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My 2023 reading list

This year I read even fewer books than last. Far fewer of these were repeats, though: Aside from my periodic reread of Tolkien (which I’m counting as three books, and which is getting less frequent as the years go on), I’d only read one of these before.

As with 2021 and 2022, I continue to log each book to Blurt as I finish it; this is a recap of the year, lightly editing those posts, and grouping books into categories:1

All books are novels that I read for the first time, unless otherwise noted. Within each category, they’re listed in the order I read them. As usual, I liked far more of the books than I was neutral towards, and I actively disliked just one: I either choose books well, or have very low standards.

The pinnacle

Good

Okay

Very mixed feelings

Unfinished

Appendix: stats

2023 2022 2021
finished 30 40 55
unfinished 1 1 2
the pinnacle 2 (7%) 2 (5%) 3 (5%)
recommended 12 (40%) 17 (41%) 17 (30%)
good 12 (40%) 19 (46%) 29 (51%)
okay 2 (7%) 1 (2%) 5 (9%)
very mixed feelings 1 (3%)
not recommended / ire-inducing 1 (3%) 2 (5%) 3 (5%)
nonfiction 3 (10%) 4 (10%) 11 (19%)
published recently 10 (33%) 11 (28%) 21 (37%)
reread 4 (13%) 18 (45%) 13 (23%)
distinct authors 19 24 39
new-to-me authors 13 (68%) 14 (58%) 21 (54%)

“Published recently” means that year or the year before. For books with multiple authors, “distinct authors” counts each separately, which might skew the counts a little towards nonfiction.


  1. This is shamelessly stolen from Ken and Robin Consume Media, which applies (most of) these categories to movies and TV shows in addition to books. ↩︎