Originally I had glimmers of a plan at the end of 2023 to write a post like this for the New Years. And then… I forgot! Since there’s no real content for today and because it was just the Lunar New Year, I figured I would perhaps do this write up now.

I’m going to go through the list of what I read in Goodreads for 2023 and see how much I even retained from each book. Despite the fact I have always described myself as a person that loves reading, I have been reading woefully little as an adult, and I decided to change that up a bit a few years ago. Not only that, but I wanted Goodreads to become more of a record on what I had read through the year, with start and finish dates as well. I had an account years ago that I deleted because I had packed it full of anything I could remember ever reading, and had also included comics/graphic novels, all of which I have left out of my current profile. Because of that, I’ve been wanting to revisit books I’ve read in the past to get them recorded on Goodreads. So, not all of these were new to me, nor does the list include any comics I’ve been keeping up with.

I wouldn’t really call these reviews necessarily either, just my personal opinions on the books themselves, and I’m going to try to refrain from looking up and refreshing myself on the plot/characters/nuances/themes. Part of it is that I want to see how much I even remember – so if I’ve misremembered it horribly, let that be a reflection on how little impact the story itself made on me. That being said, what I do discuss is going to include spoilers, more than likely.

So, let’s begin.

Starting in October of 2022 I had begun reading Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott, and it took me until the first week of 2023 to finish. This was one of my BOTM choices (I had signed up to the subscription service to broaden what books I choose to read). Part of the reason I was slow in reading it was that it didn’t quite hold my attention – in fact, I don’t really remember the character names at all. But I do remember the characters themselves, and the plot, and I remember loving the story. The book is very poetic and full of the purple prose – flowery and elegant – which was perhaps part of the reason it took me so long to work through it.

The story involves an estranged brother and sister, each with their own special abilities, who inherit a walking house. The backstory of the house itself is tied into the mythology of Baba Yaga as well as the history of the treatment of Jewish people in Russia. The main characters are actually descendents of Baba Yaga’s (if I remember correctly?), and there is some sort of BBEG out to find the house for some nefarious purpose that I also did not retain. For people that enjoy works that are dense with theme and meaning, there is a lot to unpack. Unfortunately I can’t really unpack it all because the book is very not fresh to mind, but I do recall that it seemed to touch upon the idea of generational trauma and family ties, and self-acceptance.

Immediately after finishing Thistlefoot, I started Critical Role: The Mighty Nein – The Nine Eyes of Lucien by Madelein Roux. This book is a tie in to the Critical Role D&D show that includes several voice actors that play D&D together. It is specifically based on one of the characters from their second campaign, Mollymauk Tealeaf. Late in the campaign, it is revealed that Mollymauk’s body used to belong to a man named Lucien, who kind of becomes one of the major end campaign BBEGs. The book goes into Lucien’s backstory prior to the campaign, the events that led to him being drawn in and manipulated by the Eyes of Nine, and then shows his side of the clash with the main characters. As far as tie-in novels go, it was well written and I finished it in a week, which meant that I found it engaging enough. It was also fascinating to get the backstory, and kind of clarified a few things that hadn’t been clear to me before.

The next three books I read were the Chaos Walking books my Patrick Ness. (The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men.) After watching the Chaos Walking movie when it came out, I was pretty fascinated with the idea of a world where men’s thoughts floated around them, visible for everyone to see, detect, and interpret. That made me interested in the books. The books are quite different than the movie, and I believe handled the romance between the main characters a LOT better. Once again, I forget the names (I umm…. don’t retain names well, you’ll find). The general gist of the story is the main lead (a teenage boy, quickly approaching the age that he will be considered a “man” in his village) is growing up in a town where there are no women. They are settlers on an alien world and he has been told that all the women died long ago. After meeting a girl, the two men that raised him send him away to another town with her, and he learns that there are plenty of women still alive on their world, as well as learning what happened to the women of his town.

Because of the nature of the story, there’s a lot of exploration on feminism and what masculinity and being a man actually means. There’s some degree of moralizing typical to a young adult story (the main ethical dilemma the main character faces involves killing others, and whether he can bring himself to even if it is necessary). There are good people and bad people on both sides, but mostly a lot of the characters are just normal people – they are doing things more to look out for themselves than they are to hurt others. Also because of the world’s native inhabitants, the story touches on themes of colonialism as well. The first book was a faster read for me – I absorbed it in less than a week, but the next two books took a few weeks each, and I remember thinking they were a little more tedious to read through.

I think one thing that stood out to me because I found it almost hilarious was that there were certain threads of similarity through all of the books, and because the books are carried into a trilogy they’re especially samey with the first two books. The main character is stuck with a character that he hates at the beginning, has an antagonistic relationship with, but eventually kind of begrudgingly likes and respects or even loves… and then that character dies. The main characters always get close to their goal and think they’ve come to the end… and then the bad guy wins.

That being said, the ideas (while I don’t agree with all of them) are fascinating, and the setting of the world itself is fantastic. The characters were pretty well fleshed out too. I liked it, but I’m not sure I would ever willingly re-read it.

The next book I read was another BOTM pick, The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz. It was a quick read, the idea was kind of fun. The main character is a young woman who has been chosen by her favorite author to attend a special writing retreat. She and several other young women are taken to the author’s remote mansion, where she discovers two things: First, one of the other people attending the retreat is her ex-best friend that she had a falling out with. Second, the author wants everyone at the retreat to write an entire novel in the short period of time they are together, and she is offering them her personal insights and a group workshop on those novels. The main character decides to write a historical fiction book about the original owner of the house and his wife.

As fun as the idea was, the execution was kind of meh? I remembered texting a friend about the book after the fact, saying that the entire story was basically the main character coming to terms with the fact that she’s attracted to chicks and then the bad guy gets away. Because the entire falling out she had with her friend was over them sleeping together, and she seems to be coming to terms with her attraction to some of the other characters and the author, who are all women. That, and she realizes she makes an assumption about who the author is fucking around with early on, and turns out to be wrong because she had been too close minded to consider it was another woman. So a lot of the book involves the main character attempting to grasp her sexuality.

The other part is the author actually steals all her work from other people, and is attempting to use the retreat as a means of finding the next novel she can publish. Which is almost a fun idea until the bad guy gets away, and you get the sense the bad guy only gets away because the main character found her sexy. That and the fact that most of the characters form into cliques around whether they hang out with the main character or her ex-friend gave things a kind of catty vibe. So, fun idea, but handled kind of poorly.

Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel was next. Another BOTM pick, a kind of feminist retelling of the Ramayana from the perspective of a character that is sometimes considered a minor “villain” (although that might be too strong of a description of her role). In the Ramayana, Rama (an incarnation of Vishnu) is a young prince who is banished from his kingdom at the request of Kaikeyi, one of his father’s three wives. His father owed his wife a promise, and the promise she asked for was that Rama be banished for 10 years. During his banishment he lives in exile with his wife and brother, during which time his wife is kidnapped and held prisoner by a demon, and he goes on a quest to save her. After becoming a well known hero, he returns after the decade is up and reclaims his place in his kingdom.

The novel tells the story of Kaikeyi from her time as a young girl until the events that led to her asking for Rama to be banished. It took me a few weeks to read because it was a little hard to get into at first, but once I did I could hardly put it down. At first there’s no sense of the presence of gods, because Kaikeyi is not favored by the gods. Because of this lack of favor, Kaikeyi seeks to learn her own power, and following the instructions of a scroll she finds, she learns to enter a state where she can see the physical representation of her relationships with others as a glowing string. The stronger her relationship, the thicker and brighter the thread – and she learns that she can use this thread to manipulate and influence the people around her, so long as she is careful not to push too hard.

She is married to a king who has two other wives already, and using her ability is able to strengthen her position and relationships within her family and kingdom. There is a heavy feminist slant as she manages to take part in her husband’s counsel and advise on how to rule his kingdom and she seeks to improve things for women. In fact, part of her concern with Rama is that he is heavily influenced by a holy man who thinks that Kaikeyi’s efforts on behalf of women are inappropiate. 

Some things I remembered being fascinated by – initially, the gods have little presence, but once Rama is born and meets his wife, the gods have a heavier presence within the story, one that Kaikeyi herself is shown as being on the outside of. Also, in Patel’s retelling, the demon that kidnaps Rama’s wife turns out to be her father, simply attempting to reclaim his lost daughter. The magic of seeing the literal ties that bind relationships was a fun idea too. There is a lot of focus on the relationships between women and women supporting and helping each other.

The next book was The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth. I liked this one a lot – it was a really quick read and I finished it in one day. The story is told from two points of view – one is that of a woman who is married to the perfect man. They buy a house that is situated quite close a cliff, and it turns out it is a popular suicide spot. As such, her husband has become a bit famous locally because he’s become adept at talking people out of their suicides – until one day, he fails. The main character then struggles with whether her husband might have actually pushed the woman over the cliff, especially once she learns the identity of the woman – the wife of a man she claimed to have an affair with before. She also tells the backstory of her entire whirlwind romance with her husband.

The other point of view is the dead woman’s. She also tells the entire story of her relationship with her own husband, and how it seemed kind of detached and impersonal in ways, and left her completely uncertain of how her husband actually felt about her.

I actually don’t want to spoil this one, but as a meditation on what makes a relationship perfect, it’s wonderful. Especially in the sense that the grand romantic gestures that some people make aren’t reflections of true love, but that a true soulmate is someone you build a deeper understanding with over time. The way the entire story pulls together at the end was great. It also meanders a bit (sometimes almost a little too clumsily) into the realm of mental health and mental illnesses.

Half Sick of Shadows by Laura Sebastian! Also another BOTM pick. Another feminist retelling of an older tale, this time Arthurian legend, in which the Lady of Shallot is the main character. In this version, Arthur and his friends grow up in Avalon together before returning to help Arthur become king. Elaine has visions of the future and possible futures, and she uses her abilities to try to steer the course. It was okay. I didn’t dislike it – in fact, there were quite a few things to like, such as Guinevere being basically a werewolf. It was definitely its own take on the legend, imbuing the story with a lot more magic and fantasy, and there were a lot of things to like, but I had read a few other feminist retellings over the past few years and I think at this point I felt quite worn out by them.

The next book I read was more of a novella than a novel. Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King. I think perhaps werewolf Guinevere put Silver Bullet on my brain, and I rewatched it around the same time as well. After rewatching the movie, I thought to myself how I had never actually read the story it was based off of, so I decided to do that. It was another 1 day read, being much shorter than anything else I read in 2023. It does differ from the movie in several ways, but the plot is basically the same – mysterious murders occur once a month in a small Maine town around the full moon. It turns out to be a werewolf. Young boy in a wheelchair finds out and with the help of his uncle and sister manages to kill it. It’s Stephen King, so of course I like it.

Critical Role: Vox Machina – Kith & Kin by Marieke Nijkamp was next. It’s based off of characters from the first campaign of Critical Role, telling the backstory of the twins. It covers the time they spent with their father and how they eventually left him to find their own way in a series of flashbacks. The main story itself tells how Vax became embroiled with a thieves guild for his sister’s sake, and they are sent on a job by the guild to retrieve some item. When they approach the town where the item is kept, they are separated in a battle – Vex is taken into the town and kept as a guest of the town’s leader, whereas Vax is helped by a group that is rebelling against the town and the new leadership there. The town is under attack by strange creatures (if I remember right, undead, but I may be wrong), and both groups blame each other. Each twin hears the story from the people that helped them, and so they kind of take opposite sides on the matter at first until they are finally reunited and together they figure out that the magical item they were there to steal in the first place is in the center of it all. Again – as a tie in, it was fine. It was nice to get some background on the characters, and then of course at the end they mention moving on to the place where they would meet the other characters of Vox Machina.

The next book I read was The Power by Naomi Alderman. I knocked this one out in 2 or 3 days, it was really great. It was also another BOTM add on/pick. I think there’s also a TV show based on it, but I haven’t bothered to watch it yet. The main story itself involves women suddenly being able to use a strange power, almost like being able to wield electricity. It is tied to an organ located at the base of the neck that has suddenly just started to grow and develop in women without much explanation. The book follows several narrative threads as different characters react or observe to the shifting power dynamics that occur as this new ability gives women a physical advantage over men, and makes it so that women are no longer the weaker sex. As a result, women begin exhibiting behavior and attitudes very similar to men, and the shift in power results in instability and chaos.

Perhaps most fascinating to me was the bookends. The book is prefaced with a letter from a man to a woman, saying the book is his and he would like her opinion on it. After the main story, there are a series of letters between the fictional male author and the woman he is discussing his work with – it is apparent from these letters that they exist in a world where women have this organ and are considered the dominant sex, and the way that she treats him in these letters is similar to how a man might talk down to a woman in our own world. That, and the arguments that he makes for men in his world have very strong and valid points. I definitely recommend this one, it was a great read.

What I wouldn’t recommend would be the next one. Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling, another BOTM pick. It was a quick read, but fuck was it dumb. There’s some environmentalist themes within it – the rising sea levels and global warming have made the future kind of bleak for most people. It has caused some wealthy people to create the first “floating city” that actually floats on the ocean and the main character is a woman who managed to secure a job there. She gets close to the creator of the city, who sends her on some job up in Canada or Alaska or thereabouts to work as a pleasure girl at a place where some other guy is building some other establishment. Her goal is to get close to that guy for something I can’t remember entirely, but all kind of boils down to corporate espionage or sabotage? We also get insight into her backstory being raised by her immigrant Korean mother and helping with the business (a hotel of some sort?) that her father died and left behind to them.

Another part of the story involves a group of women soldiers/scientists who were sent to a base near there to study data about global warming, and they come to the conclusion that the world is basically fucked. They get left pretty much on their own for awhile, then visited by a group of soldiers, but they decide they want to just say fuck the world and live out on the base together. So they devise some sort of plan where they fuck the visitors to see if any of them get pregnant. They’re allowed to stay there for whatever reason and one of them has a daughter and they raise the daughter to be some supposed badass. The daughter talks some townie from nearby into being her live in boyfriend and then for some reason they’re interested in the same place the other main character is, so one of the soldiers infiltrates as the madame in charge of the pleasure girls, the daughter infiltrates as one of the girls, and her boyfriend infiltrates as an employee.

And the other part of the story is some rich boy taking a job teaching at this place, and falling in love with one of the girls.

Anyhow, it all gets messy and convuluted and dumb, and the ending was just stupid. It was just so fucking stupid. It involves the one girl driving to return to the floating city and finding the other (supposedly badass daughter) girl hitchhiking apparently on her way to the same floating city to assassinate head dude there, and they decide to go together. But the mission did not seem at all well thought out. In fact, very few of the missions any of them take seem well thought out. Conceptually the book sounds great, but it’s disappointing and doesn’t live up to the premise.

Revisiting a book I had read years ago, Redwall by Brian Jacques was next. Redwall is a series of books written by Brian Jacques involving anthropomorphized animals, typically rodents. I’m going to try to read the entire series. I’ve read half of them before, when I was a kid, but there are some that I never did get to. Some things about the books are a little problematic, for example you can generally guess at the nature of a creature and whether they are good or bad entirely based on what they are (mice are good, rats are bad. Stoats and weasels are bad, otters and squirrels are good). It felt a little more tedious to read as an adult, although that might be because the first book is fairly rough. I think when I was younger I had started on one of the middle books. The books weren’t written in chronological order, but they tend to generally tell the story of the same locality.

In Redwall, an evil rat warlord named Cluny the Scourge has come to Mossflower Woods and wants to take over Redwall Abbey. The creatures that live there manage to all gather into the Abbey and put up a defense against Cluny. While that is going on, a young mouse living in the Abbey goes on a quest to find the mythical sword of Martin the Warrior, following clues left behind in the Abbey and eventually having to travel out into Mossflower Woods and facing a snake to win the sword back. Then wielding the sword, he helps to bring down Cluny and save the day and win the girl, etcetc. It’s a fantasy story with talking rodents and swords. It’s cute. As mentioned, the first book is a bit simplistic and kind of rough compared to later books, but you can see where a lot of the world that Jacques develops starts at.

Next I revisted World War Z by Max Brooks. I’ve read this book a few times over the year and have also listened to it on audiobook. I’ve always loved it. I’ll probably re-read it again someday. The World War Z movie was fun in itself, but the book is far superior and I would love to see it eventually get a proper treatment as a TV series. The framing device of World War Z is that a man had gotten an assignment to make an official record of WWZ by obtaining interviews with people that lived through it. However, the people that gave him the assignment wanted cold hard facts and he wanted to share the full interviews to really get the human element across, so he has organized the interviews into his own book to share the stories that he has heard. Each chapter is an interview with a different person, each from different backgrounds, that helped share insights into the rise of the zombie apocalypse, as well as how people managed to survive and eventually overcome this threat to humanity. And it’s great. It’s just fucking great. Sure, the story itself is zombies – but the insight to human nature is universal. Have you never read it? Go fucking read it.

The Last Word by Taylor Adams was another BOTM pick. In this thriller, a young woman is working as a house caretaker in a remote area. She has been writing large notes on a board for her nearest neighbor – he does the same, and they read the notes using binoculars (or a telescope? or something). He recommends a book to her and she reads it. The book is godawful trash and she leaves a bad review on it, resulting in her getting into an online tiff with the author. Shortly after, strange things begin to happen around the house and she realizes she’s not alone. Somehow, the author she’s pissed off has found her…

There are things about this one that felt a bit clumsily handled, and I was able to guess most of the ending after a few false start guesses. The initial bad guy is kind of an overdone caricature more than a fleshed out character. That being said, Taylor Adam’s writing style makes for easy reading and I finished this within a few days, absorbing it quickly. I was impressed enough that I looked into what other books he’s done as well. On the one hand, the mislead idea that he goes with first sounded super awesome as a story idea, but even though I guessed the twist to it before the reveal, I still rather liked it.

Next was Existentially Challenged by Yahtzee Croshaw. I’ve been a fan of Yahtzee Croshaw’s Zero Punctuation game reviews for years (fuck… over a decade now? I’m old.) And I’m still watching even now that it is Fully Ramblomatic on the Second Wind youtube channel. As a result, I’ve been reading his books quite faithfully as they come out. Existentially Challenged is the sequel to Differently Morphous, wherein a government branch that handles things of a supernatural or magical nature investigates cases where Lovecraftian creatures may be influencing or possessing people within our world. The main character is a young woman who was initially thought to have special powers (which can occur if someone has been touched or possessed by one of the Lovecraftian beings), but it turns out she’s just got a photographic memory. Despite not having any sort of special power, she is still hired and paired with a man who outwardly appears to be a charlatan, but actually has knowledge and abilties and a past that makes him quite formidable and maybe not as buffoonish as he initially appears to be. It is made clear that part of her assignment includes keeping tabs on her partner and reporting back to their boss about him.

In Existentially Challenged, they face a case that involves dead bodies that appear to have had the life drained from them. They think that the source of this drain may involve a new faith healer that has sprung up, because true healing is almost impossible without shifting one’s own health/life into another, and the faith healer appears to be a young girl that is not suffering any ill effects from her miraculous ability. Also, since the end of the previous novel, their department is officially recognized and public, and they are adjusting to the changes caused by that and the shifting laws around their work. Yahtzee Croshaw’s works are comedies in the vein of Douglas Adams, if perhaps a bit drier in humor.

Revisited The Martian by Andy Weir next. Man gets stuck on Mars and grows potatoes. It’s a good book, and a great movie. I half re-read it to put it on my Goodreads list, and half to be able to rate it for BOTM after buying a copy through them.

After looking up more books by Taylor Adams, I read No Exit next as another BOTM add on. (I was trying to meet their challenges last year). Although it’s a completely different story of its own, there are similar elements as The Last Word. A young woman who hasn’t spoken to her mother in years hears that her mom has cancer and is about to undergo an operation. She drops everything to drive home and ends up stuck in a rest area during a blizzard with a handful of other people. While trying to get some cellphone reception to check on her mom, she finds a little girl being kept captive in the back of one of the vehicles stuck at the rest area, and begins to try to piece together who the vehicle belongs to and who the kidnapper is.

Some of how the main character handles things feels clumsy and unrealistic – if you find a kid in a vehicle, are you really just going to leave her there while you try to figure out who the kidnapper is? There are several other people there so it feels like she should feel safe saying something sooner or being confrontational (granted, in her case that would have gone badly, but still). Also, once again, the mislead on the bad guy is almost more caricature than character, covering for a more compelling bad guy. But I did absorb it quickly again despite all that – as mentioned above, Taylor Adams has a writing style that pulls you along despite it all.

Revisited Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker after that. The concept of the book always amuses me – the book is inhabited by a demon who urges you and begs you to destroy the book throughout the story. As you keep reading, it decides you must want to understand why it’s in a book, and so the demon tells you it’s life story. Starting from when it was a child growing up in hell until it arrives to the surface of our world, through its first interactions with humans, “falling in love” for the first time, and telling how it ended up stuck in the book. To be honest, most of the story doesn’t stick with me so much as the main conceit – the idea of a book addressing the reader, trying to convince them to stop reading and burn the book.

After that, my next BOTM pick was Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. A book about two childhood friends, a boy and a girl, who work together to make a video game that becomes a hit and as a result they grow their own company and gaming auteurship, with the help of a college friend of the boy’s that helped fund things and ran the business side. It’s kind of an examination of love. I will say that the story kind of reminded me of the backstory of Ready Player One, only where one of the dude’s died instead of the chick. But the dynamic of long time friends who founded a gaming company together where the guy pines after the girl for years and then she marries his handsome friend instead is all there in a very similar fashion.

That being said, it really is a beautiful story, and I absorbed it pretty quickly as well.

Then I re-read Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli, half because of a prompt I had received earlier in the year about my favorite book of all time. I used to read this book almost every other year when I was younger. It’s a kid’s book, about an orphan who runs away from his aunt and uncle and spends much of the book trying to find a place to call home. He finds happiness briefly in different places, but something always makes him move on. A very quick one day read, and not very long at all.

After finishing Redwall, I picked up Mossflower, but it took me longer to read, and I was picking up all the other books listed between these two while I slowly worked through it. Mossflower takes place years before Redwall and tells the story of Martin the Warrior. While traveling through Mossflower, he’s taken captive by the warlord wildcat that rules the area and thrown in the dungeons. He’s helped by a mouse thief to escape, and joins with the other woodland creatures who are hiding from wildcat. The warlord is very sickly though, and soon his tempestuous daughter Tsarmina takes over and she is especially cruel and vindictive and wants to bring the woodlanders back under her power. While Tsarmina and the woodlanders fight, Martin goes on a journey to Salamandastron, the ancestral home of the badgers, to bring help back to the fight. Although he does find the place, the badger lord that rules there refuses to return, as he’s embroiled in his own battle that he plans to die in – instead, he reforges Martin’s broken sword and sends him home with some extra help.

I re-read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood next. I think in part because the letters around The Power had me thinking about the ending chapter of The Handmaid’s Tale, but also just to get it back on my Goodreads list. The Handmaid’s Tale tells the story of a woman who is basically being used as breeding stock within the new zealously religious nation of Gildead, which was formerly the United States. She forms a somewhat improper relationship with her “owner,” meeting him in his study at night, and also begins to have trysts with the driver. The Hulu show is also quite good, and a few years ago Atwood wrote a sequel as well that was pretty decent.

One of the things I always especially loved though was the end, where the narrative is discussed at length as a discovered historical record at a conference. From the names of the people discussing the history of Gilead, it seems that Native American tribes have regained control of the continent and are discussing Gilead almost like it is the past, suggesting that it fails as a nation. They talk about the story in the Handmaid’s Tale by discussing authorship and characters in the story trying to narrow down which historical figures in Gilead’s leadership may be referenced. I find the different take of a story presented afterwards to be fascinating, I guess.

After that, I read Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs, another BOTM pick. A woman is warned by her father that she has to move every year after a certain date or else risk someone attacking her. While living in a very remote place where she thinks she can’t be reached, she decides to stay in place, only to find that she wasn’t safe after all. Meanwhile, her sister lives alone at home after their father’s death, without understanding why her sister won’t visit or come home. And a young man in England discovers that he’s actually a prisoner being used by his “Uncle.” All of this revolves around a system of magic that exists within their world, where books written with special ink made from the blood of rare “scribes” can be imbued with spells, and when those spells are spoken aloud, they provide the effects of the spell. This one took me a few months to read as it was initially hard to get into, and easy to put down. That being said, I loved the worldbuilding and the system of magic, and I liked how the story itself came together.

The next BOTM pick was Shark Heart by Emily Habeck. For some reason in this world there is a disease that causes people to turn into animals (literally). Once someone has progressed far enough, they have to be released into the wild. Shortly after their marriage, the main couple discover that the husband has the disease and will be turning into a shark, and so he has to adjust to the treatments and the life changes that it causes. The chapters are short and the book reads like poetry and feels like a reflection of the wear and tear serious conditions like cancer or alzheimer’s can have on people. It was another one day read. It’s beautiful and wonderful and bittersweet, and very much about love and how love perseveres.

After that I had The End of October by Lawrence Wright as a BOTM add on. It was a fun read about a pandemic, that strangely enough got published right around the time COVID-19 was starting to be a thing in the US. The disease in this particular novel is much more virulent. It was almost a little ridiculous that one character is at the core of knowing all the things and following the path of the pandemic every step of the way. The novel also kind of builds like there’s some overarching sinister plot that unleashed it – and then the revealed truth at the end is just… simple and realistic, and I loved it. I also liked that fewer characters make it to the end than you would think.

I read An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green next. April is walking home one night, spots a giant robot statue in the middle of the street in New York, and calls a friend over to help her make a jokey youtube video about it, naming it Carl. Before she knows it, she’s become an overnight viral sensation by merit of being one of the first people that posted about the robots – who have apppeared in several major cities across the world. She gets an agent and meticulously plans her online persona, becoming a social media star and eventual pundit as the presence of the Carls is polarized into a political issue. Meanwhile, people across the world begin having a shared dream that involves solving puzzles. As matters around the Carls become more polarized and openly violent, April becomes a little obsessed with her own importance and fame, and trying to figure out why the robot is here and what it wants to share through the dream.

It’s kind of a fun story, that’s more about how easily things are polarized into political camps. Also a warning against the problems of fame and letting it go to your head. Generally good. There’s a sequel I just finished reading, but I won’t post about it until next year, I guess. I technically started it right after I finished this book, but left it sitting a few chapters in as I got distracted by other books I wanted to read.

I’ve been in the middle of re-reading one Harry Potter book a year, and in 2023 I read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. At this point I’ve read all the Harry Potter books multiple times, so I’ve been taking it slow with them – I started it in July and didn’t finish until October. Similarly, I’ll be starting book 4 sometime this July.

After that, it hit October and I decided I wanted to read horror. Specifically Ring by Koji Suzuki, the book that the movie The Ring is based off of. I think I watched the movie right beforehand as well, and it had been awhile since I’d read the book, and I wanted to get it listed back on Goodreads. The story is about a reporter that finds out about the mysterious and linked deaths of four teenagers who watched a cursed video tape. After watching the tape himself, he brings a friend in to help him, and then becomes even more desperate after his wife and infant daughter watch the tape as well. They find that the tape was psychically recorded by Sadako, a young woman with powerful abilties, and try to find out what she wants so they can survive. The book is actually quite slower paced than the movie. The characters are strangely more compelling, especially the friend he brings in, Ryuji, who is hard to get a grasp on even though he plays a major role in all of the first three novels. The book is also a little bit more convuluted and complicated in plot, and includes the small pox virus as part of the will of Sadako’s curse (which is why it wants to be copied/spread) – which becomes more important in future books.

Following that, I started Spiral, the second book of the Ring series. This one picks up right after the first book, following the account of the doctor that performs the autopsy on Ryuji. Ando is a college friend of Ryuji, and follows a strange set of clues that pop up while investigating the cause of death. He meets Ryuji’s young protege/girlfriend and develops a crush on her. Through the clues, he comes across the entire written account the reporter left after the events of the first book, and learns more about the cursed tape – however, all copies have been destroyed before he can watch, the last one being destroyed by Ryuji’s girlfriend after she watched it and disappeared. Despite that, they find out that the reason the reporter was spared was because he created the written account – which now has the capability of spreading the virus. And if an ovulating woman reads that or watches the tape or any media relating to Sadako, then she gives birth to Sadako 7 days later. Sadako has been reborn thanks to Ryuji’s girlfriend, and Ando is given a choice between just letting things run their course, letting the book get published and letting Sadako become the dominant form of life on Earth as she infects everything… or reviving his son, who had died a year ago and who he has been grieving through the entire book. He chooses his son.

Then I started Loop, but I technically didn’t finish it until this year as well.

So that was everything I read in 2023. 31 books in all, more than I’ve read in years, but I’m hoping to try to keep the trend up for this year. I actually remembered a lot more than I expected to as far as plot goes. But I coud hardly remember any character names at all! For some reason I am awful at details like that.

So here’s to the next year of reading – in 2024, the year of the Dragon.