desperate but volatile attempts to love, saddled with a mercurial mother mired in crack addiction, and demeaned daily for his perceived weakness, Joseph Earl Thomas grew up feeling he was under constant threat. Roaches fell from the ceiling, colonizing bowls of noodles and cereal boxes. Fists and palms pounded down at school and at home, leaving welts that ached long after they disappeared. An inescapable...
Book cover for "Up home"
Star rating for Up home
Description:
"Born in 1945, Ruth J. Simmons grew up the twelfth child of sharecroppers. Her first home had no running water, no electricity to light the two crowded rooms, no books to read. Yet despite this-or, in her words, because of it-Simmons would become one of America's preeminent educators. The former president of Smith College and Brown University, and now the outgoing president of Prairie View A&M, Texas's oldest HBCU, for decades Simmons has inspired...
Book cover for "Waiting to be arrested at night"
Star rating for Waiting to be arrested at night
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Winner of the Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, awarded to the best first book of the year

Named one of the best books of the year by: THE NEW YORK TIMESTHE WASHINGTON POSTTHE ECONOMISTTIME
A poet's account of one of the world's most urgent humanitarian crises, and a harrowing tale of a family's escape from genocide

One...
Book cover for "You have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live"
Star rating for You have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live
Author:
Description:
"From journalist Paul Kix, the riveting story, never before fully told, of the 1963 Birmingham Campaign―ten weeks that would shape the course of the Civil Rights Movement and the future of America. It’s one of the iconic photographs of American history: A Black teenager, a policeman and his lunging German Shepherd. Birmingham, Alabama, May of 1963. In May of 2020, as reporter Paul Kix stared at a different photo–that of a Minneapolis police...