My Reading Highlights (and Lowlight) of 2023
I read 26 books this year - here are some I liked (and a stinker).
This year I challenged myself to read one book a month, hoping to end at 12 books total. I realize this is not a lot of books, but with a two-year-old I didn’t expect to get a lot of time to read (or even focus on reading when I did have time). Plus, I’m a very slow reader. I ended up reading 26 books - here are some that I really liked, and one I did not.
Note: These are judged solely against the other books I read this year, and not against all books released this year (that I obviously haven’t read) or any book I’ve read in the past that may be better or worse.
(Big thanks to
over at haunting the staircase where I first saw a form of this year-end book wrap-up and promptly created my own; go check out their post: 10/100)The Best One - Scythe by Neal Shusterman
The best book I read in 2023 was Scythe by Neal Shusterman. I had seen this book pop up on various book-tuber channels on YouTube but had avoided it largely due to the negative view I had on YA books.
Then, one day my wife and I were in the bookstore, and I said “It sounds interesting, but it’s young adult”. She looked at me and said: “What do you think you are?”
Wife: 1. Matt: 0.
I loved the concept for this book and the way the plot unfolded - though there’s an abrupt turn near the end that I didn’t love. Every time I opened this book I felt like I was living in the world Shusterman created, an experience I haven’t had with a book in some time. I read through the other main entries in Arc of a Scythe (Thunderhead and The Toll) but enjoyed this one most.
The Runner-Up - Fresh Hell (Autumncrow High) by Cameron Chaney
I loved Cameron Chaney’s short story collection Autumncrow, and it’s a book I highly recommend it to anyone interested in horror (particularly if you like 90’s throwback teen horror; though I found it spooky enough to border on adult), so I was waiting with bated breath for the release of Fresh Hell. I bought it and devoured it as soon as it came out. It has moments of excellent throwback horror with occasional warming vibes of a small town in fall.
Whether you’re familiar with Cameron’s YouTube channel (Library Macabre) or not, I think horror fans will find something here to love. I maintain that Cameron Chaney is one of the best new indie authors out there - and one of my favorites.
The Best ‘Made Into a Movie’ One - The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
I love the movie version of The Silence of the Lambs so it’s little surprise that I’d pick this as my favorite ‘novel turned movie’ book from 2023. Looking at the other novels I’ve read that have had movie adaptations, I think this choice could be controversial with some readers, considering I read some books this year with really good adaptations (Carrie by Stephen King, 1984 by George Orwell, etc.).
I read through Red Dragon by Thomas Harris earlier in the year and dove right into Silence after finishing it. It’s not typical for me to immediately continue a series, but Red Dragon was another great book, and would have made this list, possibly even this spot, had I not continued forward (this is based on my enjoyment of the book, not the movie adaptations of any of these).
What else is there to say about this book that hasn’t already been said - it’s a great thriller/procedural with interesting characters and a good setup. Combine that with psychology that digs further into the protagonist than any of the monsters, and you’ve got a winner.
And watch the movie if you haven’t, there’s a reason it followed the book closer than most movie adaptations are willing to and ended up turning out so well.
The One With The Best Ideas - 1984 by George Orwell
One area of fiction I’ve been trying to dive into more is classics, and 1984 by George Orwell fell into that boat for me (plus, it’s free to read through Amazon’s Prime Reading). While the other books on this list contain many interesting and complex ideas, 1984 is a book that felt like every chapter introduced a new and interesting idea to unpack. However, while the core ideas were always interesting, I personally felt they weren’t always explored enough, and sometimes fell prey to dense prose over exploration.
In a way, the new ideas every chapter reminded me of the video game Dishonored 2, where each level contains a new mechanic or twist to keep the experience fresh. That’s how 1984 felt like it shined for me - starting new chapters with new ideas that rounded out the world the novel sets out to create.
The Stinker - Missing Dead Girls by Sara Walters
Any cursory glance at the reviews for Missing Dead Girls by Sara Walters will likely cover the issues I had with this book. There are two big issues I had here:
First, the marketing of this book feels entirely misleading. If you want to read this book without structural spoilers, you should stop reading now, but this doesn’t spoil any of the “mystery” in the book, and I wouldn’t recommend reading it anyways.
The synopsis on Goodreads (which is similar to that on the back of the book) is about three paragraphs long and contains a line near the end: ‘Then Madison goes missing.’ This leads the reader to believe the book is setting up the premise of the novel: this is a book about a missing girl (hell, even the name is MISSING DEAD GIRLS). And yes, Madison does go missing - but she goes “missing” in the prologue, and the entire novel flashes back before that, leading up to her going “missing” in the last handful of pages - and she doesn’t actually go missing for very long, she shows up again only a few pages later.
This is a book largely about the relationship between two young women who have shared trauma. While this is inferred in the synopsis, they lean far too much into the idea that this is a book about the mystery surrounding a missing girl. I have no issues reading a book about the relationship between two characters, but I do have issues with a book misleading its marketing in an attempt to hook an entirely different audience (likely going for the true crime crowd, as was my case). As explained above, this is something others have criticized in reviews, so I don’t think it’s just me that felt “cheated”.
And secondly, this book feels like it was written for edgy teens. There’s a lot of edgy teen girl drama that is written to sound like everything is life or death, the sky is always falling. In a horror novel, what makes it horror is that characters go ‘the sky might fall’ and then it does and the [blank] hits the fan. The difference between a horror novel and an edgy teen is that the teen says the same thing, the sky falls, and then it’s nothing more than a light breeze. It’s a difference in stakes.
This book’s stakes nearly always pan out to someone saying something dramatic, and the result falling largely soft. Then, by the time the stakes are higher (near the end of the book when the actual plot picks up), I was pretty uninterested.
See you in the pages of the next one,
- Matt