2023 book meme

via a few people …

How many books did you read this year? Any trends in genre/length/themes/etc?

30, six of which were work-related. 16 were fiction, and only one was in French this year. 2022’s total was 24, so I’m pleased that I managed to beat that.

What are your Top 3 books that you read this year for the first time?

I rated three books five stars, so:

David Lodge, Small world: I read this right at the beginning of the year and barely remember it, but iirc it’s a novel about … petty personal drama among academics? If there are two things I love they’re a. rubbernecking and b. universities, so obviously this suited me.

Dave Eggers, The circle: a novel about social media being terrible, which I lapped up enthusiastically. This was so compelling that I actually read some of it in the office when I should have been working, and finished the whole thing in about three days even though it was nearly 500 pages.

Alan Booth, The roads to Sata: a really sensitive, nuanced travelogue from the 1980s about a journey made on foot through Japan. I find travel writing to be very hit and miss, but this was definitely a hit.

What’s a book you enjoyed more than you expected?

Georges Simenon, Le chien jaune: read mostly for Breizh Content, which ended up being thinner on the ground than I wanted, but I enjoyed the story and it made me concede that I should read more detective novels.

Which books most disappointed you this year?

Robert Holdstock, Merlin’s wood: also read for Breizh Content reasons, also lacked Breizh Content, but less forgivably because it was actually about magical, mystical stuff. Why do you need to concoct a mythology when there’s one right there! What are you doing!

Jay Asher, Thirteen reasons why: we watched the adaptation a few years ago and it was quite entertaining, but the novel turned out to be trash. This is why I don’t read (much) YA.

Did you reread any books? If so, which one was your favourite?

I reread all four of the Hunger Games books after going to see the new film in November. The prequel was my favourite because CS is so awful and gets whumped a lot, I love him.

Did you DNF any books?

Not as such, although there are a couple I started and haven’t gone back to for several months. But that’s not DNFing, that’s just taking a very long hiatus.

Did you start any books that you’d like to finish in the new year?

Those referred to in the previous question. One is The Canterbury tales, the other is a SF anthology from the mid-twentieth century.

Did you read any books outside of your usual preferred genre(s)?

As above, I don’t tend to read detectivey stuff, so Le chien jaune would probably be the main example.

What was your predominant format this year?

Probably ebooks on ReadEra on my phone. I do have an ancient Kindle, but my phone ended up being more convenient (and more suited to whatever eyesight issue I have that results in its being easier to read stuff from tiny screens).

What’s the longest book you read this year?

The Hunger Games prequel. Not counting rereads, it was the Eggers novel, The circle.

Did you reach your reading goal for this year (if you had one)?

My goal was to complete ~kingstoken’s 2023 book bingo and I actually fell short by six or seven squares, so no. However, I did read more than the 25 books the bingo requires, and more than last year’s total, so I’m happy enough with that. The bingo was mostly a way of structuring my reading without being completely overwhelmed by the size of the TBR list.

What books from your TBR did you not get to this year, but are excited to read in 2024? Do you have any other 2024 goals?

I have a few Final Fantasy tie-in novels that I’m looking forward to reading (Traces of two pasts, which I received as a Christmas present; the FF15 one, which will have to wait until I’ve finished playing the game; and the FF1/2/3 novelisation). Beyond that I have roughly 200 books in the “own but have not yet read” category, so … some of those, probably.

A 2024 goal that I’m concocting right now based on the above: I need to read more than one book in French, because only reading one book in French is pretty awful tbh.