It’s hard to believe 2023 is almost over. While I’ll admit I definitely didn’t do as much reading as I wanted to this year, there is still time to go out with a bang. With that said, I wanted to share my 2023 December reading list.

Here are the books I’ll be ending the year with (in no particular order).

A Classic Christmas: A Collection of Timeless Stories and Poems by Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Hans Christian Andersen & more

As the name suggests, this is a book compiled of classic Christmas stories – some of which I have already read before, but I have not read the full book from front to back yet. It can be hard replicate the magic of the holidays I once felt as a child now that I’m an adult, but this book does a pretty good job. I am very excited to pick it up from my shelf again this season.

“Perhaps no Christmas novel is more beloved than Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and no holiday poem more well-known than Clement Clarke Moore’s “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Together these classic literary masterpieces warm our hearts and remind us of the joy and love to be discovered anew each Christmas morning.

A Classic Christmas features both of these traditional works, as well as other vintage poems and stories that celebrate the timeless truths of the holiday season. This cheerful, collectible treasury makes a wonderful gift for the reader in your life and reminds us that simple gifts of the heart and memories made with loved ones truly are the most meaningful of all.”

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

I picked this book up around this time in New York last year … and I still haven’t read it. Needless to say, it’s on my shelf for a good reason. I’ve also heard nothing but good things about it.

“On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.”

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

My friend and I both have a copy of this book and a few months ago we decided we wanted to read it at the same time, creating our own, very small, two-person book club. December just happens to be the month that works out for both of us.

“France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.”

All descriptions are courtesy of Indigo.ca. Photos are courtesy of GoodReads.

Uncategorized Books Literature Reading reading list