2023: The Year In Books

As 2023 comes to a close, my third full year of remote working, I managed to far surpass my previous records by completing a whopping 59 books, four books more than my previous high from last year and my third consecutive year completing the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.  I completed the challenge in late November and surpassed last year’s total in mid-December.  I read (or listened) to 21,394 pages, by far my highest total of all time and only the fourth time I’ve passed 10,000.

Of those books, eleven were non-fiction and, of the remaining 48 novels, only four were tied to a TV show, either as the source material or as a tie-in.  None of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, with 53 e-books and two audiobooks.  I continued to take advantage of my library card, which helped me procure 44 of the books I consumed throughout the year.

Over 61% of the books I read this year were by authors I had read before. The 22 authors that I read for the first this year were:

Selma Blair Stacy Willingham Gillian McAllister Chuck Klosterman
Gabrielle Zevin Ronan Farrow Matthew Perry Amor Towles
Jason Rekulak Emily St. John Mandel Bonnie Garmus Thomas Mullen
Naomi Hirahara Maitland Ward Busy Phillips Elliot Page
Jinwoo Chong Maureen Ryan Minka Kelly Britney Spears
Emily Henry Rebecca Makkai

Jennifer McMahon, Karin Slaughter, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Erle Stanley Gardner, Grady Hendrix, Jeffery Deaver, Laura Lippman, Ruth Ware, and Stacy Willingham were the only authors that I read multiple titles from during 2023.

18 of the books I read were released this year, while only five of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1934.

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Book 57 (of 52) – Happy Place

Happy Place – Emily Henry

Harriet, a surgical resident in San Francisco, arrives in Maine for her annual reunion with her college friends planning to tell them about the end of her engagement.  Instead, she finds her former fiancé waiting for her, convinced into coming as this will be their last summer together in the family cottage and a surprise wedding.  Harriet tries to work through her feelings, for her ex, her job, and everything else, before the week comes to an end.

I had initially skipped over Emily Henry’s Happy Place when I saw that it had won the 2023 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance, as that isn’t really my genre.  When I came across it again on the list of best books of the year from the Chicago Public Library, I decided to give it a shot.  Despite the fairly obvious ending (of course they are getting back together!), it was an enjoyable read.  I don’t know how much I will dip my toes back into the romance pool going forward, but this trip, at least, was worth the ride.