The best books I read in 2023

The three books that stayed with me

I read a grand total of 52 books this year! 2023 was a big year for challenging myself and reading outside my comfort zone. I was well rewarded for that, discovering many gems which I may have previously left on the shelf.

Here are the three best books that I read in 2023. They happen to represent three different kinds of books: a nonfiction book, an anthology of short stories and a fiction novel.

Girls Don’t Play Sport by Chloe Dalton

Girls Don't Play Sport is a fierce manifesto advocating for female athletes at all levels. It explores how we got to this point and asks where we need to go next to embrace the untapped potential of women's sport. It dispels all the common myths and sexist stereotypes about women’s sport and delves into Chloe Dalton’s personal journey as a female athlete.

I have a confession to make: I am really terrible at reading nonfiction books. I’m not quite sure why as I read a lot of short-form nonfiction, but I seem to struggle to pick up books. When I do, I tend to read them slowly over several months. Even when they are about my favourite subjects like women’s sport! I didn’t read any in 2022, but that changed in 2023.

Despite that, I couldn’t put down Girls Don’t Play Sport by Chloe Dalton. I read it in less than 24 hours. It was a perfect mix of history, statistics, memoir from Dalton’s life and interviews with other athletes. Dalton is a multi-code athlete who won Olympic Gold with the Australian women’s Rugby 7s team in Rio de Janeiro and currently plays for the GWS Giants in the AFLW. She’s the founder of the [Female] Athlete Project, a news platform aiming to boost media coverage of women’s sport.

2023 really felt like the year of women’s sport in Australia, but Girls Don’t Play Sport reveals how long and how tirelessly women in Australia have been working to try and equal the playing field. While we’re still not there, brilliant writers and activists like Dalton help me believe that it will happen one day whenever the sexist voices get too loud for my liking.

Everything Under the Moon edited by Michael Earp and illustrated by Kit Fox

An anthology of twelve fairy tales spun through a queer lens to reflect our world in stories as old as time from wonderful young adult writers.

It includes stories by Michael Earp, Alison Evans, Helena Fox, Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner, Will Kostakis, Jes Layton, Gary Lonesborough, Amber McBride, Abdi Nazemian, Maggie Tokuda-Hall, Alexandra Villasante and Lili Wilkinson.

Everything Under the Moon is a truly excellent anthology of queer young adult fairytales. It’s a brilliant blend of the familiar (fairy tales we all know and love) with the new (told in creative and original ways). It really pulled at my heartstrings. My favourite story was “The Cherry Blossom Queen” by Maggie Tokuda-Hall.

I really wish there were more outlets for new young adult short stories to be published in Australia and I’m glad this anthology exists.

If You Could See the Sun by Ann Liang

Alice Sun has always felt invisible at her elite Beijing international boarding school, where she’s the only scholarship student among China’s most rich and influential teens. But then she starts uncontrollably turning invisible—actually invisible.

When her parents drop the news that they can no longer afford her tuition, even with the scholarship, Alice hatches a plan to monetize her strange new power—she’ll discover the scandalous secrets her classmates want to know, for a price. But as the tasks escalate from petty scandals to actual crimes, Alice must decide if it’s worth losing her conscience—or even her life.

I read both of Ann Liang’s young adult novels this year and choosing my favourite was a real tossup between the two! I am such a sucker for magical realism and If You Could See the Sun is a wild adventure of a coming of age story. Alice’s reckoning with her ambition is a Macbethian tale with many twists and turns.