2023 reading wrap up

[sandrylene]

My goals for the year were: 100 books, 2 classic sci fi books, 1 in French or German. Uh. ...maybe I'll finish my French book.... any time now. (Lies: I won't. It was L'Étranger and I got to halfway and just ...ugh, I don't want to.) So yeah, another year where I didn't meet that goal, whoops.

Stats
Number Of Books You Read: 139

Authors were 82% female, 13% male, <1% non-binary, 5% anthology/mixed.

The average rating was 4.8 (of the like, four books I rated? I dunno.)

Number of Re-Reads: 5. Mostly Ilona Andrews again (I decided to re-read The Edge novels because I couldn't remember basically any of the details, only that I'd really enjoyed them first time around. I also enjoyed them second time around, and currently do remember more of them, so mission accomplished, I guess.)

Shortest & Longest Book You Read In 2023?

• Shortest:Victoria Goddard - The Game of Courts. This one is 79 pages.


• Longest: Victoria Goddard - At the Feet of the Sun. This one is a ridiculous 1330 pages.


• Average Length for the Year: 351 pages

Superlatives

• Best Book You Read In 2023?

Picking just one is ridiculous. Some favorites are:



• Neal Stephenson - Fall; or Dodge in Hell
  Found this heartily enjoyable as someone in a related-ish industry. I recognized several of the characters in this book - they were basically "yup, those are some of my past and present coworkers and friends, and I love them."


• Sangu Mandanna - The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches


• K.J. Charles - The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen


• Calvin Kasulke - Several People are Typing
  I read this on a thirteen hour plane ride, and for the couple hours I was reading, I could *not* stop explosively laughing.


• Emily Tesh - Some Desperate Glory
  I was in no way expecting how well this was done, given this is effectively her first work in the genre as best as I'm aware. I liked her fantasy novellas, but like. Not remotely the same thing!




• Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t? Maybe Jennette McCurdy - I'm Glad my Mom Died?
  I don't know if I quite thought "oh, I will love this" but I thought "I will feel positive emotions about this" based on everyone's reviews, general rep, etc. What I actually felt was mostly like being punched in the gut a bunch.



• Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read in 2023? Ugh, Maybe Isaac Asimov - Foundation.
  What surprised me was: apparently characters are completely irrelevant to the story, basically. It is so the polar opposite of the things I usually read. At the point where they timeshift the first time and completely discard everyone you were previously introduced to I was very much taken aback, but going "okay, well, maybe we haven't met the protagonist yet." We did though. He just didn't matter as a person, only as a sort of source of random omniscience. ...in as much as this book had a protagonist. Ugh. I don't like it.
  My goal for the year was to read two classic sci fi books, and this was the second one, and I got to the end of it and was like "and now we know why I don't read classic sci fi - to hell with this!"



• Book You “Pushed” The Most People To Read (And They Did) In 2023? I got I think two coworkers started on the Inspector Gamache books I fell for last year.



• Best series you started in 2023? Best Sequel of 2023? Best Series Ender of 2023?




• Best series started: Gail Carriger - Divinity 36, the first in the Tinkered Starsong trilogy.
  This was just stupid, good fun. She put out the whole trilogy this year, and I had this moment in October that was like "OH NO, I must IMMEDIATELY read WAY too many books," because a new Victoria Goddard dropped in between my finshing book one here, and realizing two and three already existed. ...that was a ridiculous week.


• Best sequel: Daniel O'Malley - Blitz.
  I love the Checquy series, and was so happy to realize this year there's a third one. Really enjoyable.


• Best series ender: Martha Wells - The Gate of Gods.
  Loved the whole series, though this was a really nice wrapping up.




• Favorite new author you discovered in 2023? So I obviously have to say Victoria Goddard, given I found something of hers, then proceeded reasonably quickly to read a total of 23 works.
  Except the extra stupid thing is - this year I also discovered Celia Lake for the first time, and then read 22 of her works as well. I would say, though - Celia Lake is lovely and all, but I think less substantive and more just like a soothing, warm bath kind of book experience (which - remarkable, given how many of her books are at least peripherally of "ways the world wars impact people"), whereas I feel like Victoria Goddard books are more substantive.



• Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone? Hmm. Helen Simonson - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand?



• Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year? Ooh. Actually I think I have some competition for this category this year.
  It'll be one of Emily Tesh - Some Desperate Glory, Daniel O'Malley - Blitz, or Martha Wells - The Gate of Gods



• Book You Read In 2023 That You Are Most Likely To Re-Read Next Year? I really don't generally plan on doing that, but if I were going to... maybe Martha Wells - Witch King? The jumps in there make me feel like maybe I'd get more out of it a second time (even though I did enjoy it the first)



• Favorite cover of a book you read in 2023? As per usual, I have no idea.



• Most memorable character of 2023? Tremaine Valiarde? So enjoyable as a heroine, honestly.
  Oh, wait, no, Cliopher Mdang. "My character class is 'Bureaucrat' and I am so good at it I have leveled up all of society." XD



• Most beautifully written book read in 2023? Maybe Nghi Vo - Mammoths at the Gates?
  I loved what this was doing in terms of people and their meaning to each other, and how different that can be both from person to person, and over time.
  



• Most Thought-Provoking/Life-Changing Book of 2023? I don't know about life-changing for me, personally, but thought-provoking I would give to Yaa Gyasi - Homegoing.
  I thought this was beautifully done, and really personalized the horror of the slave trade and the treatment of black people in the US.



• Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2023 to finally read?
  I did a back catalog read of Martha Wells, and there was tons of stuff in here I loved. Got through the Raksura books, The Fall of Ile-Rien books, and City of Bones, and really enjoyed all of those. Very much hoping to read the other Ile-Rien books when they're re-released.


• Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2023?

Since I'm still taking highlights this year, I have a sampling:



• He had spent his lifetime working within an ancient, complex, and corrupt bureaucracy and court. He no longer believed one could legislate out of existence greed, or stupidity, or sheer perversity of will. It reassured him that neither could one legislate out of existence love, or hope, or the desire for beauty.
  Victoria Goddard - The Hands of the Emperor


• “If you raise a daughter to be both independent and an excellent marksman, you have to accept the fact that your control over her actions is at an end.”
  Martha Wells - The Gate of Gods


• Across the city, people woke or slept, or slumped home from graveyard shifts, or lived, or died in hospital beds or in stupid accidents, or sent rats to tell their bosses they were sick before they snuck back to lovers’ beds, or counted the night’s take twice, three times, in case their dealers had stiffed them, or fried breakfast, or jogged along the coast, or worked their businesses, or failed at same. They lived their stories as if no one else’s would ever intervene.
  Max Gladstone - The Ruin of Angels


• “Our job in life,” he said at a graduation ceremony at Thiel College in Greenville, Pennsylvania, early in his career, in 1969, “is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is—that each of us has something that no one else has—or ever will have—something inside which is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness, and to provide ways of developing its expression.”
  Maxwell King - The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers


• Pluto, well aware of his own social ineptitude, had obviously pored over an etiquette manual before showing up, and so, during his rote interactions with Zula and other immediate family members, had acquitted himself well if bizarrely, addressing them in high-Victorian grief speech straight out of whatever scanned and archived Emily Post book he’d memorized.
  Neal Stephenson - Fall; or, Dodge in Hell


• That was how people always talked about romantic, sexual love. As if that sort of love was necessarily better, greater, more, than friendship. As if being the greatest of friends was a step down.
  Victoria Goddard - At the Feet of the Sun





• Book That Shocked You The Most. Maybe Stuart Turton - The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle?
  Where it started versus where it ended... The plot went places I definitely wasn't expecting. I think maybe because I wasn't expecting where it lands, genre-wise, beforehand?
  



• OTP OF THE YEAR (you will go down with this ship!). ...no, don't think I have one.
  



• Favorite Non-Romantic Relationship Of The Year.
  Since I just read System Collapse... I just continue to love Murderbot and ART. It's such a fun dynamic, and also after Murderbot starts out the series with effectively just going it alone and doing their best, it's so nice to see it have someone else sensible it can rely on... in between bickering. XD



• Favorite Book You Read in 2023 From An Author You’ve Read Previously.
  Neal Stephenson - Fall; or Dodge in Hell
  He is really hit or miss for me, but this one was extremely up my alley. I don't know that it's objectively *good*, but I was basically dancing around in enjoyment while reading it.



• Best Book You Read In 2023 That You Read Based SOLELY On A Recommendation From Somebody Else/Peer Pressure.
  Katherine Addison - The Goblin Emperor.
  People have talked this up forever, it feels like, and I meant to get around to it for what feels like forever as well. I actually got it out of the library maybe last year or the year before, looked at the Dramatis Personae and went "OH GOD, that is TOO MUCH" and then never started it. I got advice from a friend that there is absolutely no need to get any handle on the characters beforehand because the main character doesn't have said handle either, and that thankfully let me start it. Which yay - fantastic book. <3



• Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2023? ...no, definitely not a thing.



• Best debut you read? Jodi Taylor - Just One Damned Thing After Another
  Really solid for a debut, I thought. Slowly going through the series, but I find this a bit more nail-bitey than some other things, and so have been going a bit slow.



• Best Worldbuilding/Most Vivid Setting You Read This Year? Hm. I was really impressed by the amount of worldbuilding in Sharon Shinn - The Shuddering City.
  It's a one-off, from an author who usually writes series, and I think in general I enjoy her world-building elements, but this book I think did a pretty good job of doing the amount of worldbuilding I might expect from a series, doing it all in one book, and not having it weigh down the book, either.



• Book That Put A Smile On Your Face/Was The Most FUN To Read? Possibly the ridiculous Gail Carriger Tinkered Starsong trilogy? ...I definitely think I also cried in there somewhere, but it was in between ridiculous funtimes fake kpop boy band competition in space, so y'know. Mostly fun.



• Book That Made You Cry Or Nearly Cry in 2023?

As per usual, I cried a lot. Included in this are:



• Jennette McCurdy - I'm Glad my Mom Died


• Maxwell King - The Good Neighbor


• Courtney Milan - The Devil Comes Courting


• Yaa Gyasi - Homegoing


• ...at least one of the Raksura books, but which one(s) I'm not sure


• Emily Tesh - Some Desperate Glory


• Victoria Goddard - The Hands of the Emperor


• Trevor Noah - Born a Crime (the bit with his mom, ye gods)



Let's pretend that was all of them. I don't think it was, but let's pretend.


• Hidden Gem Of The Year?
  Am I allowed to say Rebecca Fraimow - The Iron Children?
  I really enjoyed this, I've read nothing else quite like it, and I think more people should read it... Let's say I'm allowed to say it. :)



• Book That Crushed Your Soul? Yaa Gyasi - Homegoing
  It was not *wholly* soul crushing. There were bits of hope in there. But in between some fair amount of bleak.
  



• Most Unique Book You Read In 2023? Uhhh. Maybe Michael J. Sandel - What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets?
  Not because it was good. We bookclubbed it and all agreed: this was a series of things intended to be lectures which absolutely did not work well as chapters. Basically every chapter was written to be frustrating and infuriating seemingly for the purpose of provoking discussion? But like, when you read that on your own, it's just you yelling at the book a lot and when your fury boils over, occasionally DMing someone else in bookclub with you so you can both froth at the mouth together. Would not recommend.



• Book That Made You The Most Mad (doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t like it)? I guess I could say same as the above, but that seems like "This Person Is A Professor, Not An Author, Those Are Overlapping, But Not Interchangeable Skillsets" which I'm not loving as a reason for this category.
  Instead, let's say Trevor Noah - Born a Crime.

My list of Books I Finished Despite Loathing was still short this year, huzzah! I think it was just two - Isaac Asimov - Foundation, which I'd already mentioned, including why. And Thea Harrison - The Adversary, which was a novella, so reasonably short, and just. So inane. I generally have liked her other stuff for being simplistic, escapist, nonsense. This was simplistic and nonsense, but I'm not sure I detected any positive attributes. Oh well. We all have off days.

And generally I enjoyed a lot of what I read - in my personal ratings I had >60% with <3 or even more enthusiastic than that attached. So overall, good year! I was really happy with this.

Comments

[rabswom]

Oh, Daisie and I LOVE LOVE LOVE all the murderbot books. We actually got to see Martha Wells do a Q&A when we were in San Francisco in November, which was awesome.

We're reading Yaa Gyasi - Homegoing with our book club this month. I expect to be crushed.

[sandrylene]

Oh dang, that's awesome! I'd love to see Martha Wells live. Here's hoping some future day!

Good luck with Homegoing - it was really interesting, engaging and overall kind of hopeful, despite the crushing bits. So.... hang in there, I suppose?