Living in Portland rekindled my love of reading. I lived minutes away from the famous Powell’s Books, but the real gems were small secondhand stores where I found rarer titles.
I would purchase a book and read it at a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop. This was a fairly expensive habit that I soon needed to replace with a library card and tea kettle.
As my savings grew, so did my reading frequency. I set a goal to read 52 books in 2023, with no restrictions on the length, content, or style of books read.
I hit this goal with time to spare. Here are my ten favorites, in no particular order:
- No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
- True Grit, Charles Portis
- Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
- A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
- So Big, Edna Ferber
- The Financial Expert, R.K. Narayan
- Free Food for Millionaires, Min Jin Lee
- Fellowship Point, Alice Elliott Dark
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver
- The English Understand Wool, Helen DeWitt