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 58 (of 52) – I Have Some Questions For You

I Have Some Questions For You – Rebecca Makkai

A successful podcaster returns to her New Hampshire boarding school to teach a two-week class, becoming drawn to the unanswered questions surrounding the death of her former roommate.  Falling down the rabbit hole, she teams up with two students, who started a podcast on the story for their class project, to dig deeper into the case, hoping to find enough evidence to spur a new trial.  When a hunch leads to a big break in the case, they get a hearing to argue for a new trial and may have actually identified the real killer, but will that be enough?

Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions for You came to my attention after being nominated for Best Mystery & Thriller in the Goodreads Choice Awards.  I liked the concept, but the execution was a little lacking.  The ending could have been tightened up a bit and, overall, there was a lot of superfluous fat that padded out the story with no real benefit to the overall tale.  This was my first experience with Makkai’s work and I’m not sure when. or if, I’ll get back to it.