Year-End Lists

The Guardian: The 50 Best Films of 2023, drawn from films released this year in the US and posted alongside a similar list based on UK releases

[see also 2021 • 2017 • 2015]

1. Past Lives
   Celine Song
2. Killers of the Flower Moon
   Martin Scorsese
3. The Zone of Interest
   Jonathan Glazer
4. The Holdovers
   Alexander Payne
5. All of Us Strangers
   Andrew Haigh
6. 20 Days in Mariupol
   Mstyslav Chernov
7. Poor Things
   Yorgos Lanthimos
8. The Boy and the Heron
   Hayao Miyazaki
9. Godland
   Hlynur Pálmason
10. Anatomy of a Fall
    Justine Triet
11. Showing Up
    Kelly Reichardt
12. The Eight Mountains
    Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch
13. Maestro
    Bradley Cooper
14. Alcarràs
    Carla Simón
15. Amanda
    Carolina Cavalli
16. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
    Haruki Murakami
17. After Love
    Aleem Khan
18. Full Time
    Éric Gravel
19. Monster
    Hirokazu Kore-eda
20. Incredible But True
    Quentin Dupieux
21. Pacifiction
    Albert Serra
22. Joyland
    Saim Sadiq
23. Fremont
    Babak Jalali
24. Love Life
    Kôji Fukada
25. May December
    Todd Haynes
26. Nostalgia
    Mario Martone
27. Pretty Red Dress
    Dionne Edwards
28. The Teachers' Lounge
    İlker Çatak
29. Oppenheimer
    Christopher Nolan
30. Memory
    Michel Franco
31. Wonka
    Paul King
32. You Hurt My Feelings
    Nicole Holofcener
33. Napoleon
    Ridley Scott
34. Strange Way of Life
    Pedro Almodóvar
35. Passages
    Ira Sachs
36. The Taste of Things
    Trần Anh Hùng
37. Bad Press
    Rebecca Landsberry-Baker and Joe Peeler
38. Rodeo
    Lola Quivoron
39. The Deepest Breath
    Laura McGann
40. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
    Raven Jackson
41. The Future Tense
    Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy
42. Orlando, My Political Biography
    Paul B. Preciado
43. Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV
    Amanda Kim
44. War Pony
    Riley Keough and Gina Gammell
45. The Beasts
    Rodrigo Sorogoyen
46. How to Blow Up a Pipeline
    Daniel Goldhaber
47. American Fiction
    Cord Jefferson
48. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
    Kelly Fremon Craig
49. Anselm
    Wim Wenders
50. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
    Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson

Little White Lies: The 30 Best Films of 2023

[see also 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2012]

1. May December
   Todd Haynes
2. Asteroid City
   Wes Anderson
3. Poor Things
   Yorgos Lanthimos
4. The Boy and the Heron
   Hayao Miyazaki
5. All of Us Strangers
   Andrew Haigh
6. Priscilla
   Sofia Coppola
7. Showing Up
   Kelly Reichardt
8. Killers of the Flower Moon
   Martin Scorsese
9. The Killer
   David Fincher
10. Oppenheimer
    Christopher Nolan
11. Barbie
    Greta Gerwig
12. Passages
    Ira Sachs
13. Past Lives
    Celine Song
14. Saint Omer
    Alice Diop
15. Trenque Lauquen
    Laura Citarella
16. Polite Society
    Nida Manzoor
17. Earth Mama
    Savanah Leaf
18. Fallen Leaves
    Aki Kaurismäki
19. How to Blow Up a Pipeline
    Daniel Goldhaber
20. Afire
    Christian Petzold
21. Pacifiction
    Albert Serra
22. Samsara
    Lois Patiño
23. Return to Seoul
    Davy Chou
24. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
    Jeff Rowe
25. Evil Dead Rise
    Lee Cronin
26. Rye Lane
    Raine Allen-Miller
27. Napoleon
    Ridley Scott
28. How to Have Sex
    Molly Manning Walker
29. Anatomy of a Fall
    Justine Triet
30. Typist Artist Pirate King
    Carol Morley

Shelf Awareness: Best Books of 2023, limited to books for adults, although they also post lists of children's and young adult books

[see also 2018 • 2017]

Fiction

• America Fantastica
  Tim O'Brien
• Chain-Gang All-Stars
  Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Good Night, Irene
  Luis Alberto Urrea
• In Memoriam
  Alice Winn
• The Laughter
  Sonora Jha
• Let Us Descend
  Jesmyn Ward
• Murder Your Employer

  The McMasters Guide to Homicide
  Rupert Holmes
• Prophet
  Sin Blaché and Helen Macdonald
• Shark Heart
  Emily Habeck
• Whalefall
  Daniel Kraus

Nonfiction

• Better Living Through Birding

  Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
  Christian Cooper
• The Comfort of Crows

  A Backyard Year
  Margaret Renkl
• Enlightened Transsexual Comix
  Sam Szabo
• The Exceptions

  Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science
  Kate Zernike
• How to Say Babylon

  A Memoir
  Safiya Sinclair
• Lesbian Love Story

  A Memoir In Archives
  Amelia Possanza
• The Quickening

  Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth
  Elizabeth Rush
• The Talk
  Darrin Bell
• You Could Make This Place Beautiful

  A Memoir
  Maggie Smith
• Zero at the Bone

  Fifty Entries Against Despair
  Christian Wiman

Rishi Dastidar: Best Poetry Books of 2023, as published by The Guardian

• To 2040
  Jorie Graham
• Balladz
  Sharon Olds
• indiom
  Daljit Nagra
• The Iliad
  Homer, translated by Emily Wilson
• Self-Portrait as Othello
  Jason Allen-Paisant
• Bad Diaspora Poems
  Momtaza Mehri
• Octopus Mind
  Rachel Carney
• Crisis Actor
  Declan Ryan
• Isdal
  Susannah Dickey
• We Play Here
  Dawn Watson
• Bright Fear
  Mary Jean Chan
• The Home Child
  Liz Berry
• Anne-thology

  Poems Re-Presenting Anne Shakespeare
  Anne Hathaway (various editors)
• Contraflow

  Lines of Englishness 1922-2022
  John Greening & Kevin Gardner (editors)
• Mapping the Future

  The Complete Works
  Karen McCarthy Woolf & Nathalie Teitler
• Trace Evidence
  Charif Shanahan
• Pitch & Glint
  Lutz Seiler

California Review of Books: 10 Best Books of 2023

• Blue Skies
  T.C. Boyle
• The Rigor of Angels

  Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality
  William Egginton
• Poverty, by America
  Matthew Desmond
• A Fever in the Heartland

  The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
  Timothy Egan
• After the Funeral and Other Stories
  Tessa Hadley
• The Wonder Paradox

  Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives
  Jennifer Michael Hecht
• The Asking

  New and Selected Poems
  Jane Hirshfield
• Tyranny of the Minority

  Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point
  Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
• The Big Myth

  How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
  Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
• Why We Love Baseball

  A History in 50 Moments
  Joe Posnanski

Albumism: The 50 Best Albums of 2023

[see also 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2010s • 2019 • 2018 • 2017]

1. The Omnichord Real Book
   Meshell Ndegeocello
2. Fuse
   Everything but the Girl
3. Black Rainbows
   Corinne Bailey Rae
4. Memento Mori
   Depeche Mode
5. The Age of Pleasure
   Janelle Monáe
6. That! Feels Good!
   Jessie Ware
7. First Two Pages of Frankenstein
   The National
8. The Love Invention
   Alison Goldfrapp
9. everything is alive
   Slowdive
10. Hit Parade
    Róisín Murphy
11. I Inside the Old Year Dying
    PJ Harvey
12. Tension
    Kylie Minogue
13. But Here We Are
    Foo Fighters
14. Hana
    Sophie Ellis-Bextor
15. Council Skies
    Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
16. Heaven
    Cleo Sol
17. the record
    boygenius
18. Weathervanes
    Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit
19. Gold
    Cleo Sol
20. I Hope You Can Forgive Me
    Madison McFerrin
21. Married in Mount Airy
    Nicole Dollanganger
22. Playing Robots into Heaven
    James Blake
23. Magic 2
    Nas
24. Special Occasion
    Emily King
25. Glorious Game
    El Michels Affair & Black Thought
26. Parallel Universe
    Isaiah Collier
27. Strays
    Margo Price
28. Black Classical Music
    Yussef Dayes
29. Mid Air
    Romy
30. The Returner
    Allison Russell
31. Desire, I Want to Turn Into You
    Caroline Polachek
32. The Great White Sea Eagle
    James Yorkston, Nina Persson and The Second Hand Orchestra
33. Slugs of Love
    Little Dragon
34. The Ballad of Darren
    Blur
35. Euphoric
    Georgia
36. Folkocracy
    Rufus Wainwright
37. Voice Notes
    Yazmin Lacey
38. Queen of Me
    Shania Twain
39. Love & Money
    Katie Melua
40. Magic 3
    Nas
41. Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
    Lana Del Rey
42. Cracker Island
    Gorillaz
43. Learn To Swim, A Mixtape
    Joshua Idehen
44. What Matters Most
    Ben Folds
45. Joy'All
    Jenny Lewis
46. The Weakness
    Ruston Kelly
47. My Soft Machine
    Arlo Parks
48. Guts
    Olivia Rodrigo
49. Such Ferocious Beauty
    Cowboy Junkies
50. Danse Macabre
    Duran Duran

The Guardian: The 50 Best TV Shows of 2023

[see also 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019]

1. The Bear
2. Succession
3. Happy Valley
4. Beef
5. Poker Face
6. The Last of Us
7. Blue Lights
8. Top Boy
9. The Sixth Commandment
10. Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland
11. Fleishman Is in Trouble
12. I'm a Virgo
13. Barry
14. Colin from Accounts
15. Jury Duty
16. I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson
17. Somebody Somewhere
18. Dreaming Whilst Black
19. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
20. Reservation Dogs
21. Planet Earth III
22. Ghosts
23. Time
24. Boiling Point
25. The Curse
26. Squid Game: The Challenge
27. Only Murders in the Building
28. Deadloch
29. Hijack
30. Black Mirror
31. Silo
32. The Gallows Pole
33. Starstruck
34. The Long Shadow
35. Dead Ringers
36. Dave
37. The Gold
38. Black Ops
39. Russell Brand: In Plain Sight
40. The Fall of the House of Usher
41. Champion
42. The Piano
43. Dear Mama
44. A Small Light
45. Boat Story
46. The Change
47. Lessons in Chemistry
48. The Lying Life of Adults
49. Beckham
50. Rain Dogs

Electric Lit: Best Nonfiction of 2023

[see also Best Novels of 2023 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2022 • Favorite Novels of 2022 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2021 • Favorite Novels of 2021 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2020 • Favorite Novels of 2020 • 15 Best Novels of 2019 • 15 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019]

The Top 5 Nonfiction Books of The Year

• A Living Remedy
  Nicole Chung
• Monsters

  A Fan's Dilemma
  Claire Dederer
• Hijab Butch Blues
  Lamya H.
• You Could Make This Place Beautiful

  A Memoir
  Maggie Smith
• Quietly Hostile

  Essays
  Samantha Irby

Other Favorite Nonfiction Books

• Sink
  Joseph Earl Thomas
• The Book of (More) Delights

  Essays
  Ross Gay
• The Heartbreak Years

  A Memoir
  Minda Honey
• Pageboy
  Elliot Page
• Ordinary Notes
  Christina Sharpe
• Dyscalculia

  A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation
  Camonghne Felix
• bell hooks: The Last Interview

  and Other Conversations
  bell hooks
• A Man of Two Faces

  a Memoir, a History, a Memorial
  Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Liliana's Invincible Summer

  A Sister's Search for Justice
  Cristina Rivera Garza
• The Loneliness Files

  A Memoir in Essays
  Athena Dixon
• Black Women Writers at Work
  Claudia Tate (editor)
• Doppelganger

  A Trip into the Mirror World
  Naomi Klein
• Palo Alto

  A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
  Malcolm Harris
• The In-Betweens

  A Lyrical Memoir
  Davon Loeb
• When Crack Was King

  A People's History of a Misunderstood Era
  Donovan X. Ramsey
• All the Gold Stars

  Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive
  Rainesford Stauffer
• Saving Time

  Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
  Jenny Odell
• Tabula Rasa

  Volume 1
  John McPhee
• A Life of One's Own

  Nine Women Writers Begin Again
  Joanna Biggs
• Eyeliner

  A Cultural History
  Zahra Hankir

Electric Lit: Best Novels of 2023

[see also Best Nonfiction of 2023 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2022 • Favorite Novels of 2022 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2021 • Favorite Novels of 2021 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2020 • Favorite Novels of 2020 • 15 Best Novels of 2019 • 15 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019]

The Top 5 Novels of The Year

• The Guest
  Emma Cline
• Big Swiss
  Jen Beagin
• Chain-Gang All-Stars
  Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Terrace Story
  Hilary Leichter
• Forgive Me Not
  Jennifer Baker

Other Favorite Novels

• I Have Some Questions for You
  Rebecca Makkai
• Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind
  Molly McGhee
• Land of Milk and Honey
  C Pam Zhang
• Blackouts
  Justin Torres
• Holding Pattern
  Jenny Xie
• People Collide
  Isle McElroy
• The Late Americans
  Brandon Taylor
• Yellowface
  R.F. Kuang
• A Quitter's Paradise
  Elysha Chang
• Mrs. S
  K. Patrick
• Sea Change
  Gina Chung
• Where There Was Fire
  John Manuel Arias
• All the Sinners Bleed
  S.A. Cosby
• Moonrise Over New Jessup
  Jamila Minnicks
• Rouge
  Mona Awad
• The Great Reclamation
  Rachel Heng
• We Are a Haunting
  Tyriek White
• Enter Ghost
  Isabella Hammad
• Our Share of Night
  Mariana Enriquez
• Biography of X
  Catherine Lacey

Constance Grady: The Very Best Books of 2023, as published by Vox, organized by when they were published and alphabetized by the authors' names

[see also 2022 • 2020 • 2019]

Second Half of the Year

• Chain-Gang All-Stars
  Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Loved and Missed
  Susie Boyt
• The Last Language
  Jennifer duBois
• The Marriage Question

  George Eliot's Double Life
  Clare Carlisle
• The Upstairs Delicatessen

  On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading
  Dwight Garner
• Menewood
  Nicola Griffith
• The Vaster Wilds
  Lauren Groff
• The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
  James McBride
• The End of Drum-Time
  Hanna Pylväinen
• The Fraud
  Zadie Smith
• How I Won a Nobel Prize
  Julius Taranto
• Idlewild
  James Frankie Thomas
• This is Salvaged
  Vauhini Vara

First Half of the Year, Fiction

• Big Swiss
  Jen Beagin
• The Guest
  Emma Cline
• Vintage Contemporaries
  Dan Kois
• White Cat, Black Dog
  Kelly Link

First Half of the Year, Nonfiction

• The Everlasting Meal Cookbook

  Leftovers A-Z
  Tamar Adler
• All the Beauty in the World

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me
  Patrick Bringley
• Monsters

  A Fan's Dilemma
  Claire Dederer
• The Wager

  A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
  David Grann
• My Hijacking

  A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering
  Martha Hodes
• Flawless

  Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital
  Elise Hu
• Spare
  Prince Harry