You’ve seen my yearly Top Five/Top Ten lists, and now it is time for another “best of the best” list!

For those of you who have been following this blog, you’ll know that I’ve been producing a list of my favorite books published for each of the years I’ve been blogging. Last year, I gave you my top nine books from the last nine years. That means… this year we reach the magic number of 10! I haven’t decided if I’ll just keep adding, or if I’ll cut this to only my top 10.

Let me know in the comments if you think I should just let the list grow, or I should confine myself to only 10 books.

Let me start out with a hardy

Happy New Year!

May 2023 be filled with lots of amazing books to read, as well as health and happiness for all my readers.

With that out of the way… here is my list (with links to my reviews) of the #1 ranked books of the past 10 years including this year’s favorite novel (remember, my list only includes novels published (in English) during that calendar year):

• 2013 – “A Tale for the Time Being” by Ruth Ozeki
• 2014 – “A Man Called Ove” by Fredrik Backman
• 2015 – “A Spool of Blue Thread” by Anne Tyler
• 2016 – “Flight of Dreams” by Ariel Lawhon
• 2017 –  “All the Rivers” by Dorit Rabinyan
• 2018 – “Warlight” by Michael Ondaatje
• 2019 – “The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt” by Andrea Bobotis
• 2020 – “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell
• 2021 – “A Single Rose” by Muriel Barbery (Trans. Alison Anderson)
• 2022 – “No Land to Light On” by Yara Zgheib

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I used to include an Honorable Mentions list as well, but instead, you can always just take a look at my Top Ten books of 2022, which I published on December 30th. I can tell you that each and every one of these books are ones I think about often, and remember in great detail. In fact, in hindsight, I would still give 5/5 stars (or higher, if possible) to each and every one of these novels. So you can believe me when I say that ranking them is no easy task. So…

The winners are:

In 10^th place: “A Spool of Blue Thread” by Anne Tyler

In 9^th place: “Warlight” by Michael Ondaatje

In 8th place: “A Single Rose” by Muriel Barbery (Trans. Alison Anderson)

In 7^th place: “A Man Called Ove” by Fredrik Backman

In 6^th place: “All the Rivers” by Dorit Rabinyan

In 5^th place: “The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt” by Andrea Bobotis

In 4^th place: “Flight of Dreams” by Ariel Lawhon

In 3rd place: “No Land to Light On” by Yara Zgheib – NEW!

In 2^nd place: “A Tale for the Time Being” by Ruth Ozeki

In 1^st place: “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell

No, I didn’t decide to make any changes in last year’s order. However, I wondered long and hard as to where I would place this year’s favorite. Many factors came into play here, and this year’s first place winner did come very close to beating out Ozeki, and I even contemplated moving it straight to the top. Who knows, but maybe in the future I’ll change my mind and move it up. Either way, third place is your Bronze medal, and the Zgheib novel is one I very warmly recommend, and I’ve been promoting it at every turn!

There you have it, my best of the best for the years 2013-2022.