My 2023 reading list

This year I read even fewer books than last. Far fewer of these were repeats, though: Aside from my periodic reread of Tolkien (which I’m counting as three books, and which is getting less frequent as the years go on), I’d only read one of these before.

As with 2021 and 2022, I continue to log each book to Blurt as I finish it; this is a recap of the year, lightly editing those posts, and grouping books into categories:¹

All books are novels that I read for the first time, unless otherwise noted. Within each category, they’re listed in the order I read them. As usual, I liked far more of the books than I was neutral towards, and I actively disliked just one: I either choose books well, or have very low standards.

The pinnacle

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  Golden Hill (Francis Spufford, 2016): Set in 1746 New York, this felt Austinesque like the best Aubrey/Maturin stories, though without the nautical adventure. It started out as a fun romp; by the end it became something else, very satisfying but more melancholy. This was the second book I read this year, and as I suspected, it was my favorite new read. I ended up rereading the ending two or three times, which I never do.

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  The Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954, reread): The Lord of the Rings, part 1, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. This was something like my twentieth time reading this book. One thing that strikes me from this reading is how economical it is — seriously! — with the important exception of the poetry, which felt self-indulgent. Pay attention to how much happens in any given chapter, and how short that chapter is compared to how it would have been written by a modern author. Inner lives of the characters, and even much of the outer lives, are pared down, leaving us with the scope of an epic. Speaking of epic sagas, this is very much a book that wants to be read aloud.

Recommended

• The Glass Hotel (Emily St. John Mandel, 2020): Ostensibly (and, to be fair, mostly) about a financial con, it’s also somehow about ghosts and maybe alternate realities. I think this is my favorite of her books. The most obvious St. John Mandel motif was the improbable connections between characters; some of the characters were hapless, but not as intensely so as in her earlier books.

• Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel, 2009): Thomas Cromwell series, book 1. This was a big chonker of a book, about Thomas Cromwell’s rise from son of a blacksmith to most trusted councilor of Henry VIII (Henry the Butthead). Very enjoyable. I had one significant kvetch: Whether a writing tic or a stylistic choice, there were many passages with ambiguous pronoun references; sometimes I had to reread multiple times to understand what was happening.

• Sea of Tranquility (Emily St. John Mandel, 2022): About plague, time travel, and the simulation hypothesis. Includes some more-mature forms of her standard motifs, plus links to other parts of the St. John Mandel Literary Universe. Quite good.

• Babel (R.F. Kuang, 2022): About the translators’ college at Oxford in the 1830s that worked magic based on the tension between imperfectly-translated terms, and thus fueled the British Empire. About empire of course, and appropriation and systemic racism and such. I enjoyed this; in hindsight I’m not sure it quite held together as well as it felt at the time, but it’s certainly worth reading.

• The Steerswoman (Rosemary Kirstein, 1989): The Steerswoman, book 1. A kind of a fantasy novel about a group of (mostly) women who gather and share knowledge, and a group of (mostly) men who hoard it. This feels like the kind of story that a younger Ursula K. Le Guin might have written.

• Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Heather Fawcett, 2023): This was a charming story about two academics — the titular Wilde, junior and diligent and quite possibly neurodivergent, and a tenured professor, lazy and charming and (Wilde suspects) prone to falsifying his research. Seasoned with little bits of horror, but still quite fun and cozy.

• Termination Shock (Neal Stephenson, 2021): I had dragged my feet on this book because the marketing had put me off; this was apparently a Very Important book with Things to Say. I shouldn’t have paid attention: This was Stephenson’s most fun book since at least Reamde, and a very characteristic one, with hijinx, unlikely characters, passages where Stephenson showed off the cool research he’d done — the only thing missing was the badass Russian with a heart of gold. Two notes: First, one exposition dump early in the book dragged a bit, though at least Stephenson had the character acknowledge it. And second, the climax felt similar to those in Seveneves and Reamde, and possibly others further back that I’ve forgotten.

• The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson, 1995): The only book Stephenson has written solo that I hadn’t read (other than The Big U — is that any good?). Some amazing imagery, and carefully-thought-out social impacts of nanotechnology and post-scarcity that rhymed in some ways with Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series. The book has some vestiges of its time (e.g. some really dated stereotyping), and an abrupt ending characteristic of his earlier work, but the ending worked and overall I really liked the book.

• Children of Ruin (Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2019): Children of Time, book 2. Tchaikovsky does the same thing as he did in his previous, but with an additional element and resulting different themes. There was also a bit of horror — beyond the previous book’s simple arachnophobia triggers — such that I didn’t want to put the book down in those sections.

• Crook Manifesto (Colson Whitehead, 2023): A followup to Harlem Shuffle, and equally delightful.

• The Two Towers (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954, reread): The Lord of the Rings, part 2. Another thing I’ve noticed on this reread is that my mental images of the locations are very different. Tolkien’s descriptions seem very clear, and I don’t know why or how I could ever have imagined things as I did in the past, and I don’t think my current images are influenced by the movies in any meaningful way. Curious!

• The Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955, reread): The Lord of the Rings, part 3. It turns out I hadn’t read all the appendices, or had thoroughly forgotten some of them. I like to think that everybody should read them, but … well, they’re not part of the main story for a reason. This book, for all its various virtues, was the volume with most of the racist characterizations we think of as we reevaluate Tolkien — not just the Haradrim and Easterlings, but even some of his depictions of orcs cross the line. Important to be aware of flaws in a work, even (or especially) if you otherwise love it.

Good

• The Old Ways (Robert Macfarlane, 2012, nonfiction). This is a rambling look at walking, paths, and sailing, and is also (unexpectedly) a little biography of Edward Thomas. I lost momentum about three quarters of the way through, but managed to recover and finish. Maybe I would have preferred the book to be a little shorter, but on the other hand it resonated with me enough that I bought a copy to have on hand when the library loan ends.

• Imaginary Peaks (Katie Ives, 2021, nonfiction): The core of the book is a mountain climbing hoax, but it extends outwards to cartography and its difficulties, hoaxes more generally, and colonialism, among other things. The book referenced several books and authors also referenced in The Old Ways, not entirely surprisingly.

• Joan (Katherine J. Chen, 2022): Historical fiction about Joan of Arc. Chen, properly, wrote her own interpretation of Joan, one who’s less a holy maid with visions and more “the Thomas Edison of handing a dude his ass” (note: not a quote from the book). The final part of the book was difficult to read — it’s a tragedy after all — but at least we don’t get to her being (spoiler for approx. six-century-old history) burnt at the stake. Side note / content warning / complaint: In the book, Joan’s sister is raped (offscreen, and handled delicately, but). I hope someday we can find a better plot point to motivate the main character.

• Dead Country (Max Gladstone, 2023): The Craft Wars, book 1, or perhaps The Craft Sequence, book 7, depending how you count. (It’s the latter, I think.) Anyway, interestingly, this book sort of rhymed with Gladstone’s previous, Last Exit, sharing some motifs, but I think this was the better book: tighter and with less clumsy preaching.

• The Echo Wife (Sarah Gailey, 2021): I read it compulsively, but it was really hard, about sexism and abuse and surviving them. It didn’t help that the protagonist — or at least the narrator, maybe she’s not the protagonist — is not especially likeable. I’m glad I read this, but I can’t easily recommend it.

• The Outskirter’s Secret (Rosemary Kirstein, 1992): The Steerswoman, book 2. Confirms the Le Guin vibes I got from the first book: ecology and sociology are core to the story. If you read and enjoyed The Steerswoman, bump this (and the following books) up to Recommended.

• The Lost Steersman (Rosemary Kirstein, 2003): The Steerswoman, book 3. This was a little more harrowing than the previous two, but (or thus?) a little more compelling. These books are self-published, and could have used another pass from a copyeditor, but nothing that ruins the read.

• The Language of Power (Rosemary Kirstein, 2004): The Steerswoman, book 4. This is clearly not the end of the series, though it ends on an adequately-satisfying note, but it’s the most-recently published. (Kirstein is apparently continuing to write.) Less Le Guin–esque than the others, but still reminiscent. I’ve enjoyed all these books.

• Bring Up the Bodies (Hilary Mantel, 2012): Thomas Cromwell series, book 2. I very much enjoyed this. It feels like the political parts of A Song of Ice and Fire, but with a wry sense of humor, and without the fantasy elements (obviously) and glorified cruelty that became increasingly central to that series. (Or, rather, probably vice versa: That series clearly drew some of its inspiration from these historical events.) Amusingly, the stylistic tic of Wolf Hall was transformed into a different tic which eliminated almost all pronoun ambiguity; it felt forced at the beginning, but it gradually won me over. If you read and enjoyed Wolf Hall, bump this (and the following book) up to Recommended.

• The Mirror & the Light (Hilary Mantel, 2020): Thomas Cromwell trilogy, book 3. This was a huge book, and reading it felt a little bit like work, but it was absolutely worth it by the end: We know how the story must play out, even if we haven’t read the history, but it remains compelling to the last page. Probably don’t bother reading this if you haven’t first read Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, but if you have, this is a must.

• Seveneves (Neal Stephenson, 2015, reread): I still find the first two-thirds of the book intensely compelling. I had trouble connecting as well as with the last third, though. I wonder if it should have been expanded and broken into a second book? It’s an important part of the story, but I feel like it wanted a little more space to breathe, and a little less recounting of history.

• These Burning Stars (Bethany Jacobs, 2023): The Kindom Trilogy, book 1. I almost put the book down early, when it repeatedly poked at a stylistic peeve of mine, but Jacobs’s writing stepped up just in time, and I enjoyed the rest of the book to the end.

Okay

• Saving Time (Jenny Odell, 2023, nonfiction): I read this slowly and sporadically, as I do with a lot of nonfiction, and I’m not sure what to make of it. There seem to be some deep insights about how we perceive time and how parts of it are a social construction, along with digressions about labor and inequity that Odell manages to pull back to the main topic, along with bits that feel a little too woo-woo for me.

• Fall (Neal Stephenson, 2019): I can’t even start to analyze this through the lens of Goethe’s three questions: I couldn’t tell what Stephenson wanted his book to be (about uploading consciousness? a retelling of Paradise Lost? a fantasy quest? mad about the internet and/or religious fundamentalism?), and so I can’t even judge whether he succeeded, much less whether it was worth doing. And I can’t tell if it ended up more or less than the sum of its parts. I will say that I was kind of tired of the book around the ⅘︎ point (though the ending picked up a bit), and I feel pretty sure this wasn’t his best work.

Very mixed feelings

• The Vaster Wilds (Lauren Groff, 2023): A beautifully-written, incredibly-bleak story of a girl who escapes the famine in colonial Jamestown. What she finds is barely better, and the glow of light and hope at the very end didn’t do much to counter the darkness of the rest of the story. I’m glad I read this, and I enjoyed it in some ways, and cannot recommend it wholeheartedly, unless you value how well words are put together more than what happens to the book’s only real character.

Not recommended

• The Terraformers (Annalee Newitz, 2023): I almost put this one down unfinished: The setting and story are incredibly inventive, and the characters’ portrayal and motivations very one-dimensional and clumsy. I actually found myself skimming parts, which I almost never do with fiction.

Unfinished

• After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000–5000 BC (Steven Mithen, 2004): I’m enjoying this, but it’s a big chonk of a book. I set it aside, but have dipped back into it occasionally, and will make it through eventually.

Appendix: stats

“Published recently” means that year or the year before. For books with multiple authors, “distinct authors” counts each separately, which might skew the counts a little towards nonfiction.