2023, I'm done with you. So very done.
You were the worst. You were the year that made me thinking longingly of 2020 and dream of quarantine bubbles. If you weren't the worst ever, it's because time has thankfully erased all those other memories of the other worst years.
You were the year that
- my 22 year-old parrot died, but only after we tried 6 weeks of anti-fungal therapy and twice-a-day nebulizers
- a trip to St. John's for an island vacation was interrupted by hurricane Leo fears
- my aging mom fell, got diagnosed with a benign brain tumor, and had brain surgery, cementing my role as chief caretaker
- at the same time, my aging dad got Covid, cementing my role as accessory caretaker. Also, the same year I put a tracker on my dad's car keys
- and some other stuff, including a temporary divorce, etc. But never you mind--you know very well what you did
But wait, you wanted me to talk books? Books? Reading?
Alright, whatever, fine. I'll take a stab at it.
Clearly, with the above, I listened to the dulcet tones of Kobna Holdbrook Smith reading me my favorite installments of the Peter Grant series again, which I absolutely did not mark on Goodreads because at this point, I'm simply embarrassed. If they were on a record, I would have worn them out. Whispers Underground and The Hanging Tree were joined by a re-listen of Amongst Our Weapons and Furthest Station.
Advance reader copies came through for me, quite possibly because at times, the obligation to turn in a review was the greatest motivating factor in starting a book. Winners? The almost-always reliable Robert Jackson Bennett with The Tainted Cup, hopefully the start of a new mystery series. Highly recommended for anyone who likes fantasy mixed in with their mysteries. Otherwise, novellas were almost 100% my reading length of choice. T. Kingfisher's young-adult Illuminations was clever, along with The Monks of Appalling Dreadfulness. Kate Daniels returning in Magic Claims was entertaining, good enough to read twice. Tchaikovsky's One Day All of This Might Be Yours was another remarkable one. I started out last year with an exceptional novel from Max Gladstone's new Craft series called Dead Country. I've been lucky enough to get the next, so here's hoping that starts me off well with 2024.
Interestingly, most of my reads seemed to be set in space--I was a big fan of spaceships this year, usually the low budget, feel-good, HEA sort that will be fairly forgettable--but when I returned to Earth, there were a couple of non-fiction standouts: autobiographies from Black men, The Bodies Keep Coming and Better Living Through Birding.
As far as numbers, I read my normal 110 books or so. I had a LOT more false starts this year than ever before, an experience that was occasionally frustrating given how much I usually love stories. I hope no one was closely watching my 'currently reading;' books stayed for months or would come and go in the course of a day or would reappear just long enough for a tl;dr review.
Nonetheless, I persevered through both reading and the year without resorting to violence, perhaps discovering moments of calm.
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