Best Non-Fiction (& some runners up) of 2023
I shared the other day my 11 best fiction novels of 2023 and today I wanted to give some attention to some incredible memoirs I read this year that absolutely deserve to be highlighted. This was a weird year in that I really didn’t read much in the way of theology, devotional reading or “self-help”/educational type non-fiction reading, I really read novels or memoirs (and some kid’s novels aloud). But man I read some incredible memoirs. I have five I want to share with you today that I easily gave 4.5 or 5 stars to, and more importantly that I continue thinking about. I think that’s what I love so much about memoirs, we have the ability to learn from other people’s stories if we let ourselves be open to hearing their life experiences.
If I could only share one 5 star non-fiction book with you this year it would hands down be Beth Moore’s memoir, All My Knotted Up Life. I cannot even begin to tell you how much I loved this book. I read it way back in the spring and it easily stayed at the top of my list all year. This book was everywhere when it came out and I don’t think I’ve met someone who didn’t like it (and I know a LOT of people who have read this one). Beth shares her life story from growing up in Arkansas in a very dysfunctional family (although some of the stories she told about family vacations had me laughing so hard I was crying—that woman can tell a story and make you think you were right in the middle of it!) through her current day experiences of life in her 60s. She shares deeply about what it was like to be a woman who felt called to teach the Bible in the Southern Baptist Convention who very much did not believe women should be teaching anyone other than fellow women. She shares so much about her life these last 6 years that she never shared publicly and when I say you will be blown away when you read about what God has done in her life, well that’s an understatement. This was a stunning book.
My second favorite memoir of the year was my West Virginia book, Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam Jr. I didn’t know what to expect when I picked this one up, but I loved this story of Homer and his coal-mining family history and how seeing Sputnik go over his town one day inspired him to dream of a life beyond the mines. Reading about some of his early experiments had me laughing out loud and I found myself rooting for him and his buddies, the Rocket Boys, as they taught themselves physics and calculus and chemistry and engineering in a town when only the football players were usually revered. This was such an inspiring story, and is the basis for the film October Sky, which I showed my kids after I finished reading this and they loved.
My next favorite memoir was a book I finished last week called How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key. I had been hearing about this new release from several places, many people I trust in terms of their reading taste had loved it and said it was an incredibly vulnerable, intimate look at a marriage (and infidelity) but it was so much more. It was truly a look at the church, community, and handling our own mental health and trauma (and what happens when you don’t deal with some of these things). He is an absolutely hilarious author but also incredibly vulnerable about his own shortcomings. What I also loved is that at the end you get a chapter with his wife’s take on some of the events he shared about. I laughed, cried, and underlined a lot and would recommend this one wholeheartedly.
Another memoir I adored that I shared about on my blog here awhile ago is Tyler Merrit’s I Take My Coffee Black. I shared about this and I’ve had 5 people who read my blog this fall tell me they’ve also now read it and all of them loved it, so I know it’s not just me! Tyler simply shares his experiences of life as a man of faith, a man with dark skin, a man who loves musical theater and building community and teaching Sunday School to kids. He is an incredible story teller and so many of his stories made me see the world a little differently, putting myself in his shoes. He talks about his family, the places he’s lived, and his accidental viral video. I listened to this one on audio and loved hearing his stories in his own voice.
My final 5 star memoir of the year was a book called Magic Season by Wade Rouse. Wade has written a lot of fiction under the pen name of Viola Shipman (his grandmother) but this was his story. This was my Missouri book, as that’s where he was raised and where he returned to care for his father who is dying. Wade and his dad haven’t really ever seen eye to eye. Wade grew up a gay man in a conservative small town in the Ozarks. He didn’t love sports, didn’t have a lot of aptitude for them, and struggled to earn his father’s approval. There was one thing they had in common however, an un wavering love of the St. Louis Cardinals. Wade learned early in his life that even if he couldn’t play baseball well, he could watch it and learn the strategy and players and team history. And that was how he and his dad connected for most of their relationship. Wade returns home to care for his dad where they share one final Cardinals season together and more than that, baseball provides them the opportunity to start opening up to one another, seeking forgiveness, and coming to a new understanding of what the other has carried all these years. I adored this book. His writing is beautiful, the way he weaves baseball and life together is powerful, and this is one that made me both laugh and cry.
I mentioned in my previous post with my top novels of 2023 that I’d share a handful of “runner up” books that came REALLY close to 5 stars but for the sake of the length of this post I didn’t do a full write up of them. But these were some titles I absolutely loved and would highly recommend.
Both The Address and The Spectacular by Fiona Davis. Historical Fiction at it’s finest. These both take place in NYC in various parts of history—The Address is the story of the famous Dakota apartment building and the people who got that building off the ground (along with a bit of a murder mystery that spans a century to solve). The Spectacular was centered around one young woman who earned a spot as one of the famed Rockettes during the period of time when the Big Apple Bomber was terrorizing NYC. Both were wonderful looks at real historical events in this city with fictional characters driving the story.
The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise was a wonderful road trip story of an unlikely pair. A 21 year old needs a job. An octogenarian doesn’t want a caregiver but her children insists. Hi-jinks ensue as these two take off on a cross country road trip to evade the cops for a crime that one of them may or may not have committed. Hilarious, heartwarming and a fabulous adventure.
You With a View—I will be honest I hesitate to recommend this romance novel because it is VERY spicy—this one is NOT G-rated! While I thought the romance scenes were far more frequent and gratuitous than I was comfortable with, I needed to put this on this list because of the story that drove this book. It was wonderful. This is a story about loosing a beloved grandmother and retracing the trip she never got to take in order to connect with her. I cried numerous times thinking about how much I miss my own grandma as I read this one, and I loved this story so much. But again, a very open-door novel!
And lastly, I really loved my Nevada book—We Are Called to Rise. This one dealt with difficult topics, as three separate families deal with hard circumstances in life, but the way these three families end up connecting, the healing that does happen, and the resilience of the human spirit made this novel a beautiful read.
