The Saturday Morning Post (No. 28) The 2023 Reading Wrap-up

With the end of 2023, the time has rolled around again to look back on the books I've read this past year. 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

This year I started 108 books, finished 93, with 15 DNF books. I have never read more books in a year than in 2023.

In 2022 I started 40 books, finished 25 of them, again, with 15 DNF books. I have to go back into the ancient past, soon after the dinosaurs died off, to find my second best year for reading. That was the year 1966, when I read 100 books, all of them science fiction. The following year I recorded reading 57 SF books, and the only other record I have of books read runs from Feb. 1970 to April 1971. In it I recorded 77 books, which now include more than SF books. There were many years when I may have read only a dozen, or less, especially in the years when I was writing my own books.

So why did I read so many books this year? I think that I can list several reasons.

The first is that I am a fairly fast reader. Not a speed reader, but I can read most books within two or three days. We're looking at 2 books a week for 2023, so I'm not exactly reading at a breakneck pace.

The second reason was that I was not writing for most of the year. I did some revisions on The Girl on the Kerb at the beginning of the year, and I only returned to writing, an hour a day, in October, so that I had the time, and more importantly, the mental bandwidth to read. In the past, I did not like to read books when I had my story in mind and was trying to write it down. One story in my head was enough. So the lack of serious writing left a space in my life that could be filled with reading.

A third factor was that about a year and a half ago, I realized that science fiction wasn't my bag anymore, and probably hadn't been for some time. As a result, I went on a quest to find new genres to read. At first I tried free books from Amazon in a coupe of different genres, with so-so results. But they broke the iron hold SF had on me. I've moved on in two directions. I'm now giving books and authors a try based on recommendations by people in blogs and on the BookTube channels. In addition, I've been rereading some of my favorite books from my selves, many of them for the first time in decades.

And finally, I've been reviewing at least one book every week for this blog. That puts a certain pressure on me to keep reading. The good news on that front, for me, at least, is that I think I have 15 books that I read this year that I have yet to post reviews for. I've got some breathing room. I don't mind falling behind.

I don't know how many books I'll end up reading in 2024. I don't look on it as a contest. I have no goals. We'll see what develops. but honestly, I would be surprised if I got around to reading 92 books in 2024. There are only so many good books.

In any event, below are a list of my best reads for 2023; books that earned an A grade from me, in no particular order. I find it impossible to rank books. The links to the reviews may include other books as well. The (RR) indicates a reread, and  the "?" in the case of the Ellis Peters books because I'm not sure what titles from the library I read 30 years ago.

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara A-       My review

Mister Roberts by Thomas Heggen A-  (RR)     My review

The Razor’s Edge by W Somerset Maugham  A    My review

The High Window by Raymond Chandler A  (RR)     My review

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler  A   (RR)     My review  (a very short one)

Flashman and the Mountain of Light by George MacDonald Fraser A+  (RR)

H. M. S. Surprise by Patrick O’Brian  A+ (RR)     My review  includes Flashman 

Apricot Sky by Ruby Ferguson A   My review

Boy in the Blitz by Colin Perry  A  (RR)    My review

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell  A-/B+    My review

IN GOD WE TRUST  All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd  A  (RR)   My review

Mrs. Tim of the Regiment by D E Stevenson  A      Stay tuned, review coming

A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters  A  (RR??)   Stay tuned, review coming

One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters  A   (RR)       Stay tuned, review coming

Lessons in Chemistry  by Bonni Garmus  A   Stay Tuned, review coming

Saint Peter's Fair by Ellis Peters  A   (RR?)    Stay Tuned, review coming

While my A list includes a lot of rereads, I think that can be simply explained by the fact that the only books I'm going to bother rereading are my favorites. Most of them I haven't read in 10 to 30 plus years, so they were often as fresh as my first (or second) reading.

As for the books that didn't quite make an A; I find that I have read;

31 B books, i.e. books I really liked, many of them just falling short of an A

46 C books, average books. I DNF books that I don't like, so they're good but not great books for me.

1   D book, that I kept reading hoping for the best, but it kept getting worse.

15 DNFed books that I sampled but did not suit my tastes.

Sneak Preview of 2024 reads:

I found those Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael books so enjoyable that I went online to Abe books and ordered all 16 Cadfael mysteries in the 3 book omnibuses version, so you can expect to be seeing reviews of those mysteries scattered throughout the year.

There is of course, the big one; Jasper Fforde's Red Side Story the book that I've been waiting for a decade plus to read.

And... Well, I can't say I can see further into the future than anyone else, so I don't know what else will tickle my fancy. Probably some more rereads from my shelves. Stay tuned.

How was your 2023 in reading?

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