Top Authors Share Their Must Reads of 2023

Matt Reynolds: “This piece is sheer joy. Not just because Caity Weaver is so damn funny—we all know that already—but because it introduced me to something I find almost impossible to comprehend: People who approach friend-making with the kind of relentless zeal usually reserved for competitive sports. This is not my idea of a holiday, but I’m so glad Caity was there to show us how time-poor, ultra-high-achieving millennials like to spend their downtime.”

Angela Haupt: “I’ve returned to this piece again and again since my colleague Jamie Ducharme published it in September. As a recovering overachiever, it spoke to me in a very personal way. I’ve shared it with many friends in a similiar boat, and it’s helped us all remember what really matters. It’s a great perspective-shifter on how and why embracing mediocrity can make us happier and healthier.”

Andrew Sofin: “In a year with so much troubling news, from wars to natural disasters, this article was an absolute breath of fresh air. You cannot help but smile and daydream about these trips. Share it with your friends and family and see what they pick as their top three. It really says a lot about who you are. If I win the lottery, I will take my family to all the places, starting with Greece!”

Agnes Callard: “Mastroianni takes a stab at solving the mystery of why human beings made so many advances in complex mathematics before discovering what seem, in retrospect, to be much more obvious truths—that blood circulates, that maggots come from flies, that heavy and light things fall at the same rate. His answer is that math makes our ignorance about it obvious, whereas in many areas of science we have ‘an illusion of explanatory depth’—we seem to ourselves to know much more than we do. Whether or not he is right about the causal-historical claim, the category of illusory explanatory depth is a fruitful one, and I found myself wondering: what are the things that I walk around wrongly assuming I understand...?”

Joanna Thompson: “This piece somehow manages to be hilarious, horrifying and weirdly kind of hopeful all at the same time. It’s also one of the most original climate stories I’ve read in years (and that’s saying something). Meg is an outstanding journalist and human being, and I’m looking forward to devouring whatever she publishes in 2024.”

Lee Suksi: “Souvankham Thammavongsa, author of the prizewinning How to Pronounce Knife, applies the same light yet devastating touch as she does to her short stories to tell her story of losing her brother. In anecdotes told clearer than memory will allow, she relays the intertwined truths in the platitude ‘great love, great loss’.”