Best Books of 2023

I’ve read some really good books this year! I finished at a respectable 89 books and I met both the number of books and the book challenge goals. Top genres are sci-fi romance, fantasy/sci-fi, historical mystery, YA, and romance adjacent (which includes a variety of genres with a small romantic subplot; many of my books are in overlapping categories). The YA is a bit of a surprise, but it includes the Spy X Family manga that I borrowed from my nephew. 61% of the books I read, I purchased. And 58% were paper vs electronic, which is opposite from last year, but I did read a bunch of stuff off my shelf so that could be why. 

I decided against listing any web comics this year. My favorites were on hiatus most of the year and others I loved have completed. I’m still reading them, but have gone back to waiting and reading multiple episodes at a time rather than following daily/weekly. It worked for me this year. I’ve learned that anything I think will happen for next year, will probably not, so I’m just rolling with it.

The ones I own in paper

And here’s my list for 2023:

The Wonder Engine and Thornhedge - T Kingfisher - She’s just one of my favorite authors and I love her books. Her writing is comforting.

Spy X Family Vol 8 - Tatsuya Endo - These manga are just consistently cute but I really loved this one. I love the anime as well.  

Know My Name - Chanel Miller - Hard to read but so worth it.

Annapurna: A Woman’s Place - Arlene Blum - Such an interesting look at an expedition to Annapurna. Told from a woman’s perspective, since the whole team were women, it really got into details I’m always curious about, but books by men never mention: logistics, being away from family, etc. 

Float - Kate Marchant - I found this book through the webtoon that is being drawn right now. It’s not perfect but it hit the spot so much and I loved it. Perfect book at the perfect time.

Sally-Ann - Susan Scarlett -I discovered Susan Scarlett (a pseudonym for Noel Streatfeild) this year and this was my favorite. Such a cute, old fashioned romance. I read it multiple times. 

Evil in Emerald, Terror in Topaz - AM Stuart - I just really enjoy this historical mystery series, and Emerald had a real-life character that I might be related to. I’m so happy that she’s decided to self publish another book. 

The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Sea - Susan Casey - I loved this non-fiction book about the depths of the ocean. I can’t wait to read more by this author.

The Bookshop on the Shore - Jenny Colgan - The male lead bugged me a bit, but I got over it pretty quickly and it turned into another perfect book at the perfect time. 

Divine Rivals - Rebecca Ross - I saw this on GR and saw it was included with Kindle Unlimited so I downloaded a copy and then didn’t read it. And then I decided to just check it out and I wasn’t even 20% when I bought the hard cover and pre-ordered book 2. Loved it!

Honorable Mentions:

Dragonsong - Anne McCaffery - This was a childhood favorite that I re-read. I still love this book. Wasn’t really a fan of the other Pern books, but this one I read many, many times. 

Circe - Madeline Miller - This one frustrated me and made me think and I’m still thinking about it. And the ending was just so perfect.  

Lavender House - Lev AC Rosen - This was a great mystery and I ate it up. 

The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare - Another childhood favorite. It’s simpler than I remember, but what from childhood isn’t? I still love it. 

 

Merry Christmas - Late

I had a nice Christmas. It was very low key and spent with my family. We did our dinner and gift exchange on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day I went to my mom’s house and we made French toast for breakfast and panini’s for lunch and put puzzles together. Then I went home and took a nap. I also took today off work and my nephew came over and we went to a couple book stores. Then, I took down my Christmas tree and decorations. It had been up for over a month so I figured it was ok. I left out a couple things that are more winter than Christmas.

It’s been a nice holiday. As we close out the year, I will be working from home a couple days and spending my evenings possibly cleaning out some spots in my house. I’m ready to close out the year quietly and start the new one a little lighter. 

Monday Morning

Some mornings are worth getting up for. Today as I left my house for work, I opened up my garage and there was a white coat of frost over the grass, trees, and pretty much everything. It was really quite pretty. I couldn't see the mountain because of a layer of fog. I'll pretend it was only fog and not also inversion/pollution. The drive to work was foggy as well. The nice kind that still lets me see where I'm driving. And then when I pulled off the freeway, I noticed that it was actually snowing. Or really thick fog? It was sticking to the ground and cars, super fine and soft. I kind of really love winter.  

I'm completely ready for Christmas. All the gifts have been bought and wrapped and yesterday I delivered treats to my neighbors. I made spiced applesauce bread in fancy baking cups and caramels. I was trying for raspberry caramels like Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory does. These are not them. I used 3 teaspoons of extract and it's not enough. There's only a hint of raspberry. They are still really tasty though. Next time I try it, I'll use raspberry oil instead. 

Anyway, it's going to be a busy week to get through both at work and home, but then starting Friday afternoon, I plan to relax and just have a Merry Christmas. 

Book Goal: Finished

I completed my book reading goal today, officially. I met my # count a few books ago and today I’m at 82 books read so far this year, and all of my different subsets complete: 7 nonfiction, 3 “classics”, 10 paper books I already owned, 5 non-romance, 5 diverse authors, 6 kindle already own, and 5 childhood favorites. I have some thoughts on the whole thing. 

At the beginning of the year it seemed like such a fun challenge and I was excited to find books to fit in each of the categories. It ended being a bit of a bother because I felt I couldn’t always read exactly what I wanted to stay on track with the goal. Hitting 78 books was never really the problem, but getting them in the categories did end up taking some thinking about and pushing off other books. 

I have 958 books on my kindle currently and a lot of them are unread. Going through my kindle was like taking a trip back in time and I can see periods of my life in those books. A lot of books I have read had forgotten about and others I remember buying them and thinking I absolutely had to read them and now I look at them and my tastes have changed and I’m not interested at all. I didn’t even look through all of them to pick out stuff to read so I know there is probably so much I have completely forgotten I have there. 

I do have quite a few paper books sitting on my shelves that I haven’t read and some of the books I really thought I would read this year, just never really appealed. And a couple of them felt like a huge weight was lifted because I finished them. I finally read Circe by Madeline Miller which I had purchased, purged, and repurchased. And now I’m keeping because it was so good and gave me things to think about. LOL

I really like reading non-fiction and will keep reading it. Finding diverse authors was interesting. I did have to make an effort, but there is so much out there to choose from. I initially thought that finding 5 non romance would be hard because I gravitate to having a little bit of romance in the majority of the stuff I read. Turns out it wasn’t that hard. 

I picked some good childhood books to re-read and a couple of them I still love so much. I was surprised to find that Harriet the Spy had a good bit of fat shaming in it which I never noticed it as a kid. I still have all the nostalgia but not sure that one really holds up so well. 

I did find myself looking for smaller books, just so I could keep up, especially with the classics. I didn’t want big tomes this year. It kind of feels like cheating although there is nothing wrong with books of any size. 

So I’ve decided next year there are no goals. It’s going to be a free for all and I want to see where it takes me. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to try new things, but I want to feel free to put books down if they aren’t working, or pick up a really big novel that takes me a month read. I still have a bunch of books on my shelf that I never purge because I’m going to read them “one day”. Well maybe that day will come next year. So my Goodreads goal will probably be somewhere between 12-24 books. Very small just because I like to click on that link and look at my books but I don’t want it to feel restricting at all because I just want to read whatever, whenever. 

Now I’m going to spend this snowy, wet evening with my Christmas lights on and re-reading comfort books and celebrate that I hit my goal and it was good for me to do this year. I found new books and authors and old favorites, which was really the whole point of it all.