Book rundown, 2023

In 2023, I went into business as a fulltime editor. I worked on two dissertations, three scholarly monographs, and thirteen novels, none of which I’ll be discussing here. This \ post is about books I chose to read, not books I got paid to read.

One unforeseen drawback to editing professionally: I have less enthusiasm for pleasure reading in my off time. I’m more likely to reach for music than audiobooks these days. But I still managed more than one book per week, and I would like to take the opportunity—I would like to take every opportunity—to mention that one of those books was War and Peace.

Total books read: 78. That’s 60 books I chose to read, plus another 18 I edited or indexed professionally. For the rest of this post, we’re just going to focus on those 60.

Age levels:

• Adult: 56
• YA: 2
• Children’s: 2

 
Books that were published in 2023: 6

• Deduct It! Lower Your Small Business Taxes, by Stephen Fishman
• Perilous Times, by Thomas D. Lee
• Cry, Baby, by Benjamin Perry
• The Midnight Kingdom, by Jared Yates Sexton    
• Mammoths at the Gates, by Nghi Vo
• System Collapse, by Martha Wells

Nonfiction: 20

Fiction: 40. That feels about right, a two-to-one fiction-to-nonfiction ratio.

Genres: (as some books have more than one genre, total exceeds 60)

• Nonfiction:
• Biography – 1
• Business – 4
• Editing and grammar – 4
• Health and wellness – 2
• History – 9
• Literary criticism – 2
• Meditation – 2
• Memoir – 1
• Music history – 1
• Social science – 4
• Spirituality – 2

 
Fiction:

• Adventure – 3
• Crime – 6
• Fantasy – 13
  
• Folk tales – 1
• Historical fiction – 2
• Horror – 2
• Literary fiction – 8
• Science fiction – 11
  

Miscellaneous:

• Annual fat Russian novel: War and Peace
• Re-reads: 2
• Audiobooks: 47
• Unique authors: 55
• Most read author: Nghi Vo, with her lovely Singing Hills novellas

Best books of the year:

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders

This is a collection of Russian short stories and literary criticism. Do you understand how hard it is for me to get people to read this book? It is so good though. So good. It is the all the joy of studying writers and stories with none of the Foucault.

The Address Book, Deirdre Mask

Here’s another hard sell: a nonfiction book about street addresses! It is captivating, though. Truly. I’ve never thought so much about street names or numbers or how that influences our lives. This is sociology + data nerdery. Also, important thing to note, people in England use filthy names for their streets. They just do not care.

Best audiobook narrators:

Roger Clark, The Searcher (Tana French). Tana French remains my favorite contemporary crime writer. This was my first time enjoying one of her novels as an audiobook. Clark does authentic Irish and American accents throughout.

Frazer Douglas, Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller). The sensuality of this man’s voice needs a warning label.

Various: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (George Saunders). Saunders narrates the literary criticism part of this book, but the stories themselves are read by various actors:

• "In the Cart," Chekhov, narrated by Phylicia Rashad
• "The Singers," Turgenev, narrated by Nick Offerman (my favorite narration in this book)
• "The Darling," Chekov, narrated by Glenn Close
• "Master and Man," Tolstoy, narrated by Keith David
• “The Nose,” Gogol, narrated by Rainn Wilson
• "Gooseberries," Chekov, narrated by BD Wong
• “Alyosha the Pot,” Tolstoy, narrated by Renée Elise Goldsberry

Themes:

• Business books: I think it is delightful if business books are the type of book that you personally enjoy reading. It takes all types, doesn’t it? I myself find them excruciating. The only reason I read any business books was because I started my own business.
• Russian history: before I went and got the idea to start my own business, I was writing a novel set in eighteenth century Russia.
• Togetherness, community, belonging: because that’s the only thing that matters.
• And in fiction: despite the ongoing nightmares in the world, the narrowing world of traditional publishing, and ongoing threats from people who value AI over human creativity, there has never been such a good time to enjoy fantasy and science fiction. So many superb contemporary writers.  

K. J. Parker: Is he still the best?
I will never stop banging this drum. Tom Holt is always terrific and so is his pseudonym, K. J. Parker.

Honorable mentions:

• A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman. I was not expecting to love this book, but oh gosh. Crotchety Old Man Thawing is such a good genre, when it’s done right.
• Stone Blind, by Natalie Haynes. A retelling of the Medusa story. This was my first time reading Haynes. I was transfixed. She is a formidable prose stylist and storyteller both. I felt the breadth of human emotion in this book.
• Under the Whispering Door, by T. J. Klune. Klune is one I ration carefully. One book per year, no more. Mustn’t indulge. Anyway: I typically do not care to read love stories (for unhealthy reasons; it makes me feel bad when characters on a page get to experience something I don’t), but it’s okay with Klune. He always makes my heart feel warm.
• Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller. Another astonishingly good Greek retelling, this time focused on Achilles and Patroclus. The grief I felt in this book…
• The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North. A re-read of one of my favorite science fiction novels. Such fine plotting, such mind-blowing ideas.
• War and Peace, by Lev Tolstoy. It was wonderful. At times, Tolstoy cosplays a military historian and those passages get a little snoozy, but mostly this book is high drama. Affairs, betrayals, intrigue, secret marriages, bigamy, botched abortions, pistols at dawn.
• The Cooking Gene, by Michael W. Twitty. A Black man traces his history through food. This is not one of those uplifting, celebratory books. It’s about trauma and violence.
• The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo. The first novella in a fantasy series. In a setting reminiscent of Imperial China and Vietnam, a nonbinary cleric travels the land to collect oral histories. The prose is lovely but not overwrought, the way folk stories ought to be, and the action balances nicely with the moments of repose.       
• System Collapse, by Martha Wells. The Murderbot books continue to deliver. If you’re new to them, start with the first, All Systems Red.

All the books I read, sorted by genre:

Nonfiction

Business
Cather, Karin and Dick Margulis. The Paper It's Written On, 2018
Fishman, Stephen. Deduct It! Lower Your Small Business Taxes, 2023
Pakroo, Peri H. The Small Business Start-Up Kit, 2018
 
Grammar and editing
Dreyer, Benjamin. Dreyer's English, 2019
Harnby, Louise. Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers, 2013
Saller, Carol Fisher. The Subversive Copyeditor, 2016
 
Health and wellness
Albright, Mary Beth. Eat and Flourish, 2022
Murthy, Vivek. Together, 2020

History
Burton-Hill, Clemency. Year of Wonder, 2017
Cleves, Rachel Hope. Charity and Sylvia, 2014
De Madariaga, Isabel. Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia, 1998
Figes, Orlando. The Story of Russia, 2022
Hartnett, Lynne Ann. Understanding Russia, 2018
Kytle, Ethan J. and Blain Roberts. Denmark Vesey's Garden, 2018
Rosslyn, Wendy. Women and Gender in 18th-Century Russia, 2003
Sexton, Jared Yates. The Midnight Kingdom, 2023
Twitty, Michael W. The Cooking Gene, 2018
 
Literary criticism
Saunders, George. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, 2021
 
Meditation
Nhất Hạnh, Thích. The Miracle of Mindfulness, 1975
Selassie, Sebene. You Belong, 2020
 
Social science
Gottschall, Jonathan. The Storytelling Animal, 2012
Mask, Deirdre. The Address Book, 2020
Perry, Benjamin. Cry, Baby, 2023

 
Fiction

Crime
Braithwaite, Oyinkan. My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018
Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926
French, Tana. The Searcher, 2020
Todd, Charles. A Test of Wills, 1996
Tudor, C. J. The Chalk Man, 2018
Winters, Ben H. The Last Policeman, 2012
 
Fantasy
Abercrombie, Joe. Half a King, 2014
Abercrombie, Joe. Half a War, 2015
Abercrombie, Joe. Half a World, 2015
Klune, T. J. Under the Whispering Door, 2021
Lee, Thomas D. Perilous Times, 2023
Nix, Garth. Sabriel, 1994
Vo, Nghi. The Empress of Salt and Fortune, 2020
Vo, Nghi. Into the Riverlands, 2022
Vo, Nghi. Mammoths at the Gates, 2023
Vo, Nghi. When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, 2020
Weeks, Brent. Beyond the Shadows, 2008
Weeks, Brent. Shadow's Edge, 2008
Weeks, Brent. The Way of Shadows, 2008
 
Folk tales
Afanasyev, Alexander Nikolaievitch. Russian Folk Tales, 1980
 
Horror
Barron, Laird. The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, 2018
Bradbury, Ray. The Halloween Tree, 1972
 
Literary fiction
Backman, Fredrik. A Man Called Ove, 2019
Capote, Truman. Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1958
Coupland, Douglas. Life After God, 1994
Dickens, Charles. The Pickwick Papers, 1836
Haynes, Natalie. Stone Blind, 2022
Miller, Madeline. Song of Achilles, 2011
Tolstoy, Lev. War and Peace, 1867
 
Science fiction
Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1979
Banks, Iain M. Consider Phlebas, 1987
Delaney, Samuel R. Babel-17, 1966
Holt, Tom. When It's a Jar, 2013
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Lathe of Heaven, 1971
North, Claire. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, 2014
O'Brien, Robert C. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, 1971
Wells, Martha. System Collapse, 2023