What a great year for reading it’s been! This is the first year in at least a decade that I haven’t participated in the official Goodreads Reading Challenge, since I stopped using Goodreads to track my reading. I did, however, still set reading goals for myself and keep track of each book I read, and I found 2023 to be one of the best reading years of my adult life.
I blew past my numerical reading goal of 45 books way back in September, and I’m at 63 books as of this writing. While I reached similar numbers back in 2021 when I hit my pandemic reading stride, I think that this was an especially balanced year in terms of diversity and variety in my reading. I used two main methods to track and document my reading this year. The first is StoryGraph, a Goodreads alternative with much of the same functionality. You can see the full list of books I read this year here. In order to make keeping up with my tracking less of a burden, I have let go of the need to write detailed reviews of every single book I read, usually just writing a sentence or two to remind myself what the book is about if I haven’t reviewed it for the blog. The other method was completely new to me this year: a crochet Reading Log Snake! Back in January, I saw a photo floating around social media of a crocheted snake with genre color-coded segments representing each book read, and immediately decided I could make one for myself. I went online and found a quick pattern for the snake’s head (I used the “small snake” instructions from this free pattern) and then designed a key assigning a different color of yarn to each of the genres I typically read: horror, romance, science fiction, fantasy, mystery/thriller, nonfiction, short story collections, and “other.” I’m considering adding an additional color for historical fiction if I decide to do this again next year.
Crocheting my Reading Log Snake affected my reading habits in several unexpected ways. First, I found it especially satisfying to add a stripe of color every time I finished a book, which may have motivated me to finish more books than usual this year. The genre color coding also made me more aware, overall, of the genres I was reading. I was reluctant to have two of the same color next to each other on my snake, which had the benefit of preventing me from getting stuck in a single-genre rut. On the other hand, it also made it more challenging for me to read series, because instead of bingeing the sequels to a book I loved, I slowed down to read a few books in other genres first, which could cause me to lose momentum. As another plus side, though, my desire to create the most balanced and visually appealing snake possible would often lead me to seek out books in genres I hadn’t read recently, which made it easy to pick out my next read and to get excited about something new.
Another significant motivating factor in my reading this year was book clubs. As I mentioned in last year’s reading recap, I’m no longer able to regularly participate in the weekly Romancing the Gothic book club that powered so much of my 2021 reading. However, I did rejoin a few of the old book clubs I participated in before the pandemic in addition to picking up some new ones. This fall, I started a new book club at a theatrical social club called the Lambs that centers on books with a variety of well-known adaptations (so far we’ve read Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw). For work, I occasionally participate in our American Mystery Classics book club, reading books from our line of reprinted classics of the American Golden Age of mystery (roughly between the two World Wars).
In fact, said American Mystery Classics book club has helped me with one of my reading goals this year of reading more of the classic writers in the genre. I particularly enjoyed The Penguin Pool Murder, in which Stuart Palmer first introduced his iconic school teacher sleuth Hidegarde Withers. I also loved S.S. Van Dine’s The Benson Murder Case, his first book to feature the influential dandy detective Philo Vance. I’ve continued my trend from last year of reading more contemporary mysteries and thrillers, as well. One of my favorite books overall from the year was Julia Bartz’s brilliant debut Gothic suspense, The Writing Retreat. I also discovered the wonderful world of cross-genre mysteries. My other favorite book of the year was The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal, a sci-fi murder mystery set aboard a luxury spaceship, and I also loved Victor Manibo’s debut sci-fi thriller The Sleepless.
The other genre I read far more of this year was historical romance. Whenever I felt like I was getting bogged down in just a couple of genres and needed to shake up the colors on my Book Snake a bit, I’d grab a short romance novella on audio. I returned to several authors that Romancing the Gothic had introduced me to, such as Cat Sebastian and KJ Charles who both have a substantial backlist I’ll be mining for a while. But one of my favorite romances I read this year was by an author completely new to me: A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall. I also really loved The Widow of Rose House by Diana Biller, which I believe I learned about from one of the many bookish podcasts I listen to.
Overall, I think I did fairly well at meeting last year’s goals, although I’m still making pretty slow progress through the physical books I already own and I have a few borrowed books still to give back. I’m going to try again to make it through more of my physical books next year, especially ones that have been on the shelf for a while. I also want to bring back my frequent goal of reading more nonfiction, since you’ll notice that’s the genre least represented on this year’s Book Snake. But perhaps the biggest change I’ll make to my reading next year is a change in my blogging schedule: I’ve been posting here every single Monday for eight and a half years, but lately I’ve found myself racing to finish books just to have something to write about each week and treating my blog as more of a chore than a fun hobby. To try to remedy this, I’ve decided to move my posting schedule to every other week to give myself some more breathing room between posts. This of course means that I’ll have to be even more discerning about which books I volunteer to review, since I’ll be writing half as many reviews. But I want to be able to take my time and give you all more thoughtful reviews and essays rather than rushed work. I hope you will still join me here every other week! My next post will be on New Year’s Day, January 1, and then the following post will be January 15.
How did you do on your own reading goals? Let me know in the comments?
I started rereading oldies mysteries this year, those from pre-war (well, 1930s-40s ish mostly) as well as some of the more modern since I got a bunch for free or cheap and owuld find an author and then read as much of that author as I could find. I love the older ones and found some of the newer ones interesting too, mostly the ‘cosy’ genre, although all the crime and murder does not make anything feel cosy to me! I started rereading some of the older Regenciy romances (meaning written by Georgette Heyer and others later like 70s-90s). I read a bunch of books about Spiritualist mediumship since I am one, and other autobiographies on the subject, including modern people. That led me to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and I reread some of the Sherlock Holmes and started reading Sir ACD’s The Wanderings of a Spiritualist which I haven;t finished yet. So, I have been happy with this year’s reading and am glad you have enjoyed yours too!