2023 Reading Reflections

and too many favorites

Hello Readers,

Happy 6th Day of Christmas! I hope your Christmas Day was lovely and that your Christmas season is off to a good start. Before the New Year kicks off I wanted to share some of my reflections on my year of 2023 in reading and list some (too many) of my favorites from the year. In order to slip more picks in I made a lot of categories. I hope that this is a fun list to read through and that maybe you are inspired in your reading plans for next year. If you got any Christmas money that needs spending there are all books that would be a lovely addition to any home library.

Thoughts about my Reading Life in General

This year my total book count was down, but I am very happy with my reading life still. I had a goal this year of focusing less on number of books and more on a life of deep reading (and fun reading). When I have a reading goal of a specific number of books read I can definitely tend to focus too much on finishing books and even read shorter books to “make my goal” and that is not what reading should be about. So this year, inspired by Alan Jacobs I tried to make sure that my reading was leisurely since it is a leisure activity.

While I am okay with my lower book count, I did want to think about why that was the case and I think some of the reasons were that I had more school preparation and pre-reading to do this year for homeschooling two students and switching curriculums. I also did a lot less audio book listening in an attempt to be more present to my children who have an ever more desire to chat these days. I also gave myself more freedom to start and not finish books I wasn’t enjoying. So I did a lot more picking up books and reading 20-50 pages and then putting them down, which I would rarely do before because that seemed like such a waste of time if my goal was “the most books.”

I also used the library much more this year which gave me a lot more freedom to dabble in books to see if I was even interested before fully committing to reading the full book. I may have done this a little bit too much and not committed to books worth reading, but there is ever an ebb and flow in my reading life.

Now onto my favorites….

Literature Book Club Favorite(s)

I couldn’t pick only one (even out of only 12 options). The idealist in me says that it is because we read such good books. The realist in me says that it is because I made the book lists. I’ll leave you to decide. So, I made multiple categories so that I could pick 3 (and some runner ups). These are all from the 2022-2023 and the 2023-2024 lists if you want to see what they were up against.

Best Group Conversations

My first category is based on how much fun I had discussing the book at our meetings. I always have fun and the conversations are always lovely, but two really stuck out to me from the past calendar year. One caused arguments about true love and the other about murder…we care about the more important things in our group, obviously!

Romeo and Juliet was surprisingly enjoyable to read (for someone that hasn’t read much Shakespeare, but even better it produced a very fun and interesting conversation about love and marriage and poetry.

The other novel that provided a very entertaining conversation was Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. There was a lot of debate about gothic heroes and murder. It was very fun!

I would love to hear your favorite reads (from Book Club and other reads) in the comments!

Best Rereading Experience

I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time in high school and loved it. I credit my sophomore year English teacher for this. I can still hear her voice in my head doing Scout’s voice. She showed the humor so well through her reading and I’m not sure I would have “gotten it” otherwise. But rereading this book as an adult is even better and reading it in community was even better! Harper Lee was a genius to tell this story about a very serious racial matter through the fresh eyes of a little girl so that we could all experience it through her innocence. And on top of it all I enjoyed every single minute I spent reading the book. I may have decided in the process of writing this that it is my overall book club favorite of the year!

Best New Reading Experience

Our Mutual Friend was suggested by our resident Dickens lover so it was a new read for me. Making this a category is definitely cheating because this might have been my only new read on either Book Club list, but I make the rules so I get to make it a category and get one more book on the list. I have loved everything I have read by Dickens, but admittedly I have barely scratched the surface of his work. Our Mutual Friend was no exception. It has everything you want in a Dickens novel: lots of interesting characters, hilarious running jokes, a twisting plot that finally all makes sense in the end, and this one even had a murder mystery! It is long, but completely worth the read if you haven’t gotten to it yet! I aspire to be a true Dickens lover. For instance, my long term reading goal is to become the dad in About Time who uses his time traveling powers to spend time with his family and read more Dickens.

Spiritual Books

New to Me

I finally finished Flannery O’Connor’s volume of letters, The Habit of Being, this year. It is over 600 pages and I savored every letter so it took me about 2 full years to read it and it was worth every second. Flannery is hilariously witty, delightfully grouchy, and always spiritually insightful. I recommend this book even if you are not a fan of Flannery’s fiction writing, maybe especially so. It will make you come to love this author of grotesque stories and get into her mind to understand and appreciate what she is doing in her other writing. I read it every morning (or so) along with my other spiritual reading because it is full of meditations on the Christian life. If you are a reader or writer it is also full of lots of tin bits on writing as well. I have heard someone say (and I honestly can’t remember who) that they keep this book on their night stand to read one letter a night and plan to do it for their whole life. I may adopt that reading plan as well!

Technically this pick is also cheating because I haven’t technically finished The Supper of the Lamb yet. But in my defense I might keep on reading this one indefinitely as well. Marketed as a cook book it is so much more. I initially bought this for my culinary and theologically minded husband thinking that he would appreciate this chef/pastor’s perspective on cooking and I was right. What I didn’t realize is that it is so much more than a cookbook and that I (who would not consider myself to have a particularly culinary mind) would also fall in love with this book. Robert Capon is a delightful person to “spend time with” in the kitchen. He is a wonderful cook who is inspirational in the kitchen as well as in the spiritual life. He is also hilariously witty and a little uppity (which is very fun to read). I have heard

Autumn Kern

say that she keeps some books as commonplaces in themselves (because otherwise she would rewrite the whole book in her commonplace book) and that this one is one of them!

Rereads

I don’t remember where I hear about Gift from the Sea for the first time, but I read it a few years ago and loved it. Someone reminded me about it this year so I promptly requested it from the library and reread it over a morning or two. This is Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s (wife of Charles Lindbergh, of the famed flight across the Atlantic) reflections on being a wife, mother, and a writer during her vacation to a seaside cottage alone. You could read this book in one sitting or over the course of weeks and get so much encouragement from it. I am now seeing that there is also a set of journals and letters by her and I think I may add those to my 2024 reading list because her writing is so good!

We read The Four Loves for our local Mom’s Group this Fall and I cannot recommend C.S. Lewis enough. Anything he writes you should buy it and read it over and over again. He has the gift of being able to take normal situations and have me thinking about them in a new way over and over again. There is a reason so many Christians keep reading C.S. Lewis. This book particularly is such a good look at our relationships and how our natural and supernatural loves can become more like Christ and why that is a beautiful thing.

Fiction

New to Me

I read Everything Sad is Untrue with Close Reads this summer and I think if I had to pick one favorite for the year it would be this one. It is a novelized memoir about an Iranian refugee mixed with stories about his parents, grandparents, ancestors, and Persian fairy tales. Daniel Nayeri writes this story in the person of his 11 year old self, which might be the most creative narrative perspective I have read. It is a meditation on coming of age, family, religion, and the power of story itself. If you’re going to read one modern novel this year, read this!

I read Mr. Wilder and Me on

David Kern

’s recommendation (from one of the Close Reads End of the Year Podcasts I think) and it was surprisingly enjoyable. It was one of those that I requested from the library on a whim, but didn’t think I would get around to it. Then over Thanksgiving break I finished my other novel and decided to pick it up and I couldn’t put it down. It explores the declining career of the film director, Billy Wilder, from the perspective of a fictionalized first person narrator. I guess I am into creative narrative devices this year. This is also one that explores the ideas of story telling and art as well as having a page turner story.

Non-Fiction

New to Me

If you have talked to me this year about books or motherhood then you already know that I read Life Among the Savages. Shirley Jackson is a famous horror/thriller novelist who also had 4(?) children. In this memoir (and its sequel) she chronicles the mishaps of the chaos of trying to be a creative woman while also being a wife, mother, and owner of an old house. It is hilariously written and published as a very aesthetically pleasing paperback. If you need some humor in your life, look no further.

In Range David Epstein tells us everything that Charlotte Mason told us, but with a modern twist and with plenty of research in an engaging story telling way. This was a great one to listen to on audio.

I also listened to Stolen Focus twice this year. This was a super helpful book about our attention crisis with much more politically liberal solutions than I would normally take to. I do not agree with everything in this book, but after reading a lot of “pull yourself up by your own technological bootstraps” types of books, I appreciated this alternative perspective that we may need more societal than personal solutions.

I hope this list is fun and maybe you got a few reading ideas for the coming year! Book lists are one of my favorite genres of reading. Speaking of, Close Reads came out with their 2023 in Reading episode this past week and it is lovely (as always). One of my Christmas traditions is to listen to this episode while burning all the cardboard boxes from the kid’s Christmas presents after they’ve gone to bed on Christmas night. Then I am usually inspired and go back and listen to all the old Year in Reading episodes for the rest of the week. So if you want your TBR to be even longer, go ahead and have a listen!

One of my ever present “reading life problems” is how to record what I read. I have used Goodreads, Storygraph, an Excel document, a specific reading journal, and a pen and paper list (of varying iterations). I am never quite satisfied with any of these systems. This year I dabbled in Storygraph and liked the idea, but not enough friends were on it. Then I started keeping a paper list to record books I finished, but also books that I dabbled in. But I really missed Goodreads analytics and interactions with friends. So this coming year I am getting back on Goodreads if you’d like to join me!

I wish you all a lovely year in reading and a merry rest of your Christmas holiday!

Keep on reading!

“We seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves. . . . We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own.”

-C.S. Lewis (An Experiment in Criticism)

A Few Reminders

• Next up in January is Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare and then on to Middlemarch for February and March.

• If you found your way here and are not part of an in person book club, welcome! We would love you to read along with us. But, in person literary community is a beautiful thing. So please contact me if you’d like to join or start a group!

• If you are part of a group, but you’re not on our Slack page, please contact me. That is where people share thoughts and logistics for each in person group.

• Here is the whole list of this years book selections

• Book lists from previous years can be found here.

• We are now on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (with links to Substack) in order to hopefully spread the reading life to more people...if you want to like or share with any friends that want to start their own groups (or follow along virtually) please do!

*As always, some of the links are affiliate links. The few cents(literally) earned with each purchase you make after clicking links (at no extra cost to you) go toward the time and effort it takes to keep Literature Book Club running and I appreciate it!