Best of 2023

[Link to Best of 2022 List]
[Link to Best of 2021 List]
[Link to Best of 2020 List]
[Link to Best of 2019 List]

Happy New Year, and happy thirtieth birthday to me! My grandma always said that being thirty is infinitely better than being twenty, and I'm hoping that's true, because the majority of my twenties sucked (major exceptions including the birth of my youngest niece*, meeting my best friend, and my parents adopting the best dog in the world). I'm overdue for a lifetime of stability and comfort after the nonsense I've had to go through.

2023 had very few 'best of' entries... Only 5 percent of the books I read made it onto here. I'm a little disappointed, especially considering I might not make a list like this again. (I can't read nearly as much as I'm used to reading, due to my new job.) But the few books that did make it onto this list are truly excellent.

(*Obviously the births of ALL my niblings were great, but the rest of them happened in my teens and pre-teens; not my twenties.)

Willodeen by Katherine Applegate is a children's book — I read a lot of children's books this year — about a small tribe of people who hate a "useless" smelly, pig-like animal and hunt it to near-extinction... Only to experience environmental upheaval and an inexplicable absence of their beloved "hummingbears;" cute little animals that bring in tourists and tourist money. Willodeen, an odd little girl who loves the pig-like animals, goes on a scientific journey to find out why her forest is changing so fast. Why there are so many fires lately; where the hummingbears went... It's a story about environmentalism and how fragile the balance of nature can be once humans start meddling. On top of that, it's a beautiful story of grief and recovery and friendship... (Did this book make me cry? Maybe.)

I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane was a dystopian story about a woman who's wife dies in childbirth during a major societal upheaval. The president (who feels very Trump-ish), quickly becoming a dictator, has decreed that anyone who hurts someone else must now carry an extra shadow... And people with more than one shadow are second-class citizens who have almost no rights at all. Since the baby technically "killed" her mother, she is assigned an extra shadow at birth, and all the stigma that comes with it is even more extreme when directed at an infant. It's a beautiful, poetically-written, almost stream-of-consciousness story about fascism, bigotry, queerness, found family, and self acceptance (and also healing, since our protagonist is severely traumatized from the loss of her wife).

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh is a novella about a vaguely inhuman man who lives in and guards the woods and all the magical inhabitants within; a sort of fairy groundskeeper... And the tale of how he slowly falls for the eccentric human man who bought the property he lives on. Since the story is so short, it's hard to say much without spoiling anything, but if you enjoy old-school fairy lore, medieval magic, sassy old ladies, and queer romance, you'll love this.

While I loved the entire series, I'm choosing the first (of five) Gregor the Overlander books by Suzanne Collins (yeah, the Hunger Games author!) for this list. It's set in modern-day New York City, where an impoverished tween (Gregor) has to care for his family due to his mother's full working schedule and his father's recent disappearance. While chasing his toddler sister through a laundry room, the two of them fall... Into a dangerous underground world where talking, person-sized cockroaches, bats, and albino humans are at war against evil rats. It has some tropes I don't love (namely, "chosen one" prophesies), but that doesn't much bother me because Gregor is the most precious pacifist of a protagonist. He only wants to protect and support his loved ones and is willing to go to extremes to do so. He's a good boy and I love him. This series has so much to say about poverty, sibling bonds, the true cost of war, death, mental illness, trauma... And Gregor is an absolutely incredible role model for young boys! He's a gentle, sensitive, emotional, loving, kind kid... Highly recommend! (Warning: The later books are a very blatant Holocaust metaphor. Genocide by gassing happens, and it's graphic.)

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin is a very weird little... thing that I'm finding hard to describe. Every sentence in this book felt like a sharp left turn; I continuously found myself laughing and saying "wait, what?!" — I guess, if it has a plot, it's about a transcriptionist (Greta) for a therapist (Om) who becomes obsessed with one of Om's patients: a married Swiss woman (Flavia). Despite signing confidentiality agreements, when Greta meets Flavia outside of her therapy sessions and falls head over heels for her, they quickly form a deeply unethical romantic/sexual relationship built on lies. But it's so much more than that; it's a funny and deeply sad character study(?), essay on loneliness and repressed trauma(?), something. As another reviewer worded it, "my favorite genre is literary fiction about messed up women doing crazy sh*t". I loved it, even if I don't quite know what it was.

And that's it! I really didn't have a lot of luck with books this year. (Or with anything else, what with the broken hip and macular degeneration and "learning to live as an Officially Disabled Person" now, and all.)

My list of books that were pretty good, but not quite good enough to make it onto this list, are A Curious History of Sex, Goddess of Filth, A House with Good Bones, Together We Rot, Bones & All, Rabbits for Food, The One and Only Ivan, Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation, A Night Divided, Thornhedge, and (if manga counts), Tomura Shigaraki: Origin. You know it's a rough year when there are two new Kingfisher books, and neither of them makes the "best of"!

Because I'm a crotchety old biddy and negativity is my bread and butter, here's the list of books I actively hated from this year: And Then I Woke Up, A Welcome Reunion, Tell Me I’m Worthless, The Witch and the Vampire, and Sister, Maiden, Monster. See?! Even my "hated" books list is short! It really was just a whole year of "meh," wasn't it?

In 2024, I'm looking forward to the following books: Lady Makbeth, Murder Road, Icarus, Adam, Mine, A Sorceress Comes to Call, Deliver Me, and Heavenly Tyrant. (Assuming Heavenly Tyrant actually comes out this time. I love you, Xiran, and I understand why you can't tolerate your publisher messing with your pay, but please, I'm dying, here!) (Seriously, follow Xiran Jay Zhao's YouTube account; they spill so much tea about the publishing industry...)

I'm now following authors Marisa Crane, Emily Tesh, Skyla Arndt, and Jen Beagin; they've been added to my "favorite authors" list. And I'm still following Mira Grant, Katherine Applegate, K. Ancrum. Nicole Lesperance, Naomi Novik, Mona Awad, Kristen Arnett, T. Kingfisher, Akwaeke Emezi, Anne Heltzel, Xiran Jay Zhao, Samantha Irby, Caitlin Doughty, Sayaka Murata, Katrina Leno, Stephen Graham Jones, Simone St. James, Zoje Stage, Darcie Little Badger, Elizabeth Lim, Ava Reid, Catriona Ward, and Grady Hendrix.

I'm no longer following Chloe Gong, Lucinda Berry, Eric LaRocca, or Silvia Moreno-Garcia. No hate to them! I really liked some of their work, but for various reasons, I'm no longer interested in what they create. Hopefully this year I'll find some cool newbies!