This wasn’t one of my top years for reading. I think I am still recovering a lot from 2020, when my brain was too loud to focus on the quiet activity of curling up with a book. I’m still not quite there, with so many other interests keeping me awake later than I mean to be and leaving less time for my usual reading at bedtime.

Also, I set out with the goal of reading ALL The Expanse novels, which might have been a little too lofty considering they are all several hundred pages. I did manage to get through a couple, but I needed shorter stories after that. Around November, I downloaded an amazing audiobook “The Weight of Blood” and I’ve started listening to “White Smoke” – I had dropped audiobooks when I started paying for Spotify and then slipped into the realm of D&D podcasts.

I avoided logging too many picture books, as that can also cause my list to look bigger than it is, so the few I did add, like Carnivores, tickled me enough that I didn’t want to forget it existed. Caliban’s War was book 2 in The Expanse and those 624 pages took me a LONG TIME to get through. But I will revisit. I do miss Holden and Bobby and Naomi and Amos…all of them.

I did log graphic novels though because there are so many good ones out there for kids, teens and adults. You’ll notice a LOT of Harrow County, which I was determined to read before the Kickstarter launched for the board game. I also started MIND MGMT but then my brain got loud and there is SO much going on in that comic, I had to set it aside for a bit to recover. Like, it’s an amazing supernatural spy story but it LOVES to mess with your mind, not just with the plot twists, but there are lots of hidden messages on the page and trying to read that at 11pm was not doing it justice. I will revisit it though as I just got the board game in and I want to really appreciate it all.

You can see the entire list below. My favorites reads of the year were

• Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
• Weight of Blood by Tiffany Jackson
• Incredible Doom vol 1 and 2 by Mathew Bogart
• Harrow County (the whole series!) by Cullen Bunn
• White Smoke by Tiffany Jackson

You can find all my book reviews and more on GoodReads but I tend to post the ones that really impress me here too! I’m hoping to finish White Smoke before the end of the year, taking me up to 30 books. And I think 30 will be my goal for 2023…

What stand out books did you consume this year? (I’m going to start saying “consume” because you can read and listen and it still counts!)