My Top Nine Books of 2023

Perhaps I’m a bit late on this, but I wanted to share my favorite reads from 2023.

These were books that I found to be really stunning. I narrowed to the titles below as they were extremely valuable to me in growing my empathy and understanding of the topics within, and I suspect that at least a few will have lots of relevance for you as marketers, researchers, and the like.

Here’s the short list of 9 titles (because why does everything have to be a Top 5 or Top 10?), and I’ll include a little blurb on each, sharing what I found fascinating and beneficial about them. I hope by sharing my recommendations, they just might help you find a book that becomes a favorite of yours that you read in 2024.

1. Heavy, by Kiese Laymon
2. You’re the Only One I Can Tell, by Deborah Tannen
3. The Most Tolerant Little Town, by Rachel Louise Martin
4. Burn it All Down, by Maureen Ryan
5. Hiroshima, by John Hersey
6. What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, by Aubrey Gordon
7. When Crack Was King, by Donovan X. Ramsey
8. When McKinsey Comes to Town, by Michael Forsythe
9. Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America, by Julie DiCaro

1. Heavy, by Kiese Laymon

One of the most poetically-written prose works I have ever read, Kiese Laymon’s “Heavy” is a book about serious struggle, but one that gives such beauty to every word that you’ll be pulled into the depths with bearable lightness.

Laymon describes the book as “A personal narrative that illuminates national failures” and my goodness, is that drop-dead accurate. Thorny topics like growing up Black in the American South, abuse, weight, gambling addiction, and masculinity are tackled gracefully within its pages— Laymon’s words are so enrapturing, and so wise, you will be glad for the journey.

2. You’re The Only One I Can Tell, by Deborah Tannen

This is an entire book written about the subtle, specific intricacies of female friendships.

As a qualitative researcher, I loved the form this book took— the writer weaved key quotations in from people all across years and cultures into one examination of the unique way women bond with, fight with, and split from, their friends. It includes direct quotes from women that are full of emotion, and while not comprehensive to the experience of all (qualitative research never is), it’s extremely insightful (as qualitative research always is).

If you’re a woman or are female-identifying, and you’ve had friends, acquaintances, and ‘frenemies’ in your life, you’ll find yourself hearing about behavior you well-recognize from your own life. It’s a heck of a personal read.

3. The Most Tolerant Little Town, by Rachel Louise Martin

‘The Little Rock 5’ are commonly-recognized as some of the first brave individuals to integrate public schools, but Rachel Louise Martin found that a full year before those far more famous events took place, there were 12 Black students who integrated a high school in the small town of Clinton, Tennessee.

Overlooked by history, Martin documents (in painstaking detail) a year in which this handful of Black students were so maligned and threatened (not just by other students but by adults as well), the school was brought into a froth that eventually led to a bomb being placed.

Fair warning, this story has no sunny-side-up ending— but this important and notable read helps us all bear witness to something that might otherwise have been forgotten.

4. Burn it All Down, by Maureen Ryan

Maureen Ryan approached this book as an entertainment reporter with decades of experience (and thereby, tons of connections) within the entertainment business— and it shows. “Burn it All Down” is not specifically about ‘me too’ and does not touch on Harvey Weinstein— instead, the book gets into the dynamics of toxic workplaces and the poor managers who run them that do NOT rise to the levels of unlawful behavior, but are insidious nonetheless.

In this case, the bad managers happen to be showrunners in Hollywood, but the analogy to any workplace is inordinately clear. This book was valuable as it clearly demonstrates the way toxic managers devastate individuals and also, often ruin the creative work along the way.

5. Hiroshima, by John Hersey

The ‘father of the atomic bomb’ — Oppenheimer himself— sure has gotten tons of attention this year. And while I didn’t see the biopic that bears his name, I understood that little of it presented the true impact of the device for the people it was dropped on.

I read Hiroshima, the 1946 book by John Hersey as counter-programming— recommended by a trusted friend, this short book is made up of 6 in-depth interviews with Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings— an immediate bestseller, this book has never been out of print, and for good reason. It is dogged and delicate storytelling about the terrible day, and terrible days after, the atomic bomb fell out of the sky on civilians.

6. What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, by Aubrey Gordon

Penned in a way that swings between incredibly funny and extremely heartfelt, this book was a marvelous read.

I’ve long-admired Aubrey Gordon and her goal to bring anti-fat bias into the broader public awareness in a disarming-yet-direct manner. And reading her book brought so many issues of fat bias forward, and the impact it can have on people: from a difficulty getting good medical care to difficulty with travel to difficulty being taken seriously, and so on.

Being a ‘straight-sized person’ (as she describes anyone of a typical body size), there was a ton of new learnings in here for me, and it deepened my knowledge of some issues I’d already had on my radar. This book will grow your empathy muscle immensely.

7. When Crack Was King, by Donovan X. Ramsey

Growing up as a kid in the 80s, the word ‘crack’ was a part of the lexicon, and was almost always used as a way to insult someone at school. This might be all I remembered about the crack ‘epidemic.’ Donovan X. Ramsey shed a light into this period in American history that bordered on moral panic, spun up by media and politicians.

He conducted deep interviews with his subjects who lived through this period in American history, before turning their stories into compelling narratives. His subjects all have different ways the drug touched their lives— one was a mayor, one was an addict, one was a dealer, and so on— ultimately, the politics of poverty and race that beget the War on Drugs are a big part of this story as well, which Ramsey is (rightly) unsparing in his criticism of.

8. When McKinsey Comes to Town, by Michael Forsythe

Before John Oliver went viral with his 20-minute evisceration of McKinsey, I read this book and gripped the spine with growing ire. If you watched the segment of Last Week Tonight and think you probably have all the great anecdotes from the book, there’s so much more to it.

Any businessperson has worked in an industry McKinsey has touched, and every consumer has bought a product or service that’s been influenced by McKinsey. The reach of this secretive company is wide and long, and the book is a stark reminder of that influence.

Not for nothing, the chapter on AllState might be the most brutal example I’ve ever heard of a business corrupting itself— astonishing page after page, this book throws some serious dirt in the face of management consulting and the businesses who hire them.

9.? Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America, by Julie DiCaro

Julie DiCaro is a witty woman with some serious backbone— you simply have to be, if you’re a female journalist in the sports world. Julie weaves compelling anecdotes about her own career in sports radio together with interviews (some on-the-record, some anonymous) with other high-level female sports journalists of note, and the results are truly harsh anecdotes of sexual harassment, power imbalances, and huge amounts of gender disparities over decades.

Hearing from female journalists that pioneered the way for other women to enter sports media, a reader can see there’s been some progress, but one is left with the overwhelming feeling that women have made few gains in their long time in this rough business.

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Hope you enjoyed this list-- let me know in the comments if you enjoyed any books that you'd love to share, as I need new reads for 2024!