2023 in books – ignormatyk

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Generally, I don't make these kinds of summaries because, frankly, who gives a f*ck how many books someone has read or whatever. But lately, I've been short on ideas for articles, and besides, 2023 has been a record year for me in terms of reading, so I’ll just go ahead and boast, like a normal person.

frankly
who gives a f*ck
how many books someone has read
or whatever

So far, we're in the first half of December, and instead of the usual fourteen or fifteen books, I've already hit thirty-six, with the thirty-seventh currently being read.

If anyone takes a (probably bored) look at my book list, they'll find only 34 titles there. The missing two are repeats, which I don't list again. Currently, I'm 'listening' to "The Star Diaries" by S. Lem, so that's another repeat.

Authors

If I were to create a podium and place the authors I've read most frequently this year on it, it would look like this:

At the very top, there would be three names, each with five titles:
- Jeffery H. Haskell (the "Grimm's War" series)
- Alastair Reynolds ("Slow Bullets", "Eversion", "Century Rain", "House of Suns", "Pushing Ice")
- Dennis E. Taylor (four books from the "Bobiverse" series, plus "Roadkill")
In second place - two writers, each with two titles:
- Craig Alanson (the "Expeditionary Force" series)
- Benedykt (the "Labirynt" series (PL))
And the third place would be trampled by twenty-five pairs of feet belonging to the remaining authors

Genres

In terms of genres, science fiction remains the undisputed queen, as it had been since when I was 4 y.o.; this year, I read only five non-SF books: "Ballada o pewnej panience" by Twardoch, "A City On Mars" by Zach and Kelly Weinersmith, "Widmo Brockenu" by Mróz, "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing" by the recently deceased Matthew Perry, and the satirical miniature "Science: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness" by Zach Weinersmith.

Languages

Only five items on my list are in Polish (Twardoch, Mróz, Ziemiański, and Benedykt x2); the rest are in English.

Flops a.k.a duds

Some flops, which I didn’t finish reading, are not on my official list. After all, if they were, I could easily inflate my reading list to hundreds or even thousands of books annually, but why bother?

One such dud was "Ninefox Gambit" by Yoon Ha Lee, who turns out to be quite a popular writer, and this particular book, her writing debut, even collected several awards. But it didn’t appeal to me. It was too... what should I say? Abstract? Quirky? I don’t know really.

Another disappointment was "Hospital Station" by James White. Too much 'Fi', not enough 'Sci' for my taste. And it felt a bit technologically dated.

"Sundiver" (David Brin) is my third and final book flop in 2023. Like "Ninefox Gambit", this book was also very well received, but not by me.

Media

There were very few audiobooks (just two): "Widmo Brockenu" and "Shards of Earth".

There weren't many physical books this year either, only four: "Ballada o pewnej panience", "A City On Mars", "Murder on the Orient Express", and "Virion. Legion".

The rest were e-books read either on Kindle or on a smartphone/tablet.

Repeats

I know I'm repeating myself, as I mentioned this at the very beginning of this post, but that's what repeats are for, right?

This year, I revisited three titles:

"PLO" by Grzędowicz (all four volumes, from Audioteka.pl)
"The Witcher" by Sapkowski (short stories plus "Baptism of Fire", also from Audioteka)
"The Star Diaries" by S. Lem (for a change, from Audioteka, a superproduction with Piotr Adamczyk in the role of Ijon Tichy, very well done in my opinion)

There are still three weeks until the end of the year, maybe in this Christmas-New Year's frenzy, I'll manage to grab something else. Or maybe not.

We shall see.

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