We’re entering into January, so it’s time to look back at my reading from 2023.  I read 120 books this year, which is a nice increase on recent years.  I’ve been trying to do more reading, less phone time, so maybe that’s why!  Here’s a look at the details…

1) Best of…
I’ve been splitting my “Best of” books for the past several years, so that I can highlight the ones that were best in very specific ways.

1A) Best Premise: After Anne by Logan Steiner – I loved the idea of a novel retelling the life of my favorite author, L. M. Montgomery.  And then some parts were excellent and some parts seemed like–very strange choices.  I’m fairly sure Steiner and I have read all the same source material (particularly Montgomery’s journals and Rubio’s excellent biography, The Gift of Wings) but we reached some very different conclusions!  I ended up feeling mixed on the book, but I did love that premise.

1B) Best World Building: Indexing by Seanan McGuire – A dark urban fantasy, I loved the exploration of fairy tales and how they impact the world, particularly recognizing how dark and deadly they can actually be!  A very cool magic system and concepts over-laid on (almost) the real world.

1C) Best Romance: A toss-up here, between Book Lovers by Emily Henry and Landline by Rainbow Rowell.  In both cases I enjoyed the romantic couples defying romantic cliches.  The heroine in Book Lovers knows the cliches well and recognizes where she fits in – she’s the big city, high-powered girlfriend who gets dumped for the simple small-town girl – and I loved that twist.  In Landline we see a couple a decade into their relationship who have real challenges but also really love each other, and I liked that a lot.  So many things shouldn’t have worked with the two of them, but I loved it anyway.

1D) Best Character: Eliza Hamilton in My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie – It might be a little unfair since Eliza was a real person, but the book brought her to life beautifully, and really portrayed how amazing a force she was – as more than Alexander Hamilton’s wife.  Although, surprisingly, Eliza and Alexander could also be contenders for best romantic couple!

1E) Best Series: The Raksura Series by Martha Wells – One of the easiest choices this year, I loved this series so much I bought it all when I’d only read the first half.  Amazing worldbuilding (it would take that category if it wasn’t in this one instead) and I loved the found-family feel of it.

1F) Best Nonfiction: The Good Neighbor by Maxwell King – My toddler got into Mister Rogers this year, which sent me off to read this biography of Fred Rogers.  The short version is that he was exactly who you think he was, and the long version highlights the incredible life he had and work he did.  Heartwarming and lovely.

1G) Hardest to Put Down: Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister – This was a very clever, twisty mystery about a woman moving backwards in time to try to solve a murder committed by her teenage son.  Nothing is the way it looks, and it was very intriguing to see how it all came together.

2) Worst Book: We Need to Hang Out by Billy Baker – This was meant to be a memoir of making friends as an adult, but I found it utterly unrelatable.  Virtually every social event he planned or attended sounded terrible (gathering 400 of his closest high school friends!  Attending a New Kids on the Block cruise where everyone dances all the time!  Building a boat even though no one knows how!)  I can appreciate people have different social interests, but none of his strategies seemed to work very well either, so I didn’t even feel I was getting what I was promised.  He also seemed to embody a particular type of masculinity without much self-awareness that not everyone is like him or his friendships.

3) Most Surprising (in a Good Way): After Many Years by L. M. Montgomery – This was surprising because I didn’t know it existed!  I’ve been wanting to find more short stories by Montgomery for years, and somehow missed this being published a few years back.  I suspect I saw something about it, but the title similarity to After Many Days (another collection of her short stories) misled me into thinking I already had it.  It was a quite good collection too – less surprising in content than in existence though!

4) Can’t Believe I Waited Until 2023 To Read It: Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill by Gretchen Rubin – I’ve known about this book ever since I read The Happiness Project years ago, but somehow never picked it up, even though I think Winston Churchill is a fascinating figure.  Watching The Crown pushed me into picking up a Churchill biography, and I thought this would be interesting to finally explore.  The concept didn’t quite work for me, but I’m still surprised it took me this long to pick it up.

5) Most Hilarious Read: Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett – It feels good to have Pratchett back in this category.  I’ve been trying to finish out the last few Discworld books I’ve missed and this was the best of the four I read this year.  A send-up of classic Hollywood, it also filled in a few pieces I’d been missing in the larger Discworld story.

6) Most Satisfying Read: Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld – A very odd but engaging book, this reimagines Hillary Clinton’s life if she had broken up with Bill during law school.  It’s remarkably convincing, and the satisfaction mostly comes from how the 2016 election turns out.  Very, very satisfyingly.

7) Favorite Author: Martha Wells definitely takes this category as my favorite author of 2023.  Although I’d read her before, I really fell in love with her writing in the Raksura series, and ended up reading 10 of her books this year.  Most in the one series, but also others, including a Star Wars book!  She writes beautifully and has a strong found-family thread running through her very different books that I loved.

8) Most Looking Forward to in 2024: Paladin’s Faith by T. Kingfisher – Technically this came out a few weeks ago, but is really bizarrely slow about shipping from Amazon, so I’ll be reading it in 2024.  Kingfisher was my favorite author last year, I’ve read through nearly all of her books I want to read (I’m avoiding her dark horror), and I’m basically thrilled to pieces by a new book in her World of the White Rat, especially a Paladin one.

I think that rounds things up!  So what have you been reading?  What were some of your best and worst of 2023?