Books we read in 2023

[Mike]

I had 101 books read to me in 2023. 900 hours of audiobook listening, so an average of 9 hours per book.

As far as I can tell, 50% of the books I read were written by women, and 28% by persons of color. Just counting them up based on my recollections, only 20% had any queer representation (good or bad).

And it turns out, there were only 10 of the books that I felt weren't worth my time, but a whopping 60 of them that I enjoyed enough that I would recommend them to others!

Here's my top 20, in order...

1. I Must Betray You -- Ruta Sepetys
2. Babel -- R. F. Kuang
3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian -- Sherman Alexie
4. Thornhedge -- T. Kingfisher
5. The Mere Wife -- Maria Dahvana Headley
6. A Memory Called Empire -- Arkady Martine
7. The House on the Cerulean Sea -- T.J. Klune
8. Children of Ruin -- Adrian Tchaikovsky
9. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow -- Gabrielle Zevin
10. Crying in H Mart -- Michelle Zauner
11. Feed -- M.T. Anderson
12. The Galaxy and the Ground Within -- Becky Chambers
13. Dark Matter -- Blake Crouch
14. Turtles All the Way Down -- John Green
15. The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle -- Stuart Turton
16. The Goblin Emperor -- Katherine Addison
17. Road Out of Winter -- Alison Stine
18. Nettle and Bone -- T. Kingfisher
19. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl -- Jesse Andrews
20. Nothing to See Here -- Kevin Wilson

[Phoebe]

I appreciate the list because I want to read some of these. I bought three new books and I don't know how I'm ever going to get through the pile until June but we will see. I've been reading House of the seven gables and again, It requires reading a bunch of historical contexts so it's slow going. I had to dig into all the Salem witch trials and a bunch of stuff about the lead up to the civil war and so on. I've been struggling over what species of racism Hawthorne is afflicted by, because he is surely afflicted but I think he is aware of and somehow grappling with it in a way that has not been detected by the critics. He's really a genius writer, so it becomes the type of book where you have to pore over every sentence. It's full of moral observations. More to come but highly recommend - if your only prior exposure to this writer is the Scarlet Letter, I have found this one much more to my taste and more interesting.

I started watching the movie version because it had two amazing actors, but right away it became clear that they had completely rewritten a bunch of things in a way no one could tolerate. I'm not sure what to do with that. Watch it and tolerate? I wrote the screenplay already so it's going to upset me.

[Mando]

If you are on Spotify, I just now found their audiobooks section. Most cost extra, but many are free...
I mean, who can resist the Chronicles of Narnia in German...amiright

[Mike]

If you are on Spotify, I just now found their audiobooks section. Most cost extra, but many are free...
I mean, who can resist the Chronicles of Narnia in German...amiright

I just found the same in Spotify. I have a premium Spotify family plan already, so there's a bunch that I already have access to. If I had known that sooner, there's at least four books I wouldn't have needed to be on a wait-list for last year.

[Phoebe]

Spotify audiobooks remains a delightful untouched ground... I hope soon to investigate it.