Clare L. Deming

The year has almost come to an end and it’s time to look back at my reading for the year. This is one of my favorite types of posts to write, so let’s get to it! Here is my graphic of all the books I have finished so far in 2023, for a total of 46!

While I had set an unrealistic goal to read 100 books for the year back in this post, 50 is a more reasonable amount for me. As I’m writing this post, I have a few more days remaining in the month, with two more books that I should definitely be able to finish. I may grab a couple of graphic novels or a shorter novel and binge read to see if I can hit 50 by the end of the year.

How did my 2023 reading break down in terms of genre and formats?

• 20 books were stand-alone fiction novels.
• 18 were audiobooks.
• I had one DNF (did-not-finish) book that actually doesn’t appear on this list.
• 2 were non-fiction, and one of those I hope to finish in the next few days is as well.
• 2 novels were not in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, and 1 was on the border of genre.
• I finished (or kept up with) the books in 8 different series.
• I started to read 5 new series.
• 3 were graphic novels.

Here are my favorite books from the year with some comments and links to full reviews below:

• Fairy Tale by Stephen King was a wonderful stand-alone fantasy novel (paid link). You can find my review here.
• I finished listening to The Witcher series (audiobooks) this year with The Lady of the Lake (paid link). While I’ve read that the ending is controversial, I thought it was appropriate to the series. You can read my review here.
• The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip is an older book and was also a type of fairy tale story (paid link). You can find my review here.
• In my ongoing read of Leigh Bardugo’s books, my favorites were the Six of Crows duology which I just reviewed here and here, as well as the next two books, Rule of Wolves and King of Scars, which I will be reviewing soon (paid links).
• I also read Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series, and while I thought that the ending fell a bit flat, the second book, The Last Graduate, was a harrowing read (paid link). My review is here.
• Babel was a long stand-alone novel but its themes have inspired conversations about real-world events since I read it (paid link). This is a tragic story but was very well-done, and I highly recommend reading it. You can find my review here.
• Elder Race is a novella that combined science fiction and fantasy into one story and was a nice introduction to this author’s work (paid link). I haven’t had a chance to review it here yet.
• The two non-genre novels that I read, Where the Crawdads Sing and Horse were both very good, so if you’re looking for a break from sci-fi/fantasy, these are solid reading choices (paid links). My reviews are here and here.
• Shannon Chakraborty won my reading heart with her Daevabad trilogy which I reviewed here, here, and here (paid links). So when she released the first book in a new series, I had to pick it up immediately. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi was such a fun adventure story, and I’ll be writing a full review soon. You could also read this as a stand-alone story.
• The last book on this list is a dieselpunk adventure comic/graphic novel which I just finished this week. Skies of Fire (#1-4) was produced as a Kickstarter and I really enjoyed reading this. I’ll have a review up soon.

Lastly, did I read the books that I had planned to read on my post from the beginning of 2023? The answer to this is always, NO, but where did I go off track? Here are some thoughts on that:

• I had meant to read more of the Sandman series of graphic novels, but only got through one more in 2023.
• I also had meant to continue my read-through of The Wheel of Time, but only read book #4 in 2023.
• I didn’t get to read any more of the Dune books, but there was also a natural end-point after Dune Messiah.
• There were several series on my list that I’ve been meaning to finish for several years. I still didn’t make any progress on these.
• I didn’t read any classics in 2023, even though I had a few on my list.

Here is a visual of some of those books that I didn’t get to, but still plan to read soon:

That’s my recap of my reading year for 2023! How did you do in your own goals? What were your favorite books for the year? Let me know in the comments (above).