By Georgia FreeWednesday 27 Dec 2023Hope Book ClubBooksReading Time: 7 minutes
2023 has been a big year of books. From fantasy, crime, fiction and memoirs, it’s hard to pick just one favourite. So, Hope Book Club co-hosts Georgia and Simone asked the office what their picks of the year were. Below is a (not quite) comprehensive list of the best books of 2023:
Simone’s picks
Book of the Year: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.
So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.
A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
Honourable Mention #1: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.
But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.
Listen to Hope Book Club’s review of Lessons in Chemistry.
Honourable Mention #2: One Illumined Thread by Sally Colin-James
In Judea, under the brutal rule of King Herod, a woman yearns for a child but is outcast when she does not fall pregnant. Against all convention, she masters the art of glassblowing, a creative act she believes will keep her dream of motherhood alive. In Renaissance Florence, a young wife is left penniless by her hopelessly unfaithful husband and struggles to find a way to support herself and her young son. And in contemporary Australia, a talented textile conservator, devastated by loss, is desperate to regain control of her life.
A stunning, sweeping historical novel spanning two thousand years, One Illumined Thread celebrates the power and creative spirit of the female heart, as each woman finds freedom through an extraordinary connection.
Listen to Hope Book Club’s review of One Illumined Thread.
Georgia’s Picks
Book of the Year: Educated by Tara Westover
Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills bag”. Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse.
Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself.
She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
Honourable Mention #1: The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams
What is lost when knowledge is withheld?
In 1914, when the war draws the young men of Britain away to fight, it is the women who must keep the nation running. Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho. Peggy is intelligent, ambitious and dreams of going to Oxford University, but for most of her life she has been told her job is to bind the books, not read them. Maude, meanwhile, wants nothing more than what she has. She is extraordinary but vulnerable. Peggy needs to watch over her.
When refugees arrive from the devastated cities of Belgium, it sends ripples through the community and through the sisters’ lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future where she can use her intellect and not just her hands, but as war and illness reshape her world, it is love, and the responsibility that comes with it, that threaten to hold her back.
Honourable Mention #2: Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton
A girl and her mother have been on the run for sixteen years, from police and the monster they left in their kitchen. They’ve found themselves a home inside a van with four flat tyres parked in a scrapyard by the edge of the Brisbane River.
The girl has no name because names are dangerous when you’re on the run. But the girl has a dream. A vision of a life as an artist of international acclaim. A life of love with the boy who’s waiting for her on the bridge that stretches across a flooding, deadly river. A life beyond the bullet that has her name on it. And now that the storm clouds are rising, there’s only one person who can help make her dreams come true. That person is Lola and she carries all the answers. But to find Lola, the girl with no name must first do one of the hardest things we can ever do. She must look in the mirror.
Picks from the Hope Office
Ally Barnes (Breakfast Presenter): Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
A comedy writer thinks she’s sworn off love, until a dreamily handsome pop star flips the script on all her assumptions. Romantic Comedy is a hilarious, observant and deeply tender novel from New York Times–bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld.
Celeste Stevens (Breakfast Producer): The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?
Laura Bennett (Afternoons Presenter): Out of Sorts by Sarah Bessey
From the popular blogger and provocative author of Jesus Feminist comes a riveting new study of Christianity that helps you wrestle with—and sort out—your faith.
In the process of gently helping us sort things out, Sarah Bessey teaches us how to be as comfortable with uncertainty as we are with solid answers. And as we learn to hold questions in one hand and answers in the other, we discover new depths of faith that will remain secure even through the storms of life.
El Robertson (Account Manager): The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku
Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed in November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested and taken to a concentration camp.
Over the next seven years, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors every day, first in Buchenwald, then in Auschwitz, then on a Nazi death march. He lost family, friends, his country.
Because he survived, Eddie made the vow to smile every day. He pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom and living his best possible life.
Pat Waddington (Account Manager): Did I Ever Tell You This? by Sam Neill
In this unexpected memoir, written in a creative burst of just a few months in 2022, Sam Neill tells the story of how he became one of the world’s most celebrated actors, who has worked with everyone from Meryl Streep to Isabel Adjani, from Jeff Goldblum to Sean Connery, from Steven Spielberg to Jane Campion.
David Barker (Chief Financial Officer): The Boys from Biloxi by John Grisham
Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood friends, as well as Little League all-stars. But as teenagers, their lives took them in different directions. Keith’s father became a legendary prosecutor, determined to “clean up the Coast.” Hugh’s father became the “Boss” of Biloxi’s criminal underground. Keith went to law school and followed in his father’s footsteps. Hugh preferred the nightlife and worked in his father’s clubs. The two families were headed for a showdown, one that would happen in a courtroom.
Brittany Garcia (Community Relations): Sensible Shoes: A Story About the Spiritual Journey by Sharon Garlough Brown
Sharon Garlough Brown tells the moving story of four strangers as they embark together on a journey of spiritual formation: Hannah, a pastor who doesn’t realize how exhausted she is. Meg, a widow and recent empty-nester who is haunted by her past. Mara, a woman who has experienced a lifetime of rejection and is now trying to navigate a difficult marriage. Charissa, a hard-working graduate student who wants to get things right.
You can listen to the full episode of Hope Book Club in the player above, on the Hope 103.2 app, or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to join the Hope Book Club Facebook community.
Featured image by Canva Pro. Book cover images supplied.