Our Favorite Books in 2023

Since starting the CFO Bookshelf podcast, I have released a ‘favorite books’ show each January. I’ve always been reluctant to do so because my reading tastes may differ from yours. However, these episodes are some of the most downloaded in our podcast catalog. In this discussion, I list my Top 10 books, honorable mentions, fiction, and even books that I did not like. Other insights include what and how much to read and if fiction matters.

The Top 10

1. Let It Go: My Extraordinary Story – From Refugee to Entrepreneur to Philanthropist by Stephanie Shirley
2. Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall by Zeke Faux
3. Le Deal: How a Young American, in Business, in Love, and in Over His Head, Kick-Started a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry in Europe by Byrne Murphy
4. The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results by Stephen Bungay
5. How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between by Flyvbjerg and Gardner
6. The Symphony of Profound Knowledge: W. Edwards Deming’s Score for Leading, Performing, and Living in Concert by Edward Martin Baker
7. Men and Rubber: The Story of Business by Harvey Firestone
8. Around the Corner to Around the World: A Dozen Lessons I Learned Running Dunkin Donuts by Robert Rosenberg
9. Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The Wisdom of Legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser by Dan Levy
10. Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters by Timothy Keller

Not every book can fit into the top ten. Below are a handful of other books that are worth mentioning that I pigeonholed into several categories, starting with the Honorable Mentions.

Honorable Mentions

Honorable mentions fall under two categories fall under two lists: authors I’ve interviewed, and the rest.

Honorable Mentions – Authors Interviewed:

1. Times Up! by Ron Baker
2. The Accidental Business Nomad by Kyle Hegarty
3. Fair Pay by David Buckmaster
4. Tractor Wars by Neil Dahlstrom
5. Bitter Brew by Bill Knoedelseder
6. The Little Book of Boards by Erik Hanberg

Honorable Mentions – Management:

1. The Giants of Sales: What Dale Carnegie, John Patterson, Elmer Wheeler, and Joe Girard Can Teach You About Real Sales Success by Tom Sant
2. Goldratt’s Rules of Flow by Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag
3. Outbound Air: Levels of Work in Organizational Structure by Tom Foster
4. Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-Taking Decisions by Peter Drucker

Honorable Mentions – by CEOs:

1. Upside Down Management by John Timpson
2. Time to Make the Donuts by William Rosenberg

Honorable Mentions – Autos/Bios/Memoirs:

1. Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
2. Swagger: Super Bowls, Brass Balls, and Footballs—A Memoir by Jimmy Johnson

Honorable Mentions – History and Narrative Non-Fiction:

1. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
2. Snapshots from Hell by David Robinson
3. The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts

Fiction

1. All My Sons by Arthur Miller
2. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles 
3. City of Thieves by David Benioff
4. The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
5. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
6. The Running Man by Stephen King
7. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy 
8. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
9. Eye of the Needle: A Novel by Ken Follett

Repeats

Every year, I reread select titles from my library. One example is The Effective Executive, which I started rereading the last week of the year. Most of the titles in this category were for podcast interviews (if I have not read a guest’s book within the past twelve months, I always reread it).

1. What it Takes RaeganMoya-Jones
2. The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig
3. True Profit by Hermann Simon
4. The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim
5. Simple_Complexity by Willy Donaldson
6. The Deming Management Method: The Bestselling Classic for Quality Management by Mary Walton
7. Wild Company: The Untold Story of Banana Republic by the Zieglers (the founders)
8. Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers
9. Investment Biker: Around the World with Jim Rogers
10. Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace by Ricardo Semler

Did Not Meet Expectations

1. The Devil’s Candy: The Anatomy Of A Hollywood Fiasco by Julie Salamon
2. The Fifties by David Halberstam
3. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
4. The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant 
5. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
6. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck 
7. The Rise and Fall of H&H Bagels by Marc Zirogiannis
8. Just Add a Zero by Chad Jenkins

Media Pairings

If you liked this episode, consider the following audio and written content:

• Our Favorite Books in 2022 (podcast)
• Our Favorite 10 Books in 2021 (podcast)
• My Ten Favorite Books in 2018 (article)
• My Favorite Books in 2017 (article)