2023 Year in Review

Tell us about your reading year. How many books? Best? Worst? Surprises? Any info you'd like to share....

Here is my year in review:

I read 120 books, 42 of which were nonfiction (35%)

Best Fiction (in random order)

The Widows by Suzette Mayr
Sutton by J.R. Moehringer
Bina: A Novel in Warnings by Anakana Schofield
When We Lost our Heads by Heather O'Neill
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

Best Nonfiction (in no particular order)

Friendly Fire: How Israel Became its Own Worst Enemy and the Hope for its Future by Ami Ayalon
The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig
Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower by Charlie Angus
Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

The Worst (random order)

Psychology of Stupidity by Jean-Francois Marmion
Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World by Mo Gawdat
Look for Me by Edeet Ravel
The Baker Who Pretended to be King of Portugal by Ruth Mackay
The Girl He Left Behind by Beatrice MacNeil

My year in review:
84 books, which is the first time in a long time I've read this much
39 books in French (my native tongue)
I visited over 28 countries in 5 continents

Favourites include:
La civilisation, ma Mère!... by Driss Chraïbi
Night Boat to Tangiers by Kevin Barry
Petit traité sur le racisme by Dany Laferrière
Wordslut by Amanda Montell
H(A)PPY by Nicola Barker

Disappointments include:
Cultish by Amanda Montell
Les têtes à Papineau by Jacques Godbout (even though the ending is gut-punching)
Pageboy by Elliot Page
The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fjord
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

>3 Cecilturtle: interesting we both listed Wordslut!

>4 LynnB: I'm pretty sure it's thanks to you, I picked it up. I thoroughly enjoyed it and then was promptly disappointed by Cultish which is just weak and boring. Oh well :)

It is always wonderful to see what others have rated as excellent books!

I had a good reading year, reading 60 books 32 non fiction and 28 fiction.
Here are my favourites!

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry
The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin NF
Olive, Mabel and Me by Andrew Cotter NF
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Haven by Emma Donoghue
The New Puritans by Andrew Doyle NF
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Oh and anything by Claire Keegan, her wonderful short stories or short novels.