Favorite Books Read in 2023
It’s been a long journey to regular reading again. I burned out of college and struggled to get my ability to comprehend words back, yet alone quickly. Fast forward almost seven years and 2023 was the first year I felt capable of reading books at a semi-decent pace! It’s not the fastest pace, but I did read and listen to 44 books. Here are the ones that stuck with me the most. Note that, unlike with my favorite indie games played in 2023, not everything here was published in 2023.
Let’s do this!
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean (2022)
This book really bites. Pun intended. It’s also a bit sapphic and relatable and just a huge compelling commentary on what anyone capable of having kids is expected to do and act and be. Devon is a shit, unlikable and cold in some ways, believable and sincere in others, and she’s such an earnest mom. This one really lingered in my mind after I’d finished. I did pick it up because of the Publishing Rodeo podcast but forgive me, Scott, but I haven’t gotten to your book yet. This year though!
Chaos Terminal by Mur Lafferty (2023)
This is book 2 in the Midsolar Murders series, and I really enjoyed the twists and turns. I’m diving more into the whodunnit/detective/murder mystery genre(s?) and enjoyed that this was also set in space with lots of fun aliens and a sentient, somewhat fussy space station. Mallory and Xan are fun and I can’t wait for future stories in this series. Honestly makes me wish space murder mystery books were a larger thing!
The Green Bone Saga (main trilogy) by Fonda Lee (2017-2021)
Speaking of series! I read the entire Green Bone Saga this year and couldn’t really pick a favorite so the entire trilogy goes in one mention. It feels like you have to read all of it to get the full scope of the overall story. Normally I’m a middle story or movie person, I love the tension and conflict and character development that tends to happen in the second installments of a trilogy. Hilo annoyed the shit out of me in the first book, but by the end I was having a lot of emotions over his full character arc. I don’t love every choice made with every character, but I really loved the final message and ugh it was just such a good reading experience. Also I need this adapted to a TV show to angst over.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (2021)
From dramatic trilogy to soft and quiet novella, A Psalm for the Wild-Built really asks what it means to find enjoyment in life and fulfillment in what you do and why you feel the need to do anything. Mosscap was adorable and Dex felt so similar to myself in a lot of ways. Maybe it’s because I’m deep in freelance writingland and the hustle to exist under capitalism while disabled is exhausting, but the themes hit hard and I absorbed this novella in a single afternoon (one of the many things I love about novellas). I’ve read several of Becky Chambers’s books now and this continues to be one of my favorites next to A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (which I didn’t read this year so isn’t on this list but remains a favorite in general).
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2023)
I’ve read a couple of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s books now and between enjoying her style overall and the gorgeous and captivating cover art, I grabbed this one from my library so fast. I’m also weak for pining and romantic undertones in a story, so this covered a lot of the tropes I enjoy, and Montserrat and Tristán are fun and well-written characters. It was also oddly educational on film history in general (as I don’t know that much about older movies) in Mexico City especially. It doesn’t have the same all-encompassing and festering tension Mexican Gothic had, but that’s not really the point of this one. This is pulpier and punchier and I enjoyed it a lot.
Siren Queen (2022) & Mammoths at the Gates (2023) by Nghi Vo
At this point I love anything Nghi Vo writes. I read both Siren Queen and Mammoths at the Gates this year and both hit very different emotions. Siren Queen is strange, surreal, and beautiful, the prose is just the right amount of dense and complex to readable for me (which can be a tough thing to hit, given my ADHD brain being easily distractible). Luli choosing to become the monster in the stories rather than the heroine because no one would give an Asian girl those kinds of roles in the early days of film (let’s be honest, even present)? So good. The book lingered in my brain for weeks after. None of Nghi Vo’s work is for folks who don’t like ambiguous magic systems, but I personally enjoyed the chaotic and mysterious magical elements both in Siren Queen and in her Singing Hills Cycle novellas.
Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon (2021)
This book will fuck you up if you aren’t expecting the themes. It’s brutal, so brutal, but beautiful and tender and real. Vern is on the run from the cult she grew up in and flees with her twin babies. Then her body starts to undergo strange changes. She beings to grow a fungal exoskeleton, she begins to change. She also maybe finds love, tries to navigate being a young mother, and so much more. This was another one that stuck in my brain for ages after.
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez (2022)
The format of this book alone is so unique and mesmerizing and worth the read. Perceive a story told in a magic realm theater, discover two men who fall in love, have emotions over the legacy of being displaced by war and colonizers, of being diaspora. This book gave me so many thoughts and hit so many feelings that I can’t really describe it without spoiling anything beyond this basic explanation. Read it.
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow (2023)
This is a Southern gothic fairytale with gothic horror elements, not a gothic horror entirely. Keep that in mind and you will love it, provided you like sentient houses and strange beasts in a sleepy Southern town. This was my last book of the year and I absorbed it at record speeds (for me, so like 3 days). It really is a romance with darker elements, and Opal and Arthur Starling were exactly my trope type so I loved it.
Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher (2023)
This has a similar energy to Nettle & Bone in that it’s very dark fairytale-eque with twists on typical tropes such as the beautiful maiden trapped in a tower. I don’t want to say more other than this novella really went for childhood trauma topics and how some abusive people will never, ever learn to be better and you deserve to have love and life in spite of them.
Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas (2023)
The vampires are the white Americans trying to harm indigenous Mexican folks in 1840s Mexico, the end, I love it. Okay no there’s a whole romance subplot as well as actual vampiric monsters causing trouble. This feels like it lives in that space between a Western and a Southern gothic book and I found myself drawn to it. I read this right after Silver Nitrate and that felt appropriate to me. I think, after listing all these books, I read a fair bit of gothic adjacent or gothic-ish SFF in 2023!
Where Peace Is Lost by Valerie Valdes (2023)
I love Kel, Savvy, Dare, and Lunna as characters. Kel is hiding on the planet Loth after retiring from a past Valerie Valdes smartly hints at in pieces but doesn’t fully reveal until the end, and it is very epic when all the pieces of the puzzle finally come together. I love a space opera world (though most other locations are referenced and the main bulk of the action takes place on a single planet). I especially love Kel and Dare. Please give me more, thanks, this had so many of my enemies to grudging allies to maybe more type tropes.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang (2023)
Frankly, I love this book for how scathing it is about the publishing industry. It’s blunt about how abysmal book advances are unless you are very, very lucky. It’s also scathing about how the publishing industry lets books exist where a white person gets to tell marginalized stories and pretend to be part of those communities until they’re called out by other marginalized folks. And even then, that person might not face much in consequences. Likewise, when Athena, literary Asian American darling, dies in front of June, June steals Athena’s unfinished manuscript and changes her pen name to Juniper Song to be ambiguously Asian to suit. It’s unsettling as hell, and I definitely think it’s worth reading if you like thrillers and want to watch the trainwreck that is June’s life play out.
Bonus Graphic Novel
Galaxy: The Prettiest Star by Jadzia Axelrod and Jess Taylor (Illustrator) (2022)
This one was randomly recommended to me by my library account and I was happy it knew I love a queer narrative about how the hell to even navigate gender. This one is delightfully and unapologetically trans and I enjoyed the illustrations a lot too. My one complaint is that it’s too short, I want more Galaxy!
And that’s it for all the books I read in 2023. My goal in 2024 is 40 books, hoping to hit at least that if not 50! Getting back into reading after years of burnout has been so soothing. I’ve also been getting into manga and graphic novels and I can’t wait to dive into that more. I just can’t wait to read more in general 💜
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