Books of 2023
A wrap up of my year's reading (including favs and stats)
Firstly, welcome to my Substack, I’m glad you’re here and appreciative of you subscribing. I plan to write about what I’m reading, watching at the theatre (as many of you will know I moonlight as a theatre journalist) and writing & publishing chat. I’d love to hear what you’re most interested in reading from me so please do get in touch and let me know.
The headlines
I’ve lured you in with promises of literary insight and am now revealing that this year I read the least books total since I started keeping track. I also read less books that came out this year than I have since I started paying attention to publishing. Having spent years as a librarian then book blogger then journalist then literary scout, being released from organising my reading around publication dates is freeing but it does mean what crops up in these missives will be a mix of contemporary recommendations and whatever I’m into of the moment (eg this year I reread every complete Austen novel, but I’m going to do a separate post on that so if ranking Austen heroes and heroines by arbitrary standards is your thing, please stick around).
This year is not the most representative of how I usually read. For example, the past six years I’ve read the whole Women’s Prize list, which I didn’t this year, but I also started my podcast, where I speak to other writers about their most beloved children’s or YA book. This skewed me more even heavily than normal towards children’s and especially YA books, which I don’t usually read a lot of. I also have been working on my new fantasy series which has meant going back to a lot of fantasy I enjoyed growing up. I always read a fair amount of fantasy but it’s even more heavily represented here than usual.
The stats
I use a combo of an Excel spreadsheet and Storygraph to chart my reading (I’m on there privately and anonymously, you won’t be able to find me!). So here are some stats from those two sources, don’t come for me if the numbers add up wrong.
I read 81 books this year (my reading year runs mid-December to mid-December, anything from now on goes into next year’s stats).
32 were adult fiction, 24 were children’s fiction and 11 were YA (there were also four non-fiction books, one collection of short stories, one graphic novel). It also includes 8 picture books which I’m never sure how to count as I don’t want to diminish the quality and importance of good picture books by excluding them but also they are obviously very quick reads.
21 were published this year, 17 were from the last five years, nine from the 2000s, 12 from the 80s and 90s, 12 from the 50s - 70s, seven from the 19th century with a 1905 and 1911 book a piece to finish the list.
I won’t break down every genre but the top two were fantasy (31 books) and literary fiction (23 books).
I read 35 books for the podcast, and eight for events I was chairing. I would say 16 of the rest I read for pure pleasure, and the others occupy a grey area of books I was genuinely keen to read but the timing was dictated by professional purposes.
My most read authors were Jane Austen (6), John Burningham (5), Garth Nix (4), Eleanor Catton (3) and Terry Pratchett (3).
Storygraph operates on star ratings out of five and there my average rating was 3.82. I gave 14 books ratings under 3 stars and 19 ratings of 4.5 or higher (this comes from doing a lot of rereads of my favourite fantasy books, the previous few years skew lower!).
2023 favs
(the links go to my bookshop page and are affiliate links so thank you if you buy that way!)
Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang - I read this and Pam’s debut (see below) as she was a guest on the podcast. I loved both of them and I also loved that they were very different from each other. This is set in a near future where a smog has rendered most food ungrowable but a young chef manages to get a job in a mountaintop survivalist community for the incredibly rich. It’s about food and pleasure and wealth and climate change with just the right balance of intensity, visceral food/sex/vioelnce and hope. Delicious, one might say.
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray - along with everyone else I thought this was excellent. I did not perhaps reach the levels of fervour others did - I felt fairly sanguine about it not winning the Booker - but it really is a beautifully crafted, beautifully written novel. Funny, sad, clever, tense and one of those books you feel in absolutely safe hands reading because you feel the author is so in control of their craft. Proof of sanguinity is me looking very happy for Paul Lynch in the background of literally every shot from the Booker.
i have not read prophet song but i realised i was right behind him and needed to look suitably happy Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton - I’ve loved Eleanor’s writing since I was a school librarian and me and my students in our Man Booker shadowing group fell in love with The Luminaries (more on that and her other two books below). Birnam Wood is a literary eco-thriller for want of a better genre description. Set in New Zealand and focused on a community group of gardening activists and the billionaire they become entangled with. Tense, sharp and also hugely enjoyable with a couple of excellent twists that provoked genuine hand-to-mouth gasps.
Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh - Sophie’s debut, The Water Cure, is a favourite and this has some elements in common with that in terms of a dreamy (nightmarish?) quality, lyrical but not obfuscating writing style and a rooting-for-women-making-terrible-decisions energy (which I enjoy much more in this dreamy, literary genre than a contemporary disaster millennial genre).
Mister, Mister by Guy Gunaratne - it’s fairly rare to encounter a book that feels genuinely original and this did that for me. It’s almost the opposite of what a book of this nature tends to be - an undoing of identity/an anti-coming-of-age book. It traces the life of a Muslim radicalist poet to the immigration detention centre he has ended up in and it consistently refuses an easy narrative. Fresh, clever and challenging but in a very satisfying way. A book I spent a lot of time thinking about after I’d finished it.
The List by Yomi Adegoke - I’ve co-curated and hosted the Lush Book Club since 2017 and we relaunched post-pandemic this year with Yomi as our first guest. The List is about cancel culture, among other things, and tackles it in such a nuanced, interesting way - as did Yomi at our event. The book is knotty and sharp with some very funny satirising of the British media atmosphere over the last five or so years.
Penance by Eliza Clark - Eliza and I have been Internet pals for a while (we also learned relatively recently that we went to the same high school) but I had been anxious about reading her debut, Boy Parts, as the Internet deemed it deeply unpleasant which is not my usual jam. I ended up reading that and her follow-up, Penance, this year and really liking them both. While Boy Parts undeniably is a dark ride, I actually found Penance more distressing although I also preferred it. It’s fake true crime book that feels desperately real and skewers society’s fascination with true crime while also being a brilliant window of teenage girlhood.
My two favourite children’s books were Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell, which is currently deservedly winning everything and The Kingdom Over the Sea by Zohra Nabi, one of the best children’s fantasy debuts I’ve read in years.
Highlights from the rest of my reading year
The Luminaries & The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton - as I mentioned above, I’ve long been a fan of Eleanor’s writing and The Luminaries is potentially my all time favourite book - certainly in the top five. Being a big fan of the book on Twitter in my librarian/book blogger days actually got me an invite to one of the first publishing parties I ever went to and everything came pleasingly full circle this year when I met Eleanor properly when I interviewed her at Cheltenham Literary Festival and we hit it off, and I ended up being her date to the Booker. I reread The Luminaries for the Cheltenham event and was reminded all over again how truly brilliant it is but I also read her debut for the first time which is a sharp and strange almost metafictional novel about performance and power - I really loved it.
The Old Kingdom Trilogy by Garth Nix - I’m gently superstitious about what I read over Christmas/New Year - I like to read something long/interesting/immersive to go into the new year. Last year I reread Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and I brought in 2023 with Garth Nix. These are some of my favourite fantasy books, such brilliant world building, beautifully drawn characters, genuinely frightening villains and a gorgeous ending. I also love fantasy series like this, or Earthsea, where each book progresses in time and we see characters throughout their lives.
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens & Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - I decided to read David Copperfield before getting to Demon Copperhead and it basically scuppered my Women’s Prize reading as it took me most of a month as I was on deadline at the same time. But I adored it. I’ve never really been a Dickens gal but this changed my mind - I cannot tell you what a good time I had reading it. I laughed! I cried! I cursed the name of Uriah Heap! And while many friends have read Demon Copperhead without the Dickens and loved it (a testament to how well Kingsolver does it) I personally found reading them back to back a brilliant experience. I was delighted that Demon Copperhead won the Women’s Prize - see below.
me, delighted that demon copperhead won the women’s prize The Other Wind & Tales of Earthsea by Ursula K LeGuin - Earthsea is one of my foundational book series, and a really totemic series for my new book (Whetherwhy Chronicles - out in September!). I had never read the book of short stories or the last book, which LeGuin wrote 11 years after Tehanu. They are both as gorgeous and wise as the rest of the series, the ending of The Other Wind made me weep and is a perfect end - I’d really encourage you to read it if you’re an Earthsea fan but never got that far.
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien - as I’ve mentioned, I did a LOT of fantasy rereading this year to gear me up for finishing the first draft of my new book and I am a LotR girlie in my heart. Lord of the Rings was my first online fandom community as a teenager and I was DEEP into all things Middle Earth - I will perhaps admit to more stories from this era in a future post, we’ll see how much I decide to embarrass myself.
if you know, you know How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang - I though Zhang’s debut was absolutely excellent. An alternate Western, it’s about two orphaned Chinese-American sisters making their way during the Californian gold rush. It has a sort of dark fairy tale feel and is bracing, sad and brilliant.
The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li - I adore Li’s fiction and non-fiction (I am delighted that she’s going to be one of the Booker Prize judges for 2024). I read this shortly before Cursed Bread and I think they make an excellent duo - dreamy, literary writing, a focus on girl/womanhood and shaping identity in reaction to another girl/woman.
I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel - Despite having enjoyed several of them I had believed that I had reached my limit of millennial disaster women novels but this one slipped through through sheer forces of its stylishness. If you fear you have also read one too many books about modern women making terrible decisions, I’d urge you to try this one, and if you appetite for those books remains undimmed, I’d recommend you put this to the top of your pile.
Future plans
as well as regular updates on what i’m reading, let me know which of these you’d like to read…
My (mainly immersive) theatre highlights from this year and what I’m looking forward to next year.
A wrap up of my Jane Austen reread including a ranking of the best Austen heroes & heroines & handsome ne’er-do-wells.
I have finally ventured into Sarah J Maas’s ACOTAR universe and am having the best and worst time of my life and have many thoughts…
they aren’t good books but they do have good memes Perhaps a post about the process of doing structural edits on my new fantasy series, if that is something of interest..?
I mentioned my Christmas book superstition and this year I’m going with Gormenghast and may report back on that experience…
But for now, if you’ve got this far, thank you for reading/subscribing and wishing you and yours and happy and peaceful festive period and New Year’s celebration!
Birnam Wood destroyed me!! Putting The Book of Goose on my list too.
I hope you share your ACOTAR thoughts at some point because that series is SUCH a wild ride!