Here are the books I finished reading this year.

Venomous Lumpsucker Hunt, Gather, Parent The Mountain in the Sea Blockade Billy A Wizard of Earthsea Heat 2 Demon Copperhead Mooncalves: Strange Stories A Walk in the Woods Termination Shock Sea of Tranquility Lark Ascending This Census-taker The Magician's Nephew The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

This was a very good book year for me. Probably the best in a decade or so in terms of both quantity and quality. Here are a few themes and highlights.

  • I got back into reading physical books this year and realized that this is my preferred medium. Of the 15 books that I finished in 2023, three were on my Kindle and the rest were all physical hard copies. I did not listen to any audiobooks this year.
  • My favorite book I read this year was, without a doubt, The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler. I cannot wait for the follow-up, The Tusks of Extinction, which I’ve already pre-ordered and is scheduled to ship on January 16th. I loved everything about this book.
  • I also read several others that I would give a full five-stars to: Heat 2, Demon Copperhead, A Walk in the Woods, and This Census-Taker.
  • Every book I finished this year was worth the time. One of the changes to my approach that I’d credit with this “good book year” was a new policy to give up on a book more easily than I’ve done in the past without any guilt. Sometimes, a book just doesn’t click for whatever reason and I think that’s OK. This has been a sticking point at times in the past where I’ve tried to keep making it happen and felt like I couldn’t' move on to something else until I’d finished what I’d started and then wound up reading nothing instead of just moving on. Life’s too short and there are way too many books for that. The one exception to this was Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock, which I did not like but read to the end anyway, even though it was also the longest book I read this year. Even though I didn’t like it, it had some really interesting ideas and at least one or two interesting characters that made it worth the slog.
  • I read the two Narnia books with my six-year-old son. He really loved them and I loved experiencing them with him. I even enjoyed revisiting these books, despite some negative associations stemming from an undergraduate C. S. Lewis survey course. I expect that we’ll continue exploring this series together this year.

Looking forward to reading even more in 2024. Bring on the weird.