I did something this year I don’t recall ever doing before: I skipped a book in a series. I skipped the third book in Barbara Hambly’s Winterlands series because I wanted to know the end but just couldn’t watch two characters I loved go through a whole book of pain. And it was fine, I don’t think I missed too much.
I really enjoyed Dan Simmons’ Hyperions Cantos despite finding them really complex (and I really want to reread them one of these days) so I expected to like The Fifth Heart. Ugh, NO. Almost unbearably boring and with one of the most annoying main characters ever.
Space Opera by Catherynne M Valente was another book I expected to enjoy and just did not, for completely different reasons. I don’t often do well with humor and didn’t like the humor here, though I can see why others would. Just not my cup of overly described rabbit hole tea.
Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St Mary’s, though, had me literally laughing out loud more times than I can remember in any series. So much so that I immediately had to move on to The Time Police series and The Ballad of Smallhope and Pennyroyal. Why did it take me so long to find these books? Sure, the romance elements were lacking but that’s not why I was there.
Kacen Callender’s Islands of Blood and Storm duology was the opposite of a laugh riot, though in a good way. A tough, dark read, which makes sense given it’s about slavery. I’m glad I read these two books and I made use of The StoryGraph’s filters to find a next book that wasn’t dark and sad. Full Immersion by Gemma Amor was also a gut-wrenching read in a different context.
My favorites of the year — in no particular order and for no reason I can pin down — were:
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. This book had lots of hype, which scared me, but it turned out the hype was justified and it was just an excellent read all around.
Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree would have been on my list of Noteworthy Books of 2019, had I started this blog back then. Its prequel A Day of Fallen Night came out in 2023 and this year I got around to reading that and re-read Priory, almost six years to the day after reading it the first time. Just a wonderful world and cast of characters throughout.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern was just exquisite. I never wanted it to end. A bonus was that chapters were often brief, making the book easy to pick up and put down, and therefore easier to spin out the enjoyment.
The Tide Child series by RJ Barker was totally not what I was expecting or looking for — I was on vacation in the Caribbean and picked it out hoping for tropical pirates — but ended up being just what I really wanted. Wonderful human and non-human characters and a great adventure that was more than just plot. A real find.
Marina J Lostetter’s Noumenon series, where a couple of the main characters are AI, and AI I would like to have.
I continued the practice I started last year, using Goodreads to track my reading progress — since I do virtually all of my reading on a Kindle, tracking progress with Goodreads is almost painless — and The StoryGraph for reviewing books and finding new books.
Not that I need help finding new books. My TBR pile has increased to 483 books (up from 439 last year), 244 of which I own. Also an increase from last year. So if my goal was to decrease the pile — which it isn’t — I’m failing. Good thing that’s not the goal!