2023 Recap

Normally I begin my annual Reading List post with a recap of the year that has been but I know some of you are eager to get to the poll results so I will be brief.

2023 was a transitional year for me. I began this website when I was a stay-at-home parent. This year I returned to fulltime work. Normally, I have no trouble completing my Reading List and I read a few more books besides. This year it was a struggle to get through my entire list and I may need to reassess just how much I can now read in a year with a fulltime job and two small children.

Favourites and Not-So-Favourites

It was another year where I read several books that I liked but did not love. My lists of favourite fiction and non-fiction was not under threat. This was somewhat disappointing since I had high expectations for several books such as Adrian Goldsworthy’s Caesar, Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker and Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. I liked all of these but perhaps not as much as I was hoping for. Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots was more of a mixed bag and therefore disappointing.

Even Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – one of my all-time favourites – which I picked to reread for the first time since I first read it may get demoted from my favourites list.

I am also continuing my journey through some twentieth century postmodernism. And not really enjoying it! My favourite novel, Catch-22, is usually classed among them but I have not enjoyed Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 or V. In fact, I have not reviewed them because I have no idea what to say about them! I will carry on though as I have several of them in my TBR pile.

If I were to pick the best of this year it is mostly some of the other non-fictions I read – Sam Harris’ book on religion, The End of Faith; Singh and Ernst’s book on alternative medicine, Trick or Treatment; and a book that was not on my 2023 Reading List as it was sent to me by the author to review – Jeff Colvin’s Avoiding Apocalypse. I quickly wrote my review of Avoiding Apocalypse to meet my deadline but the more I thought about it afterwards the more I had to say.

New Contributor

Returning to fulltime work has also made it harder to devote as much time to writing reviews and I have not posted as frequently as I would have liked. Filling some of the gap has been my wife, Rebecca, who decided this year to make some contributions. Her reviews of Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, which went on the win the 2023 Women’s Prize, and The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, which won the 2022 Booker Prize, were particularly popular here.

Polls This Time

The first time I attempted to determine my reading list online poll back in late 2018 to form my 2019 Reading List. The number of votes cast in that round was modest but I allowed myself to expect that this time I would get a better response. After all, I am doing it slightly differently this time, changing things from what I felt did not work well last time. I have about 50% more followers and receive about 900% more views than when I last ran polls in 2018.

Unfortunately, the response was very muted this time around. Mostly family and friends rather than followers or random visitors. Inevitably, I wondered what I’ve done wrong or could have done better. Maybe the rise in followers and views over the years has been misleading and what I needed to have a good response to these polls was more engagement. After all, while my views have gone up, likes and comments have gone down.

It is tempting to fall into the trap of questioning everything. But this soon leads to feeling like you are in high school trying to be popular. It is ok to try and see if you could do things better but also still best to be yourself and let the world take you as you are.

There are a myriad of ways I could have done the polls differently and I am certainly open to suggestions. I know that twelve polls is probably too many but that does cover the genres I want to include in a reading list. But I do like an idea from a friend who suggested I instead spread them out over a year and give the results of the previous poll when posting each new one.

Anyway, onto the poll results and the final list!

Results

The first poll was on novel series. The four options were somewhat literary and perhaps people found that a bit dry. Book series are after-all dominated by young-adult, fantasy, science-fiction and crime. I think there will be a lot of that in my future reading and I look forward to it. I just wish more of those series were actually completed!

I had thought MaddAddam by Margaret Attwood would hold sway here but the winner of the first poll was The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker.

When I first used polls to decide my reading list, back in 2018, the non-fiction polls were clearly less popular that fiction ones. So, I thought I would alternate between fiction and non-fiction this time. My second poll was to decide a history book to read. The winner was The German Genius by Peter Watson.

In the case of the Classics poll, there was a clear winner – Moby Dick.

The Science poll was one of the closest. It was won in the end by Richard Dawkins’ Unweaving the Rainbow.

For Modern Classics, people expressed to me a wish for Parker or Lucky Jim but the votes went for The Trial.

The Philosophy poll was one of the most even polls until the last few days when MacCulloch’s A History of Christianity pulled away. It’s over 1,000 pages. If my reading of MacCulloch’s biography of Thomas Cromwell is any guide, I expect his history of Christianity to be thorough and informative but maybe dry and difficult. Yikes!

Again, with the Contemporary poll, people expressed interest in others to me, but the votes went strongly for The Name of the Rose.

Stephen King was the overwhelming favourite in the Other Non-Fiction poll.

In the ‘Wife’s Choice’ poll, 2022 Booker Prize winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida got an early lead in the voting and did not let up.

Again, in the Indian Fiction poll, the trend continued where the silent voters held sway over what people were telling me they were voting for.

The Indian Non-Fiction poll is one where I did have a book in mind that I hoped would win – Ramachandra Guha’s second biography of Gandhi. That is because I am currently reading the first – Gandhi Before India – and hoping to read the follow up soon. But the votes did not go that way!

Again, the Reread poll did not go the way I expected or the way the feedback suggested. Another silent majority made a statement.

Final List

So, my final 2024 Reading List looks like this:

• The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker
• The German Genius by Peter Watson
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins
• The Trial by Franz Kafka
• A History of Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• On Writing by Stephen King
• The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
• The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee
• Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

What the Future Holds

Thanks again to all who voted. Although a little disappointed by the turnout, it was a fun campaign to plan and execute. I don’t rule out doing it again but it will be some years away to allow me to clear out my TBR pile and have some fresh options. I don’t rule out doing it differently either, maybe spread out over a year as a friend suggested.

I also don’t rule out changing the categories. I think the two most under threat are my two Indian ones. I have read a lot of books about India over the years and finding ones that I have not yet read and are interesting to me is getting difficult. I am tempted to replace one or both with a fantasy and/or a science-fiction category, though that presents fresh challenges of their own!