2023 Booklist

Happy new year to all! As is tradition, here's a round up of last year's reading. It's a pretty long list (for me) this year, 75 books, but the numbers feel a little arbitrary- this includes a couple of books I read to my kids, but not the super short ones, where is the cut off line anyway? And as always it doesn't include re-reads. I don't think I had many re-reads, apart from getting to read The Secret Garden, Ballet Shoes and The Borrowers to the kids. Excited for even more to come!

Shortest book Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada, a novel made up of a series of short and very strange vignettes about a man and his best friends, also their relationships and the main character's struggle to have a baby. But also aquariums, weasels, snow storms and soup. It's an unsettling book but also in a way mundane. Longest book Stories from the Little Beach Street Bakery: An Omnibus Edition by Jenny Colgan. A cozy romance comfort read that I enjoyed very much- a lighthouse! A tidal island! A beekeeper and a bakery and a pet puffin! But this feels a bit like cheating since it actually combines two books in one volume, so after this is The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (a mere 570 pages!). This was enjoyable but I wasn't a huge fan of the ending and it didn't live up to A Gentleman in Moscow for me.

Oldest book The Three Cornered Hat by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón y Ariza (1874). This is sort of a farce, apparently it was turned into a ballet and I guess it has the feel of a comic opera, lots of disguises and men trying to seduce other men's wives and general absurdity. Not sure this has aged well. Newest book is a close call! Overall I think The Wake-Up Call by Beth O'Leary wins, but at time of reading probably The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman. Both published in September 2023. Both lots of fun- The Wake Up Call  if you feel like a romance and The Last Devil to Die if you prefer a murder mystery.

Most books by one author 6 books by Sulari Gentill- I was reading through her Rowland Sinclair mysteries. Set in Australia in the 1930s, these have a bit of a feel of Phryne Fisher, with an aristocratic hero along the lines of Peter Wimsey (but not as complex or as great of course), with a backdrop of growing fascist movements which lends a sense of unease. I enjoyed these but find them a bit frustrating in that the characters are more interested in dashing around adventurously than focusing on solving the mysteries in front of them, and also my library's eBook versions are very glitchy. Second place to Beth O'Leary- I read all 5 of her books this year. 

Reading themes A small but very specific theme- books where the main character calls on her family (with whom she has a complicated relationship) to help her dispose of a body following an accident. Comedy and relationship building ensues. This was just two books but I wasn't expecting it to crop up twice!

Comfort reading- I did quite a bit of this. Earlier in the year my father in law was dying, I wanted a comfort read but couldn't quite face murder mysteries in the moment. So I read a lot more romances than normal (I am not normally a big Romance reader). Hence the aforementioned Jenny Colgan, which was very comforting. Also Beth O'Leary- I've wanted to read The Flatshare for a while, it had an intriguing premise, and it really delivered. I think she does a good line in delivering on interesting premises (though I was a little underwhelmed by The Road Trip). Basically the experience is the same as watching a romcom, which I enjoy.

Favourite books It's hard to choose, I'm doing this by genre this year. Non-fiction I read two more collections of essays by Kathleen Jamie this year, Sightlines and Surfacing. I love these a lot! She writes so beautifully, and has this wonderful quality of noticing and observing the world- there's quite a lovely part at the start of Surfacing where she reflects on ways of seeing while visiting a Yup'ik village in Alaska. Her essays are about nature and travel, and a lot of the essays in Surfacing are actually about archaeology. There's a great focus on details, but with a broad awareness of the wider world, a love of nature, an anger about the way we treat the environment, but an anger that is not disheartening, maybe? A concern for and interest in both humans and nature. I don't know how to express it but just read these instead and you'll get the idea.

Favourite literary fiction is the meta-fictional/thinly veiled biography/memoir This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham. It's a book about a writer who is trying to write a biography of Leonard Woolf but struggling to deal with the man and his contradictions (and the looming and eventually literal spectre of Virginia Woolf), while also dealing with family issues and eventually the pandemic and general global chaos that is recent history. There are parallel narratives of Leonard Woolf and Alice (the modern day writer), and the many different ways that Leonard (and Virginia) appear in the novel are an intriguing way to deal with the contradictions and limitations of biographical writing. Honourable mention to another Australian book- Limberlost by Robbie Arnott, a really gentle, tense, and moving story centred on one boy's summer in Tasmania during WWII, but ranging all over his life.

Favourite romance goes to Beth O'Leary, I think it's a close tie between The Switch and The Flatshare. She writes a lot of books with dual narrators, and this works particularly well in these books- in The Switch a busy Londoner swaps flats with her grandmother for a holiday, and both of them commence fixing the lives of the people around them and finding love. In The Flatshare two people who have never met share the same flat (and bed- one has it at night, one in the day) and communicate through post-its and letters. 

I did read a bunch of murder mysteries, even if I took a bit of a break, and my favourite crime/murder mystery was Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto, which I have been going on to recommend to everyone. A little old lady sets out to solve a murder that has happened in her tea shop, gathering a bunch of suspects who she investigates but also comes to like. I started this year with Jesse Q. Sutanto's Dial A for Aunties, which was a silly and fun romp, but this one I found unexpectedly heartwarming. Maybe it's the comfort reader in me again, but I really liked this one. 

And I feel like I didn't read as many fantasy novels as I could have, but my favourite was probably Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher. This was a satisfying fairytale quest, and I like T. Kingfisher's unassuming but determined heroines. I'm definitely planning to read a lot more of her books! I also wanted to mention The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo, set in 1930s Malaya and sort of more magic realism than straight fantasy, but I enjoyed it a lot.

And now, the list!

Dial A for Aunties - Jesse Q. Sutanto

Nettle & Bone - T. Kingfisher

Ghosts - Dolly Alderton

Skydragon - Anh Do

All Systems  - Martha Wells

Sudden Traveler - Sarah Hall

The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels - India Holton

The Night Ship - Jess Kidd

Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey

The three cornered hat - Pedro Antonio de Alarcón y Ariza

Amongst Our Weapons - Ben Aaronovitch

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking - T. Kingfisher

Where the Fruit Falls - Karen Wyld

Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors - Aravind Jayan

A Closed and Common Orbit - Becky  Chambers

The Bookshop on the Shore - Jenny Colgan

Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus

People Person - Candice Carty-Williams

Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country: and Other Stories - Chavisa Woods

The Queen of the Night - Alexander Chee

Death in St. Petersburg - Tasha Alexander

The Flatshare - Beth O'Leary

Without Further Ado - Jessica Dettmann

Stories from the Little Beach Street Bakery: An Omnibus Edition - Jenny Colgan

The Year of Miracles: Recipes About Love + Grief + Growing Things - Ella Risbridger

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan

Love Marriage - Monica Ali

Either Side of Midnight - Benjamin Stevenson

Surfacing - Kathleen Jamie

Unnecessary Drama - Nina Kenwood

Gods of Jade and Shadow - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Opposite of Always - Justin A. Reynolds

Dinner with the Schnabels - Toni Jordan

The Lark - E. Nesbit

The Switch - Beth O'Leary

This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor - Adam Kay

Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and its Human Fallout - Ginger Gorman

The Flip Side - James Bailey

This Devastating Fever - Sophie Cunningham

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers - Jesse Q. Sutanto

The Witch and the Tsar - Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

Weasels in the Attic - Hiroko Oyamada

The Perfect Crime - Vaseem Khan

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) - Dennis E. Taylor

Sightlines - Kathleen Jamie

Eyes Like Mine - Sheena Kamal

Love & Virtue - Diana Reid

The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction - Robert Goddard

A Few Right Thinking Men - Sulari Gentill

The Great Alone - Kristin Hannah

A Decline in Prophets - Sulari Gentill

Romantic Comedy - Curtis Sittenfeld

A Heart That Works - Rob Delaney

Miles Off Course - Sulari Gentill

Still Life - Sarah Winman

Glass Houses - Anne Coombs

The Searcher - Tana French

The Last Devil to Die - Richard Osman

Limberlost - Robbie Arnott

The Lincoln Highway - Amor Towles

Paving the New Road - Sulari Gentill

An Astronomer in Love - Antoine Laurain

The Tea Ladies - Amanda  Hampson

Murder at the Museum - Alasdair Beckett-King

Signal to Noise - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The No-Show - Beth O'Leary

All's Well - Mona Awad

Gentlemen Formerly Dressed - Sulari Gentill

The Night Tiger - Yangsze Choo

A Murder Unmentioned - Sulari Gentill

The Wake-Up Call - Beth O'Leary

The Road Trip - Beth O'Leary

Eliza Vanda's Button Box - Emily Rodda

What You Are Looking For Is in the Library - Michiko Aoyama