2023: My Year in Books

This year was a year of changes for my family.

My elder child graduated from high school and started college, and my younger child graduated from homeschool and started public high school. In spite of some adjustments, both of them are thriving in their new educational environments.

After we took a weeks-long trip through New England and Quebec mid-year, I took on a new job role that has been an education for me. It’s given me the chance to spend every day with humans spanning five generations, and it’s taught me a lot about who I am separate from the homeschooling and child-rearing that have occupied most of the past two decades.

Over the years I’ve anticipated the empty nest phase and hoped that the awareness that it was looming on the horizon might soften the landing on the other side of full-time homeschooling and round-the-clock parenting. Perhaps it did soften the landing, but it’s still been a rough transition for me. I didn’t realize how much of myself I’d set aside while putting my family first, especially during the isolation of the pandemic years when family and home was almost all there was to focus on. I’m gradually getting back a sense of myself, and I’m looking forward to more adventures and learning experiences in 2024.

I plan to write more about that process as it unfolds, but you’re not here for navel-gazing…you’re here for my 2023 Year in Books! Or at least that’s what I assume you’re here for, but even if you mis-read the title and came here thinking this was a post about crocheting (2023 Year in Hooks!) or about playing chess with wildlife (2023 Bears ‘n’ Rooks!), I hope you find something interesting.

TheStoryGraph keeps getting better and better, and this year unveiled a feature—the 2023 Reading Wrap-Up—that makes my Year in Books post much simpler to write by doing all of the summarizing and collages for me:

In addition to the 5-star reads pictured in the summary image, I also rated Rouge by Mona Awad 5 stars (I guess the square format of the summary didn’t allow enough space for all four covers).

Number of books read: 139 (20% fewer than 2022)

Number of books I didn’t finish: 7 (one more than in 2022)

Pages read for the year: 46,777 (15% fewer than in 2022)

Audiobook hours: 853.47

I spent a lot of time with mysteries and scary books (thrillers and horror, although apparently not enough genre horror to make the summary bar chart; horror was 6th on the genre list), and my top three authors are mystery authors (Agatha Christie, Michael Connelly, and Rita Mae Brown).

You can see the whole beautiful wrap-up on TheStoryGraph.

And that’s my reading for 2023.

For 2024, I plan to read as much as I can, but I’ve got some plans up my sleeve that I’m not ready to mention here yet that might affect my reading goals. Stay tuned for developments as they develop!

I hope that your own 2023 Year in Books was pleasant and that 2024 brings you many welcome adventures, both bookish and otherwise.