At the end of January, I wrote the immortal line in my weekly roundup...
...libraries are very much going to define my 2023...
And that was because I'd read 9 books in a month. I had no fucking idea how accurate that was going to become.
So... because I can... here is the parade of everything I read in 2023, presented in reverse chronological order (mostly, Goodreads occasionally gets confused when you finish more than one thing on the same day).
At the end of 2023, I'd officially read 198 books. Which is more books than I read in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 combined. I'll be honest, it might be the most books I've read in a year since I was a teenager.
Even when I did a montage for the first hundred and then second hundred books I read when I first started adding them to the blog sidebar back in 2006, those still took about 18 months.
But this giant up-tick in books is entirely thanks to the aforementioned Libraries SA and their One Card system where you can borrow books from any library in the state and have them sent to your local library to pick up. In fact, of those 198 books, 177 (89%) were from the library.
Also, yes, beyond just logging them all into my Goodreads through the year (and reading 825% of the 24 books I said I was going to read during the year as part of their yearly Reading Challenge), I also might have made a spreadsheet for some end of the year math. Shush.
Digging into the numbers a little more... just over half of them (52%) were books and just under half (48%) were graphic novels. I also stepped my queer reading up, because a quarter of everything I read this year had gay themes.
My average rating for everything I read was 3.3 out of 5. According to Goodread's star ratings, that puts it somewhere between "Liked it" and "Really Liked It". And that sounds about right given that about 60% of the books I read were one of those two ratings.
It wasn't all smooth sailing though. I "Hate Completed" a few titles, pushing myself to finish things that I mostly wasn't enjoying. But I only abandoned 9 books, for a myriad of reasons, mostly because I just wasn't feeling whatever it was or it wasn't grabbing my attention... but sometimes because it was just abjectly terrible. Throughout the year I developed a "100 page" cut off. If I wasn't enjoying the book by 100 pages, I would (and should) just give up on it.
That didn't always work, especially when someone had recommended a book to me, or, like in October, Fluffy and I did a Halloween Book (well, two books by the same author)... and they both sucked.
I discovered (rediscovered? realised?) throughout the year that, for the most part, I love Urban Fantasy, Fantastical Realism or Low Fantasy much more than High Fantasy. Given that I have friends who love to read giant, foot-crushing High Fantasy tomes and every time they talk about them, my eyes glaze over and I'm just not interested. This shouldn't really have been a revelation, thinking back, even to when I was a kid, I'm not sure I ever was. I love High Fantasy movies. Clearly, these days, I love DnD. But I much prefer something more grounded with fantastical elements. Who knew?
That may also have something to do with the fact that my average page count for the books I read was 244 (from a total of 48258 pages read). Honestly, I can't really be bothered with big long books at the moment (with some exceptions)... and it definitely indicates that I read a lot of graphic novels. But, yeah, over the year, I've kind of decided that I prefer books in the 250-300 page range.
I dipped my toes into some Japanese fiction throughout the year, both regular novels that had been translated, but also some manga for the first time. Like, real manga, that you have to read from right to left and from the back.
I went through a cozy mystery phase, specifically a number of ones that were bakery themed. I'll be honest, a lot of them aren't very good. Or that if the book starts out with cozy baking, it will end with somebody being involved in a car chase or being shot at or otherwise one step away from being murdered. I also got sucked into a number of series (both novels and graphic novels) as the year progressed. More on those shortly.
While the majority of stuff that I read was published after 2000, the oldest thing I read all year was from 1884. And was a science fiction/mathematical fiction book that was half social satire, half dimensional geometry. Very strange, and a little dry, but at least I can say that I've read it.
That was one of the fun things about all the reading I did this year, to be honest. If I saw a book that looked interesting, whether that was online, or in the library or because somebody mentioned it to me, I could just borrow it. That included things that have been on my To Read list for several years, things by authors I already liked, or stuff I'd never heard of before. And then, when I was done, whether it was good, bad or indifferent, back to the library it could go.
I also tend to lean towards fiction over non-fiction. Although two of the non-fiction books I read through the year were about working in bookshops. Make of that what you will.
So, taking a leaf out of my yearly movie round up, let's cover some of the best books I read this year...
Before we get there... a brief list of honourable mentions... Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer, Sins of the Black Flamingo by Andrew Wheeler and Travis Moore, Baking Yesteryear by B. Dylan Hollis, the Locke and Key series by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez, and Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty... interestingly, there are several sci-fi titles there.
These following titles are not really in any particular order than mostly chronologically the order I read them... along with except from my Goodread reviews at the time.
Legends and Lattes
Travis Baldree
I don't know that I've fallen in love with a book like this in... a good long while. Or ploughed through something quite so quickly.
This was a very early read, but one that stuck with me through the year. I recommended it to other people, and even thinking back on it now gives me warm fuzzy feelings.
The Travelling Cat Chronicles
Hiro Arikawa
It's beautiful, heartfelt, well written (which, also in this case, means well translated by Philip Gabriel) and just... delightful.
Another early read, and not my first book translated from Japanese, but possible the first one I've read narrated by a cat.
The House in the Cerulean Sea
T.J. Klune
This book is... exceptional. It made me smile, it made me cry, it made me angry (in a good way, at the people who deserved it), and it just made me very, very happy.
I had something of a rollercoaster ride with Klune this year, reading four of his books, and loving three of them. This was the first, and although it has become a little controversial or problematic since, I still love it very much.
They Both Die at the End
Adam Silvera
This book is... sensational. I wasn't sure about it at the start, I wasn't sure I was going to like either of the main characters, but once they meet, the book finds its wings and soars.
This is how you tell a story. And one where Silvera states the end of the book right on the cover, and it still manages to keep you guessing right until the very end.
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking
T. Kingfisher
Is this exactly the kind of book I would have read when I was in my teens? Oh, definitely that. Is it because it takes place in a universe that has a magic system that I desperately want to explore more of? Hell yeah.
Magical baked good. Gingerbread warriors. Sentient dough. Do I need to say anymore?
The Starless Sea
Erin Morgenstern
This book is deep and layered and interwoven and intense. It smells of old books and long closed up spaces... it tastes of honey and lemon and spice.
I adored Morgenstern's previous novel, The Night Circus... I adore this. But differently. And I'm perfectly find with that.
Bloom
Kevin Panetta
Books about people who bake is so my thing right now. And this is a beautiful self contained story with a great art style. Honestly, there's something really lovely about single-colour tonal colouring in graphic novels.
The sole graphic novel on the list. Not because there weren't other good ones (see also the Honorable Mentions list), but this one just did everything right.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built/A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
Becky Chambers
Chambers manages to create a world with a full and rich history in less pages than other books use to say nothing at all. It's a world that I would desperately like to visit, if only for a little while.
And while I want both of the Monk and Robot books to be made into one book so that I can press a copy of it into everyone's hand and say "just... read this... then come find me when you're done", I also get why they're two different books. Because they're telling two completely different, yet equally valid stories... or maybe asking two different questions.
There were only a small handful of books this year that went onto the list of "I'd like my own copy of this eventually". These were two of them. They might also need a re-read.
White Trash Warlock/Trailer Park Trickster/Deadbeat Druid
David R. Slayton
What I didn't expect this book to be was possibly the single best version of the Urban Fantasy/Magic aesthetic I've ever read. Because this book is flat out amazing. The world building and mythology/fantasy is top notch, the writing is excellent, the mystery that runs through this book ended in a way that I absolutely did NOT see coming. Plus, gay male, magic using protagonist. Not a thing you find every day.
I picked this up because the title was too good not to... I then fell in love with Slayton's world.
The Murderbot Series
Martha Wells
This is also another one of those books that manages to create a whole world in very few pages. Sure, it doesn't really flesh out many of the characters other than the titular Murderbot, but I also don't think it needs to, given that they are our point of view character.
One of the best sci-fi series I've read. Partially, I think, because it's often less about the sci and more about the people. They're also short and sharply written and I will keep reading them for as long as Wells keeps writing them.
Wolfsong
T.J. Klune
There are a handful of books that I count as being Important To Me. This is very much on that list.
So... this feels like cheating. Because as I said in my review, this book speaks to me in a very, very personal way. Which means that recommending it to other people to read feels... weird. It's like saying "here's a piece of my brain, please read and enjoy". I fully intend to read the rest of that series... but I'm almost afraid to.
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