The Best of 2023

 

This is a place to celebrate and review my reading journey over the last year. And...despite my reading rate going down a bit in the last two months, 2023 was still a pretty strong year for reading. For the third year in a row I managed to top 200 books read (which hadn't happened for quite a while before 2021). I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get to plant my flag atop Mount Olympus on Mars in my Mount TBR Reading Challenge for a third year. Olympus (read at least 150 books from my own stacks) is my ultimate goal every year, even though my declared goal is Mount Everest (100 books). I made Everest and loaded up the rocket ship back in late September determined to visit Marvin Martian, but fell short of the final goal by 16 books. But I've shifted another 134 books off my TBR mountain range. Other victories included completing all of the challenge goals I set for myself for 2023 (all 39 of them!).Overall, a very satisfying year for this reader and challenge-aholic. I still don't visit my fellow bloggers as often as I used to (hardly at all--I'm sorry, folks!). I wish I could go back to the early days of the blog when I seemed to have time to read and write reviews and go visit all my virtual friends....why does the time seem to fly so much faster these days (and faster every year?

But...back to celebrating. Let's take a look at the year-end reading stats.

Total Books Read: 204

Books Owned & Read: 134

Pages Read: 48,001

Percentage of Rereads: 19%

Percentage of New-to-Me Authors: 33%

Percentage Mystery: 77%

Percentage Nonfiction: 7%

Percentage by Women: 45%

Percentage Written 2000+: 38%

Percentage Non-US/UK: 10%

Non-US/UK Authors: Argentinian, Australian, Belgian, Canadian, Canadian/Singapore, Czech Republic, Danish, Irish, Swedish, Trinidad

Non-US States/UK Settings: Australia, Austria China, Denmark, a Fantasy World, Fictitious European Country, France, Germany, Freece, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Middle East (unspecified), Outer Space, Poland, Ship (Atlantic Ocean), South America (unspecified), Sweden, Tanzania, Trinidad, Turkey

Top Vintage Mysteries of 2023 (no rereads)

The Fear Sign by Margery Allingham (Golden Age, 1933; 4 stars)

Psycho by Robert Bloch (Golden Age, 1959; 4 stars)

Death Turns the Tables by John Dickson Carr (Golden Age, 1941; 4 stars)

The Four False Weapons by Carr (Golden Age, 1937; 4 stars)

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (Golden Age, 1939; 4 stars)

Sound of Revelry by Octavus Roy Cohen (Golden Age, 1943; 4 stars)

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper (Silver Age [Fantasy/Mystery], 1965; 4 stars)

Murder for Two by George Harmon Coxe (Golden Age, 1943; 4 stars)

Murder on the Purple Water by Frances Crane (Golden Age, 1947; 4 stars)

The Case Against Paul Raeburn by John Creasey (Golden Age, 1948; 4 stars)

The Figure in the Dusk by John Creasey (Golden Age, 1951; 4 stars)

Inspector West Kicks Off by John Creasey (Golden Age, 1949; 4 stars)

And So to Murder by Carter Dickson (Golden Age, 1940; 4 stars)

The White Priory Murders by Dickson (Golden Age, 1934; 4 stars)

The Angry Heart by Leslie Edgley (Golden Age, 1947; 4 stars)

Black Friday by David Goodis (Golden Age, 1954; 4 stars)

Death Among Friends & Other Detective Stories by Cyril Hare (Golden Age, 1959; 4 stars)

Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery as edited by Hitchcock [Robert Arthur] (Silver Age, 1962; 4 stars)

The Widening Stain by W. Bolingbroke Johnson (Golden Age, 1942; 4 stars)

Blind Man's Bluff by Baynard Kendrick (Golden Age, 1943; 4 stars)

Here Come the Dead by Robert Portner Koehler (Golden Age, 1942; 4 stars)

The Birthday Murder by Lange Lewis (Golden Age, 1945; 4 stars)

Bats in the Belfry by E. C. R. Lorac (Golden Age, 1937; 4 stars)

Who Is Simon Warwick by Patricia Moyes (Silver Age,1978; 4.5 stars)

Line-Up edited by John Rhode (Golden Age, 1940; 4 stars)

Beauty Marks the Spot by Kelley Roos (Golden Age, 1948; 4 stars)

Secret of the Old Post Box by Dorothy Sterling (Silver Age, 1960; 4 stars)

The Professor Knits a Shroud by Wirt Van Arsdale (Golden Age, 1951; 4 stars)

Inquest by Percival Wilde (Golden Age, 1940; 4 stars)

Top Modern Mysteries 2023 (no rereads)

The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian (2022; 5 stars)

Blackstone Fell by Martin Edwards (2022; 4.5 stars)

Who Cries for the Lost by C. S. Harris (2023; 5 stars)

Hemlock Hollow by Culley Holderfield (2022; 4 stars)

A Gentleman's Murder by Christopher Huang (2018; 4 stars)

The Mistletoe Murder & Other Stories by P. D. James (2016; 4 stars)

Fear Nothing Vol. 1 by Dean Koontz (2010; 4 stars)

Death & the Conjuror by Tom Mead (2022; 4.5 stars)

The Red Death Murders by Jim Noy (2022; 4.5 stars)

The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman (2022; 4 stars)

Murder in Bloomsbury by D. M. Quincy (2018; 4 stars)

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn (2022; 4 stars)

A Most Efficient Murder by Anthony Slayton (2022; 4 stars)

Top Fiction 2023 (no rereads)

Little Men by Louisa May Alcott (5 stars)

Wild Seed by Octavia E, Butler (5 stars)

Piranesi by Susannah Clarke (4 stars)

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (5 stars)

The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (4 stars)

I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay by Harlan Ellison/Isaac Asimov (4 stars)

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (4 stars)

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (4.5 stars)

Mrs. Frisby & the Rats of N.I.M.H. by Robert O'Brien (5 stars)

Pax by Sara Pennypacker (4 stars)

Alif the Unseen by Wilson, G. Willow (4 stars)

Top Nonfiction 2023 (no rereads)

My Pocket Meditations for Self-Compassion by Courtney E. Ackerman (4 stars)

Mental Illness During the First World War by Charles Glass (4 stars)

John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles by Douglas G. Greene (4 stars)

The Art of the Mystery Story edited by Howard Haycraft (4 stars)

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson (4 stars)

Packing My Library by Alberto Manguel (4 stars)

Number One Is Walking by Steve Martin (4 stars)

Nala's World by Dean Nicholson (4 stars)

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (4 stars)

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold (4 stars)

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei et al. (5 stars)

Monthly P.O.M. (Pick of the Month) Award Winners

January: A Gentleman's Murder by Christopher Huang

February: The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian

March: Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

April: Inquest by Percival Wilde

May: Line-Up by John Rhode (ed)

June: And Be a Villain by Rex Stout

July: The Birthday Murder by Lange Lewis

August: The Widening Stain by W. Bolingbroke Johnson

September: Who Is Simon Warwick? by Patricia Moyes

October: Death & the Conjuror by Tom Mead

November: The Red Death Murders by Jim Noy

December: Blindman's Bluff by Baynard Kendrick

Now...before we move on to the big winner of 2023--the P.O.Y. (Pick of the Year) Award, I have a few other awards to hand out--my own version of the Razzie Awards.

The This Isn't What Alternate Universes Are For Award goes to Dead, Mr. Mozart by Benard Bastable. Bastable (aka Robert Barnard) goes to all the trouble to invent a world where Mozart doesn't die in 1791 and sets him to investigating a murder. But...Mozart's not very good at it and he's not even very interesting as a poor detective. The mystery plot itself is also not much--you think there's going to be all this political intrigue surrounding the new King George and his controversial Queen, but that just sortof fizzles. The murder is pointless. The detective work is pointless. And the extension of Mozart's life for this story...pointless.

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The So, You Died & I Don't Care Award goes to Skippy Dies (aka Hopeland) by Paul Murray. The whole point of story is that Skippy dies (this isn't a spoiler--it happens practically on the first page) and the rest of the story is supposed to be finding out why.  But my library had gotten its hands on the boxed set of Murray's little saga which breaks Skippy Dies into three separate books. If I want to find out everything, I apparently need to read two more books. I'm afraid that's not gonna happen. I gave it the ol' college try, but male teenage angst, especially when some of it is still being had by a thirty-something history teacher named Howard the Coward just doesn't seem to be my thing. It doesn't help that it's written in the present tense and it skips around among the characters. I really wanted to like this. I didn't want to let Katie (who recommended it) down. But Skippy, I'm sorry, I just can't wade through two more books with all these characters to find out why you died. 

The I Don't Like Stream of Consciousness Writing Even When It's Good [spoiler alert, the winner isn't] Award goes to: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I don't even know where to begin with this. There is so much here that just isn't my cup of tea. It's told in the first person. It's a coming of age story about a boy that I can't have any sympathy for despite the fact that I'm very sorry that his mother was killed in a horrible terrorist bombing. I mean later in his story we spend pages on him and his burned out druggie friend in Las Vegas. His narrative just goes on and on and on and there's so much detail and "near-stream-of-consciousness, why on earth is he telling me this" stuff crammed into this 700-page doorstop that I tuned out regularly. 

The Sherlock Holmes, You Ain't Award goes to Sidney Chambers & the Perils of the Night by James Runcie. Sidney Chambers just isn't doing if for me. I wasn't all that excited about his debut when I read it two years ago, but I wanted to give him another chance. The most endearing thing about the man is he brings up Lord Peter Wimsey in the cricket match story. But, overall, my view of these stories still stands--the characters just don't grab me and I don't buy Chambers as an amateur detective. His style is all just talk to people and somehow he magically just knows what happened and is (according to Grantchester lore) "never wrong." The conversations he has with people just don't make a great deal of sense to me. They seem to be full of non sequiturs that don't connect in any way to what Chambers is investigating. I realize that some people do throw non sequiturs into conversations...but not every single conversation and not every single person you meet. 

And finally (this one is spoilerish, so I tried to mask the spoiler part--highlight the apparently empty space before the picture if interested)..the Ghosts Get Into Everything Award goes to Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott. There is so much here that could have made a great mystery/thriller. I'm not a huge fan of stories from the past that somehow connect up with modern events, but it does work sometimes. Not here. The book starts out with Elizabeth's death. I was all set to have Lydia take up the reins of finishing the book and, in the course of her research, actually discover who killed Elizabeth. Oh she does....but it was a ghost. A freaking ghost. 

Now the moment we've all been waiting for...the presentation of the Mystery Pick of the Year! Of course, if the judges look purely at the star ratings, there's only one five-star winner in the mystery category this year which is not a reread or by a previous winner: Chris Bohjalian's The Lioness. This was one of the books I read for the 12 Challenge (goal--gather 12 recommendations from 12 friends and read those books to complete the Challenge. The Lioness came highly recommended by Audrey Nye Hamilton and it did not disappoint. As I said in my review: An absolutely beautifully written bloodbath. So many unnecessary violent deaths--so many. Generally speaking this type of book is not my type of book. BUT Bohjalian can write. Man, can he write. I was sucked right in from the beginning and even the high body count couldn't keep me from turning the pages to find out what happened next. I'm no expert on Africa of the 1960s, but the historical research seems solid and information about the time is introduced in such a way that it never felt like an info dump. The narrative also makes clear that Bohjalian participated in an African safari himself--the scenery and animals come vividly to life on the page. He also manages the multiple points of view superbly. Each chapter focuses on one of nine characters, giving the reader a panoramic view of the story to match the vast countryside. Overall, an outstanding experience. 

So congratulations to our big winner for the year!