My Year in Books 2023
My first year owning a brick-and-mortar bookstore is in the books, and I found time to read books again!
I discovered audiobooks this year, mainly because I get free advanced listening copies (ALC) from Libro.fm because I am a bookseller and borrow them from the library. Audiobooks have let me enjoy books more personally and immersively, and I can multi-task! I am proud to say that I have listened to over 60 books this year! I listed all of them below, and the red ones were great reads. Most of these are new books with a few oldies but goodies!
Because I am a bookstore owner who has to be able to sell all types of books, I opened myself up to reading more books I wouldn’t normally read. I’m a nonfiction girl, but I read a lot of really good fiction. My favorite nonfiction book this year was G-Man, and my overall favorite fiction books were Yellowface, Mermaid of Black Conch, Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.
You can purchase all the books mentioned below on a page I created on Rozzie Bound’s website.
| Title | Author |
| The Vanishing Half | Britt Bennet |
| G-Man: J Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century | Beverly Gage |
| While We Were Dating | Jazmine Guillory |
| The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X | Les and Tamara Payne |
| Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own | Eddie Glaude |
| Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy | Damien Lewis |
| American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis | Adam Hochschild |
| Spare | Prince Harry |
| The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family | Kerri Greenidge |
| Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America | Gilbert King |
| Waiting to Exhale | Terry McMillan |
| The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation | Anna Malaika Tubbs |
| City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles | Mike Davis |
| Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and A Mother’s Will To Survive | Stephanie Land |
| An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege | Heidi Ardizzone |
| Angela Davis: An Autobiography | Angela Davis |
| Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop | Vikki Tobar |
| Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom | Ilyon Woo |
| An Honorable Exit | Eric Vuillard |
| Summer on the Bluff | Sunny Hostin |
| The Wedding | Dorothy West |
| The Catch Me If You Can: One Woman’s Journey to Every Country in the World | Jessica Nabongo |
| Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist | Jennifer Wright |
| King: A Life | Jonathan Eig |
| Parts of the Holy Bible | |
| A Disappearance in Fiji | Nilima Rao |
| Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto | Tricia Hersey |
| Summer on Sag Harbor | Sunny Hostin |
| Yellowface | R.F. Kuang |
| Poverty, By America | Matthew Desmond |
| Narcas: The Secret Rise of Women in Latin America’s Cartels | Deborah Bonello |
| A History of Burning | Janika Oza |
| The Mermaid of Black Conch | Monique Roffey |
| The White Woman on the Green Bicycle | Monique Roffey |
| The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World | Vijay Prashad |
| The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store | James McBride |
| That Peckham Boy: Growing Up, Getting Out and Giving Back | Kenny Imafidon |
| Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close | Hannah Carlson |
| The Blood of Emmett Till | Timothy Tyson |
| Hijab Butch Blues | Lamya H |
| The Islands | Dionne Irving |
| The War of Words: How America’s GI Journalists Battled Censorship and Propaganda to Help Win World War II | Molly Guptill Manning |
| The Widows of Malabar Hill | Sujata Massey |
| All The Sinners Bleed | S.A. Cosby |
| Quietly Hostile | Samantha Irby |
| The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder | David Grann |
| Songs of Irie | Asha Ashanti Bromfield |
| The First Ladies | Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray |
| How to Say Babylon | Safiya Sinclair |
| Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World | Christopher Cooper |
| Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America | Michael Harriot |
| Word Nerds Unite!: The Fascinating Stories Behind 200 Words and Phrases | Webb Garrison |
| How to Protect Bookstores and Why: The Present and Future of Bookselling | Danny Caine |
| Black Fortunes: The Story of the First Six African-Americans Who Escaped Slavery and Became Millionaires | Shomari Wills |
| Black Cake | Charmaine Wilkerson |
| The Satapur Moonstone | Sujeta Massey |
| Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism | Rachel Maddow |
| The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World | Vincent Bevins |
| When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era | Donovan X. Ramsey |
| Walk Through Fire | Sheila Johnson |
| Glory Be | Danielle Arceneaux |
| Killers of the Flower Moon | David Grann |
| Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business | Roxane Gay |
| The Woman In Me | Britney Spears |
| Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education | Stephanie Land |
| Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement | Tanisha Ford |
| Hurricane Summer | Asha Ashanti Bromfield |
| There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History | Rory Carroll |
| Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World | Yepoka Yeebo |
| The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination | Stuart Reid |