My Year in Books 2023

 by Sybil Johnson

It’s time for my annual reading wrap-up. January to December, just to make it clear. One reason I say that is because I put together a list of my 3 favorite reads for Shepherd.com. Their year, however, went from end of September 2022 through end of October 2023. Those books were:

• Sherlock Holmes and the Rune Stone Mystery by Larry Millett 
• Charlie Thorne and the Lost Equation by Stuart Gibbs 
• The Vampire Book Club by Nancy Warren 

I won’t go into details here. You can read about these at Shepherd.com. They should be up soon. Just search for my name.

Number of books “consumed” (audio plus print/ebook): 68, 25 fewer than last year. 30% non-fiction. 70% crime (middle-grade books, cozies, historicals, mystery/thrillers and traditional). 35% of those were cozies.

Cozy highlights: 

• The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
• Vampire Book Club series by Nancy Warren
• Death Knells and Wedding Bells by Eva Gates (Lighthouse Library series) 

Yes, I have gotten on the Richard Osman bandwagon. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and intend to read the rest of them. I also read all of the books in the Vampire Book Club series by Nancy Warren and treated myself to the latest book in the Lighthouse Library series.

Non-fiction highlights:

• Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt by Kenneth McKenzie and Todd Harra
• Denali’s Howl by Andy Hall
• The Great Typo Hunt by Deck and Herson
• The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
•  In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
  
• The History of the World Through Body Parts: The Stories Behind the Organs, Appendages, Digits and the Like Attached to (or Detached From) Famous Bodies by Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras
• Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses by Bess Lovejoy

(The last two look a bit macabre, don’t they? They were both interesting.) 

This last year I learned about the Tudor era affliction known as the sweating sickness (you did not want to get this!), extinct languages, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, books on Henry VIII’s wives (this continues to be a fascination for me), true stories from undertakers, an ill-fated attempt at scaling Denali in the 1960s, a trek across the U.S. fixing typos ... Apparently, I was really into tragic sea voyages as I read two books on the subject, one on the Wager and one on the whaleship Essex. 

That’s my quick summary. I don’t usually set a reading goal for the year, but this time around, I think I’ll try for 100 books in 2024. I have so very many that I want to read. 

I’m curious, did you find yourself reading more last year than in previous years? Did you read different things? 

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In other news, the American Dialect Society has chosen its word of the year: enshittification. I have never heard this term. Apparently, it became popular after a blog post by author Cory Doctorow to describe “how digital platforms can become worse and worse.” As usual, I am sadly out of touch with such stuff. You can read more here: https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/