I read at least 25 books in 2013, and I liked most of them. (I very much did not like “1Q84” by Haruki Murakami, which was by most accounts the most wonderful thing in the history of wonderment. I thought it was horrible.) But I loved three of them, and here they are:

“Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” by Ben Fountain is a book about war and America and (as the National Book Foundation people put it) “the commodification of soldiers,” and it takes place largely at Cowboys Stadium.

I love Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce books. They’re kind of subversive “cozy” mystery novels about a young chemist-sleuth in the ’50s in the English countryside. “Speaking from Among the Bones” is Flavia’s most recent adventure. (The first was “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie,” for those of you who like to begin things at the beginning.

“Tell the Wolves I’m Home” by Carol Rifka Brunt is a coming-of-age, families-are-difficult story. It made me cry. A lot.