10 Best Books Of 2023: From understanding the importance of familial ties to peeking into the virtual world of AI these are the best books to read that will not just provide you a way to entertain yourself but through the interesting narrative structures, writing style, and themes it will portray the bittersweet journey of the year.
Choosing these top ten books was not an easy task but reading them is. Regarded among one of the best books of 2023 these encompass both fiction and nonfiction. Indulge in the delight of reading through these novels that made a remarkable impact on the publishing industry.
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10 Best Books Of 2023: Our Top Picks
Unravel the story lying between the closed book, and give yourself a treat by reading some of the critically acclaimed authors like Zadie Smith, Amitav Ghosh, and Man Booker prize winner Paul Lynch. Based on various parameters like narrative structure, the total number of copies sold, and how many accolades and awards were bagged by the writers we have cropped the list.
Best Fiction Books Overall (Editor’s Choice): Prophet Song By Paul Lynch
A mother’s quest to save her family on the cusp of an Ireland society moving towards totalitarianism. The story depicts the dark world of tranny through myriad of human emotions.
Fiction is defined as an imaginary world built by the creative imagination of a writer, the story can be inspired by real events but the character will be changed.
Best Non Fiction Books Overall (Editor’s Choice): Doppelganger By Naomi Klein
What will you do when you find your double lying in front of you? That is what happened to celebrated activist Naomi. She dug deep into the concept once alien to mankind, then we heard and now it become a reality but not exactly.
Non-fiction compiles of prose written on a factual basis. It covers real-life events like AI, Global Warming, Wildfires, and Wars. You cannot invent the stories it has already occurred writers just gave us a holistic account of the situation.
1. Prophet Song By Paul Lynch (WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023)
On a pitch-black, damp evening in Dublin, scientist, and mother-of-four Eilish Stack receives a knock at the front door only to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. Ireland is shattering into pieces. The country is in the hands of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself wrangled in the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unraveling.
What lengths will she go to secure her family? And what will she leave behind? captivating, terrifying, and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of astounding originality, depicting the devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s desperate fight to hold her family together. Book Price: Rs 389
2. The Fraud By Zadie Smith
Year 1873, Mrs. Eliza Touchet a Scottish housekeeper and cousin by marriage of once acclaimed novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. She is a woman of many interests literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life, and the next. But she is also skeptical. She finds her cousin having no talent, his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, being a bully and a hypocrite and England being a land of facades, in which nothing looks true.
Andrew Bogle, on the other hand, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of grain comes at a human cost. That the rich always demean the poor. And that people get more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, a star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story. Based on real historical events ‘Tichborne Trial’ the novel is a perfect blend of reality and fiction. Book Price: Rs 3,147
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3. Chain-Gang All-Stars By Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Squid Game meets The Handmaid's Tale)
Even without looking, she knows all the executioner’s eyes are on her. Let the game of freedom from prison begin, it is watched by millions as a form of entertainment. Chain-Gang All-Stars is a widely acknowledged and highly controversial program inside America's private prison system. In packed areas, live-streamed by millions, prisoners fight for their liberty.
Fan all-time favorites Loretta Thurwar and Hamara's 'Hurricane Stax' stackers are teammates and lovers. Thurwar is on the verge of ending her time on the circuit, free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares for her final encounters, as protestors gather at the gates, and as the program's corporate owners stack the odds against her - will the price be simply skyrocketing? Book Price: Rs 1,759
4. Smoke and Ashes: A Writer's Journey through Opium's Hidden Histories By Amitav Ghosh
During Amitav Ghosh’s research for the Ibis Trilogy approx twenty years ago, he was awestruck to find how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote of were dominated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by a precious substance carried in huge quantities on those currents: opium. In turns of events, he discovers that his own identity and family history were swept up in the story.
The author finds the substantial effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and China, as well as on the world as a whole. Engineered by the British Empire, which exported opium from India to sell in China, the trade and its revenues were essential to the Empire's survival. In further exploration of one of the best books, Amitav finds opium at the origins of some of the world's biggest corporations, several of America's most powerful institutions, and contemporary globalism itself. In India, the frequency of the consequences was even more dynamic. Book Price: Rs 429
5. Yellow Face By R.F Kuang
Love yourself a cat-and-mouse drama that covers white lies, dark humor, and deadly outcomes. When Athena dies in an unusual accident, June her best friend steals her unpublished manuscripts further she publishes them under her ambiguous name Juniper Song. Coming from the same industry but different situations they were considered to the best friends but what led to them in this mess? A question answered in a sarcastic tone and covers a less talked about prejudice.
When things don’t fit exactly how she wants them to June loses her sanity, the evidence speaks something different and it turns out to be the last nail in her facade but is it? What will happen next is all our fault but How? Book Price: Rs 351
6. Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs By Kerry Howley
Who do you think you are? You are data about data. You are a map of connections an amalgamation of everything you have ever posted, searched, emailed, liked, and followed. In this surprising work of narrative nonfiction, the author investigates the curious implications of living in the age of the everlasting. Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs tells the true story of intelligence specialist Reality Winner, a lonely young woman who stuffs a state secret under her skirt and trusts the wrong people to be a helpful hand.
After printing five pages of lethal information she was never supposed to see, Winner finds herself at the mercy of forces more dangerous than her worst nightmares. Following Winner’s implausible journey from rural Texas to a federal courtroom, Howley maps a hidden world, drawing in John Walker Lindh, Lady Gaga, Edward Snowden, a rescue dog named Outlaw Babyface Nelson, and a mother who will do anything to bring her daughter out of jail. Book Price: Rs 2,1023
7. Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech By Brian Merchant
The critical story in modern tech began not in Silicon Valley but almost two hundred years ago in rural England when workers who were known as the Luddites rose rather than starved at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods. The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to shatter those machines as punishment of death won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction. This long-forgotten class struggle brought nineteenth-century England shaking to their knees.
Fast forward to the current world technology jeopardizes millions of jobs, robots are thronging factory floors, and artificial intelligence will soon seep through every range of our economy. How will this change the way we live? And what can we do about the situation? Find the answer in Blood in the Machine. Brian Merchant intertwines an examination of our current age with the story of the Luddites, showcasing how automation changed our world and is molding our future. Book Price: Rs 1,140
8. Doppelganger By Naomi Klein
You woke up one morning and found you had acquired another self like a stunt double who was almost you and yet not completely you. What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, opposite way, furthered the very causes you devoted your life to fighting against? Not a long time away the acclaimed activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein experienced this event she came face to face with a doppelganger whose views she found disgusting but whose name and public persona were almost similar to her own and many people got confused about who is the actual person.
She got confused and flustered by such events; AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and fake communication; Modern wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are toddling on the edge of authoritarianism, even as the oceans burst up. Under such circumstances, reality itself seems to have become unshackled. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo? The highly relevant topic makes it one of the best books of 2023 the topic will give an insight into the AI world and its workings. Book Price: Rs 2,165
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9. Number Go Up By Zeke Faux
Who cares when everyone is getting enormous money? Cryptocurrency was a new concept in 2021, big firms and giant investment funds are buying it. politicians were endorsing it. TV ads hail it as the future of money. Hardly anyone knows how it works - who cares when everyone is getting Richie-rich? But Zeke Faux a financial crime reporter cares, as in her words “Even in fraud, there are standards”
In search of a grand cash reserve at the foundation of the whole new system, the incredulous Faux finds himself crossing three continents, as well as the varied boundaries of law, taste, and economic rationality. Shocking and uproarious, the novel Number Go Up is the essential chronicle of a $3 trillion delusion, the greatest well history will ever remember. Book Price: Rs 2,084
10. Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World By John Vaillant
A convulsive account of the century’s most intense urban fire, and a wide exploration of the ever-changing relationship between humanity and fire's fierce energy. In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, which is the hub of Canada's oil industry, came under the grasp of wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster turned entire neighborhoods into small fire units and 90,000 people flew from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the story of this apocalyptic firestorm, John Vaillant maps the past and the future of our ever-hotter, more flammable society.
What makes this one of the best books to read is the dense topic covered in such a way that anyone can understand its significance. A constant companion in our evolution fire has been shaping culture and civilization. The way it has become lethal in the age of intensifying climate change is its destructive power which is unleashed in ways never witnessed by human beings. With fluid prose and cinematic writing style, Vaillant dives into the combined historical landscape of the oil industry and climate science, the unparalleled destruction wrought by modern wildfires, and the lives forever changed by these disasters. Fire Weather is an urgent reading for our new world on fire. Book Price: Rs 1,598
Please Note: The price of the books mentioned above is subject to change according to the seller.
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Disclaimer: No journalists were involved in the production of this article. The prices mentioned here are subject to change with respect to Amazon. Also note, the mentioned products are picked on user ratings and Her Zindagi is not responsible for the after-sale service of any products.
FAQs
1. What is the most bought book in 2023?
The most bought book of this year is Spare by Prince Harry.
2. What is the highest-rated book on Goodreads 2023?
The highly-rated book on Goodreads is Yellow Face by R.F Kuang
3. What is the current #1 best selling book?
Currently one of the best books is Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning Liz Cheney, Author.
4. What is the most-rated book in the world?
The most-rated book in the world is the Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling.
5. Who is the #1 best-selling author?
Agatha Christie is a celebrated author whose over 2 billion copies were solid.