A Brief Look At My 2023 In Books
I’m still using Goodreads for book tracking, primarily because I only follow authors and that’s how I get a fair number of my recommendations: the books enjoyed by authors I enjoy. Last year, I set my challenge at 50 books, and in the end I read 64, although this is misleading for reasons I’ll get to in a bit.
At the end of each year, they provide a short summary with a few stats. There’s no need to click through, unless you want to see all 64 books, because I’m going to relate those stats here.
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15,379 pages
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64 books
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Shortest book, at 24 pages: Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land by Ruthanna Emrys
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Longest book, at 736 pages: The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan
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Average book length: 240 pages
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Most-shelved: 146,893 other people shelved Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
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Least-shelved: 0 other people shelved All That Burns Unseen by Premee Mohamed
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First fiction book finished: A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys
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First nonfiction book finished: If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal by Justin Gregg
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Last fiction book finished: The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei
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Last nonfiction book finished: Empire of Normality by Robert Chapman
You won’t find me making nay value judgments here, partly because I have hard time doing that and partly because I simply drop any book that I’m not sufficiently enjoying. I’ve no problems recommending any of the books I read in 2023.
Goodreads changed its policies over the past year, making it more difficult to get online-only stories added as books in certain circumstances. Many of the reasons why some are blocked are fairly ridiculous. At any rate, there were a handful of such stories that I never managed to get listed but that I did read. I ended up saving them for when I’d hit my goal of 50 books.
I’ve set my challenge for this year again to 50 books. As I’ve remarked before, likely on posts like this one, I’ve always got one fiction and one nonfiction read going at any given time. Traditionally, I read the nonfiction during the day and the fiction at bedtime.