My Year in Books: 2023

Time for my yearly roundup of books read in the past year! As always, this post hits most of the highlights (and a few lowlights); if you're interested in the full list of everything I read this year you can browse it on Goodreads. Books that made my top-ten list for the year are marked with an asterisk.*

Officially, I read 69 books in 2023, including logged re-reads, which feels like an almost shockingly low number. However, I do know that I did a bunch of re-reading which I never bothered to log, so the actual number is probably higher. (For example, I know that sometime in the autumn I blazed through three or four books by Grace S. Richmond that I'd read before, but never noted it in my book diary or on Goodreads.)

Most of the re-reads that I did keep track of were classic novels: I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting Charles Dickens' Bleak House (which I think may be his masterpiece) and Martin Chuzzlewit (which remains my personal favorite, in spite of a whole skeleton of bones to pick with the American segment) and Jane Austen's Emma and Northanger Abbey. I did not really read any new-to-me classics this year—aside from Anthony Trollope's The American Senator*, which made my top-ten list—but I think that was because I covered that department so well with classic re-reads!

There was a handful of Westerns. Open Range by Lauran Paine* was a slightly surprise standout, sneaking onto my top-ten list. Unfortunately Paine was also responsible for my Worst Book of the Year, which has to be a record of some sort—I find it hard to believe the same author who penned Open Range could have been responsible for the so-called prose in Halfmoon Ranch. Let us hope the stories that made up the latter were very early works. I also finally caught up with Eugene Rhodes' Bransford of Rainbow Range, which was enjoyable, but not by any means my favorite Rhodes book in spite of its being one of his best-known. The Daughter of a Magnate by Frank H. Spearman was pretty good, Desert Brew by B.M. Bower just okay. Mystery Ranch by Arthur Chapman was a rare example of a genuine whodunit in a Western setting: interesting, though not a particularly scintillating mystery in the end!

Plenty of mysteries, of course. The highlight of the year was The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey*—even better than I expected, though bittersweet to finish her all-too-short oeuvre. I also finally finished the Felse Investigations series by Ellis Peters (actually, not technically, since I still haven't read the first book). Rainbow's End was admittedly a slightly anti-climactic finish; the second-last book, City of Gold and Shadows, was better. And I'm almost through the Henry Gamadge series by Elizabeth Daly...I have just one book left and I'm rather putting it off because I hate to see the series end! Death and Letters was probably my favorite of the Daly titles read in 2023. I also tried out the first two books in Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series, to see if I liked it any better than I did on my one attempt years ago, and I have to say that neither Wolfe himself or Stout's style/tone in general are really for me (though I admit I was a bit partial to Archie Goodwin after two books).

A couple of non-series mystery titles I found modestly enjoyable were Arrest the Bishop? by Winifred Peck and There May Be Danger by Ianthe Jerrold. To Catch a Thief by David Dodge, which is in many ways quite different from the famous Hitchcock movie, was...interesting, though unsatisfying in some ways. And I read a couple more of the British Library Crime Classics themed anthologies of short stories edited by Martin Edwards—Murder at the Manor: Country House Mysteries was just okay (although the final story, "Weekend at Wapentake" by Michael Gilbert, packed a punch I did not see coming), but Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries was much better, great fun in fact. On the nearer side of the Atlantic, Alibi For Isabel and Other Stories by Mary Roberts Rinehart was good as well, though only a couple of the stories in the collection could honestly be called mysteries (the connecting theme for most of them is the WWII home front).

I already mentioned Halfmoon Ranch as the worst book I read, but it swooped in fairly late to claim the title from either Death in Cyprus by M.M. Kaye or Air Bridge by Hammond Innes (the latter I think was even more a disappointment than it would otherwise have been because it had been on my to-read list for so long based on an intriguing blurb). I also may be in the minority on this, but I failed to be much moved by The Princess Bride.

A large part of this year's nonfiction was made up of books linked to nature and gardening: Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life by Marta McDowell* was a top-ten pick, and I also enjoyed Unearthing the Secret Garden from the same author. Also falling in or near this category were Seasons at Eagle Pond by Donald Hall, The God of the Garden by Andrew Peterson, and Twenty Days With Julian and Little Bunny, by Papa by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I also greatly appreciated Simple Money, Rich Life by Bob Lotich*, a book on managing finances from a Christian perspective. There were a couple of good historical nonfiction titles: the immensely entertaining Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies by Lawrence Goldstone*, and The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History by Stephan Talty. The Brasspounder by D.G. Sanders was an entertaining memoir of life as a railroad telegrapher in the early twentieth century.

The catch-all category, of novels and short stories in various or no particular genres, was responsible for an unusual amount of top-ten picks this year! Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorenson*, A Tale of a Lonely Parish by Francis Marion Crawford*, The Provincial Lady in America by E.M. Delafield*, and An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden* all made the cut. Also enjoyable were The Red House by Edith Nesbit, Poor Dear Theodora! by Florence Irwin, Cheerful—By Request by Edna Ferber, and Yours, Constance by Emily Hayse.