The Best Books I Read in 2023

A collage of the Best Books I Read in 2023.

I fell slightly short of my Goodreads goal of reading 25 books in 2023, coming in at 24 books for the year. True to my trend of reading random old books, I didn’t read many books that were actually published in 2023. Which means my list isn’t the best books of 2023, but rather the best books that I read in 2023. If you want to read my full reviews of these books, just click on the title, and that will take you to my original review of the book.  

The Roof Over Our Heads, by Nicole Kronzer, 2023. Nicole Kronzer’s young adult novel The Roof Over Our Heads is a wonderful love letter to theater, families, and belonging. The main character of the novel is Finn Turner, a 17-year-old who lives with his two mothers and two brothers in a Victorian mansion owned by a theater company. But the theater has a new artistic director who isn’t convinced that the expense of the mansion is worth it to the theater’s bottom line. Finn’s mothers get the idea to perform an interactive play in the house—while the cast lives in the mansion as though it’s 1891. The house that the action takes place in is called the Jorgensen house, and it’s based on the James J. Hill House. I used to be a tour guide at the Hill House, so I was thrilled to read a novel where I know the setting so well. The Roof Over Our Heads is a delightful novel full of vivid characters. 

Being Elvis: A Lonely Life, by Ray Connolly, 2016. This book is a fantastic examination of the personality of Elvis Presley. Ray Connolly has clearly done his homework, as he compresses Elvis’ life story into 320 pages. Elvis was something of an enigma: a huge star who remained at times oddly passive about his own career. Being Elvis is a sympathetic portrait of a gifted artist who was adored by millions of people around the world, and yet his life was a lonely one indeed.  

If At First, by Keith Hernandez and Mike Bryan, 1986, updated 1987. Keith Hernandez won 11 Gold Gloves at first base, won a batting title, was co-MVP in 1979, and led the 1982 Cardinals and 1986 Mets to the World Championship. He also had one of the greatest mustaches ever. If At First is Hernandez’s daily diary of the 1985 season, in which the Mets won 98 games, but just missed out on the postseason. Hernandez is smart and self-reflective, and a gifted writer. Before game time, Keith could be found working on The New York Times crossword puzzle. His hobby was reading books about the Civil War—this immediately impressed me when I was a kid and read this on the back of one of Hernandez’s baseball cards. If At First is an excellent look at a different era of baseball: When Hernandez’s left ankle is in pain after seven games on artificial turf, his solution is: “Tape it up, gulp three aspirin, and keep on truckin’.” When Keith grounds into a double play with the bases loaded to end a game, he faces the reporters: “Sitting on my stool, fresh beer in one hand, cigarette in the other, waiting.” The 80’s were a different time, kids. 

Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, by Sarah Churchwell, 2013. Churchwell examines Fitzgerald’s classic novel in detail, and she takes us through Fitzgerald’s time in Great Neck, Long Island, which inspired the setting of The Great Gatsby. By relentlessly combing through primary sources, Churchwell shows us how then-current events may have influenced the gestation of Gatsby. Churchwell combines expert scholarship with great writing to create a fascinating look at Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. Every Fitzgerald fan needs to read Careless People.  

Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman, 2004. This volume collects 37 interviews with Fitzgerald that were published during his lifetime. It’s astonishing that none of the interviews in the book mention The Great Gatsby in any detail, an indication of how the book was neglected by the public at the time it was published in 1925. The interviews show more of Fitzgerald’s political side, which didn’t often make it into his fiction. One of the most interesting interviews in this book is from 1927. The interview was titled “Fitzgerald, Spenglerian,” a reference to the German philosopher Oswald Spengler, whose book Decline of the West Fitzgerald was reading at the time. Fitzgerald sounds like a prophet: 

“Mussolini, the last slap in the face of liberalism, is an omen for America...The idea that we’re the greatest people in the world because we have the most money in the world is ridiculous. Wait until this wave of prosperity is over! Wait ten or fifteen years! Wait until the next war on the Pacific, or against some European combination!” 

Together, these interviews offer a glimpse into what a fascinating and intelligent man F. Scott Fitzgerald was.  

The Late George Apley, by John P. Marquand, 1937. The Late George Apley is an exquisite work of satire. The framing device of the novel is that George Apley’s son has asked the narrator to write a biography of his father, a leading citizen of Boston. Marquand threads the needle perfectly, as his narrator/author takes us through the events of George Apley’s life, much of it reconstructed through primary sources such as letters. Marquand pulls off a tricky feat in this novel—he is able to make you laugh at George Apley and also have sympathy for him. The Late George Apley launched Marquand as a serious novelist, and for the rest of his life his novels garnered critical acclaim as well as high sales.    

Book Review: Being Elvis: A Lonely Life, by Ray Connolly (2016)

Paperback cover of Being Elvis: A Lonely Life, by Ray Connolly, 2016. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Simply put, Elvis Presley was one of the most significant figures in the history of 20th century music. Elvis has become such an icon that it’s hard to separate his work from the celebrity surrounding him. British writer and journalist Ray Connolly examined Presley’s life in the excellent 2016 biography Being Elvis: A Lonely Life. Connolly’s book doesn’t attempt to be the definitive Elvis biography; rather, it presents us with an examination of Elvis’s personality in a relatively brief 320 pages.  

Connolly has clearly done his homework—to write such a tight biography of Presley means that he has a thorough command of his sources and the narrative that he crafts. Like Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 film Elvis, Connolly places much of the blame for Elvis’s decline on his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Unlike Luhrmann, Connolly fully dissects Elvis Presley’s personality, in an attempt to try to illuminate Elvis’s actions. Elvis is a tricky subject for a biographer—on the one hand, there’s too much information to wade through, as seemingly everyone who ever met Elvis has written a book. Serving Royalty: How I Made a Cheeseburger for Elvis at McDonald’s, by Mark Taylor. (That book doesn’t actually exist.) And yet at the same time, Elvis gave very few interviews after 1960, so there isn’t a ton of material where Elvis describes his own thoughts and feelings.  

For someone at his level of fame, Elvis Presley was at times curiously passive about his own career. That’s a bit of an overstatement, as he was often tenacious in the recording studio to achieve the sound he wanted on a record. But if you think of people at Elvis’s level of fame, say, Frank Sinatra or Barbra Streisand, the picture that emerges is of powerful people who might border on control freaks. That wasn’t Elvis Presley. For all his dissatisfaction with the movies he made, Elvis did little to take control of his Hollywood career. I also think that Elvis was often hindered by his enormous fame—it was a burden sometimes. Elvis was so famous, on such a different level than just about anyone else, that he couldn’t blend into a movie: his movies aren’t just movies that Elvis happens to be in, they are ELVIS MOVIES.  

I’d argue that Elvis did make some good movies, like Jailhouse Rock and King Creole, but when you compare his movie career to Bobby Darin’s, you see a stark difference. Bobby Darin was a very successful entertainer, but he wasn’t burdened by the same level of fame that Elvis was. When Darin broke into movies, he didn’t have to just play Bobby Darin in every movie he made. Darin’s first movie role was in 1961’s Come September, where he starred alongside Rock Hudson, Gina Lollobrigida, and Sandra Dee. Darin didn’t have to carry the whole movie himself, as Elvis so often had to. Darin also made several movies where he didn’t sing, something Elvis always wanted to do. Darin’s other films include Too Late Blues, directed by John Cassavetes, State Fair with Pat Boone and Ann-Margret, Hell is for Heroes, with Steve McQueen, Pressure Point, with Sidney Poitier, and a supporting role in Captain Newman, M.D., with Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis, and Angie Dickinson. Because Colonel Parker was risk-adverse in the extreme, there was no way that Elvis was going to be in a John Cassavetes movie, or appear with stars like Steve McQueen and Gregory Peck, who might overshadow Elvis.  

Reading Being Elvis reminded me of what an instant phenomenon Elvis Presley was. The recording session on July 5, 1954 that produced Elvis’s first record, “That’s All Right,” was the first time that Presley had ever sung or played with other musicians. (p.32) Not bad for a debut. By July 5, 1956, Elvis Presley was the hottest thing in show business.  

Connolly unearths tantalizing nuggets, like the Colonel’s negotiations with RCA for a proposed 43-city tour in 1963. RCA balked when Parker demanded a guaranteed advance of $1 million, and so the deal came to nothing. Since his release from the Army in 1960, Elvis had only performed 3 live concerts in 1961—he hadn’t toured since 1957, and I’m sure the demand for tickets would have been huge. Another opportunity lost.  

While the 1960’s had been a decade of making movies and not touring, the 1970’s were the opposite, as Elvis appeared in Las Vegas and toured extensively throughout the United States. Connolly hits the reader with the astonishing fact that, besides Elvis’s 2-year stint in the US Army, the longest break of his career was a four-month hiatus in 1975. (p.280) At that point, Elvis was in obvious need of a rest, for his health and to regain his enthusiasm for his career.  

Being Elvis, the 2018 documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher, and Luhrmann’s 2022 movie all make the point that singing in Las Vegas was not good for Elvis’s voice. I’d be interested to hear someone explain more about this. Is singing in Las Vegas generally detrimental to singer’s voices? If so, how did Vegas staples like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin thrive for decades in the desert? Or was there something specific about Elvis’s voice that the dry desert air damaged?  

1973 was a key year in Elvis’s career. The year began on a high note, with a huge global audience viewing Presley’s satellite TV special Aloha from Hawaii. It was a huge milestone for Elvis. But by the time Elvis opened his August shows at the Las Vegas Hilton, a Hollywood Reporter critic wrote “It is tragic, disheartening and absolutely depressing to see Elvis in such diminishing stature.” (p.269) 1973 was also when Elvis should have finally broken free from Colonel Parker’s unimaginative management of his career. Elvis fired the Colonel but made no move to contact anyone to replace Parker. Parker correctly gambled that Elvis would eventually come back, and so he did. Instead of touring the world, as he should have done, Elvis performed 180 concerts in 1973, all within the USA.  

Elvis needed a break, but his finances were in such poor shape that he would have had to plan ahead, and curb some of his famously generous spending, in order to take some time off. Elvis also needed someone other than his father, Vernon, handling his money. Vernon was honest, often criticized Elvis’s lavish spending, and he did the best job he could, but he was not financially sophisticated. It’s rather shocking that one of the most famous entertainers in the world handed his finances off to his father, who hadn’t even graduated from high school. That might have worked fine in 1955, when Elvis was basically just making money from touring, but by 1975, his finances needed outside help.  

Being Elvis is a sympathetic portrait of a gifted artist who was adored by millions of people around the world, and yet his life was a lonely one indeed. The Elvis I like to think of is the one who lives forever inside the music he left us. I love hearing Elvis get lost in a song, the way he did when he was jamming on songs. Listen to the joy in his voice as he tears into songs like “Reconsider Baby,” “Hi-Heel Sneakers,” “Stranger in My Own Home Town,” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” and “Merry Christmas Baby.” That’s Elvis the way I want to remember him, not the jumpsuited icon, not hidden away inside the gates of Graceland, but singing for the sheer joy of it.  

Movie Review: Elvis, Directed by Baz Luhrmann (2022)

Poster for Baz Luhrmann's Elvis, starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, 2022.

The real Elvis Presley, 1968.

 Baz Luhrmann’s fever dream of an Elvis biopic, titled simply and rather prosaically Elvis, is a mishmash of ideas thrown at the screen. I like Luhrmann’s films—I think Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby were fantastic—but Elvis just doesn’t quite work.  

First off, can biopics please junk the “cradle-to-grave" format? Inevitably, characters are streamlined, events are fictionalized, and timelines go to pieces under the burden of presenting someone’s entire life in two hours. (Or in the case of Elvis, 2 hours and 39 minutes.) I’d much rather see a biopic that focuses on a discrete time in that person’s life. For Elvis, you could choose from many periods, but the 1968 Comeback Special and his return to live performances in 1969 would be fascinating.  

I think Luhrmann made a fundamental error in having Elvis’ manager Colonel Tom Parker be the narrator of the story. Why should Presley’s story be Parker’s to tell? Having Parker be the narrator inevitably focuses more attention on him, which feels unfair to Elvis. Because Luhrmann chooses to characterize Parker as an evil, amoral carnival salesman, a stock villain instead of a three-dimensional character, Parker quickly wears thin. Parker wasn’t actually a Colonel—he was born in the Netherlands and was an illegal immigrant to the United States. Many Elvis historians have theorized that Presley’s seeming disinterest in performing internationally was due to the Colonel’s fear that his secret would be discovered, and he would be deported from the United States. I agree with this theory, as does Luhrmann. What’s missing from Luhrmann’s film is any sense of the Colonel’s fears of being deported—this is a man who is acting out of his own personal fear, and that doesn’t come across in the movie.  

Then there’s the woeful miscasting of Tom Hanks as Colonel Parker. Now, I don’t know what Colonel Parker sounded like—the only clip I’ve heard of him speaking is from a 1987 Nightline interview, where he betrays no hint of a Dutch accent. If Parker really spoke as Hanks does in the movie, no one would have believed that he was from West Virginia, as Parker claimed. Tom Hanks is a brilliant actor, of course, but sometimes instead of doing three hours of makeup to make Tom Hanks look like Colonel Parker, can’t you just hire an actor who looks like Colonel Parker?  

Austin Butler does a good job with the difficult task of playing Elvis Presley, one of the most handsome and charismatic entertainers who has ever existed. For me, Butler was more believable as the young, pre-Army Elvis than as the jumpsuited 1970’s Elvis. Part of that is Butler’s looks—he looks about a decade younger than 31, his actual age.  

By focusing more on Elvis’ relationship with the Colonel, short shrift is paid to Elvis’ music, unfortunately. For a more thorough look at Elvis as a singer and musician, check out the excellent 2018 documentary The Searcher. Elvis recorded 28 takes of “Don’t Be Cruel” and 31 takes of “Hound Dog” before he was satisfied with the final product. I want to see a movie about that guy—you could position him more as a Brian Wilson-type of eccentric genius trying to perfectly replicate the sounds inside of his head rather than a simple country boy.  

And don’t get me started on the historical inaccuracies in Elvis. It wasn’t a choice between “going into the Army or going to jail,” as the Colonel ominously intones in the movie. Elvis makes it seem as though Elvis was drafted immediately after his July 4, 1956 performance. In reality, Elvis was drafted in late 1957, obtained a deferment to film King Creole, perhaps his finest movie, and was inducted into the Army in March of 1958. The peacetime draft was commonplace in the period between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. And Elvis comfortably skates over any queasiness 2022 audiences might feel as 24-year-old Elvis meets 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu in Germany in 1959 by not mentioning her age and having 24-year-old Olivia DeJonge play Priscilla through the whole film. The movie also doesn’t really mention how Elvis then stashed Priscilla away at Graceland until they married in 1967. (Her parents were apparently okay with this.)  

I can’t imagine experiencing the kind of adulation that Elvis Presley was showered with every time he appeared on stage. It must have been intoxicating to have people treat you like something approaching a deity. But at the same time, I wonder if that wouldn’t wear off fairly quickly when you realize that people will treat you as a deity no matter how good or bad your own performance is. The effects of that kind of adulation on Presley’s personality would be fascinating to know.  

Elvis offers a flashy feast for the eyes that the real Elvis Presley would no doubt approve of. But too often, instead of a revolutionary way of examining the life and career of a truly revolutionary entertainer and artist, Elvis settles for the typical storylines of a generic biopic.