The best 5 books read in 2023: They may deserve a spot on your list

In 2023, I set a personal record for the highest number of books read in a single year. In this post, I’ll share my top 5 favorites from the list of books I enjoyed in 2023.

While I do not consider myself a fast reader, I managed to complete 23 books this year. Among them, a few were technical reads, but the majority fell into the categories of business and self-improvement.

The main subject across the books of 2023 was somewhat related to death. But what I believe is that it is more about learning how to live well. Remembering our limited time on this earth can help us focus on what is more important to us right now, and also help us not to get worried about things that are not important and also not under our control.

The second most read topic was self-improvement. I always try to improve myself, and I’ll improve aspects of my life.

When writing this post I decided to exclude software engineer technical books, because most of the people are probably not engineers and not going to get much about the technical book so all the other books were considered, but not the technical ones.

My top 5 favorite books of 2023

So these are the top favorite books that are read in 2023 in reading order.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

You can think that the book Being Mortal is about death (and it is true), but for me, it is more about life. Death is unavoidable and talking about it, makes us reflect on what are the more valuable things for us in our lives. Being Mortal is a reminder that we have a limited time to live on this earth and it touches on complicated subjects, mainly regarding the last years of our lives and how we can have a better ending to our lives.

In the book-specific post, I highlight the Learnings from the book Being Mortal which are mainly: Medicine’s goal is to extend life, what matters to us change, what is worth living for?, everything is trade-offs, hospice maybe is a good option and letting go.

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

The main idea of Extreme Ownership is that all responsibility for the success or failures of a team or organization falls with the leader. That means that the leader must own everything. No one to blame, only the leaders themselves.

Even if in your work your job is not a “leader” job you can benefit as everyone is a way is a leader. You can even lead your own boss.

In the post Learnings from the book Extreme Ownership I highlight the principles that I like the most: Some are: Extreme Ownership, “No bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders”, Believe, Check the ego, Simple, Prioritize and Execute, Leading up the chain and others.

Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away

The primary objective of the book is to challenge and transform the negative perception associated with quitting, highlighting instances where it is indeed the most optimal course of action. By shedding light on various biases that often compel us to persist in unproductive situations, the book emphasizes our tendency to avoid using the term “quit” due to societal judgments.

Check out the post Learnings from the book Quit for more learnings like: Grit vs Quit, We avoid the word Quit, Expected value as a framework, Avoid escalation of commitment, Work on the hardest thing first, Have a kill criteria, The endowment effect, Your identity is not what you do, and The dark side of goals.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

The name of the book comes from the approximate life span of a human. If you live to be eighty years old, you’ll have had about four thousand weeks of life. This is a surprisingly short period.

The book tries to help us face the fact that our time is very limited and we will not be able to do everything that we want to do in this life, so we have to prioritize, not do some things, live in the moment, or just enjoy the things by what they are not what is the value in the future.

On the post Learnings from the book Four Thousand Weeks I write why: You’ll never have time for everything, Being efficient is a trap, The value of your time is not measured by the results, We use leisure as a means to an end and Time alone is not worth

Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

The book brings short stories about 23 things that never changed and in theory will never change in the future.

As the author puts it: “History is filled with surprises no one could have seen coming. But it’s also filled with so much timeless wisdom.”

The whole concept of the book is really nice: Instead of looking for the new shining thing, the book focuses on what tends to be stable over time, and due to that it tends to be dismissed by everyone.

On the post Learnings from the book Same as Ever I share the 5 main learnings of the books, which are: everything is so fragile, you can’t predict the unpredictable, low expectations is key to happiness, good stories are better than facts and optimism for the long run, pessimism in the short run.

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If you want to check out the learnings from the other books that were not on this list, check you the Learnings from Books category with all the posts.

I hope that some of the books caught your interest and helped you learn something new.

Happy reading!