The Year in Words

Santa Barbara Independent Staff Sounds Off
on the Books They Loved This Year

by Indy Staff | December 28, 2023

Ava Talehakimi, Production Manager

My pick is all about love: new visions by bell hooks. I finally picked up this book for my feminist book club. It is illuminating, comforting, and a pleasure to read.

Bianca Castro, Graphic Designer

I’ve read some great books this year. My top choices: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is an exceptional book and captivating story. An interesting take on the idea of: What if I could change my life? Also, One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle was wonderfully written and had brilliant characters. I felt transported to another time and place.

Brandi Rivera, Publisher

This year, I jumped on the Frieda McFadden psychological thriller train. I started with Never Lie and am now on book two of her Housemaid series. Book number three comes out next summer.

Callie Fausey, News Reporter

My favorite book I read this year was probably Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima. It’s really dark and weird and hilarious. I just loved that I could never really predict what was going to happen next. It’s not the typical kind of book I read, either, so it was a cool change of pace.

Don Brubaker, Web Content Manager

I love a good plot twist and enjoyed a few great books this year that had them in spades: Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister, The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, and The Guest List by Lucy Foley.

Emily Lee, Marketing & Promotions Manager

Foe by Iain Reid is a sci-fi horror novel that I couldn’t put down. The reveal at the end delivered on all fronts — it was uneasy, surprising, and satisfying. Definitely one of my top three books of the year. I’d even recommend it to those who don’t typically pick up this genre.

Jackson Friedman, Associate Editor

I had fun looking back on what I read/listened to.

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann. This was my favorite, easiest-to-recommend book of the year. You can check out my short synopsis and endorsement of the audiobook version of it in my guest column for the Indy’s All Booked newsletter. But that title sums it up — and sells it — better than I ever could.

Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino. Memoir melds with film criticism and (you guessed it) speculation in this amusing, surprisingly endearing ’70s cinema geekfest that also serves as an origin story of sorts for one of American movies’ most singular minds.

Fairy Tale by Stephen King. The king of horror was the first author to spark my joy of reading, so I like to periodically check out what he’s come up with recently. Following a good-hearted boy and his dog into a cursed alternate world, this 2022 dark fantasy recalls one of his earlier works (and my first introduction to his writing), The Talisman. It’s a pleasant departure from his more frightening fare, if not one of his all-time great works.

Lone Women by Victor LaValle. This historical horror story set in early 20th-century Montana follows a Black female homesteader burdened by a dark past and a mysterious steamer trunk. The book fell apart for me in the second half, but the first half is an eerie, taut page-turner.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu. This historical-fiction horror novel reimagines the true-life story of the ill-fated Donner party with a supernatural twist. It’s a more thoughtful, maturely written novel than you might expect from the premise but just as unnerving and tragic as you could imagine.

Jill Critelli, Production Designer

Make to Know by Lorne M. Buchman. From the studied and meticulous to the playful and improvisational, creativity comes in all forms, shapes, and sizes. Make to Know illustrates the power of knowing through the practice of doing, and it demystifies the creative process. Written by my alma mater’s past president, this book engages in conversations with professional artists of various disciplines breaking down their genius and helping you develop yours. If you’re feeling the need to express yourself, but are stuck in a procrastination loop, this book calls you to take action in the direction of your curiosity and learn about yourself in the process.

Leslie Dinaberg, Arts, Culture & Community Editor

My favorite book this year was one I read very reluctantly for my book club. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt sounded truly awful to me: the story of a widowed office cleaner’s unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus. How could that possibly be good? And yet, the curmudgeonly octopus, Marcellus, and the wounded but stoic night-shift worker, Tove, came together for one of the most unique and touchingly human stories I’ve read in a long time.

Marianne Partridge, Editor in Chief

Some books I liked in 2023 were:

Mid-Air: Two Novellas by Victoria Shorr. Two insightful, deeply American stories: one family’s waning power and influence and another’s energetic rise, told with compassion and charm, beautifully written in elegant, sparse prose — with some very familiar scenes of Santa Barbara life in mid-century.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. A deep dive into the creative lives of two gamers and their personal journeys over 30 years. Zevin skillfully developed the two central characters from childhood through their intertwining careers, friendships, and loves. Even those who know nothing about the gaming world might be fascinated by the technical process needed to create virtual worlds — at least I was.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. A wonderfully told story with Towles’s gift for unexpected twists and coincidences, humanely drawn characters, and a carefully crafted plot that moves toward a moment of clarity.

The Hollow Land by Jane Gardam. Written as a young adult’s story, it describes the social complexities when British city folks come to the countryside — how understanding between families can develop and how many marvelous stories can happen in one child’s lifetime.

The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith. The most recent detective novel in the Cormorant Strike series.

Matt Kettmann, Senior Writer

It’s hard for me to dive into new authors when I haven’t covered all the classics. My favorite older titles of this year’s reading list were certainly John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley in Search of America, a national soul-searching endeavor that’s probably direly in need of a repeat in the modern era, and AJ Liebling’s Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris. Much like George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, it’s an emerging writer’s tales of finding his way, in this case revealing how much food connects to everything else, especially in France. As a food writer myself, these are critical lessons that I someday hope to emulate in book-length form as well.

Nathan Vived, Copy Editor

I’ve fallen into the Discworld series with The Color of Magic, which is a roller coaster full of snark, sarcasm, and an indefatigable sense of wonder. Terry Pratchett’s amazing world certainly starts with a Big Bang.

Nick Welsh, Executive Editor

Anarchy and Old Dogs, a Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery set in Laos by Colin Cotterill. I discovered the infinitely beguiling Dr. Siri Paiboun detective series kind of the same way Christopher Columbus discovered America — totally by accident. In my case, however, the results have been far more benign. Although there are nearly 20 mysteries in the series, I’m recommending Anarchy and Old Dogs because I write under the guise of the Angry Poodle and because the first victim to be taken out happens to be a blind dentist. (Given the dental marathon I’ve run this year, that somehow resonated.) Nothing, of course, is as it seems, but what it actually is almost doesn’t matter given what great company all the characters are. Think Tony Hillerman’s now-legendary Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn for comparable chemistry. Dr. Siri, as he is referred to, is a 72-year-old Laotian doctor whose dreams of retirement have been cut short by Communist Party functionaries who appointed him the nation’s one and only pathologist. Unbidden and unbeknownst to Siri — smart, shrewd, funny, and at times crotchety — the good doctor finds himself sporadically possessed by the spirit of an ancient Hmong shaman who helps him crack cases.

The Siri series is written by Australian author Colin Cotterill — who happens to live, in real life, in Thailand — and is set in the 1970s; the Vietnam War and all its swirling geopolitical convolutions provide a less-than-distant backdrop. Cotterill writes with a remarkably light touch. He tickles. Wonderfully absent is any preachiness, or, for that matter, any of the woe-is-me, knight-errant self-loathing typical of many American mysteries, which — just as typically — can only be absolved by enough hackage and hewage to leave the taste of blood in the readers’ mouths. Cotterill doesn’t shy away from dead bodies, but it’s the live ones who make the journey so much fun.

Richelle Boyd, Marketing & Promotions Administrator

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey, 1962: (adj.) melancholic, stirring, heartfelt. From the book: “I lay in bed the night before the fishing trip and thought it over, about my being deaf, about the years of not letting on I heard what was said, and I wondered if I could ever act any other way again. But I remembered one thing: it wasn’t me that started acting deaf; it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.”

From Richelle: I loved this novel because it perfectly encapsulated loneliness and the struggle to be understood. It shows the lack of humanity and free will of the penitentiary asylum system, and the narrator is the perfect example of “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

Exhalation, Ted Chiang, 2019: (adj.) rousing, otherworldly, thought-provoking. From the book: “The amount of air that I draw from each day’s new pair of lungs is exactly as much as seeps out through the joints of my limbs and the seams of my casing, exactly as much as I am adding to the atmosphere around me; all I am doing is concerting air at high pressure to air at low. With every movement of my body, I contribute to the equalization of pressure in our universe. With every thought that I have, I hasten the arrival of that fatal equilibrium.”

From Richelle: Chiang so expertly invents this stream-of-consciousness short story that transports me every time I reread it. It’s a beautiful deconstruction of thought and the life cycle through what could be called an existential self-evaluation.

Ryan P. Cruz, News Reporter

Pay as You Go by Eskor David Johnson. This just came out and it’s already made its way to the top of my list. It’s Johnson’s debut novel, and he’s already shown how skilled he is with creating endlessly entertaining characters who are trying to navigate the crazy world of modern-day apartment hopping. The main character, Slide, tries to find a place to live in the city of “Polis,” dealing with weird roommates and a strange work environment just to survive.

Sarah Sinclair, Advertising Director

All Is Well by Louise Hay and Mona Lisa Schulz. My reading tastes lean heavily toward fiction. I read novels for enjoyment, entertainment, and escape. Even so, this nonfiction tome, which reads almost like a reference book, is destined to become one of my favorite annual rereads. All Is Well addresses the mind-body connection. It examines ways that our emotions and experiences affect different parts of our body, and sets forth the resulting pearls of wisdom in an organized, easily digestible format. The late Louise Hay is an inspirational guru with more than 50 million books in print. Mona Lisa Schulz holds an MD and a PhD; she’s a physician who crosses into the field of mysticism. Written in 2013, All Is Well combines concepts of intuition and affirmation with medically backed science to help us understand imbalances in our lives and lifestyles that may affect our overall physical health. Intuition plus science is a pretty solid combo, and the authors take us through each area of the body and finish with an alphabetical table of maladies that’s a quick and easy reference tool for everything from asthma to warts, and a plethora of ailments in between.

Terry Ortega, Calendar Editor

My Name Is Barbra (audiobook) by Barbra Streisand. There are two groups on the planet: those who love Babs, and those who don’t even like her, let alone love her — so this is not for them. I chose to listen to the book because I wanted to hear Barbra telling her own story, which turned out to be the most amazing experience because she has added anecdotes, comments, and stories that are not in the book and also, she has included audio clips of songs that she refers to as well as her curtain-call encore when she sang “My Man” on the closing night of Funny Girl on Broadway (that song was not in the show). So many disheartening stories of her growing up in Brooklyn, her cold mother, her detailed rise, lending her talents to the fight for equality and justice for all people, and my favorite aspect of the book: her breakdown of the creation of Funny Girl, the show and the movie; and the movies The Way We Were and A Star Is Born, my personal favorites.

She rereads dialogue, recounts specific scenes, and reveals the business side to being a creative woman in a man’s world without lecturing. To find out that some of her favorite scenes in these movies were also my favorites made me feel a kinship with her. I was also delighted by stories of the antique clothes she has acquired (and still has in her basement mall) and working with designers Irene Sharaff and Cecil Beaton. She’s thoughtful, smart, and knows that being honest, and admittedly tactless, has fed into her image of being rude. If ever I meet her, I know to tell her that I love her work, not her. I haven’t finished listening yet, as it is 48 hours and 15 minutes long, but I know I will miss her when it’s over.

Tessa Reeg, Copy Chief

By some alignment of the stars, 2023 was a great year for releases by my favorite authors!

Riley Sager never misses in my opinion, and this year’s release, The Only One Left, was a thrillingly spooky tale inspired by the true story of Lizzie Borden. An old mansion on the edge of a seaside cliff, an elderly woman accused of murdering her family, and confessions written on an old typewriter — not to mention the fear factor of no cell phones in the ’80s — and I’m sold.

If you like your stories to emphasize the journey rather than the destination, Julia Heaberlin is a master at that. Her 2023 release, Night Will Find You, combines psychics and conspiracies with science and the cold, hard fact of a little girl gone missing. This book manages to feel timely and modern as well as old and wise, featuring a healthy dose of Texas flavor.

Jessica Knoll has kept us waiting for her next book for years, and the day finally came with this year’s release, Bright Young Women, inspired by a real-life serial killer yet focused solely on the women whose lives he affected. Knoll’s gritty, unabashed writing style strips away the Hollywood glamorization of this particular serial killer (whom she notably refuses to name).

I had never heard of Tiffany McDaniel, but after reading On the Savage Side, I was blown away. This book is not meant to be devoured; it’s meant to be slowly savored. McDaniel’s writing is dreamy, poetic, and enigmatic, and when juxtaposed with the harsh reality of the poverty-stricken Ohio town her characters inhabit, the combination is breathtaking.

Tobi Feldman, Accounting Administrator

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. This book was my Hanukkah present from my son last year. A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor — including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother — and how she retook control of her life.