Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: They feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.

Anne Lamott

This was one epic year of reading. I read the most books I’ve ever read in a year, I didn’t guilt myself over DNFing several books I was REALLY not enjoying, and I discovered so many great reads and authors. I love doing this post every year since seeing a visual of my year of reading is super interesting to me. Plus it’s neat to look back and see how different my years are and what I was in the mood for.

Number of Books

This year I read 214 books for a total of 77, 118 pages! My shortest books was 31 pages long and my longest was 1,443.

Mood and Pace

Apparently it was a mysterious, dark, emotional, adventurous, tense, and funny year for me where reading was concerned.

Genres

Yeah, I’m a huge fiction person. I also love reading across multiple genres. I think my reading really reflects my personality where I love trying new things and want to live a life that feels full, so I try to get as much diversity in as possible.

Print vs Audiobooks

The reason I can read so much in a year is because of audiobooks. Over the years, I’ve turned up the speed gradually and now I listen at 2.15 speed. This lets me cruise through books and I love it! Of my 214 books, I read 160 through audiobooks.

Before you think I’m made of money (hahaha), I listened to all of them on the Libby app. It’s linked to my library card and all of the books were free. I only spent about $60 on books this year and that was entirely at local, independent bookstores on my travels or locally at Pocket Books.

Month by Month

August, October, November were my best months and I’m honestly shocked to see how much I read each month. It never feels like that much since I’m having so much fun while reading.

I purposely set aside time to read every day. I read during my morning workouts, on my drive to/from work, doing chores around the house, and on my lunch breaks at work. Reading adds adventure to my life, but I make sure it doesn’t interfere with quality time with my boyfriend and pets. It’s an added perk to this life I love.

Also I realize the graph says 211, but I can’t for the life of me figure out which ones I missed adding to this tracker. I just started using StoryGraph, so it’s a learning curve. Oops!

Star Ratings

This year was interesting. There were a LOT more books that I felt were awful that I read. My reading taste and cultural awareness has increased a lot over the years. As I get more in tune with current events, what movements are more meaningful to me, my radar for red flags in books gets pinged more. I do my best to keep ratings fair especially if books were written a while ago.

On the other hand, I read a lot of fantastic books this year that really stuck with me. I think I had more 5 star and almost 5 star reads than any other year. Plus, I really had fun with book recommendations from friends more than any other year. I’ll share my favorite reads of the year below!

A Book by An Author from Every Country Update

Last year I ended my epic challenge with 35 countries. This year I’m up to 40! I feel like I start out the year strong and then get into mood reading. Either way, I added to my list, discovered new authors, and got a little bit closer to my goal. I’d like to focus more on Africa, South America, and Western Europe this year. If anyone has any recommendations I would love to hear them! Plus I feel like I should go ahead and read something by a Russian author since that would visually make me feel like I got somewhere.

My most read countries this year were Indonesia, the Philippines, and Mexico! I found a bunch of authors who I absolutely loved and read as much from them as possible.

Top Books of 2023

Without further ado, I give to you my favorite reads of 2023! This was SUCH a hard list to narrow down!!! Someone please read any of these and talk to me about them!!!

How was your year of reading and what were some of your favorites!?