TWC's favorite reads of 2023

Welcome to our second annual list of TWC’s favorite reads of the year. While compiling it, we stumbled across this lovely insight from Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby:

 A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.

We offer up the list below in the hope that some of the writing that beat in our chests this year—a wildly varied assortment including detective stories, modern classics and a literary magazine—will find a home in yours, too.

Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell

“With its gorgeous, evocative language, this story transported me fully into the minds and souls of the characters and all their fears, yearnings and grief.”

—Judy, proofreading project manager

“A quiet novel about a beloved child succumbing to a deadly plague was surprisingly good company even in a bleak Maine winter, thanks to O’Farrell’s luminous prose.”

—Michaela, partner and managing editor

The Origins of Free Verse, by H.T. Kirby-Smith

“Niche, yes, but fascinating. Kirby-Smith traces a history of English-language free verse poetry that begins centuries before the Modernists set out to ‘make it new.’”

—Param, writer

 “The Radical Queerness of Dolly Parton,” by Cory Albertson

“I’ve been a huge fan of Dolly my whole life, but after moving to Tennessee and finding out about her Imagination Library, her financial contribution to the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and all the other wonderful things she does, I got a Dolly tattoo. This is a great article from a great publication.”

—Sandee, proofreader, copy editor and fact-checker

The Running Grave, by Robert Galbraith           

“This detective mystery, the seventh in the Cormoran Strike series, captivated me so much that I read the 960-page beast in just four days. Whew!”

—Clarke, writer

Check out the full list from our team. And if you’d like to share the best thing you read this year, we’d love to hear from you.